AMHERST, Mass. — Ellen Evert Hopman first collected the interviews in her new book, A Legacy of Druids, in 1996. She did so using methods that might seem antiquated in today’s fast-paced world: by having conversations in person, and by asking questions by mail. The fact that it took twenty years to publish the results of her work echoes the words of the late Isaac Bonewits, “as fast as a speeding oak.” Some things simply should not be rushed.
Bonewits, who founded Ár nDraíocht Féin in 1983, is one of the people that Hopman spoke with to create this book. Because he and others interviewed, including Lady Olivia Robertson, have since passed away served as an impetus to get this book published, Hopman told The Wild Hunt. “I had a sense that it was historically important,” she explained.
However, the technical hurdles were not insignificant. Much of the original work was saved on floppy disks that were inaccessible because it’s all but impossible to find that kind of drive anymore. Hopman had to resort to scanning transcriptions of the interviews, which she had originally done on a typewriter. This created other issues. As can happen when text is scanned, it “was full of weird symbols, it was just a terrible mess,” she recalled. The entire document had to be carefully reconstructed to make to readable again.
But reconstruction, in another form, is something quite familiar to Hopman. Her approach to Druidry is Celtic reconstructionism, which seeks to build upon the oldest written sources to learn about Druidic ritual, belief, and philosophy. Since that tradition was oral, the best sources available are the writings of Christian monks who recounted the stories of the Druids in the seventh century.”It’s honoring what the ancients did,” she said, but it’s not the only way to follow the path. A Legacy of Druids shows that such diversity is as much in evidence a generation ago as it is today.
Phillip Carr-Gomm, longtime leader of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids (OBOD), weaves together the many perspectives in his foreword:
. . . when I read the interviews Ellen has collected here, I realised that they articulate most of the issues contemporary Druidry is still concerned with today, and the insights they offer are as valid now as they were twenty years ago. This in itself would be sufficient justification for publication, but in addition I found I could engage with the material in another way. In reading the interviews, I had the benefit of hindsight – twenty years on I could see what ambitions had been realised, and whether any fears had proved justified. In addition, I could imagine how a similar collection gathered today might differ, and I could start to get some sense of what legacy modern Druidry might be leaving the world.
Many of the Druids interviewed for the book are from Britain, which is why Hopman opted to go with a British publisher, Moon Books, at Carr-Gomm’s suggestion. “They accepted it in 24 hours,” she said, and that interest seems to be reflected in the fact that Amazon is showing it as a bestseller, even though it’s not due to be released until April 29. According to Moon Books’ Nimue Brown, “I can only think that’s people pre-ordering copies – and to a degree that we just don’t normally see this far ahead of a book’s release. And of course rankings are all relative – if five people all bought Ellen’s book in a short time frame when no one else was picking up Druid titles, it would put her high on the list for a while.”
That’s something Hopman finds gratifying. One of her other dozen books, Being a Pagan: Druids, Wiccans, and Witches Today, was included on a Huffington Post list entitled “27 Essential Texts About Paganism For Your Bookshelf.” However, she hasn’t seen that translate into sales. That text is the intellectual ancestor of A Legacy of Druids as it follows the same interview model, one that Hopman decided to use for her own Druidic path as it matured and grew. As Hopman wrote in her introduction:
As Druidism slowly gained recognition, I saw that a forum was needed where Druids too could express themselves so that the public would come to know us more fully. At this time in history Druids are still a small sub-set of the current Neo-Pagan revival, with many different flavors and beliefs within each sect. . . . The one thing we all have in common is our reverence for nature and a passionate desire to protect our Mother Earth.
Hopman told The Wild Hunt that she was never trained as a writer, and that she sometimes feels like her projects are directed by a divine force. That sense was especially strong when writing the first of her Iron Age Druidic fiction trilogy Priestess of the Forest. As she explained, “Writing it felt like watching a movie; I was just the scribe.” That might be an apt description, because a screenplay is currently being written based on that book, with Elyse Poppers already having been cast to play the female lead. “That’s new ground for me,” Hopman said. “I’m just lunging ahead.”
While the official release of A Legacy of Druids is April 29 to coincide with Beltane, Hopman does have signed copies available through her web site right now.
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“Much of the original work was saved on floppy disks that were inaccessible because it’s all but impossible to find that kind of drive anymore.” That is why you should back *everything* up onto the latest technological storage medium. Learned that the hard way for the same reason Ms. Hopman did. Now I also make sure whatever I deem important is also backed up on 3 different types of media. Better to be safe than sorry. 🙂
I’d bet these folks could probably get all of that transferred:
Retromedia Inc.
24 Lark Industrial Parkway
Greenville, RI 02828
I have interviewed her several times when I was editor for ACTION, online. They were always interesting interviews.
Just the fact that the author includes Stonehenge in the cover of her book makes it obvious that it is filled with glaring errors. Honestly, if people want to know about the Druids and the Celts in general, how hard is it to just read the native Celtic literature of Britain and Ireland like the Irish Cycles or the Mabinogion?
Except the Mabinogion were compiled in the 12th Century from earlier oral traditions. The problem with that is that by the 12th Century, all of Britain, Wales, Ireland and Scotland were Christianized and so the stories were heavily influenced by Christianity. Since most of pre-Christian tradition was never written down, the true beliefs and customs of pre-Christian Celtic lands were lost. Trying to untangle Christian ideas from non-Christian ideas is difficult.
You talk as if untangling pagan pre-Christian and pre-Roman (which is equally important too) beliefs is that hard. It honestly isn’t. Just compare the content of the texts with the Bible or Greco-Roman mythology and that’s it. Mentions of Jesus or of biblical or Homeric figures certainly aren’t Celtic, but mentions of figures that appear nowhere in the Bible or in Hellenic classical literature reflect genuine traditions very accurately, and these are very easy to point out and identify.
Its not that easy. If you take norse myth for example. In the Voluspa, you could argue Baldr shares many traits with Jesus and Ragnarok has many similarities with Armageddon. Just because Jesus isnt in it, doesnt mean it isnt christian influenced.
I have no idea what academic credentials you might have. Mine are very much vicarious, in that I know enough to make a personal judgment about who to trust on certain things. That makes my opinions my own to live or die with.
What the academics of my awareness all agree upon is that there is one fatal mistake waiting to be made: assuming the veracity and accuracy of an oral source.
True academic verification — a step in the direction of scientific methodology, not an equivalent to it — requires multiple independent sources and close scrutiny with a skeptical eye of all of them.
To Adam: But that only ends up proving my point; that there are elements that we can identify as being of Christian or of Hellenic origin. Also, both Baldur and Ragnarok are of pre-Christian origin as can be seen by their names alone; if they became associated with Christian elements it simply is because the parallels were already there before the Christians arrived.
To Franklin_Evans: I don’t have credentials and never claimed I did, but you’re overestamating the unreliability of oral traditions, and not only that, you’re also not taking into account that texts like the Welsh Triads and the Irish Cycles were not only composed in their original Celtic languages (as opposed to Latin) but they were composed in relative if not very close proximity to the Celtic pagan cultures that eventually converted to Christianity.
And not only that, but they are the best evidence, as edgy as it may be, that we have of Druids and of Celtic religion in general. It’s certainly far better than what the Greeks and the Romans presented us, as well as to archeological evidence which reveals extremely few things about Celtic religion and particularly Druids.
Unless a work is self-published, authors do not choose the covers (or often, even the titles) of their books.
But modern Druids do make use of Stonehenge.
I haven’t read the book, but I’ll admit I do find it worrisome when someone claims divine governance for a work that is essentially reportorial. It makes me suspect that the book represents the agenda of the writer (or writer’s deity) more so than it represents what the interviewees actually said.