Under the title “Le vieux neuf” Mr. Edouard Fournier published in the Le Siècle, a series of articles ten years ago, as much outstanding as interesting, from the erudition point of view, with respect to history. When commenting all modern inventions and discoveries the author proves that if this century has the merit of application and development, it does not have – at least in its majority – that one of precedence. Over the time that Mr. Fournier wrote this magnificent series, there was no understanding of spirits, not noticing that the events that take place today are a mere repetition of what was equally or better known by our ancestors.  This is unfortunate, as his profound investigations would have allowed him to expose the old mystic just as he has exposed the ancient industry. We wish one day his extensive research may be directed to that spiritual side as well.

As for us, the personal observations do not leave any doubt relative to the ancient times and to the universality of the Doctrine taught by the spirits. The coincidence between what they tell us today and the beliefs of the remotest eras is a very important fact. We shall note, however, that if we find traces of the Spiritist Doctrine everywhere, we don’t see it completed anywhere else. It seems that the task of coordinating these sparse fragments among all peoples has been reserved for our times, so that we can arrive at the unity of principles, through a more thorough, and above all, more general set of manifestations which, as it seems, give reason to the author mentioned in the preceding article, about the psychological period in which humanity gradually enters.

Ignorance and prejudice have disfigured this doctrine almost everywhere as these fundamental principles blend with the superstitious practices of all times, exploited with the objective of subduing reason. Nevertheless, under this stack of absurdities the most sublime ideas have germinated like precious seeds hidden under the burning bushes, waiting for the vivifying sunlight to develop. Our generation, more universally informed, brushes aside the burning bushes. Such a cleansing, however, cannot be accomplished without transition. Let us then allow the necessary time for the good seeds to develop and the weeds to be eliminated.

The Druidic Doctrine offers a curious example of what we have just said. This doctrine, which we only know the exterior practices, rises to the most sublime truths on certain aspects. But these truths were only known to the initiated ones: frightened by the human sacrifices, the public harvested the sacred agarics of the oat with a sanctified respect and only saw the phantasmagoria. We will be able to assess it by the following text, extracted from a document as much precious as unknown, which sheds a completely new light onto the truthful theology of our ancestors.

We offer a Celtic text to the reflection of our readers, published not long ago, whose appearance has caused certain commotion in the educated world. It is impossible to be certain about its authorship as well as to which century it belongs. It is, however, incontestable that it belongs to the tradition of the Bardic Welsh and that its origin is sufficient to award it the highest value.

It is known, indeed, that Wales was, and still is in our days, the most faithful asylum to the Gallic nationality which has suffered, among us, profound modifications. It has been just touched by the weak and short roman domination; preserved from the barbaric invasions by the strength of its inhabitants and by the natural difficulties of its territory; submitted later to the Normand Dynasty which felt impelled to allow it a certain level of independence, retaining the name Wales as an always distinctive mark connecting it to ancient times.

The Welsh (Cymraeg or Gymraeg) language, once spoken all over the northern part of the Gaul, has never ceased to be used as many customs are equally still Gallic.

From all foreign influences, Christianism was the only one completely successful. But that was not achieved without difficulties, relatively to the supremacy of the Roman Church whose reform in the XVI century did not do more than determining its fall, articulated long before in those regions full of an indefectible independence. 

One can even say that on converting to Christianism the Druids were not extinct in the Gaul, as they were in our Brittany and in other regions of Gallic blood. They had, as an immediate consequence, a very solidly constituted society, mainly dedicated, apparently, to the cult of national poetry but which, under the poetic blanket, preserved a notable fidelity to the intellectual heritage of the old Gaul: the Bardic society of Wales, after been kept as a secret society during the whole Middle Ages, by oral transmission of its literary monuments and doctrine, similarly to what the Druids used to do, then decided around the XVI and XVII centuries to confide the most essential parts of their inheritance to the writings.

It is from that collection, whose authenticity is attested by an uninterrupted chain of traditions, that the text we mentioned proceeds and its value, given those circumstances and as mentioned before, does not depend on the hand which had the merit of writing it, neither on the period when the writing was given a definite format. It is the spirit of the medieval Bards that transpire from it, Bards who were in turn the last disciples of a wise and religious corporation which, under the name of Druids, dominated the Gaul during the first period of its history; more or less like the Latin clergy did during the Middle Ages.

Even if we were removed from all clues regarding the origin of the analyzed text, we would surely be on the right path, given its agreement with the Greek and Latin authors who left us their teachings about the Druids’ religious doctrine. That agreement is reached out of indubitable points of solidarity as they are supported by the reasoning extracted from the very substance of those texts. Thus the demonstrated solidarity regarding the fundamental articles – the only ones we heard about from our ancestors – naturally extends to the secondary developments. Indeed, these developments, imbued with the same spirit, necessarily derive from the same source; they are part of the whole and cannot be explained by anything else but that way. At the same time that they refer to the primitive archives of the Druidic religion, by such a logic deduction, it is impossible to assign any other starting point to them.  This is because, other than the Druidic influence, the region from where they originate has not suffered any other influence but the Christian that was totally strange to those doctrines.

The themes developed in the triads are so strange to Christianism that the rare Christian influences found here and there in the body of the text, at first sight, already distinguish them from the primitive structure. That influence, naively originated from the conscience of the Bardic Christians, could hardly interleave with the interstices of the Druidic tradition, if one can say so, incapable of blending with all that. Thus, the analysis of the text is as simple as rigorous, hence it can be simplified by leaving aside everything that contains the seal of Christianism and, once filtered, by considering as of Druidic origin all the rest, visibly characterized by a religion which is different from that of the Gospel or from the Catholic Councils.

Thus, in order to mention only what is essential, let us begin by the well-known principle that the dogma of charity to God and man is so peculiar to Christianism as the migration of the souls is to Druidism; a certain number of triads in which a spirit of love breathes, immediately revealing as indicators of a comparatively modern character, never known to the primitive Gaul, whereas the other triads, animated by a completely different breath, reveal even more markedly the distinguished character of the antiquity. Finally, one does not need to observe much to understand that the form of the teachings contained in the triads is of Druidic origin. It is a well-known fact that the Druids had a particular preference for the number three and used it in their lessons.  This is additionally demonstrated through the Gallic monuments that contain the number three.

Diogenes Laertius has preserved one of those triads which succinctly summarize the duties of man to the Divinity, to their neighbors and to himself. “Honor the superior beings, do not commit injustice and do cultivate ones virile virtue.” The bard’s literature propagated aphorisms of the same kind, relatively to all fields of human knowledge: Science, History, Moral, Law, Poetry. One cannot find a more interesting or adequate work to inspire great thoughts than that of the text published below, according to the French version by Mr. Adolphe Pictet.

From that series of triads the first eleven ones are dedicated to the exposition of the characteristic attributes of the Divinity. It is this segment that had the greatest Christian influence, as it was easy to predict. If one cannot deny that the Druidism incorporated the principle of God’s unity, they had also conceived, in a confusing way, perhaps due to their disposition for the number three, something like the Divine Trinity. It is, nevertheless, incontestable that what complements such a high theological conception – that is, a distinction of the persons and particularly the third one – became completely strange to this old religion. All that contributes to prove that its former adepts were much more concerned with the establishment of man’s freedom than with charity. It was precisely a consequence of this false starting point that made it perish. It seems also reasonable to associate the whole prologue to a more or less determined Christian influence, particularly from the fifth triad.

Following the general principles, relatively to the nature of God, the text continues to expose the constitution of the Universe. The body of this constitution is authoritatively formulated in three triads which, showing the particular beings in an order absolutely different from that of God, complete the idea that has to be made of a unique and immutable Being. Under more explicit formulas, the triads just reproduce what was already known, by the witnesses of the ancient times, about the circulation of the souls, alternatively passing from life to death and from death to life. We can consider them like in a famous Farsalia verse, in which the poet exclaims, upon addressing the priests of Gaul, that if what they teach is certain, then death is nothing more than the median of a long life: “Longae vitae mors media est.”

 ¨¨¨

“God and the Universe

 I – There are three primitive unities and from each one of those there could not be more than one: a God, a truth and a point of freedom which is the point where the balance of the whole opposition resides.

II – There things proceed from the three primitive unities: the whole life, the whole good and the whole power.

III – God is necessarily three things: the greatest part of life, the greatest part of science and the greatest part of power. From each thing there could not be a greater part.

IV – God cannot stop being three things: what has to constitute the perfect good, what has to desire the perfect good and what has to practice the perfect good.

V – Three guarantees of what God does and will do: His infinite power, His infinite wisdom and His infinite love, as there is nothing that cannot be done, that cannot become truthful and that cannot be desired as an attribute.

VI – Three main objectives of God’s work, as the Creator of all things: diminish evil, reinforce good and clarify the whole difference, so as to know what should be or, on the contrary, what should not be.

VII – Three things God cannot stop conceding: what there is of more advantageous, of more necessary and of more beautiful for each thing.

VIII – Three forces of existence: it cannot be different; it cannot be necessarily another one and cannot be able to be better since its conception. This contains the perfection of all things.

IX – Three things will necessarily prevail: the supreme power, the supreme intelligence and the supreme love of God.

X – The three greatness of God: perfect life, perfect science, perfect power.

XI – Three original causes of the living beings: divine love, according to the supreme intelligence; the supreme wisdom, by the perfect knowledge of all means; the divine power, according to the will, love and wisdom of God.”

“The Three Circles”

XII – There are three circles of existence: the circle of the empty region (ceugant) where, with the exception of God, there is nothing alive nor dead and no being that God cannot penetrate; the circle of migration (abred) where every animated being proceeds from death, where man has lived; and the circle of happiness (gwynfyd), where every animated being proceeds from life and that man will live in heaven.

XIII – Three successive states of the animated beings: the state of humiliation in the abyss (annoufn); the state of freedom in humanity and the state of happiness in heaven.

XIV – Three necessary phases of every existence regarding life: the beginning in annoufn; the transmigration in abred and the plenitude in gwynfyd. Without these three things nothing else can exist but God.”

Thus, as a summary, about the capital point of the theology that God, as their Creator, takes the souls from the “emptiness”, the triads do not precisely enunciate. After showing God in an inaccessible and eternal sphere, they simply show the souls originating in the last layers of the Universe, in the abyss (annoufn); from there these souls pass to the migration circle (abred), where their destiny is determined through a series of existences, according to the good or bad use of their freedom; finally, they elevate to the supreme circle (gwynfyd) where the migrations stop, where there is no more death, where life takes place in happiness, preserving a perpetual activity and total consciousness of their individuality.

Truthfully, Druidism does not follow the same mistakes as Eastern theologies, which lead man to be finally absorbed into the centre of an immutable Divinity since, on the contrary, it distinguishes a special circle, a circle of the emptiness or infinite (ceugant), which forms the incommunicable privilege of the supreme Being and in which no creature, whatever the degree of holiness, will ever penetrate. It is the highest point of the religion because it establishes the milestone for everyone’s progress.

The most significant hallmark of that theology, given that it is a purely negative mark, consists in the absence of a particular circle, such as the Tartar of the pagan antiquity, destined to the endless punishment of the criminal souls. To the Druids there isn’t properly a hell. The distribution of penalties, to their eyes, occurs in the circle of the migrations, in more or less happy condition where always owner of their own freedom they expiate their faults through the suffering and prepare for a better future, by the reformulation of their vices. In certain cases it is even possible that the souls degenerate to the annoufn region where they are born and to which no other meaning can be given but the animality. By this dangerous side of the degeneration, which nothing justifies, as the diversity of conditions in the circle of humanity is perfectly sufficient to the penalties of all degrees, Druidism would have then slipped to the metempsychosis. But such an unpleasant extreme, to which no requirement of the development of the soul through the migrations leads, as it will be seen by the series of triads relatively to the regimen of the abred circle, it seems to have occupied a secondary place in the religious system.

Apart from some obscurities due perhaps to the difficulties of a language whose profound metaphysical origin has not yet been well understood, the declaration of the triads with respect to the circle of abred spread the most vivid lights over the body of the Druidic religion. One feels a slight breath of superior originality. The mystery which offers the spectacle of our current existence to the intelligence, acquires there a singular feature not found anywhere else. One would say that a great veil, tearing off before and beyond life, allows the soul to suddenly swim with an unexpected power, through an undefined extension, never suspected before in their prison, among the thick walls of birth and death.

Whatever the judgment we pass on the truthfulness of that doctrine, it should be profound. Thinking of the effect that these principles about the origin and destine of the soul should have on simple creatures, it is easy to understand the huge influence the Druids had over the spirit of our ancestors. Amidst the darkness of antiquity, those sacred ministers could not appear to be, to the eyes of the people, anything but revealers of Heaven and Earth.

Here the remarkable text under scrutiny:

“CIRCLE OF ABRED”

XV – Three necessary things in the circle of abred: the least possible degree of the whole life, and from that its beginning; the matter of all things, and from there the progressive growth which only takes place in the state of need; the formation of all things of death, and from there the debility of the existences.

XVI – Three things that all living beings necessarily participate, through God’s justice: God’s help in abred, because without that nobody could know anything; the privilege of participating into God’s love; and the agreement with God who is fair and merciful regarding the realization of His power.

XVII – Three causes of the need in the circle of abred: the development of the material substance of every animated being; the development of the knowledge of all things; and the development of the moral force to overcome every Cythraul (evil spirit) opposition and to free the Droug (the evil). Without such a transition, per each state of life, there could not be the realization of any being.

XVIII – Three primitive calamities of abred: the need, the absence of memory and death.

XIX – Three necessary conditions to get to the plenitude of Science: transmigrate in abred, transmigrate in gwynfyd and remember the past things, up until annoufn.

XX – Three indispensable things in the circle of abred: transgression of the law, as it cannot be different; redemption through death before Droug and Cythraul; the development of life and the good through the separation from Droug, in the redemption of death and that by the love of God, who embraces everything.

XXI – Three efficient ways of God in abred to dominate Droug and Cythraul and to overcome one’s position relatively to the circle of gwynfyd: the need, the loss of memory and death.

XXII – Three things are primitively contemporary: man, freedom and light.

XXIII – Three things are needed for the victory of man over evil: strength against pain, change and freedom of choice. Having the power of choice, man cannot have the prior certainty about the place where he is going to be.

XXIV – Three alternatives offered to man: abred and gwynfyd; need and freedom; good and evil. Having the whole in equilibrium, man can connect to one or another, at will.

XXV – By three things man fall in the need of abred: by the absence of efforts towards knowledge; by his detachment from good and by his attachment to evil. As a consequence of these things, he falls into abred until his analogous and restarts the course of his transmigration.

XXVI – By three things man necessarily returns to abred, although in other senses he is connected to what is good: by pride he falls down to annoufn; by deceitfulness, down to the equivalent point of demerit; by cruelty, down to the corresponding degree of animality. From there he transmigrates again to humanity, as before.

XXVII – The three main things to obtain in the state of humanity: science, love and the moral strength, in the highest possible state of development, before death. This cannot be achieved prior to the state of humanity and can only be achieved through the privilege of freedom and choice. These three things are called the three victories.

XXVIII – There are three victories over Droug and Cythraul: science, love and moral strength and as the knowledge, the wish and the power, realize whatever needed in their connection with things. These three victories start in the condition of humanity and develop eternally.

XXIX – Three privileges of the condition of man: the balance between good and evil and from that the ability to compare; the freedom of choice and from that the judgment and preference; the development of the moral strength as a consequence of the judgment and from that the preference. These three things are necessary to the realization of anything.”

¨¨¨

In summary, the beginning of the beings in the heart of the Universe happens at the lowest point of the scale of life. Without stretching the consequences of the declaration contained in the twenty-seventh triad, one can assume that in the Druids doctrine this initial point was in the mysterious and confusing abyss of animality. It does result, as a consequence, in the logic need of progress, as God has not destined the beings to remain is such a low and obscure condition since the origin of the soul’s history. However, in the inferior zones of the Universe, such a progress does not develop according to a continuous line. That long life, being born in such a low level and having so much to improve, breaks into segments, which are connected to each other at the basis of its succession, but whose mysterious solidarity escapes the individual consciousness, thanks to the lack of memory, at least for some time. Those periodic interruptions, in the secular course of life, form what we call death; hence death and birth, from a superficial consideration, make such distinct events, in reality being nothing more than the two faces of the same phenomenon: one related to the period that ends, and the other to the one that begins.

That is why death itself is not a real calamity but a benefit from God. Breaking the narrowest links that we had established with our present life, it transports us to new conditions, thus giving place to a freer elevation, to new progresses.

Thus, as with death, the loss of memory which follows it should not be taken as anything other than a benefit. It is a consequence of the first point because if the soul clearly kept the memories from one period to the other, in the course of this long life, the interruption would be merely accidental and there would not be death, as such, neither birth, as these events would then loose the absolute character which distinguish and give them strength.

Even from the point of view of that theology it is not difficult to directly notice, with respect to the previous periods, how the loss of memory could be considered a benefit relatively to man in his present condition, if in those previous periods, as with the current position of man in a world of suffering and trials, they were unfortunately stained by crime and mistakes, today’s primary cause of misery and expiation. It is evidently a great advantage to the soul to be free from the vision of so many faults and, at the same time, of the most distressing remorse which would then originate. As it does not oblige a formal repentance other than those relatively to the guilt of the present life, God really concedes an enormous grace, thus showing compassion for their weaknesses.

Finally, according to this mode of considering the mystery of life, the needs of all nature that we are submitted to and that since birth, by a fatal destiny, so to speak, determine the form of our existence in the present period, constitute a last benefit, as sensible as the other two. The most convenient character of our physical expiations is definitely given by those needs and our trials and, consequently, our moral development. It is still those same needs, as much with our physical organization as with the exterior circumstances, in whose environment we are placed, that forcibly drag us to death then dragging us, by the same reason, to our supreme liberation. In summary, as the triads imply in their energetic concision, one finds in them the three primitive calamities as the three efficient means of God in abred.

Which conduct allows the soul to really elevate in this life, deserving to achieve a superior state of existence after death?

The answer given by Christianism to this fundamental question is known by all: it is the condition of destroying pride and selfishness in oneself; developing in ones’ intimate substance the forces of humility and charity, the only efficient and meritorious to God’s eyes. Blessed are the humble!

Druidism’s answer is way different and clearly contrasts with the latest one. As from their teachings, the soul elevates on the scale of existences with the condition of, by working on itself, fortifying its own personality. This result is naturally obtained by the development of the strength of character, added to the development of knowledge. This is what the twenty-fifth triad says, stating that the souls fall on the need of transmigrations, that is, in the confusing and mortal lives, not only for feeding the evil passions but also by neglecting the realization of the fair actions; by the lack of strength to stick to what is prescribed by the consciousness; in one word, by the weakness of character. Besides this lack of moral virtue, the soul is still halted in its progress towards heaven by the lack of perfection of the spirit. Intellectual illumination, which is necessary to the plenitude of happiness, does not happen in the happy soul by a simple and absolutely gracious irradiation from heaven. It only happens in the celestial life if the soul endeavors, since this life, to achieve it. Thus, the triad does not only mention the lack of knowledge but also the lack of efforts to acquire knowledge, which in the end, as with the preceding virtue, is a precept of activity and movement.

In fact, in the following triads, charity is recommended as much as Science and moral strength. But in this, still regarding the Divine power, it is sensitive to the influence of Christianism. It is to Christianism that the preaching and enthroning of the law of charity in God and man, in this world, belong and not to the strong and tough religion of our ancestors.

If such a law shines over the triads it is the effect of an alliance with the Gospel, or even better, of a happy improvement of the theology of the Druids by the action of the theology of the Apostles and not by a primitive tradition. Just subtract that Divine ray and there we have the Gallic moral, in its rude greatness, moral which was capable of producing powerful personalities, in the fields of heroism and Science, but which could not unite them, neither among them nor with the crowds of the simple ones.[1]

The Spiritist Doctrine does not consist only in the belief of the manifestations of the spirits but rather in everything they teach us about the nature and destiny of the souls. If we then refer to the precepts contained in the Spirits’ Book, where we will find their complete teachings, we will be surprised by the identity of some fundamental principles with the Druidic doctrine, among which, one of the most notable, incontestably, is the reincarnation. In the three circles, in the three successive states of the animated beings, we find all phases of our spirits’ scale. What is in fact the circle of abred or the migration, other than the orders of spirits which depurate through successive existences? In the gwynfyd circle man no longer transmigrates; he enjoys supreme happiness. Isn’t that the first order of the scale, of the pure spirits who having passed through all trials no longer need the reincarnation and enjoy eternal life? Notice still that, according to the Spiritist Doctrine, man preserves the free will; which he gradually elevates by his will, by his progressive perfecting and by the trials he endured, from the annoufn or abyss to the perfect happiness in gwynfyd, with the difference, however, that the Druidism admits the possible return to the inferior layers, whereas according to Spiritism, the spirit may remain stationary but cannot degenerate. In order to complete the analogy it would be sufficient to add to our scale, below the third order, the annoufn circle, which characterizes the abyss or the unknown origin of the souls, and above the first order the ceugant circle, or God’s dwelling, inaccessible to the creatures. The table below will clarify the compar

* Depurating and elevating through the trials of reincarnation