Misrepresentation of the British Druid Order in ‘Modern Religious Druidry: Studies in Paganism, Celtic Identity, and Nature Spirituality,’ edited by Ethan Doyle White & Jonathan Woolley and published by Palgrave MacMillan, 2024

BDO founder and chief, Philip Shallcrass, writes:

Despite the absurd asking price of £110, I bought a copy of this book. Having been a Druid for 50 years and run the British Druid Order (BDO) for a substantial part of that time, and knowing many people around the world who are members of my own and other Druid groups, I have a strong interest in the subject and was keen to know what a group of academics, many of whom I know, make of Druids in general, and the BDO in particular.

One contributor I had not previously encountered, either in person or through his work, is co-editor, Ethan Doyle White. His chapter, the first in the book, entitled ‘Cutting the Misteltoe: An Introduction to Modern Religious Druidry,’ contains (on page 6) a quote from the BDO website: [Druidry is] “the earliest native spirituality of Britain and Europe of which any written record survives.” The word ‘Northwestern’ originally appeared before Europe but seems to have got lost during website updates. With it reinserted, the line is a simple statement of fact. Britain and Northwestern Europe were non-literate prior to the Roman conquest with the exception of some southern Gauls who used the Greek alphabet for financial records. White, however, chooses to interpret the line as “presupposing the idea that their [i.e. the BDO’s] Druidry is the same belief system as that of their ancient namesakes,” adding as a footnote, “Whether the members of the British Druid Order necessarily believe this is another matter.” Whether our members believe it or not is immaterial as the statement presupposes nothing of the sort except in White’s mind. Had he read a few lines further on, he would have found that “Druidry has been renewed or reinvented by successive generations in ways relevant to their own time. Ancient Druids left no written record of their beliefs and practices, though Greek and Roman writers refer to them. Modern Druid groups draw on different aspects of the past and rework them in different ways, from friendly societies founded in the 18th century to wild eco-warriors.”

And yet, in the following paragraph, White lumps the BDO in with “other modern Pagan movements, which have also claimed that their respective religions have survived underground throughout the many centuries of Christian dominance.” The BDO has never made any such claim and is, in fact, more stringent in presenting the genuine history of Druidry and the bardic tradition than any Druid group is now or ever has been. A noted academic historian has read and commented in detail on every one of our course booklets that now run to over 4000 pages and nowhere do we make the sort of spurious claims made by other Druid groups that, for example, their tradition has been handed down unbroken from the priests of Atlantis or that William Blake was once their chosen chief. On the contrary, our courses detail clearly and at length how and why we make use of archaeology, classical writers, early Christian clerics, the medieval literature of Britain and Ireland, folklore and folk customs, comparative ethnography, previous generations of Druid revivalists, other modern Pagan and magical traditions and personal gnosis to inspire our present-day practice (bardic course booklet 4, pages 4-25). These sources are more briefly outlined in my book, ‘Druidry: A Practical & Inspirational Guide’ (Pretanic Press, 2023, pages 15-18).

This matters to me because I care deeply about history and accuracy. I have long been both amused and irritated by books claiming to present practical guides to ‘authentic ancient Druidry’ precisely because, as stated on our website, we have no written records of what that might have looked like, assuming it ever existed, which seems unlikely given that archaeology clearly suggests that ancient Druidry manifested in many very different ways across the wide geographical range and time span that it covered. No two Iron Age British or Northwest European shrines replicate the same layout while the names of hundreds of local deities are recorded. Ancient Druidries might be a more useful term. To suggest, as White does here, that we are pretending our version of contemporary Druidry is identical to any form of ancient Druidry is, therefore, both erroneous and irritating.

The fact that such an egregious misrepresentation appears on page 6 of a book that is clearly being positioned as the go-to resource for academic researchers in the field is galling in the extreme. Not least because a significant part of the reputation of the BDO has been gained through the quality of the scholarship that underpins our courses. This stems from my own 50 years involvement in contemporary Druidry during which I have researched it using every means at my disposal, including assistance from noted academics in the field, some of whom I have known since the 1990s and are contributors to this book. Our courses strive to be the most academically rigorous of any available, not just in contemporary Druidry but in any modern Pagan tradition. To place us among fantasists and charlatans who pretend to be the inheritors of unbroken traditions passed down in secret from prehistory is therefore seriously damaging to a reputation we have been diligently building since the Order went public in the early 1990s.

This misrepresentation could easily have been avoided had White contacted me, read my book, scrolled down a couple of inches on the page on which the quotation used appears or simply thought a little longer about what it actually says rather than placing his own, entirely unwarranted, interpretation upon it.

I therefore request that the publishers remove the relevant passage from any subsequent edition of the book and that an erratum slip be inserted in all copies of the current edition pointing out the erroneous nature of White’s interpretation and apologising for the false impression it gives of the BDO. I suggest the following:

Erratum: On pages 6-7, it is said that the British Druid Order (BDO) claims “that their Druidry is the same belief system as their ancient namesakes,” likening this to “other modern Pagan movements, which have also claimed that their respective religions have survived underground throughout the many centuries of Christian dominance.” It has been drawn to the attention of the publishers that the BDO has never made any such claims but has always been entirely open about the various sources it draws on for its contemporary recreation of Druidry. These are outlined on pages 15-18 of BDO founder, Philip Shallcrass (Greywolf)’s book, ‘Druidry: A Practical & Inspirational Guide’ (Pretanic Press, 2023). The publishers wish to apologise for the entirely false impression given in the present volume which will be corrected in all subsequent editions.

I note that Ethan Doyle White’s chapter in which the erroneous passage occurs is also available for separate download in an electronic version. I request that this be amended immediately in line with the above.