The Celts held religion to a high degree, and the teachings of the Druids can be summed up into three simple rules: worship the gods, do no evil, and be strong and courageous. They believed in reincarnation and transmigration, and their pantheon held a great number of female deities of primary importance. They also held the concept of the triune god, the three aspects of a single deity, but they did not believe in punishment by the gods after death.
The druids were the Celtic priesthood, and in the beginning, before the Romans and other patrilineal religions forced a change, they had similar organizations for women. There are some clues in historical writings that the women, in these cases, were called Dryads, and lived in the scared groves. It is possible that they existed before the Druids, being part of the very old goddess religions.
Elise Boulding states, in The Underside of History, that some Dryads were secluded orders, never having contact with men, such as a group who served the goddess Brigit. Other priestesses were married and periodically left their duties for time with their families. A third group may have lived normal lives with their families, such as the Grove servants. Also, it is possible that Wicca may have evolved when the Druids were driven underground by the invading religions.
The Druids were also healers, judges, astronomers, teachers, and oracles, as well as the religious leaders of the Celtic clans. The head druid was known as the Arch Druid, and the female counterpart to this was likely called the High Priestess of the Grove. Special schools were available for those would-be initiates of either sex, but it was no easy matter to become part of the elite religious community. In Julius Caesar's Gallic War it is stated that approximately 20 years of study were required, a slow working through the levels of the orders, and all formal education consisted of teacher recitation and pupil memorization.
The Druids divided themselves into three divisions in their order: the Bards (poets), who wore blue robes; the Ovates (phrophets/philisophers), who wore green; and the Druid priests, who wore white. This tonsure of theirs was later copied by Christian monks.
In Ireland, the Bards and Ovates were collectively known as the Filid. The Ovates compiled knowledge of all kinds, while the bards praised, ridiculed, and taught through the use of music and poetry. The Druids served as the philosophers, judges and advisors to the tribal leaders. This survived in Ireland as the Brehon Law, where they sang Veda-like hymns, sacrificed with special plants (and very occasionally animals or humans), and used sacred fires. (The practice of human sacrifices, however, does not appear to have been very common in Ireland and Britain.)
Their high priests sometimes wore masks/crown with horns curing fertility ceremonies (the horns were in honor of the god Cernunnos, or the Horned One, and symbolized the mail virility needed for fertility, and the oldest god that the world has). The Horned God opened the gates of Life and Death, the active masculine side of nature, and was god of the underworld. The counterpart to this god was the naked White Moon Goddess. She was the oldest Earth goddess, who creates everything, the passive, feminine side of Nature.
The Druids were extremely powerful as a whole, and could easily pass from one warring tribe to another, or to any region of their choosing, and they were so well trained that, in later periods, they were forbidden to carry/use any weapons. By words alone they conquered enemies and every kind of hardship, and taught a special relationship with nature.
The Ogham alphabet (used 'til about 700 AD) was, primarily, a sacred teaching. Each letter represented ideas and thoughts, and Druidic initiated could use it as a secret sign language by stroking their nose, legs, or any other object, and in this way a message could be passed between two people while talking to a third about something "quite ordinary and innocent." Because of the formidability of this language, this, too, was eventually outlawed from the Druid's use.
The areas of being/existence were represented by three concertic circles in Celtic belief: Abred, Gwynedd, and Ceugant.
Abred (the Circle of Necessity) was the innermost circles, and where life springs from Annwn. It is the area where the human soul has to perfect itself, and to where it is reincarnated. The second circle, Gwynedd (which means "Purity," and is the Circle of Blessedness), is where the life has finally triumphed over evil, and can rest forever. The outermost circle, Ceugant (meaning "Infirmity") is the dwelling place of the ultimate power of creation, and the idea of this triune universe is represented in the three-pointed Celtic Knot artwork. Druidic lore taught that the soul has to pass through many incarnations in Abred before it could reach Gwunedd, that Abred is earthly life, and once the lessons are learned, the could does not return again. The three things the Druids believed could hinder this progress were pride, lies, and unnecessary cruelty.
The priestesses were highly revered among the Celts, as they knew the power in words, stones and herbs, sang the dying to sleep, did enchantments, prophecies, charms, birthing and healing. One of the central features of a grove was a cauldron, bowl, spring or pool, and probably was used for scrying. Red-haired women were sacred to the war goddesses, just as red was the colour of blood (life and menstrual).
Blacksmiths also held a high rank in the social order because they were trained in a special magic for a year and a day on Scath's island, learning metal magic and martial arts. They could, as well, heal, prophesy and make weapons filled with magical powers, and they were dedicated to the goddess Scathach. Pagan cultures held blacksmiths in awe b/c of their use of the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water) to create.
Certain hills, lakes, caves, springs, wells, monoliths, clearings within groves, and stone circles are sacred worship places because they have connections with ley lines and/or significant happenings of the past. Water was considered a female symbol, the passage to the underground womb of the Great Mother, but the Druids preferred oak groves and forests, and even built some large rectangular/horseshoe-shaped wooden buildings as temples (the horseshoe symbolized the womb of the Great Mother, the Great Gate of the Goddess, or knowledge attained through ritualistic rebirth). Carved tree trunk images, or stones ornamented with metal plates, occasionally represented their devotion to the deity. A sacred cauldron was housed within each temple, used as a symbol of the Great Mother's cosmic womb of reincarnation.
Most celebrations were held at night, as they reckoned time by nights rather than days. Their calendar was based on the moon, and had thirteen months: the bright half o each month was made up of fifteen days for the waxing Moon, and the dark half was fifteen days for the waning Moon. The Priests/Priestesses used the waxing moon for primarily positive magic, and the waning moon for primarily bindings.
