Never Mind The Cassocks.

With regard to the blog entry posted on both Ancestral Celt and Letters From Brython my answer to the question of the title is, even ignoring the cassocks, yes, and the wrongness is the certainty with which statements such as the following are made:

“In their time our druidic ancestors were at the cutting edge of philosophy, natural science and the understanding of the glory of the cosmos.”

I’m all for reconstructionism but claims like this make me wonder about the source being used, and in this case I fear it’s Goscinny and Uderzo. It’s such an extreme claim that it makes you wonder if those at the centre of both The Albion Conclave and Brython have any knowledge of British history at all, let alone the history of the rest of Europe of the world.

Seniuk predicts that some will find his words offensive. I find them something other. They’re barmy, especially when the cultural catastrophes of the Romans appear to have been ignored in favour of a false Druid-Christian dichotomy.

“Yet we insult these ancestors by pretending to be shamans, as if the ancient Druids had not evolved beyond the hunter-gatherers and still clung desperately to some primitive Mesolithic awareness until the arrival of the Christians.”

This kind of frothing, fictional grandeur is to be expected, I suppose, as every reconstructionism must have its Margaret Murray:


“Where is the passion on our tongues and the fire in our bellies? Is there is no yearning in our hearts to look deeper? Do we really believe we already have all the answers we need? Where is the real belief in the gods? Where is the fire in our heads?”

All due respect to anyone who wishes to formalise their religion but this all sounds a little too fiery. Cool heads may not prevail in the midst of such a fire, and the smoke will choke the light.

Being quite unbothered with LARPers and people who dress up like them to practice their religion I can’t say that until now I knew much about the Albion Conclave and Seniuk. I have taken a look around and one of the most interesting things which I have found - other than Seniuk’s inordinate fondness for describing his activities as "profound" (mistletoe?) - is that the Albion Conclave runs a correspondence course. Now, we all know that there is money in druidry, the Americans being a huge resource of historically-ignorant marks particularly keen to fork out their hard-earned that they might describe themselves as druids, and a cynical man might just wonder if this were not a move to grab a larger slice of the pie from the other teaching orders, if not push them away from the table completely.

It’s interesting that Seniuk seems to put distance between the Albion Conclave and shamanism while the only review which appears of their course that I have found describes the course as having “a deep Shamanic essence to it.” Further, on their own site the Albion Conclave describe shamanism as an “aspect of Druidic Lore”. Presumably this assertion has Seniuk's blessing therefore the Albion Conclave must have determined that shamanism sells yet this apparent endorsement of shamanism via teaching doesn't tally with Seniuk's declaration against shamanism. Something of a mess, all this.

Seniuk’s druid camp profile for 2008 reads like that of an enterprising and anti-Christian IRAB. I’m more used to seeing mangled history of this kind over on the BBC’s Pagan Topic but, considering the high regard in which some people appear to hold Seniuk’s ideas, it seems clear to me that hopeful ignorance is not confined to message boards.

Given the short notes above Seniuk’s newly stated intentions seem very confused. I would urge people to beware of self-selected leaders.