Bardic Course:
This document contains the instructions of the Final Exam for the Bardic Course of the Grove
of Dana Online College of Druidism. This exam is required for students who have taken the
free course, without guidance of a mentor to grade their assignments. The intention of this
exam is to make a final evaluation of your course progress and comprehension, and determine
if you are ready to proceed to the next course. A passing grade for this final exam is a
requirement to complete the Bardic Course.
• Please use MLA style and one inch margins with a 12-point serif font such as Times New
Roman.
• Please include both your college name and your username on the New Order of Druids
community message boards as well as a working e-mail address through which we can
contact you.
• Choose ten topics from the Bardic Course Handbook and discuss both your experience or
practice of the topic, as well as your conceptual understanding of the theory behind it. In
other words, prove to us that you have sufficient experience with and knowledge of the
course material we are presenting to be considered to move on to more advanced courses.
Seven of these ten topics are already pre-selected and therefore required.
• There are no page length specifications. However, keep in mind that you are writing a
thorough dissertation to prove equivalency of a course, which takes a minimum of one
year to complete. We recognize that different people need more or less time to express
complex topics, and do not want to lock anyone into a specific length.
We reserve the right to decline any essay that does not meet our standards of scholarship and
self-reflection.
Students are free to re-submit declined papers after amending them.
Of the ten required topics, seven of these are pre-selected, and shall be written on (in no
particular order):
• Modern Druidism and the Role of Druids
• The Celtic year (with particular attention to the year as a mandala of connection with both
nature and soul)
• The Otherworld and the Three Realms
• The Cauldrons of Poesy
• The Divine/Spirit/Deities/Numinous as Expressed in Druidic Spirituality
• Initiation
• The Relationship Between Tribe and Land
The remainder of topics you can choose from the list below:
• Celtic History
• The Place of Mythology in Spiritual Practice
• Dana
• The Ancestors
• Celtic Virtues
• The Spirit of Place
• The Elements
• The Four Winds
• Altars in Spiritual Practice
• The Oran Mór
