Deities in the RDNA

• Earth-Mother aka the Mother Earth, Nature with a capital N, open to interpretation.


• Be'al according to some Druid Revival resources, an ancient Irish supreme being (see below). Some in the RDNA community interpret Be'al as Lord if compared to the literal meaning of the Canaanite titular epithet Ba'al. Open to interpretation.


• Dalon Ap Landu Patron of the 3rd Order. The name was sloppily back-translated in 1963 by founders of the Reformed Druid movement to mean Lord of the Groves, who is an entity mentioned by the first century Roman historian Lucan. To some druids today, Dalon is less of a deity and more of a dryad, concept, or thoughtform entity, open to interpretation.


• Grannos Gaulish god of healing springs, patron of the 4th Order


• Braciaca Gender-ambiguous Brythonic deity of grain, malt, and drink, matron/patron of the 5th Order


• Belenos Gaulish god of the sun, patron of the 6th Order


• Sirona Gaulish goddess of healing springs (consort of Grannos), matron of the 7th Order. In the RDNA she is also indicated as a goddess of lakes and rivers, though historical evidence of this is lacking.


• Taranis Gaulish spelling of the pan-Celtic god of thunder, patron of the 8th Order


• Llyr Welsh god of the sea, patron of the 9th Order


• Danu Irish fertility goddess, matron of the 10th Order

Further Info on Be'al

If there's one deity (or metaphor for one) in the RDNA that might raise the hackles (or perhaps mild concern) of some Christian Druids, it's probably Be'al due to the similar spelling of the Canaanite Baal with his numerous spelling variations. Be'al with the apostrophe shows up in rare Druid Revival era books, and was by some, considered to be an ancient Irish supreme being: "The Gaelic name, which may be anglicized into Be'al, signifies "Source of All." (Fiona Macleod, The Divine Adventure, 1895/1912, p.429) "Be'al was the source of all being," (James Bonwick, Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions, 1895, p. 129) Macleod also states there's no academic evidence that links Be'al with Baal. In reality Be'al is more likely related to Bel, the deity that the festival of Beltane (Bealtaine in Irish Gaelic) is named after.

Dalon Ap Landu - Who?

Before the RDNA was created in 1963, there wasn't as much literature available about the druids compared to what we have today. In creating the neo-druidic RDNA movement, the founders took to the libraries and were inspired by the (now considered dubious) Victorian era writings they found. Somewhere early on the RDNA found Dalon Ap Landu, allegedly meaning Lord of the Groves in Welsh. Well, there is no part of that phrase that fits the translation. Ap is Welsh for son of in any case.

We have seen him on the bosom of the Earth-mother; huge woody arms raised to the sky in adoration, strong and alive; and we have called his name Dalon Ap Landu. -Meditations 4:12

The above verse from The Chronicles of the Foundation suggests that Dalon is a sacred tree: most likely an oak. For those with less literal interpretations, he could be a dryad or tree spirit. He could be a Cernunnos epithet, a Genius Loci (spirit of place), or the Green Man among other interpretations. Dalon Ap Landu is also the name given to the Third Order, and the name given to the council which Third Order druids become part of: the Order of Dalon Ap Landu, and the Council Of Dalon Ap Landu, respectively. Some druids even speculate that Dalon Ap Landu is a collective consciousness of all Third Order druids, especially since Dalon is invoked in just about every Reformed Druid ritual during the priest's consecration of the Waters-of-Life.

James Forlong, a Victorian era Oxford scholar, mentions in his book Rivers of Life a Scottish deity called Duw Keli. Unfortunately any Celtic words he uses are all spelled phonetically, making it difficult to cross reference the name without knowing the proper spelling of Keli. Duw is certainly the phonetic spelling for dubh which is Scots Gaelic for black (and ddu is Welsh which we'll get to in a moment). Coille is the modern spelling of the Scots Gaelic word for forest (and in Welsh it is celli). Forlong translates Duw Keli as Him of the Dark Grove (with the implied preceding genitive pronoun devoid of explanation). The Welsh connection: there is a neolithic chambered tomb on the Isle of Anglesey called Bryn Celli Ddu which means Mound [of the] Dark Grove. Could it have been dedicated to a primordial nature deity?

In the 1980s a Reformed Druid who was studying Welsh listed a slew of possibilites, and one of the interesting ones was that Dalon Ap Landu might have been a misheard pronunciation of Deilen Ap Llan Du. Deilen means Leaf, Ap is Son of, and Llan is a word usually attributed to churches, churchyards, or sacred enclosures. However Llan also seems like it could also apply to generic or pre-Christian sacred sites as well as groves, as indicated by some place names in Wales (i.e. Llaneves). And again Du is Welsh for black and/or dark. So Deilen Ap Llan Du would have a meaning something like Leaf, Son of the Dark Grove, the thought of which evokes yet more imagery of the Green man or some sort of nature spirit. We'd need input from a native speaker to help clear the cobwebs, really.

It's hard to trust all the Roman historians who made records of the druids, as their writings are skewed with propaganda and nuances of Roman superiority. The poet and historian Lucan wrote that even the druids feared to disturb the Lord of the Grove. I think he was exaggerating, but there it was: Lord of the Grove, a deity of place, in the historic record. (Lucan's Pharsalia, translation by Duff, 1977) I started to think Dalon Ap Landu is just a shoddy back-translation of Lord of the Groves in Welsh.

Whichever one of the founders of the RDNA decided to try translating it into a more fanciful name, they might have just been looking at the wrong things in the English-Welsh dictionary. There are plenty of Reformed Druids who view Dalon Ap Landu as just a made-up deity. Some have a minor problem with it, some don't. Some people get hung up on it and feel like they can't be a Reformed Druid. Take it for what it strives to mean: a forest god that was real to the ancient druids. The Third Order in the RDNA is officially nicknamed the Order of Dalon Ap Landu, and the governing body of the RDNA is the Council of Dalon Ap Landu. It is merely a unique name to append to the Third Order and its council. When you name something, you give it power.