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Ross Nichols (1902-1975)
Written and compiled by George KnowlesPhilip Peter Ross Nichols was a teacher, poet, artist, author and naturist who founded The Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids (OBOD) in 1964. While not entirely a new Order, the OBOD was a breakaway faction and modern version of the Ancient Druid Order (ADO), which has a history dating back to 1717.
Philip Peter Ross Nichols
Nichols was born in Norfolk on the 28th June 1902 and was one of four children. At the start of World War I (1914) his family moved to Cornwall and then Somerset, and then after the end of World War I (1918) he was sent to Bloxham School in Oxford, a boarding school for boys where he developed a passion for poetry. In 1921 he entered St Johns College in Cambridge, graduating with a Masters degree in History in 1924. While studying at Cambridge the leading anthropologist and folklorist Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) author of the classic “Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion” (1890) was teaching there, his work along with the likes of Robert Graves (1895-1985), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) and Jessie Laidlay Weston (1850-1928), another folklorist working mainly on mediaeval Arthurian texts, inspired Nichols’ life long interests in mythology, psychology, magic and religion.
Sir
James George Frazer -
Robert Graves
After leaving Cambridge, Nichols worked as a journalist and private teacher. His poetry and other writings were published in many of the leading magazines, journals and periodicals of the day, including: the Horizon, the Poetry Quarterly, the New Saxon and the New English Weekly. He also received reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, the International Times, The Listener, The Birmingham Post, Scrutiny, the Yorkshire Post and the Manchester Evening News. Nichols was a devout Christian and regularly attended his local Anglican churches, and for a number of years was actively involved with the Scout Movement before turning his attention to socialist and pacifist causes. He was also a vegetarian and naturist, and in the early 1930’s joined one of Britain’s first nudist colonies: the Spielplatz located in Bricket Wood near St. Albans, Hertfordshire. It was here that Nichols first became acquainted with fellow naturist Gerald Gardner, owner of another nudist colony nearby, The Five Acres Country Club. In 1939 at the outbreak of World War II, Nichols was appointed Headmaster of Carlisle & Gregson Ltd, a private college in London (known as Jimmy’s), a school noted for teaching Winston Churchill who during 1893 was “swotted” at Jimmy’s to pass the entrance exams for Sandhurst Military Academy. The headmaster at that time said of Churchill: “he was able enough, but his mind strayed to other interests, he was brilliant at history but sluggish in mathematics and science”. The French master apparently wanted Churchill thrown out, but he was allowed to stay on and passed his examinations. Situated in an austere building Kensington House at 5 Lexham Gardens in Cromwell Road, London, Nichols worked there during the week and spent his weekends at Spielplatz. Throughout the war years of the 1940’s, Nichols concentrated on his poetry, and within a short time-span had four books of poetry published: Sassenach Stray (1940), Prose Chants Poems (1941), The Cosmic Shape (1946) and Seasons at War (1947). As well as writing, Nichols was an accomplished watercolour painter, and even had some of his work exhibited at the Royal Academy. In 1948 Robert Graves published The White Goddess, his study of the myths and folklore of religion, which proved an influential book for Nichols.
A
watercolour painting by Ross Nichols
As a teaching academic, his position as Headmaster of a private Collage with its long end-of-term vacations, afforded Nichols the opportunity to indulge his passion for travel, during which he visited Egypt, Morocco, Bulgaria, Malta and Greece, and was a regular visitor to Wales, Ireland and Scotland, being particularly fond of Iona and the Hebridean islands. He loved to explore historical and archaeological sites, taking photos and sketching ancient monuments. Later in 1949, Nichols became the assistant editor of The Occult Observer, a quarterly publication covering Occult, Art & Philosophical subjects published by Michael Houghton the owner of the now famous Atlantis Bookshop in Convent Garden, London. The publication only ran for one year however, during which time Nichols wrote about Druidry for the first time. That same year Houghton published Gerald Gardner’s first book High Magic’s Aid, which while fictional contained his basic ideas for what was later to become “Gardnerian Wicca”. Already good friends with Gardner by this time, Nichols left the Spielplatz club in favour of Gardner’s Five Acres Country Club. In 1952 Nichols revised, edited and published a two-volume
edition of The History and Practice of Magic by Paul Christian, a
nineteenth-century French work translated by two friends James Kirkup and Julian
Shaw, to which he added supplementary articles and notes from other friends
among London’s occult intelligentsia. In
1954 he then helped Gerald Gardner produce Witchcraft
Today, his
first non-fiction book on witchcraft. Margaret
A. Murray the eminent anthropologist wrote the introduction for the book, which
when released became an immediate success.
As a result of it, covens began forming up and down the country, each
practicing its dictates, and so the Gardnerian tradition of witchcraft was born.
Gerald Gardner (third from left with bagpipes) at Stonehenge in 1951. Taken from a Festival Souvenir Brochure produced for the Festival of Britain in 1951.That same year in 1954 Nichols joined the Ancient Druid Order (ADO), no doubt at the suggestion of Gerald Gardner who had joined the same Order years earlier. As an active member of the ADO, Nichols took on the office of Scribe, a position that suited his academic and literary abilities. Later he became Chairman of the Order, in which capacity he frequently lectured on Druidry around the country, and in 1962 travelled to Ireland to lecture at the Theosophical Society in Dublin. In 1963 together with his druidic mentor the Chosen Chief of the ADO Robert MacGregor Reid, they travelled to a Breton Gorsedd in Brittany were Nichols was ordained as the Archdeacon of the Ancient Celtic Church by Archbishop Tugdual. In the following year 1964, his friend Gerald Gardner, his mentor Robert MacGregor Reid and Archbishop Tugdual all died.
Robert MacGregor Reid
As had happened several times in the past history of the ADO, the death of the chosen Chief caused a rift among senior members of the Order, and as a result the ADO split into two groups. When one group chose to elect Dr Thomas Maughan as the new Chosen Chief of the ADO, the other group disagreed. The second group then decided to form a new reconstructed Order focusing on the three grades of Bard, Ovate and Druid. Nichols became its first Chosen Chief, and so The Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids (OBOD) was born. Nichols was given the druidic name of Nuinn (the Irish word for the Ash Tree). After the death of Gerald Gardner, the Five Acres Country Club change into new hands and Nichols discontinued his membership. Still in need of a nature retreat and a place to relax away from his hectic life, he bought himself a few acres of woodland in Hambleden, South Buckinghamshire. There he built two wooden huts and furnished them with camp beds and stoves. As a retreat he could retire there alone or with friends and live a simple life in touch with nature, chopping wood for the stove, fetching water, walking in the woods, reading, writing and painting.
Woodland retreat
in Buckinghamshire
As the chosen Chief of the new OBOD, Nichols reorganised the ADO’s teaching structure and introduced the three grades of Bard, Ovate and Druid, conforming to the Celtic grades still practiced in Brittany, France and Wales. The Bard grade teachings focused on the power of song and poetry, the Ovate grade teachings included medical knowledge and healing, while the Druid grade was centred on spiritual and religious teachings connected with the land. Nichols also reintroduced the practice of publicly celebrating the solstices and equinoxes that make up the eight main festivals of the Pagan Year. Organized rituals and ceremonies were regularly held at Parliament Hill in London and at Glastonbury Tor in Summerset. There attending Druid Companions could be identified by their grade colours, Bards dressed in blue tunics, Ovates in Green and Druids in white. In the final decade of his life Nichols travelled widely
promoting Druidism and visiting such places as: Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt in 1967. In 1970 he visited Ireland and toured the Boyne Valley in
County Kildare, before paying a visit to Olivia Robertson at Huntington
Castle, Clonegal, County Wicklow.
Then in 1973 he visited Paul Bouchet, Chief Druid of the College
des Gaules in France.
Olivia Robertson
- Huntington Castle
All during this time Nichols had continued with his writing and had been working on a history of Druidry, which he finally completed as: The Book of Druidry in 1974. However, on the 30th April 1975 and before it could be published, Nichols died of a heart attack while staying at a friends house in London. Surprisingly, but so sudden was his death, there was no one ready to take over as his successor and next Chosen Chief of the OBOD, as such the Order went into a decline. After a hiatus of 13 years, one of his early students Philip Carr-Gomm became ready to take on his role, and in 1988 was asked to re-form the Order as its Chosen Chief. Under his leadership the OBOD once again flourished. Later while searching through his mentors writings, Carr-Gomm came across the original manuscript of The Book of Druidry, which in 1990 was finally and posthumously published.
Philip
Carr-Gomm
Nichols had been an accomplished teacher, writer, poet and artist, but the legacy he will be best be known for is the Order he founded and reconstructed, and which today under his successor the Chosen Chief Philip Carr-Gomm, has grown into the largest Druidic Order in the world with an international reputation. End. |
