A British Druid by William Stukeley I am always intrigued by the mysterious, which is why I'm so interested in ancient history. The further back we go, the more mysterious it gets! The ancient Druids are one of the mysteries of history. They left no written records themselves, to explain who they were or what they believed. All we have to go by is the accounts of foreign visitors and Christian converts. Both of these commentators are biased toward their own religion and culture, and therefore unlikely to paint an accurate picture. What we can do however, is compare the Druids to other priestly castes around the world. The Celtic culture was a parallel development to the Vedic culture, from their common Indo-European roots which began to branch out some five thousand years ago. It has only been in recent decades that Celtic scholars have begun to reveal the full extent of the parallels and cognates between the Celtic and Vedic cultures. Peter Berresford Ellis, one of Europ...

This Friday is a pretty special date. We will start the day with an awesome Solar Eclipse, beginning at 08:22 and ending at 10:38 GMT. This rare phenomenon will see Europe have 90% of its rays blocked out temporarily, with that figure rising to 94% in Scotland and up to 100% in Svalbard Norway and the Faroe Islands. This will be the biggest eclipse that Britain has seen since 1999. The word eclipse actually comes from the Ancient Greek work ekleipsis, which meant being abandoned. It was believed by the Ancient Greeks that the Sun would abandon us temporarily if the gods were angered. In many different cultures, there are stories of how the Sun was eaten or stolen to explain away the eclipse. Among them is the Viking fable that the Sun goddess is chased by a wolf, and when the animal catches her, a Solar Eclipse happens. Korean folklore suggests that solar eclipses happen because mythical dogs are trying to steal the Sun. In China, the belief was that a dragon attempted to eat ...