The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD)

The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, known universally as OBOD, is the world’s largest Druid order and one of the most influential contemporary Pagan organizations in existence. Founded in Britain in 1964, it offers a structured home-study course through three successive grades that guide students through nature spirituality, creative practice, ancestral connection, divination, and philosophical development. Students in more than 90 countries have completed portions of its curriculum, and many tens of thousands of people consider themselves OBOD members.

OBOD operates as an open initiatory tradition. This means that while it maintains a graded structure and formal ceremonies for those who pursue them, membership does not require in-person initiation or geographic proximity to a grove. The correspondence course model was pioneering when OBOD introduced it, making a systematic Druidic education available to people who had no local Druid community. Today the course is also available in digital format, and OBOD maintains a worldwide network of groves (local groups), seed groups, and isolated members.

History and origins

The lineage OBOD claims traces back to the revival of Druidry in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries and most directly to the Ancient Druid Order (ADO), which conducted ceremonies at Stonehenge on the summer solstice from the 19th century onward. The ADO was a fraternal society rather than a religious organization, but its ceremonies kept a symbolic connection to Druid heritage visible in public life.

Ross Nichols, a poet, artist, and intellectual, was a senior member of the ADO when a dispute over the leadership and direction of the Order led him to found OBOD in 1964. Nichols had a clear vision of Druidry as a living spiritual path rather than a purely ceremonial fraternity. He was close friends with Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern Wicca, and the two men reportedly co-devised the eight-festival wheel of the year that both traditions now use. Nichols wrote a substantial body of teachings during his lifetime; these were compiled and published posthumously as “The Book of Druidry.”

Nichols died in 1975 and OBOD went largely dormant until Philip Carr-Gomm, one of Nichols’s students, became chief in 1988. Carr-Gomm restructured and greatly expanded the curriculum, wrote the foundational texts of the home-study course, and grew OBOD from a small British circle into the international organization it is today. He served as chief until 2020, when Eimear Burke became the first woman to hold the position.

Core beliefs and practices

OBOD’s teaching is organized through three grades, each addressing a distinct dimension of the Druidic path.

The Bardic Grade opens the course and focuses on creativity, imagination, and relationship with the self and the natural world. Students work with the concept of the Awen, the flowing creative inspiration that is central to Druidic spirituality. Bardic practices include keeping a journal, working with the natural world as a teacher, beginning meditation practice, and exploring one’s own creative voice. A ceremony of self-initiation or group initiation marks entry into the grade.

The Ovate Grade works with ancestors, healing, and divination. Students explore the Celtic tree alphabet (Ogham) as a divinatory system, develop awareness of ancestral connections and patterns, and engage with concepts of life, death, and rebirth. The ovate is the aspect of Druidry most concerned with the spirit world and with the cycles of death and regeneration.

The Druid Grade brings the preceding work into an integrated philosophy and a capacity to serve others and community. It addresses the deep cosmology of the tradition, the ethics of teaching and group leadership, and the practitioner’s relationship with the divine in whatever form that takes for them.

OBOD ritual follows a pattern of opening sacred space through acknowledgment of the directions, the sacred center, and the three realms of land, sea, and sky. Ceremonies are held at groves and as solitary practices at home, typically aligned with the eight seasonal festivals.

Open or closed

OBOD is an open tradition. Celtic ancestry is not required, no specific metaphysical belief is mandated, and the course can be taken without attending any in-person event. The initiation ceremonies that mark transition between grades are available as solitary self-initiation ceremonies within the course materials.

The Order does ask students to engage honestly and to pace their learning rather than rushing through the material. The course is designed to be worked with slowly, ideally with seasons of reflection, rather than completed as quickly as possible.

How to begin

The standard entry point is enrolling in OBOD’s Bardic Grade home-study course, available through OBOD’s website. Philip Carr-Gomm’s books, particularly “Druid Mysteries” and “The Druid Way,” offer an accessible introduction before committing to the course. Many students also read Ross Nichols’s posthumous “The Book of Druidry” to understand the tradition’s founding sensibility.

Connecting with a local grove, if one exists in your area, can add communal ritual to the home-study experience. OBOD maintains a grove finder on its website. For those without a local grove, online connection with other OBOD students is actively encouraged through the Order’s networks.

In myth and popular culture

The three-grade structure of Bard, Ovate, and Druid that OBOD employs reflects a division of function found in ancient Irish literary sources, where the bardic, fili (poet-seer), and priestly functions were distinct social and professional roles in Celtic society. The Irish and Welsh bardic traditions have their own rich literary histories: the Welsh Taliesin, a historical poet of the sixth century CE who became a legendary shaman-bard in later tradition, is a figure who represents the Bardic ideal in its fullest mythological form. Taliesin’s legendary birth story, involving shapeshifting, death, and rebirth as an inspired poet, maps closely onto the initiatory themes of OBOD’s Bardic Grade.

Ross Nichols’s close friendship with Gerald Gardner, founder of Wicca, led to what both men claimed was a collaborative development of the eight-festival wheel of the year used by both Wicca and modern Druidry. Philip Carr-Gomm has written about this connection, and it illustrates how OBOD’s founding generation was embedded in a broad mid-twentieth century revival of British paganism that included figures from multiple traditions meeting in the same social and intellectual circles.

The twentieth century revival of interest in Druidry also found expression in the neo-Druidic figures of popular culture, from Getafix (called Panoramix in the original French) in the Asterix comics by Goscinny and Uderzo, to more recent portrayals in fantasy literature and games. These portrayals are almost entirely fictional, but they reflect a genuine popular fascination with the image of the forest-wise priest-figure that OBOD’s curriculum attempts to engage with historically and spiritually.

Philip Carr-Gomm has written a number of books that have themselves entered the broader Pagan literary culture, including “Druid Mysteries” and the anthology “The Druid Way,” and these texts have shaped how contemporary Pagans across multiple traditions think about nature spirituality and its relationship to indigenous European practices.

Myths and facts

OBOD is the subject of several common misunderstandings both within the Pagan community and among those encountering it from outside.

• A widespread assumption holds that OBOD teaches an ancient or continuous Druid tradition passed down from the Celtic peoples. OBOD is clear in its own literature that modern Druidry is a modern spiritual path that draws on ancient sources and inspiration without claiming unbroken historical continuity.
• Some practitioners believe that OBOD membership requires Celtic ancestry or a particular ethnic or cultural background. OBOD is explicitly open to students of any background, and the Order’s official positions on inclusivity are clearly stated.
• The correspondence course model sometimes leads people to assume OBOD is a distance-learning academic program without a genuine spiritual community. In fact, OBOD maintains an active worldwide network of groves, gatherings, and online communities, and many members participate in group ritual as well as individual home study.
• It is sometimes assumed that completing all three grades makes one a “Druid” in the sense of being qualified to lead ritual or teach. The grades provide a framework for personal development; leadership and teaching roles within OBOD involve separate processes and community recognition.
• Some observers assume that OBOD’s inclusive, non-dogmatic stance means it has no real theology or cosmological framework. OBOD does have a distinctive cosmological framework centered on the three realms of land, sea, and sky, the concept of Awen, and the nature-centered seasonal cycle, which is taught progressively through the grades.