Druids
By Leon Jenner
Please join us in welcoming Leon Jenner as October 2011 Author of the Month. Leon Jenner is a builder by profession. He was born and raised in Eastbourne, Sussex, England. This is his first book. In his book he imagines himself wholly into the consciousness of a great Druid priest at the time of the Roman invasion. By his magic powers this Druid is able to turn the tables on Julius Caesar and set in motion the train of events that will lead to his assassination. This novel is an extraordinary feat of the imagination. At the end of the novel the narrator's consciousness shrinks down again into that of a modern day bricklayer. The reader is left to decide whether or not the central character really was a Druid in a previous incarnation or whether he is in fact a nutter. Leon originally published this book as an audio novel on the net, where it was a cult hit, scoring over a quarter of a million downloads. Two YouTube videos are available to peak your interest and we hope you’ll join the monthly discussion on the AoM Message Boards
YouTube links:
http://youtu.be/ToEGg3IFybk
http://youtu.be/Hf2fH7b8038
Imagine
if you had your own personal Jesus. Not just a distant ambiguous
figure in a book, but someone a mile or two away who you could drop
in and visit.
What
if he or she could
sit opposite you and mix humour with the deepest wisdom, know with
certainty how to heal you if you are sick, how to direct your mind
and tell you where you are going to go when you die.
Imagine
that this class of person, who could be either young or old, a gifted
child even, could nurture the consciousness of your nation, the
world, the universe.
Imagine
a life where there are no unanswered questions.
This
was a Druid.
Someone
gifted with mind-blowing insight. Kings of Kings, Queens of Queens.
Living in an age where their purity of mind could be believed in.
But
we can be cynical now. Christianity and popular culture can see them
as dark and manipulative.
But
the truth is they were the shepherds of our dynamic, evolving human
consciousness. They defended it against terrifying blows.
But
every shepherd of old had to contend with the wolf and this wolf came
from within.
It
is curious that Victorian Britain, so wrapped up in being the new
Roman Empire, should create the popular vision of the Druids. Old
men in white robes with golden sickles, cutting mistletoe from an
ancient oak.
These
snippets, seized upon by the Victorians do have a precedent in the
texts of ancient authors, including Julius Caesar who had direct
experience of this European culture. But these apart, we know
virtually nothing.
Caesar
wrote that the Druids had to learn a great number of verses over a
period of 20 years. It could be more likely that this period of time
fitted within the lunar cycle, for example the lunar standstill,
which happens every 18.6 years and may have acted as an initiation
ceremony.
I
believe that human consciousness is a dynamic, evolving force and I
think that the ancient Britons lived by an idealistic or feminine
philosophy. This shaped their consciousness as much as the Roman mind
was shaped by their masculine, materialist philosophy.
It
is clear to me that this Roman mind-set conquered far more that just
the territories of Britain. Our own ancestors are exotic and alien
to us, so much so that we now feel more comfortable in the
institutions and lifestyles that have their roots in the Hellenistic
world. With this in mind,
there is no reason to suppose that a Druid couldn’t also be a
woman, or even a gifted child.
I
believe that Rome, unique in the ancient world for its paranoid
aggression, created a jolt to this evolution of human consciousness.
And the Druids, guardians, shepherding along this ancient
consciousness, had to stand by as the Roman wolf devoured their
sheep.
It
is curious though that Britain was the springboard for this Roman
consciousness so many centuries later.
The
only druid from antiquity known by name is Diviciacus or Divitiacus
of the Aedui. Not be confused with the king of the Suessiones also
known by the Latinised name Diviciacus. The name means "avenger”.
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