Professor Ronald Hutton

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248 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 2 Aug

Professor Ronald Hutton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Empire: World History · 383. Romans vs Druids: The War For Celtic Britain (Ep 1) · 2 Aug 2026 podcast

It's not as if there's an international training program for druids.

Druids in Ireland are unlikely to be like druids in Gaul, which is now France.

where Caesar, correctly or not, says did have a 20-year training program and a supra-tribal meeting place.

So they were a kind of priestly caste, rather like Brahmins in India.

Whereas in the medieval Irish literature, which may or may not have any contact with pre-Christian reality, a druid is a magician and druidcraft is just the Irish word for magic.

And so anybody who's working a magic spell is a druid at the moment at which they're working it.

However, there are full-time magicians who are full-time druids and do act as advisors to kings and wise people and Merlin figures.

But whether, as I've said, this actually is anchored in any kind of pagan reality, we simply don't know.

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