"Morgan Llywelyn - Druids" - читать интересную книгу автора (Llywelyn Morgan)

DRUIDS 5

division, who studied for as long as twenty winters to earn it.
Druids were the thinkers, teachers, interpreters of law, healers of
the sick. Keepers of the mysteries.

No subject was beyond the mental scrutiny of druids. They
measured the Earth and the sky, they calculated the best times for
planting and harvesting. Among the practices attributed to them,
in avid whispers, were such rituals as sex magic and death-
teaching.

The learned Hellenes from the south called the druids "natural
philosophers."

The principal obligation of the druids was to keep Man and
Earth and Otherworld in harmony. The three were inextricably
interwoven and must be in a state of balance or catastrophe would
follow. As the repositories of a thousand years of tribal wisdom,
the druids knew how to maintain that balance.

Beyond our forts and farms lurked the darkness of the un-
known. Druid wisdom held that darkness at bay.

How I envied the knowledge stored in those hooded heads! My
young mind was as hungry for answers as my belly was for food.
What force pushed tender blades of grass through solid earth?
Why did my skinned knees ooze blood one time, but clear fluid
another? Who was taking bites out of the moon?

Druids knew.

I wanted to know, too.

Druids instructed the children of the warrior class, who com-
prised Celtic nobility, in such skills as counting and telling direc-
tion by the stars. We met in the groves and sat at our teachers'
feet in dappled shade. Sometimes there were giris in the group.
Celtic women who wished to learn were allowed the privilege.
But our teachers never shared any real secrets with us; they were
only for the initiated.

/ wanted to know.

So of course I found a secret ritual of sufficient power to change
the season irresistible.

The diviners had declared the fifth dawn after the pregnant
moon to be the most auspicious time. The ritual would be con-