Cycling with the Druids in Bretagne in 2009

I was finally there! But I could not understand a thing!

That was my feeling during those two months of cycling through Bretagne in France in the autumn of 2009.

I introduced myself already in the previous post but let’s say I am from Argentina and 7 years ago I met a girl from Quebec in Santiago de Chile. After 2 or 3 months of being together she invited me to travel to France and then, why not (!?), travel to Asia by foot.
I said yes (!!??) and after all kinds of bureaucratic complications and the first and only flight so far in my life we arrived in Paris. There we met her twin sister and together we went to Nantes, where she lived.
So the plan was to travel by bike through Bretagne interviewing several Druids.
My friend would record the interviews with a video camera, her sister would take photos of them and I would... draw their portraits!

We had the details of the first Druid because my friend’s aunt knew him. Every Druid we visited would give us the contact of the next one and thus, during 2 months we cycled for endless hours under the sky, visited several Palaeolithic Sites, camping wherever the night got us and had incredible encounters with eight male Druids and one of the very few She Druids.
This post is not going to talk much about them (you will understand why) but about my own experience and how I end up making their portraits.

Here you can see my friend in a pub taking notes of the words of one of the Druids.
The table cloth is decorated with some features of the Breton flag.

Well, the main factor to understand here is that I did not speak any French at all when I arrived to France and all the meetings and conversations that took place during this amazing period were almost completely cryptic for me. My humble savings vanished after three weeks, and the bike that my friend’s sister managed to get for me was of very bad quality and had all kind of problems, while their bikes were in quite good shape.

On top of that the twin sisters were so very much sporty; they were grown up on a boat, travelling with their family around the world, so they were like two extensively trained champions while I felt like a very unlucky and clumsy guy riding at the end of my forces, trying to catch up with them.
This Judgement was neither fair nor realistic, but that was what I got at the time. Self-pity can swallow us any time!

From their side, the situation had a different perspective: they were sisters who hadn’t seen each other for a few years and were very happy to share the holydays notwithstanding one detail: my friend’s great idea of bring me with her. I didn’t really communicate very well with her sister, so she had to be a bit with her and a bit with me because we repelled each other… a whole mess! She was forced to take sides whenever I and her sister had a disagreement, but of course their bond was stronger, so I lost some terrain every day…

There was also the decision making problem. We didn’t know the area and not our future destinations, because each Druid would give us the contact of another one who lived one or two days of cycling away. So we had to change plans all the time and discuss possibilities, preferred roads to take to the next interview -and all these dialogues were of course… in French! Great! I could ask for translation of my opinion but I could not defend it afterwards so they decided what to do and I just had to follow!
I was really interested in Megalithic Sites - they were very intriguing for me since childhood and suddenly I was just surrounded by them! What an opportunity! However, the sister didn’t care for random boulders forgotten in the forests, so she would prefer to avoid the detours and go directly to other places that she liked more.

I remember that since something on my bike would break every two days or so, one day I just went nuts and started lifting the bike up in the air and throw it against the pavement, to the desperation and probably some amusement as well on the account of the twins.
Another day we were at the house of a very nice guy whom we found by chance, and he hosted us in his home. I was so troubled that at some point during the day I went hiding under a table! I just went in four legs beneath it and didn’t want to come out!

My friend noticed that something was really wrong and tried to pull me out, but I resisted.
I do not remember how the situation ended, they probably left me alone for a while, I don’t know. But my feeling was of total powerlessness because I was unable to master too many of the vital variables like outdoors equipment, economy, decision making and language to understand what people said around me and to express my thoughts. I realised that the power of a person relies enormously on those variables that we take for granted because we deal with them every day since we are little.

The previous photo was taken my friend in the Forest of Brocellion, the mythical emplacement of Merlin’s magic water source, one day we passed there with the bikes. Here you can see me at the feet of a five hundred year-old oak tree.
Overcome by the situation but still in a benevolent and magnificent place, I strived.

But beyond all these personal troubles I have to say with big capitals that those people in Bretagne treated us like guests of honour; everybody was friendly and welcoming to us.
They opened their homes and filled their tables with all kinds of delicacies, hosted us and endured our multiple questions, our cameras, and the silent foreigner who seemed quite lost and was sitting on the floor, drawing.
They were very happy to be appreciated by young travellers from faraway and they had a lot to tell.

This is Jean Pierre. His house was full of Celtic ornaments and figurines, musical instruments, pictures, decorative patterns, all the walls were covered with images, Gaelic texts written in gothic characters and relieves. Together with his wife they had a great garden and lived in a little village with a strange old Celtic name, and it was really not easy for us to find. They served us all kind of great food and he brought us to the sea shore where they used to perform their celebrations.

I remember the Atlantic coast and the spirit of that gentle old man and his presence, walking us through the rocks near the water. There was something very strong and poetic in the setting; something that supported very well the discussions and his will to share his knowledge, his experience. He was very happy with me because I managed to get a sound out of his much cherished horn (or was it a sea shell?) Apparently neither he nor any of his friends could blow it properly, so they ended up not believing him about the authenticity of this item.
When I got the deep calling sound in it, he was so happy and proud that he gave me a very precious gift to discover esoteric facts myself. I think he was very happy with his life and his passion and could talk forever about his favourite topics.

This was Allain, the first Druid who hosted us. He became the most familiar to us. He showed us how to increase the vibrations of a bottle of wine with the power of words and recitation. With his wife they offered us an incredible table with traditional crepes made in front of us and hours of conversation that I desperately tried to understand but in vain. He was amazed by the idea of his own death.
During his life he thought he would maybe assist to other people’s death as a witness, but when his hour would come he would experience it as the main actor.

He was the youngest of all Druids we visited and somehow the one we felt we could relate to the most.
He brought us to one of their ceremonies in the forest. He was leading it. This is the drawing of him in front of the sacred spot.

As I was just travelling with the most necessary I had just Indian ink, a few watercolours, a block of cotton paper (size A4) and 2 little brushes and a plume. Afterwards I varnished the images with the transparent part of eggs, known as a very good protective layer for paintings.

I would like to add that to appreciate my work it is very important to know where and how did I create the images. Since I had been always travelling, feeling as a foreigner most of my life (even in my own country!) I worked with the most unpredictable materials and under the most bizarre conditions.

This is why each image has a long story related to it. But in general you could try to understand my work as “capturing the moment”. Many times I felt that I should have been born two centuries before when photo cameras were not in every pocket. I developed through the years the capacity to catch the situation I am immersed in, always creating in public spaces, surrounded by people talking. Never locked in a studio or using preliminary drafts, never correcting. My style became almost like the traces of a dance, the remains of a gesture. And I hope it will continue its evolution till I will become one with my drawing.

This is the portrait of the oldest Druid in Bretagne at that moment; he was ninety years old then and his name meant “The Oven of Stars”. He had a very big and scary dog that was rather intimidating to us during the whole meeting. He said that he was not able to control the dog so all depended on its own judgement concerning us.

He told us a story of the First World War in which he participated. He said that the day of the first fight they were in formation in rows in front of a field waiting for their enemies as we see in the movies, when the other band started shooting with machineguns from inside the forest. He said, that his troops disbanded desperately and lied flat on the ground beneath a rain of bullets as they started to take mud to paint lines on their faces and clothes under a state of shock since modern war practices were unknown to them.

This was the most enigmatic character I had ever seen. He seemed to be part of a strange movie. He welcomed us for a short interview of two hours in the building of his school of knowledge. He was very well dressed and combed and moved around with parsimony and what seem to be controlled movements.

He suggested vaguely that he was not going to tell us much about the activities of his school because we were not initiated in his lineage. He answers our questions which I didn’t understood at all and afterwards brought us for a visit of that lugubrious but extremely beautiful place. We went up a by a wooden staircase. On the walls they were windows with vitreaux that poor an incredible coloured light into the building.

We climbed slowly one and another floor watching a great collection of esoteric art pieces, antiquities and paintings, listening to his comments.
Up in the attic he show us paintings made by him. The situation was so intense at that point, so picturesque! I tried to portrait the whole place with my friends and him talking but he didn’t allow me because he thought I wanted to still his painting ideas.

This was a straightforward non occultist Druid who has a huge library of books exclusively in Breton language. He received us in his shop and we talked very friendly for about one or two hours. He was also a musician and he got interested in listening to my flute, which I played for him very shortly. He was a man of the world, a social engaged intellectual devoted to the wellbeing of his Breton nation.

I don’t know what they were talking about but I could perceive that he seemed to be performing a very subtle “something” that was visible to me since I was not following the discussion but observing the body language of everybody and very attentive to the intonation of their voices.
At some point I asked my friend to ask him if he was doing any kind of internal spiritual practice while talking to us. Though surprised by the question he answered yes.

This was a friend of the librarian. He was the main Druid in the whole Bretagne. We expected an old guy with white hear and long beard walking with a long stick in his hand in the middle of the forest but instead, he appoint us in an Irish pub, and came wearing suit and cravat, shaved like a business man.
He invited us beers and talked passionately about everything we ask. He was a syndicalist working for the rights of the Breton minority. But he was also a kind of philosopher or poet.
I asked through my friend what did he thinks about Death. I will never forget the intensity with which he started pondering on mi question, he just closed his eyes, grabbed his forehead with his right hand and stayed like this for some moments before answering.

I felt happy that a man with such an important role could be so authentic. He was willing to respond to all kinds of questions coming from three young travellers that had completely different interests without questioning the randomness of our “interview”. He seems to be interested in everything and glad to answer. If I would just understand what they were talking about!

Finally this is the Druidesse. An harpist with long white hair. Such an intense and elegant woman! She accepted our invitation to meet but she wasn’t so happy with the taking of pictures or videos. Finally she allowed the recording of her voice and some picks of her hands playing or the landscapes.
She told us that women on this Druidic path were very rare and that it was not so easy to deal with the ironies and comments coming from his male colleagues. She brought us to three different Palaeolithic Sites. Two were big stones erected in the middle of the forest (Menhirs) and the third place was a vast field were huge rocks seemed to have been randomly thrown by a gigantic hand thousands of years ago.

While my friend and her sister were interviewing the Druidesse I had a lot of time to play between those rocks and somehow entered in a kind of trance and start perceiving the whole place awkwardly, feeling very subtle energetic currents that whispered a direction to follow between the rocks. As a dancer I started following those very subtle impulses and after quite some time I found out that those apparent scattered stones were in fact two tangential circles of around 15 meters diameter each. This became clear to my perception only after following for long time those strange currents and interacting with them.
I found also that the first circle was inducing a movement inside of it, like a whirlpool and that it was very difficult to jump from it to the second circle if following those strange sensations. I had to stop the game, become consciously more normal, and cross to the next circle where a similar current was taking place.

Completely astonished I mention afterwards the event to the Druidesse, wandering her opinion about me coming to the same spot during the twilights, in order to perceive maybe a more intense manifestation of my experience. She told me that as I have already discovered at noon, this was an special place, that this was why she brought us there at this hour and that in her view, the twilights is a moment of the day where “very strange things” would happen in this type of megalithic emplacements. So she recommended me not to take the risk since I had no experience at all on those matters.
I asked her if she had any druidic practice that she performed every day and she vaguely suggested that every act of the day, everything we cross or manipulate can be related to one of the four elements, and to be aware of that was her practice.
So simple and so interesting!

We still visited another Druid that was expulsed from his order because he revealed to the public some of their secrets. He didn’t seem too shocked about that but almost happy, he seemed to me a man that just pass through druidism in his personal path to discover himself. He talked a lot to us and gave us food at his table with his woman. He didn’t allow photos or recordings not even my drawing, this is why I have no picture of him, and curiously, almost no memory.

This is another photo of me at that time dancing with a huge Menhir in one of the megalithic sites we visited while cycling.

Well,
I think that’s all for my second post. I hope you would enjoy the story and don’t hesitate to ask questions if u are interested in those people or places. I could give you more precise information about them if u happen to feel a particular hint and want to go deeper in the subject.