What is the difference between druids and shamans?

Depends on the setting.

>>54071524

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.

>>54071648
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.

>>54071513
All Druids are Shamans, but not all Shamans are Druids.

>>54071718

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.

>>54071513
Shamans use totems and elemental powers. Druids turn to animals and use herbal powers.

Duh.

>>54071513
Not to be that guy>>54071524, 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).

>>54071513
Eurocentrism

In real life, druids were the priests of Celtic pagan faith, while shamn is a general term for people thought to commune with spirits.

In fantasy, both are often associated with nature but generally druids get their powers directly from nature while shamans get power from spirits or elementals, which includes but is not necessarily limited to various nature spirits.

>>54071513
Druids worship their environment.

Shamans worship their ancestors.

>>54071513
Shamans are Primal Leaders, whereas Druids are Primal Controllers.

More specifically, druids tend to be more about the physical aspects of nature while shamans call on specific spirits of nature.

>>54071513

To me Druids work with and through concrete manifestations of nature as expressed through physical animals and physical plants, standing as intercessor between the humanoid and the manifest natural world.

Whereas Shamans, to me, work through the unmanifest spiritual world: either the dead, unembodied entities, or both. Very few settings have an out-of-the-box Shaman class, but you can usually re-fluff some form of necromancer/diviner adquately.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism

Nothing, just two terms used by people in two different areas.

>>54071513

shamans are cool, druids are gay

>>54071513
Druids are mysterious

>>54071513

druids are celtic
shamans are asiatic

>>54071513
Shamans are what D&D calls druids

Druids are what D&D calls shamans

>>54071513
Shamans can destroy castles by doing incantations for the ground below to give way and collapse, while druids just need to throw salt at it and it will explode.

>>54075006
Huh. So basically, shamans are priests who use altered states specifically, and druids are fuck-if-anyone-knows.

Druids, as described by Caesar: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Caesar/CaesarGal06.html. Start at paragraph 13.

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Druids are mysterious

>>54071513
Depends. Do you mean real druids or made up Victorian druids?

>>54071513
It's a mystery.

>>54072029
But were druids shamans? Or we don't know?

>>54086966
Both are interesting and have their place.