Druid? Funny, you don't look druish...

[Mirrorglass]

what is the original source for the cartoons, please?

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0058/0058_01.asp

Another gem by Jack Chick.

 

[bikerdruid]

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0058/0058_01.asp

Another gem by Jack Chick.

thanks.
i thought it reeked of his ignorance.

 

[Cainkane1]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11457795

Now don't get me wrong, I think its a good indication of how all religions are equally silly, but in my opinion they should all be DENIED tax breaks rather than allowed them.

But more to the point, if I recall in the original form wasn't human sacrifice a rather important ritual in the religion? I wonder if they want that re-instated too

Christians used to tie people to stakes and burn them alive and islam cuts peoples heads off or hangs them. Why should a society let a few human deaths in the name of the Druid gods bother them?

Christians havee mostly quit their brand of human sacrifice and the Muslims can't do it legally in the free world so why worry about the druids believing in human sacrifice if they can't actually practise it?

The Wiccans sacrifice a chocolate bunny so maybe the druids can make a similar substitution.

 

[Cainkane1]

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0058/0058_01.asp

Another gem by Jack Chick.

yeah you beat me to it. The jack O Lantern the Druids used was a turnip though instead of a pumpkin like jack Chick illustrated. This shows his ignorance as much as anything else he has done.

 

[bikerdruid]

yeah you beat me to it. The jack O Lantern the Druids used was a turnip though instead of a pumpkin like jack Chick illustrated. This shows his ignorance as much as anything else he has done.

yes...pumpkins are new world plants.
his idea that druids went door-to-door, exchanging pumpkins for human sacrifices is ludicrous.
this type of lie is very un-christian.

 

[Big Les]

Thanks for that post Vortigern - I take your point. I've been meaning to read Hutton's book on the subject.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Let's keep this going. Helping religion make itself look stupid is a valid goal.

 

[Vortigern99]

Gawdzilla, I don't take your meaning. I don't think 21st century Druids look or act "stupid". That's a matter of personal opinion, of course, to which you're certainly entitled.

As religions go, one in which the forces of nature are respected and admired, and personal individuality and creativity are encouraged and honored, strikes me as quite positive. The American Druids I've known have been educated and intelligent people, so I don't understand what you mean by "helping religion make itself look stupid is a worthy goal". Is it?

 

[Jeff Corey]

Caesar and Strabo, both of whom lived and wrote BCE, describe fairly horrific sacrificial rituals among the Gauls. Caesar recounts rites in which humans and animals were burned to death while locked inside a giant wickerwork figure, as sacrificial gifts to the gods.

Caesar specifies that "the immortal gods delight more in the slaughter of those taken in theft or brigandage or some crime, but when the supply of that kind runs short they descend even to the sacrifice of the innocent." Persons "suffering from serious illness" made up some portion of "the innocent".

So we see that ritual human sacrifice, apart from being religious in aspect, also provided a means of publicly held capital punishment. One is given to wonder, however, how Caesar could have verified these claims, which were recounted to him by his Gaulic translator.

Strabo writes that the Druids "shoot victims to death with arrows, or impale them in the temples", after which a prediction of the future would be made according to the response of the body.

Diodorus states: "... [the Druids] devote to death a human being and plunge a dagger into him... and when the stricken victim has fallen they read the future from the manner of his fall and from the twitching of his limbs, as well as from the gushing of his blood."

Other classical writers describe different methods by which the Druids committed ritual murder: hanging, stabbing, drowning. Pliny alludes to cannibalism. Lucan and Tacitus perpetuate these accounts, though they are probably just repeating what the others have already written, and exaggerating them into still more ghastly rites. (Lucan in his Pharsalia writes of "altars heaped with hideous offerings, and every tree... sprinkled with human blood". However, this was an epic poem filled with some fairly fantastical stuff; Lucan never actually travelled to Britain or Gaul.)

It is unknown whether the cited methods of execution were employed to invoke different spirits or supernatural powers, or to appease gods of differing dominions.

From the linked article:

"While sacrifice is a core notion within most spiritual traditions, within Druidry it is confused by historical accounts of the killing of both human and animal victims," [Britain's Druid Network] said in its application to the British commission. "No such practice is deemed acceptable within modern Druidry."

"What is sacrificed within the tradition today," the application says, "is that which we value most highly in life and hold to with most passion: time, security, certainty, comfort, convenience, ignorance and the like."​

Isn't that a whole lot of propaganda? How reliable are these sources that all had an axe (or a sword) to grind?

 

[Vortigern99]

Isn't that a whole lot of propaganda? How reliable are these sources that all had an axe (or a sword) to grind?

It's fair to say the surviving contemporary accounts of the Druids -- Caesar, Strabo, ET AL. -- had an agenda beyond pure historical accuracy. For one matter, literary conventions of the age permitted exaggeration, invention and unattributed plagiarism. The stock barbarian figure -- uncivilized, quaint and savage, even murderous -- consistently influences descriptions.

Caesar spent ten years in Gaul and had many opportunities to observe the practices of the various tribes, of their leaders and of the Druids. His narration of events and descriptions of places and personages are first-hand, detailed and dispassionate. It frankly strains credulity to suggest that Caesar could have invented out of whole cloth the vivid account of the "wicker men" supposedly used to sacrifice humans animals:

"Some tribes build enormous images with limbs of interwoven branches which they then fill with live men; the images are set alight and the men die in a sea of flame." Gallic Wars VI, 16, 4.​

Strabo, writing around the same time, states that:

"... having devised a colossus of straw and wood, [the Druids] throw into the colossus cattle and wild animals of all sorts and human beings, and then they make a burnt offering of the whole thing." Geography IV, 4, 5.​

Yet these account of human sacrifice and other "barbaric" behaviors of the Gauls may have been embellished in an effort to stir up Roman popular will to continue funding the conquest of the country, first under Caesar himself and later -- during the time of Pliny, Lucan and Tacitus (QV my posts upthread) -- under other generals who were pursuing the pacification of an already conquered Gaul.

Further, both Strabo and Caesar demonstrably "borrowed" from a now-lost writer, Posidonius. Posidonius was a Greek philosopher who lived some 75 years before Caesar and Strabo, traveled in Gaul and wrote treatises on the country and its tribes, which both C. and S. intermittently acknowledge as a source for their facts. So our two most important and earliest surviving writers on the Druids' rites might never have seen the "wicker man" burnings with their own eyes.

 

[Brainache]

I thought they used to slit their throats and throw them into peat bogs...

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_prb/l/lindow_man.aspx

 

[SnakeTongue]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11457795

Now don't get me wrong, I think its a good indication of how all religions are equally silly, but in my opinion they should all be DENIED tax breaks rather than allowed them.

But more to the point, if I recall in the original form wasn't human sacrifice a rather important ritual in the religion? I wonder if they want that re-instated too

Finally!

Finally!

I wish the bless of Hermes over all druids in this country (UK) and I hope the new order reborn to eternity.

The druids were the keepers of the ancient knowledge between the nature and the man.

May the Caduceus of Hermes guide the new order and let men and women rejoin with the ancient forces of nature again!

 

[SnakeTongue]

Good.. just as planned.

[qimg]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c322/Northernme/0058_17.gif[/qimg]

The second frame is so wrong...

Ankh

The Ankh, also known as key of life, the key of the Nile or crux ansata, was the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic character that read "eternal life", a triliteral sign for the consonants ʻ-n-ḫ. Egyptian gods are often portrayed carrying it by its loop, or bearing one in each hand, arms crossed over their chest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankh

 

[Eddie Dane]

So,

Could I apply for tax exempt status in the UK and US if I were to revive the old Greek traditions?
That Homeric stuff always appealed more to me than Christianity.

Do all religions get tax exempt status in the US?
Does that include Satanism?
Are the Freemasons legally a religion?

I'd been pondering these questions, sorry to fire them off all at once.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Gawdzilla, I don't take your meaning. I don't think 21st century Druids look or act "stupid". That's a matter of personal opinion, of course, to which you're certainly entitled.

As religions go, one in which the forces of nature are respected and admired, and personal individuality and creativity are encouraged and honored, strikes me as quite positive. The American Druids I've known have been educated and intelligent people, so I don't understand what you mean by "helping religion make itself look stupid is a worthy goal". Is it?

Ah, you're helping too. Good work!

 

[dafydd]

Caesar recounts the druids burning sacrificial victims alive inside wicker figures, but these were probably criminals being executed, which is somehow more palatable than that they were sacrificing innocent people to their bloodthirsty gods.

Believing what Caesar wrote about the Celts is like believing what Hitler wrote about the Jews.

 

[Bikewer]

I once knew a fellow who claimed to be a Hassidic Druid. It does raise an interesting visual image....

 

[fagin]

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0058/0058_01.asp

Another gem by Jack Chick.

Awesome - Satan, pumpkins, Carrie, chainsaw. There's a movie in there somewhere.

 

[timhau]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11457795

Now don't get me wrong, I think its a good indication of how all religions are equally silly, but in my opinion they should all be DENIED tax breaks rather than allowed them.

Silly? Yeah. But the Druid they interviewed for that piece was "Senior Druid King Arthur Pendragon, Battle Chieftain of the Council of British Druid Orders". Compare it to "Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury" and tell me which one of them deserves a tax break for introducing cool titles.

 

[Darat]

By the way all that has happened is that a group of Druids have registered a charity that has as it aim public understanding of the religion. A charity does still pay taxes, especially VAT, there are some tax advantages - especially in giving to a charity. I don't think this is like the USA "tax exemption" for churches and the like.