5. The Druids believed in Reincarnation and the Transmigration of the Soul.
The only written account of the druids in Britain comes from the Roman writer Tacitus when he describes their role in the British last stand on the island of Mona, now Anglesey in North Wales. Tacitus describes the druids as part of a shoreline show of resistance to the approaching Romans. He describes them as “lifting their hands to heaven and showering imprecations,” on the advancing Roman troops. Tacitus credits the druids with mysterious powers as he describes how the Roman troops were struck “with such an awe” that their “limbs were paralysed,” –until Suetonius Paulinus, their general reassured them and broke the “spell.”
Whether or not the druids constituted an organised, priesthood who oversaw Celtic religious practices is a point of debate. However, they did hold positions of authority in British Celtic society. According to Julius Caesar, druids trained for 20 years, studying bardic verse, natural philosophy, the stars and the ways of the gods. Women as well as men, recruited from the nobility, were eligible to join the order, which met in sacred nemetons or groves of oak that gave the druids their name.
There, the druids practised shaman like rituals, the details of which are lost since theirs was an oral tradition. Caesar, however, embellished his written records of druidic activities with vivid accounts of human sacrifice. These details barbarize the druids. However, if this was his intention, Caesar slipped up somewhat when he also mentioned that the basis of the druid’s beliefs was that the soul was immortal and would reincarnate after death. This central belief suggests that the Druids held a slightly more sophisticated set of spiritual beliefs than Caesar intended to portray.