RDNA's "Nature is good" would later lead to Robert Anton Wilson's lesser known splinter group The Reformed Non-Aristotelian Druids of North America (RNADNA) and their credo "Nature seems good to us."
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 8:36 AM on December 27 [3 favorites]

We will pray with those old druids,
They drink fermented fluids,
Waltzing naked through the woo- ids,
And it's good enough for me.
--Pete Seeger, Old-Time Religion
posted by dannyboybell at 8:45 AM on December 27 [9 favorites]

Pretty interesting. Though this one movement seems to have been pretty seminal for a thread of neo-paganism in the US, that wider movement does have a more expansive history going back at least into the romantic folk revival era of the late nineteenth century.
posted by Miko at 8:51 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

As for me, I do not think the RDNA druids are any less "actual druids" than the practitioners who take themselves much more seriously and meet at places like Stonehenge to enact solstice and equinox rites.

The last actual druids were suppressed by Christian authorities over a thousand years ago and their memory was erased.

These organizations can build "authenticity" if people practice them long enough. Consider the Mormons. But it will not be "authentic OG druidism" because the bishops foreclosed on that a long time ago.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:28 AM on December 27 [5 favorites]

The last actual druids were suppressed by Christian authorities over a thousand years ago and their memory was erased.

It's posited the Druids never wrote anything down, sticking strictly to oral transmission, which has stymied archeologists. The Romans and Greeks had some contact with them but the only records are (at best) second-hand and painted them in a negative light, probably to reinforce the superiority of the Greek and Roman cultures. Christianity carried this tradition on.
posted by tommasz at 10:01 AM on December 27

Cherniack grew up in a secular Jewish household, but said whenever his parents were asked about their religious affiliation, they would attempt to shut down conversation by answering “druid”.

I kind of wonder if this might be the folkloric origin of the running "Druish"/Jewish pun in SPACEBALLS, in reference to the inhabitants of planet Druidia. If that was a common joke among secular Jews around this time, I could see that eventually filtering up to a throwaway gag in a Mel Brooks movie.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:29 AM on December 27 [4 favorites]

I had a roommate in the military that wanted to get out of his enlistment. So he went to the chaplin, got on record he was a druid, and then spent a year obtaining a conscientious objector discharge. Shaved about a year off his contract. This was in the late nineties. I think he mostly just didn't care for waking up early.
posted by td2x10e3 at 10:42 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

> the Druids never wrote anything down, sticking strictly to oral transmission

This was not a choice on their part. They were of a non-literate society and had no technology of writing. Oral transmission is essential anyway: nobody becomes a Buddhist or Christian or Muslim by reading the books. You need a Buddhist or Christian or Muslim teacher, because living traditions are passed "from warm hand to warm hand." Once all the hands are cold and dead the transmission ceases.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:50 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

I thought this was Carleton, (I'm a grad), and remember hearing this story when I was there.
posted by Windopaene at 11:13 AM on December 27

No one knows... who they were... or what they were doin'...
posted by SansPoint at 12:17 PM on December 27

I wonder if they ever read Asterix the Gaul in their uni library? Getafix was right there. It seems serialisation and the first collection pre-dates the College prank. I didn't realise it was such an old series - was a fixture of my early school library reading in the 70's (along with Tintin).
posted by phigmov at 1:31 PM on December 27 [1 favorite]

As someone who had a number of contacts with neo-pagan communities in the 90s, nature is good and no quotes from anyone named any variation on Raevynn sounds pretty great.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:18 PM on December 27

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