Further Reading

Saturday, 9 January 2016

Celtic Shamans By Another Name?

The Scots Gaelic and Irish word for druid is draoi (pronounced dree). Similarly in the Scottish context we have: fiosaiche (fios'sher, one who knows--a kind of visionary who sometimes has access to knowledge either precognitively or retrocognitively), taibhsear (tai,sher,"one who is spectre haunted", or vision-seer, a person who is able to see disincarnate spirits, as well as the riocht, or spirit fetch, of a person--this individual is often what is being referred to by the notion of an da shealladh, or the two sights, but truly the notion of Second Sight applies to different kinds of seers), bruadaraiche (broo-a-tara-sher, one who dreams, which not only refers to someone who receives verifiable and functional information within the dreamtime, but also someone who is so profoundly attuned to the dream that they are able to ascertain various things from the living dream even within what we would call waking reality).

Undoubtedly, the terms draoi and ban-draoi are umbrella terms. A ban-draoi can be a midwife, a counselor, an herbalist, a mediator/judge role, a diviner, a visionary guide, a bonesetter, or a healer-shaman-type individual. The same is, of course, true of the draoi...read more>>>...