Good -V- Evil

I am asked quite often the question, "What did the Druids think about evil and did they believe in the Devil?"; moreover, I am asked, "Do you believe in the Devil?"

Well, as to the latter question, I do not believe in the Devil, though the concept is appealing. Why not have someone who you can blame for your and everyone elses wrong doings? It seems to be an incredible scape goat! The concept of the Devil is not Pre-Christian. The Devil is an entity totally fabricated by the Christian church to be used as a leverage tool for power and control. The concept of good and evil is perceived by he who judges a specific instance or action. The Celts did believe in God and the creation of mankind. In this, they believe that we possessed free will and through this we, as human beings, created what evil there is in the world. They also believed that all things perceivable have an opposite. Where there is light, there is dark; in life, there is death. All are to be embraced in equality, since without one the other could not exist. This holds true to the concept of good and evil. In order for one to exist, so must the other. I have an excerpt from one of Jean Markale's books that gives good description to this. Jean is a remarkable scholar on Celtic lore and I suggest reading his material.

"The absence of a borderline between good and evil is expressive of the Celtic view of the relativity of things. An action can be good or bad according to the fashion in which it is conducted and not with respect to a scale of objective, absolute values. And if we shift the idea to the metaphysical plane, it can be established that at this place, too, there is neither an absolute good or an absolute evil. The Celts never imagined a god of good waging war on the god of evil, or vice versa. The struggle of the Tuatha de Danann against the Formor represents the realization of order against disorder, nothing more. There are no moral implications whatsoever. The gods of Celtic mythology are neither good nor evil. They simply are. And as all these gods represent functions attributed to the absolute and abstruse deity, it is necessary to accept that this great supreme God is not conceived of as good or evil either. In reality this God is both, since the idea that evil cannot exist without the idea of good. By the same token life is impossible without death, and death without life; And God, the great unnamable god, does not exist without his own contridictions, in this case, his creation."

"This explains numerous kinds of behavior imputed to the Celts: the scorn of death, the lust for life, a certain sheekiness, a constant state of communion with nature (an idea Christianity has almost suffocated by making man the king of creation), a serene amorality, a metaphysical refusal to consider the real as an absolute. For beyond the real there is something else, and the Aristotelian distinction between the real and the unreal cannot be formulated. The same holds true for what is called "the truth," something that Christianity has always wished to preach as being unique, singular, and theirs alone. For the Celts there is no absolute, revealed truth, since truth is nothing but the result of a judgment made in the mind at a given historical moment."

I will expound on this subject further in the near future.
                Cabe.