Discovering your Deravid within
Most of our tour and retreat inquiries express an interest in the mythology and traditions of the goddesses and the druids
These folks are surprised to learn that origin of the druid tradition came from the middle east where in ancient times a regional or clan king was appointed by his, usually his and not her, abilities as a visionary which was shared through poetry, as song, and music performed on a harp.
Though I cannot find reference to it on the internet, any more, I was once told by a Ancient Phoenician scholar from Lebanon that there was once an ancient word that described these leaders as “deravids”.
The “vid” part of this word is quite obvious as being part of the word video and visual we use today so within the “deravid” word it makes sense that it could mean visionary. These ancient languages were not like our latin and teutonic based languages of today that are constructed out of an order of logic and mathematics, but we languages of vision where even a single word could tell a little story. The problem this creates is that interpretation by one person can be so different by another person. This still happens with the very colurful Gealic language today.
Now the “dera” part can go in all kinds of directions.
In Ireland we have the “dara” and “dera” as the sacred oak, and from the middle east, the origin of this word, this appears to expand into meaning sacred wood. Of huge interest is the word “deru” in the ancient Hindu language meaning flow of water and many say that a race of people in ancient Southern India were known as “dravids”
In ancient Hebrew, and probably other ancient languages, when words were scribed on wood and stone vowel sounds were omitted and I speculate that this was because it was assumed people would remember them or even make up their own. So “deravid” would have been written as “drvd” leaving us to invent deravid, dorivad, darived, etc. I am sure the name David came from the “deravid” word, or similar, so its no surprise that as king he is also symbolised with a harp.
Its does seem that as kings became overseers of larger populations their work as judges, ambassadors and taxation administrators left little time for their visionary, teaching and medicine work so a deravid, or druid, was appointed to become a kind of lieutenant to look after these other matters.
As these positions involved more and more work the king appointed larger groups of administrators, and so did the druid, and among these came the “ovates” and “bards”. In modern pseudo druidry the ovates are regarded as the people of divination, the psychics, while the bards are the people who spread the news, while the druids maintained their leadership over education and medicine.
I personally like to think of ovates and bards being of balancing masculine and feminine spirit.
The other meaning of “ovate” is egg shaped so this is very feminine, and I would like to take this to the height of being a term for “goddesses” or “angels” on earth. We still have them , the women, and the men with healthy feminine expression, who look after the process of life and death, the arrival and passing, the midwives, nurses and hospice workers. With this work and spirit there has to be spiritual guidance which must also open up a channel of two world wisdom, the connection with this world and the other greater spirit world.
The “bards” are the men and the women with healthy assertive masculine expression who create, communicate and share expression through words, poems, songs, and accompanied by musical instruments. I passionately and symbolically feel the harp is most fitting for this, but that is purely personally bias and preference.
I find this is like where there was once “science”. They that became mainly chemistry, physics and biology. Biology developed into zoology, botany and microbiology, then later into more divisions such as botany drifting off into tree pathology, taxology, morphology, virology, and nutrition.
Today its hard to think of a nutritionist, electrical engineer and chemical engineer as all being just being one profession, “scientist”, and even harder to imagine our teacher, priest, doctor, lawyer, and local busker as all being one, a “druid”
Anyway, I would like to play around with the Deravid Tradition.
I don’t think it important if it was real or not but components of its name do go back into very ancient times. I invite you to join us. A Deravid would need to live a personal life story that brings together the elements of ovates and bards too.
I do not want to turn this into a cultish thing. I don’t want to set up an agenda and regime where people work towards certificates. I believe this has to run on both oral tradition and trust.
When a person believes it is their time to be a deravid, or simply and ovate or bard, then that’s when they offer themselves as servants to serve others with these “callings”.
Through our Two Worlds tours, retreat and events here at Celtic Ways the core theme is to serve people with the freedom to let the Deravid within be inspired and shared with others, with full support both spiritual and from others in our company.
I will leave this post here, to let any comments and discussion roll with this.
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