The objects of the Druid worship were many. In this respect they did not differ from other heathens: but it must be owned that in general their ideas of divine matters were more exalted than those of the Greeks and Romans, and that they did not fall into an idolatry so coarse and vulgar. That their gods should be represented under a human form they thought derogatory to beings uncreated and imperishable. To confine what can endure no limits within walls and roofs they judged absurd and impious. In these particulars there was something refined and suitable enough to a just idea of the Divinity. But the rest was not equal. Some notions they had, like the greatest part of mankind, of a Being eternal and infinite; but they also, like the greatest part of mankind, paid their worship to inferior objects, from the nature of ignorance and superstition always tending downwards.
The first and chief objects of their worship were the elements,—and of the elements, fire, as the most pure, active, penetrating, and what gives life and energy to all the rest. Among fires, the preference was given to the sun, as the most glorious visible being, and the fountain of all life. Next they venerated the moon and the planets. After fire, water was held in reverence. This, when pure, and ritually prepared, was supposed to wash away all sins, and to qualify the priest to approach the altar of the gods with more acceptable prayers: washing with water being a type natural enough of inward cleansing and purity of mind. They also worshipped fountains and lakes and rivers.
Oaks were regarded by this sect with a particular veneration, as, by their greatness, their shade, their stability, and duration, not ill representing the perfections of the Deity. From the great reverence in which they held this tree, it is thought their name of Druids is derived: the word Deru, in the Celtic language, signifying an oak. But their reverence was not wholly confined to this tree. All forests were held sacred; and many particular plants were respected, as endued with a particular holiness. No plant was more revered than the mistletoe, especially if it grew on the oak,—not only because it is rarely found upon that tree, but because the oak was among the Druids peculiarly sacred. Towards the end of the year they searched for this plant, and when it was found great rejoicing ensued; it was approached with, reverence; it was cut with a golden hook; it was not suffered to fall to the ground, but received with great care and solemnity upon a white garment.
In ancient times, and in all countries, the profession of physic was annexed to the priesthood. Men imagined that all their diseases were inflicted by the immediate displeasure of the Deity, and therefore concluded that the remedy would most probably proceed from those who were particularly employed in his service. Whatever, for the same reason, was found of efficacy to avert or cure distempers was considered as partaking somewhat of the Divinity. Medicine was always joined with magic: no remedy was administered without mysterious ceremony and incantation. The use of plants and herbs, both in medicinal and magical practices, was early and general. The mistletoe, pointed out by its very peculiar appearance and manner of growth, must have struck powerfully on the imaginations of a superstitious people. Its virtues may have been soon discovered. It has been fully proved, against the opinion of Celsus, that internal remedies were of very early use.[9] Yet if it had not, the practice of the present savage nations supports the probability of that opinion. By some modern authors the mistletoe is said to be of signal service in the cure of certain convulsive distempers, which, by their suddenness, their violence, and their unaccountable symptoms, have been ever considered as supernatural. The epilepsy was by the Romans for that reason called morbus sacer; and all other nations have regarded it in the same light. The Druids also looked upon vervain, and some other plants, as holy, and probably for a similar reason.
The other objects of the Druid worship were chiefly serpents, in the animal world, and rude heaps of stone, or great pillars without polish or sculpture, in the inanimate. The serpent, by his dangerous qualities, is not ill adapted to inspire terror,—by his annual renewals, to raise admiration,—by his make, easily susceptible of many figures, to serve for a variety of symbols,—and by all, to be an object of religious observance: accordingly, no object of idolatry has been more universal.[10] And this is so natural, that serpent-veneration seems to be rising again, even in the bosom of Mahometanism.[11]
The great stones, it has been supposed, were originally monuments of illustrious men, or the memorials of considerable actions,—or they were landmarks for deciding the bounds of fixed property. In time the memory of the persons or facts which these stones were erected to perpetuate wore away; but the reverence which custom, and probably certain periodical ceremonies, had preserved for those places was not so soon obliterated. The monuments themselves then came to be venerated,—and not the less because the reason for venerating them was no longer known. The landmark was in those times held sacred on account of its great uses, and easily passed into an object of worship. Hence the god Terminus amongst the Romans. This religious observance towards rude stones is one of the most ancient and universal of all customs. Traces of it are to be found in almost all, and especially in these Northern nations; and to this day, in Lapland, where heathenism is not yet entirely extirpated, their chief divinity, which they call Storjunkare, is nothing more than a rude stone.[12]
Some writers among the moderns, because the Druids ordinarily made no use of images in their worship, have given into an opinion that their religion was founded on the unity of the Godhead. But this is no just consequence. The spirituality of the idea, admitting their idea to have been spiritual, does not infer the unity of the object. All the ancient authors who speak of this order agree, that, besides those great and more distinguishing objects of their worship already mentioned they had gods answerable to those adored by the Romans. And we know that the Northern nations, who overran the Roman Empire, had in fact a great plurality of gods, whose attributes, though not their names, bore a close analogy to the idols of the Southern world.
The Druids performed the highest act of religion by sacrifice, agreeably to the custom of all other nations. They not only offered up beasts, but even human victims: a barbarity almost universal in the heathen world, but exercised more uniformly, and with circumstances of peculiar cruelty, amongst those nations where the religion of the Druids prevailed. They held that the life of a man was the only atonement for the life of a man. They frequently inclosed a number of wretches, some captives, some criminals, and, when these were wanting, even innocent victims, in a gigantic statue of wicker-work, to which they set fire, and invoked their deities amidst the horrid cries and shrieks of the sufferers, and the shouts of those who assisted at this tremendous rite.
There were none among the ancients more eminent for all the arts of divination than the Druids. Many of the superstitious practices in use to this day among the country people for discovering their future fortune seem to be remains of Druidism. Futurity is the great concern of mankind. Whilst the wise and learned look back upon experience and history, and reason from things past about events to come, it is natural for the rude and ignorant, who have the same desires without the same reasonable means of satisfaction, to inquire into the secrets of futurity, and to govern their conduct by omens, dreams, and prodigies. The Druids, as well as the Etruscan and Roman priesthood, attended with diligence the flight of birds, the pecking of chickens, and the entrails of their animal sacrifices. It was obvious that no contemptible prognostics of the weather were to be taken from certain motions and appearances in birds and beasts.[13] A people who lived mostly in the open air must have been well skilled in these observations. And as changes in the weather influenced much the fortune of their huntings or their harvests, which were all their fortunes, it was easy to apply the same prognostics to every event by a transition very natural and common; and thus probably arose the science of auspices, which formerly guided the deliberations of councils and the motions of armies, though now they only serve, and scarcely serve, to amuse the vulgar.