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Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca

Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca · Chapter I: Druidry

Ross Nichols: Founder of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids

Ross Nichols (1902–1975), founder of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids: his life, the 1964 split, Gerald Gardner and the Wheel of the Year.

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Ross Nichols (1902–1975) was an English poet, teacher and Druid who founded the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) in 1964 and helped shape the eight-festival Wheel of the Year observed by most modern Pagans. A friend of Gerald Gardner, he moved twentieth-century Druidry away from its fraternal and Masonic style towards a nature-centred spirituality based on Celtic myth, seasonal ritual and the landscape. After his death the order was revived by his student Philip Carr-Gomm and became one of the largest Druid organisations in the world.

Early Life, Education and Literary Work§

Ross Nichols was born on 28 May 1902 and studied at Cambridge, where he developed lasting interests in history, literature and myth. He spent much of his working life in education, eventually running a private tutorial college in London that prepared students for examinations. He wrote poetry and prose throughout his life, and in 1946 he published, with the poet James Kirkup, The Cosmic Shape, an essay on myth and the poetic imagination accompanied by poems.

Nichols belonged to a generation of English writers for whom myth, folklore and landscape offered a source of meaning beyond conventional religion. He was interested in comparative religion, in the Arthurian legends and in the sacred geography of Britain, and he was active in naturist circles, which in mid-century England often overlapped with alternative spirituality. It was through these networks that he came to know Gerald Gardner.

The Ancient Druid Order and the 1964 Schism§

Modern Druidry began not in antiquity but in the eighteenth-century revival described in Druidry: the ancient druids and the modern revival. By the twentieth century several fraternal and mystical Druid groups existed in England. One of the most visible was the Ancient Druid Order, led in the first half of the century by George Watson MacGregor Reid, which held public ceremonies at Stonehenge at the summer solstice, on Tower Hill in London at the spring equinox and on Primrose Hill in the autumn.

Nichols joined the Ancient Druid Order around the mid-1950s and became one of its leading figures, serving as an officer and writing for it. After the death of the chief, Robert MacGregor-Reid, in 1964, the order elected Thomas Maughan, a homeopathic doctor, as its new chief. The election was disputed, and Nichols, together with a number of other members, left to form a new body: the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.

Founding the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids§

The name of the new order reflected the three classes of learned men described by ancient Greek and Roman writers on the Gauls. Strabo and Ammianus Marcellinus, drawing on earlier sources, distinguished bards (poets and singers), vates or ovates (seers and natural philosophers) and druids (priests, judges and philosophers). Nichols turned these classes into three successive grades of training: the bardic grade, concerned with creativity, myth and the arts; the ovate grade, concerned with healing, divination, nature and the ancestors; and the druid grade, concerned with philosophy, teaching and ritual leadership.

Under Nichols OBOD remained small, but it differed in tone from older groups. It placed less emphasis on fraternal ceremony and Masonic-style degrees and more on an inner spiritual path of study, meditation and seasonal ritual in the landscape. Ceremonies were held at sites of historical and mythic importance, including Glastonbury and Primrose Hill in London, where Iolo Morganwg had held the first modern Gorsedd of bards in 1792. Nichols's approach treated the ancient druids as an inspiration rather than as a fully recoverable religion, and he was interested in Christian as well as pagan elements of Celtic tradition. For the ancient background see Celtic religion.

Ross Nichols, Gerald Gardner and the Eightfold Year§

Nichols and Gerald Gardner were friends from at least the early 1950s. Both belonged to naturist circles around the club at Bricket Wood in Hertfordshire, where Gardner's coven met, and both were interested in the survival or revival of pre-Christian religion. Nichols is said to have helped Gardner with the editing of Witchcraft Today (1954), and the two men discussed ritual and the calendar. Their friendship is often cited as the origin of a lasting cross-fertilisation between Wicca and Druidry, discussed in Wicca and Gerald Gardner.

Their most significant shared legacy is the eightfold ritual year. In the early 1950s Gardner's Wicca celebrated four "greater sabbats" on the Gaelic quarter days, following Margaret Murray, while the Druid orders celebrated the solstices and equinoxes. Around 1958, according to Ronald Hutton's reconstruction, Gardner's coven added the solar festivals and Nichols's Druids adopted the quarter days, so that both traditions came to celebrate eight festivals. Nichols also helped popularise names and meanings for them, including the Welsh-derived names now used by many Druids for the solar festivals, such as Alban Arthan for the winter solstice, which go back to the writings of Iolo Morganwg. The result became the Wheel of the Year, now shared across much of modern Paganism, with festivals such as Samhain at its turning points.

Nichols's Teachings: Myth, Landscape and the Celtic Tradition§

Nichols taught through lectures, essays, poems and ritual rather than through a fixed doctrine. His surviving writings deal with the meaning of the seasonal festivals, the symbolism of trees and the Ogham alphabet, the Arthurian cycle and the Grail, sacred sites such as Stonehenge, Avebury and Glastonbury, and the mythology of the Welsh and Irish literatures. He saw myth as a living language through which human beings could understand the cycles of nature and of the psyche.

These writings were collected after his death by Philip Carr-Gomm and John Matthews and published as The Book of Druidry (1990). The book combines historical discussion, which in places reflects the less critical scholarship of Nichols's own time, with meditations and ritual texts. Readers today often consult it alongside Ronald Hutton's Blood and Mistletoe (2009), which places Nichols within the long history of how the British imagined the druids.

Nichols's Druidry was deliberately inclusive. He did not demand that members abandon other religious commitments, and his order welcomed Christians as well as Pagans. This openness, along with his emphasis on creativity and nature, became characteristic of OBOD and of much modern Druidry.

Death, Revival and Legacy of OBOD§

Ross Nichols died on 30 April 1975, the eve of Beltane. Without him the order became largely inactive. In 1984 Philip Carr-Gomm, who had joined Nichols's order as a young man in 1969 and studied with him, received what he described as a call to revive it, and in 1988 he became its Chosen Chief and relaunched the order. He turned Nichols's teachings into a structured distance-learning course, which allowed people to train in Druidry wherever they lived.

The revived OBOD grew rapidly in Britain, North America, Australia and continental Europe, and by its own account now has many thousands of members in dozens of countries, making it one of the largest Druid organisations. Carr-Gomm led it until 2020, when Eimear Burke, an Irish psychologist, succeeded him as Chosen Chief. Carr-Gomm's books, including The Druid Way (1993) and Druidcraft (2002), which explores the meeting of Wicca and Druidry, continued the conversation that Nichols and Gardner had begun. Nichols himself is remembered as the figure who gave twentieth-century Druidry its seasonal, contemplative and nature-centred character.

Frequently asked questions§

Who founded the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids?§

Ross Nichols founded OBOD in 1964, after leaving the Ancient Druid Order following a disputed leadership election. The order was revived in 1988 by his former student Philip Carr-Gomm.

Did Ross Nichols create the Wheel of the Year?§

Not single-handedly. The eight-festival year arose in the late 1950s from the meeting of Gardner's Wicca, which celebrated the Gaelic quarter days, and Nichols's Druidry, which celebrated the solstices and equinoxes. Nichols contributed to the combination and to the names and meanings of several festivals.

Was Ross Nichols a Wiccan?§

There is no reliable evidence that Nichols was initiated into Wicca, but he was a close friend of Gerald Gardner, shared his interests and is said to have helped edit Gardner's Witchcraft Today. His influence on Wicca came mainly through that friendship and the shared seasonal calendar.

What are the three grades of OBOD?§

Bard, Ovate and Druid. Nichols based them on the three classes of learned men described by ancient writers on the Gauls, and turned them into successive stages of training in creativity, nature and healing, and philosophy and ritual.

Sources and further reading§