by Searles O'Dubhain
Did Druidry survive the coming of Christianity not in opposition to it but within it? The idea of the "Crane Cleric" — an Irish Christian priest who secretly maintained the older spiritual ways — is one of the more intriguing threads in modern Druidic thought. In this August 2005 post to alt.religion.druid, Searles O'Dubhain argues that the universal mystic experience described in Hermetic texts and in the Irish imbas tradition is the same experience — and that this shared inner reality made the Pagan-to-Christian transition in Ireland uniquely smooth. He traces the Crane Cleric tradition through St. Columcille, the Annals of the Four Masters, and a contemporary account from Peter Berresford Ellis, suggesting the underground may not have fully died out.
The experience of inner illumination is a universal spiritual experience that is found in many Pagan traditions: Yoga, Buddhism, Imbas, Awen, Shamanism, Hinduism, even Native American ways. It's not something specific only to a few people. It can happen to almost anyone whose spirit is seeking it.
As the Hermetica describes spiritual rebirth:
"One who is thus reborn communes with God. But this only happens when we stop talking about it and allow it to occur naturally in the silence and tranquility of deep contemplation. An enlightened being no longer believes he is a body. The body belongs to Nature, not to him, and so its fate is of no importance. He is One with everything. He sees Goodness everywhere. He is bathed in divine Light. He has become All-Mind."
It is my belief that the similarity between the Gnostic Christian approach of the Desert Fathers (which was greatly influenced by Hermetic tradition) and the native Druidic tradition is what made for such a smooth transition between the Pagan ways of the Irish and those of early Christianity. Of course, the switch between this form of Christianity and the rigid, dogmatic form that came later was battled by Irish monks and priests for 500 years. I suspect that there is an underground yet within the ranks of Irish Catholic priests that still serves the Old Ways.
I've heard mention of a few as being Crane Clerics (though this term seems to have two widely disparate meanings). I've also heard mention of the term Druids being used in certain monasteries to describe priests and members.
One wonders about these things. Does Christianity have an inner Mystery that the hardened outer shell hardly ever sees? It'd be no surprise since the original religion is based on Pagan myths and mysteries.
Of course, the Filidh were considered to be heirs of the Druids, as evidenced by this remark in the Annals of the Four Masters:
"M1097.8 — The Druid Ua Carthaigh, chief poet of Connaught, was killed by the Connaughtmen themselves."
The origins of the idea that some Christian priests could be "Crane Clerics" seems to have originated with the association of cranes and their magic with Columcille, who said that his Druid was the Son of God. I suspect that Father Joe McVeigh may well be one of these "Crane Clerics." I've been told that by others as well.
As noted in Peter Berresford Ellis's work, The Druids:
"Father Joe McVeigh, in his polemic work Renewing the Irish Church: Towards an Irish Liberation Theology (1993), points out: The first Christian missionaries to Ireland did not attempt a root and branch eradication of the Celtic Druidic tradition and beliefs. Instead, the new religion absorbed the holy mountains and the innumerable holy wells and gave them a Christian name."
Colophon
Written by Searles O'Dubhain and posted to alt.religion.druid in August 2005. The Hermetic passage is from the Corpus Hermeticum via Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's The Hermetica (Piatkus, 1997). The Annals of the Four Masters entry (M1097.8) is from the seventeenth-century compilation of earlier Irish annals. Peter Berresford Ellis's The Druids (Constable, 1994) is a scholarly overview of Druidic history and practice.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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