Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

DRUIDICAL MYSTICISM.

However orthodox the Irish of the present day may be esteemed, there must have been a fair amount of mysticism in the past amongst so imaginative a race. Perhaps this quality brought them into some disrepute with the Church, down to the time when the Pope gave their country to the Norman King of England, in order to bring the people into more consistent faith. Even St. Bernard, in his Life of Malachy, referred to the Irish as "Pagans, while calling themselves Christians."

John Scotus Erigena, the learned Irishman of the ninth century, was certainly mystical in his views. He spoke of God as the essence of all things; of the Divine Dark and Supreme Nothing; of creation being only an eternal self-unfolding of the Divine Nature; of all things resolved or self-drawn to God; of time and space, of modes of conception of the present state, &c.

Gould's History of Freemasonry refers to the connection between the Druids and Freemasons. The Papal Bull of 1751 against the latter might have been applied to the former:--

"The strict bond of secrecy--the oath to keep secret--at variance with civil and canon law--of ill repute amongst wise and good men." Clement XII. was followed in his condemnation of Freemasons by Benedict XIV.

The Zohar of the Kabbala taught that the "narrative of the Doctrine was its cloak--the simple look only at

p. 72