The druid and his soul originál AJ
The Druid and his soul
/z originálu Irish tales and sagas /
Ulick O Connor
The most powerful people in ancient Ireland were the druids, or priests.
The druids interpreted the movement of the sea, the different shapes of the moon and the seasons of the sun, and claimed to be able to foretell for the king what the gods intended his fate to be. They could cure people of illness. On the other hand, they could weave spells which could result in the death of those against whom they were directed.
They claimed to have power over nature and to be able to bring rain down or induce sunshine by means of their special powers. When the druids spoke, it was thought by the people that they were listening to the woices of the gods transmitting their will through the lips of these chosen people.
There were many famous druids but there was one especially so. People came from all over the world to sit at his feet and listen to his philosophy. He could argue anything. Once he convinced a philosopher from Egypt that black was white. And after he had succeeded in this difficult task, he turned around barefacedly and proved to the man that white was black until, in the end, the unfortunate man did not know whether there was any such thing as colour at all...and maybe there isn,t.
The druid was so clever that from time to time he forgot his function as a holy man and one day, somewhat to his surprise, he proved to himself that there was no God.
Worse than this, after proving that there was no God, he went into a veritable ecstacy of denial and finally came out with a cast-iron argument against the existence of the soul.
His argument was so cunning that the king, who really was a religious man, threw up all his beliefs and ordered the people from henceforth not to believe in either God or the existence of the soul. The druid went even further than this: he told the king that he was convinced that logic was the source of all truth. Therefore, if you could not see a thing, it did not exist. The king was so overwhelmed by this syllogism that he immediately summoned the people and ordered them to believe only that which they could see.
One day, the priest was sitting
on the edge of a seacliff working out a proposition when he found himself
talking to a spirit.
The spirit told the druit that he was a very wicked man because he had used his mind to destroy the beliefs of his people, he never listened to the promptings of his heart which was as much a source of truth as his intellect.
„But I was only being logical,“
argued the priest.
„Logic is all very well,“ replied the angel, „but you rely upon it alone simply because it satisfies your pride. And now it is too late to argue for you have only a few hours to live.“
The priest was horrified because
he was fond of life and he did not wand to die just then. Besides, after
meeting the angel, his belief in hell was revived and he wanted to avoid going
there if he could.
The druid begged the angel to
try and arrange that he would have a little more time on earth so that he might
end up in purgatory instead of hell and one day enjoy the delights of heaven.
Eventually the angel announced that the druid could only be saved from hell if
he managed to convince the king of the existence of the soul.
The priest got back as quickly
as he could to the royal palace and called the king to his chamber. This king
was not the one who had first ordered the people to give up their belief in the
soul, but his son, who had succeeded him on his death.
The druid was desperate. He had
to convince the young king or else burn for ever in hell. But as the young king
quite justifiably pointed out, the druid brought him up since he was a boy, to
believe only in that which he could see. As he was unable to see the soul, he
could not therefore believe in it.
At the end of his tether, the druid asked the young king to assemble the people. When they had gathered on the great plain in front of the palace, the druid knelt down and beseeched the king to draw a knife across his throat.
„Then when you have drawn the knife across my throat, you will see the soul, O King. If you do, will you believe and instruct our people to accept that there is such a thing as a soul?“
The king agreed because he was
very disturbed to see the druid,s distress. Immediately the king promised the
druid smiled happily.
The king drew the knife across
the druid,s throat, and the druid fell dead at his feet. From his throat
fluttered a beautiful white creature that fluttered off into the sunset. This
was, the Irish say, the first butterfly.
And even today, people in Ireland say
that butterflies are souls in purgatory, hovering on the edge of heaven,
waiting to get into paradise.