Historian Ronald Hutton’s “Blood and Mistletoe: The History of Druids in Britain”, the more academic-minded companion to his 2008 book “The Druids” (now out in paperback), is now out in the UK (and will soon be out in the US) and reviews are starting to trickle in. So far they have been extremely positive.

“This book is a tour de force: surely the definitive work on our perception of the Druids. The only thing missing from this exhaustive account is an overview, however brief, of today’s colourful Druid groups – an odd omission by the acknowledged historian of neo-Paganism. For that, you need his earlier book.” – David V Barrett, The Independent

“This is an ably researched and well-written book. It charts the history of an obsession, representing the strange creation of a wholly fabulous people who by dint of repetition become lodged in popular consciousness. They then become part of history. They become real. Hutton explains this alchemical process very well, in a study notable for its humour as well as its scholarship.” – Peter Ackroyd, The Times

“His real concern is with the constantly developing role the Druids have played in Britain’s various cultures since the 17th century, and their place in changing notions of nationality in these islands. From the first of the “antiquaries” through the foundation of the thoroughly modern Ancient Order to the Stonehenge solstice-celebrations of recent times. The result is an engrossing, endlessly thought-provoking read.” – Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman

You can read an excerpt of the new book, here. It seems a shame that, as David Barrett reports in his review, there is little information on modern Druid groups in this book. Perhaps it was an issue of space? If so, maybe we’ll be graced with a third tome on Druids from Hutton, this one giving an extensive focus to modern Druidry. Still, despite a lack of focus on modern Druid groups, I can only imagine that anyone interested in the history and evolution of perceptions concerning Druids in Britain will find much to enrich themselves with in “Blood and Mistletoe”. I can’t wait to pick up my own copy.

Comic Book Resources features a short excerpt from a longer editorial by writer Alan Moore (writer of Promethea, V for Vendetta, and worshiper of a possible hand-puppet) concerning pornography for the magazine Arthur. In the article Moore details the history of imagery and stories meant to titillate, and their importance to civilization.

“In bygone Greece we see a culture plainly unperturbed by its erotic inclinations, largely saturated by both sexual imagery and sexual narratives. We also see a culture where these attitudes would seem to have worked out quite well, both for the ancient Greeks and for humanity at large. They may well have been hollow-eyed and hairy-palmed erotomaniacs, but on the plus side they invented science, literature, philosophy and, well, civilization, as it turns out.”

So where did it all go wrong? Well, in the opinion of Moore, Christianity and the shaming of sex influenced by such thinkers as the Apostle Paul.

“Sexual openness and cultural progress would seem pretty much to have walked hand in hand throughout the opening chapters of the human story in the West, and it wasn’t until the advent of Christianity, or more specifically of the apostle Paul, that anybody realized we should all be thoroughly ashamed of both our bodies and those processes relating to them. Not until the Emperor Constantine had cut and pasted modern Christianity together from loose scraps of Mithraism and the solar cult of Sol Invictus, adopting the resultant theological collage as the religion of the Roman Empire, did we get to witness the effect of its ideas and doctrines when enacted on a whole society.”

This massive social experiment, in Moore’s opinion, eventually brought about the fall of the Roman Empire.

“If we take a traditional (and predominantly Christian) view of the collapse of Rome, then conventional wisdom tells us that Rome was destroyed by decadence, sunken beneath the rising scum-line of its orgies, of its own sexual permissiveness. The merest skim through Gibbon, on the other hand, will demonstrate that Rome had been a heaving, decadent and orgiastic fleshpot more or less since its inception. It had fornicated its way quite successfully through several centuries without showing any serious signs of harm as a result. Once Constantine had introduced compulsory Christianity to the Empire, though, it barely lasted for another hundred years.”

In his view, this compulsory conversion experience destroyed the syncretic and (mostly) religiously tolerant (for its time) society of Rome. Specifically, it hurt the recruitment of foreign military who didn’t wish to toe the new religious line making Rome weak to invasions by barbarians. Moore’s conclusion?

“…sexually open and progressive cultures such as ancient Greece have given the West almost all of its civilizing aspects, whereas sexually repressive cultures like late Rome have given us the Dark Ages.”

It should be interesting it read the entire article to hear Moore’s views on the tension between libertine excesses and repressive shame in our modern era. It seems that no happy balance has yet to be struck. With one side often losing its own compass with issues regarding the degradation of women, and the other so worried about homosexual sex that it sees such impulses as demonic possession and pure evil.