Ovarwa, I am not interested in modern XXth century druidism, it is not the point...
The book I speak about is written by historians specialised in the celtic period.
Christian-J Guyonvarc'h (1926-2012) was a mythographer and linguist of the university of Rennes (France) specialist in antic and medieval celtic world an druidism. He writed alone or with is wife Françoise Le Roux 20 books and more than 300 academics articles on the subject.
He is considered to be one of the greatest specialist about the antic druidic myths and traditions.
He was all but a neodruidic.
The celtics myths are full of time manipulations from de accelerated time of the Sith to the inverse life of Myrdynn (born old he lives an inverse life knowing the future who is for him alone the past).
the greek position with their three or four gods of Time was that the time is circular
"What is eternal is circular and what is circular is eternal."
--Aristotle
the roman thinks that the time was linear
"There is Eternity, whence flowed Time, as from a river, into the world."
--Plutarch
"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone, I do not know."
-St. Augustine
must resist
Of course, the many Greek philosophers, taken together, have no consolidated position on time. Aristotle outlines this in Physics book IV, chapter 10-14, but certainly does not subscribe to circular time.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on three pages summarizes Aristotle's approach to time "in the manner of a modern-day natural scientist, who takes it for granted that progress follows the assiduous application of a well-trained mind".
Cheers
I will just toss in my 2 cents on how I handled in a previous campaign divination/premonition.
Since God gave free will to man, future cannot be written until men make choice and act upon their choice. So premonition would only show at best what could happen. The further away from present a mage try to look at the more likely it is to be wrong.
That being stated, and since I don't know what my players will do, I cannot tell them about future events. So mechanically I solved the issue by giving a large bonus to dice to somebody who gaze into the future. I did not describe anything, but no matter what the PC decides to do, because he got some info on what will happen, he can react perfectly. This is how the PC knows the future, without the player knowing it.
The closer, the larger the bonus as the more accurate the vision is. And the bonus would extend to a whole scene not just one die. The more specific the moment he wants to know about, the more accurate and the bigger the bonus.
Now, I let the debate on historical druids and time magic resume.
A good way to do Ezechiel,
About the greek concept, I think they appear in the form of gods (who would be magical like titan) before Aristotle and Platon... and we know both do not have the same conceptions. Thanks Dexco for explanations on French specialists.
As I already said, I never started a debate on historical druids and time...
but on how to create a new form which would be tempus and could work on seeing/watching past (of place or of an object) and and dilatating/contracting time (for one place, one person, one object).
How wonderful it would be to see in the place who was the murder, who was the last owner of that object (penetration needed if magical) - of course it could be scrying if made inside a magus' lab but it is not the only use (my character is a spy/investigator)
How wonderful it would be to enter a place without the guard to see you because his time and your time is not the same (actually it could be made by saying the character is going much faster, but speed is physical even if space/time and time is time)
I feel that most of you just talk about changing the past or looking at the future (the last is interesting for the sake of the research of time I want to do, and Criamon idea of cyclic time is interesting as well)