What is the difference between druids and shamans?

What is the difference between druids and shamans?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism
mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Caesar/CaesarGal06.html.
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Depends on the setting.

Yes this is absolutely true and should always be the first answer in a thread like this.

I would say however that druids tend to be a sort of half way point between the primal tribal ritual of the shaman and the elaborate organized hierarchy of the cleric. Druids are organized and can have elaborate rituals, but they still use those rituals to deal with the primal wild forces.

You would never see a clan of druids building an elaborate cathedral to enforce the rule of a singular god or pantheon like a cleric, but they will build a ring of standing stones or a dolmen to mark special areas and honor the ancestors.

You will never see a druid drink a gallon of ayuasca and run screaming through the jungle in an insane costume made from feathers and plants like a shaman, but they would eat mushrooms and build a bonfire for a human sacrifice.

That's interesting, so Druids as a transition point between the personal religious experiances of shaman, and the social functions of priests. People who have a defined place in the social order but are still looked to because of their personal connection to the supernatural.

All Druids are Shamans, but not all Shamans are Druids.

Yes that is a very good way to express what I was trying to get at. They are more of a neutral mediator between a community and the supernatural, as opposed to a direct manipulator of the supernatural like a shaman or as a sort of bureaucratic representative of the supernatural like a cleric.

The historical druids were Celtic priests. They were often attributed with mystical powers in Celtic myth and their secretive pagan ways made them the subject of lurid accounts by Roman and later medieval writers. Their association with sacred trees and groves has often given them the character of nature worshippers in fiction. Note that Stonehenge predates the druids by several thousand years.

Shamans are a type of religious figure which enter trances to make contact with a spirit dimension, acting as middle men between humanity and spirits. Unlike druids, shamans are not associated with one specific culture or religion, shamanistic traditions can be found on pretty much every inhabited continent.

Shamans use totems and elemental powers. Druids turn to animals and use herbal powers.

Duh.

Not to be that guy, but it does. They're names for religious/mystic leaders like rabbi, priest, father, cleric, etc., and so you can kind of make them what what you want.

But in pop culture they're both on the "wild" or nature end of magic. Clerics and priests for holy magic. Wizards and sorcerers for arcane. Shaman and druids for nature magic.
Druids are hippie mages, while shamans are what you think of cultists (i.e. wizards who use blood and fear instead of books and boredom).

Eurocentrism