Everything about Celtic Polytheism totally explained
The terms
Celtic polytheism,
Celtic paganism and
Druidism refer to the
religious beliefs and practices of ancient
Celts, until the
Christianization of Celtic-speaking lands. At various times those lands included
Ireland,
Britain,
Celtiberia,
Gaul, areas along the
Danube river, and
Galatia. Currently, the areas of Europe that retain Celtic culture are limited to the six
Celtic nations.
Celtic religious practices bear the marks of
Romanization following the
Roman Empire's conquest of Gaul (58–51 BCE) and Britain (43 CE), although the depth and significance of Romanization is a subject of scholarly disagreement.
The nature of Celtic polytheism
According to
classical era sources, the
Celts worshipped the forces of nature and didn't envisage deities in
anthropomorphic terms. Deities undoubtedly formed a background to everyday life. Both archaeology and the literary record indicate that ritual practice in Celtic societies lacked a clear distinction between the sacred and profane in which rituals, offerings and correct behaviour maintained a balance between gods and man, and harnessed supernatural forces for the benefit of the group.
The pagan Celts perceived the presence of the supernatural as integral to their world. The sky, the sun, the dark places underground all had their
spirits,
life-forces and
personalities. Every
mountain,
river,
spring,
marsh,
tree and
rocky outcrop was endowed with divinity. While Greek and Roman culture revolved around urban life, Celtic society was predominantly rural. The close link enjoyed with the natural world is reflected in what we know of the religious systems of Celtic Europe during the late first millennium BCE and early first millennium CE. As in many
polytheistic systems, the spirits worshipped were those of both the wild and cultivated landscapes and their inhabitants. Cults focussed upon features of the landscape;
mountains,
forests and
animals. Divine powers associated with the
fertility of humans, of
livestock and of
crops were objects of veneration. Tribal territories were themselves held sacred and the
ground and waters which received the dead were imbued with sanctity and revered by their living relatives. Sanctuaries were sacred spaces separated from the ordinary world, often in natural locations such as springs, groves or lakes. Many
topographical features were deified as gods: many divine names refer to specific locations or geographical features, a clear indication of how closely Celtic societies identified with place. Small thank offerings were placed in domestic storage pits while more elaborate deposits were left in specially dug ritual shafts and in lakes. These offerings linked the donor to the place in a concrete way, since complex and varied rituals involved the individual in personal contact with the sacred sites devoted to their gods. An image very different from the idea of druids administering a pan-Celtic religion.
Animal worship
The character and vitality of certain animal species seems to have been considered
numinous. Certain
spirits were very close to the animals with which they were associated: the names of
Artio the
ursine goddess and
Epona the
equine goddess are based on
Celtic words for ‘bear’ and ‘horse’ .
Sanctity of hunting
Hunting deities whose role acknowledges the economic importance of animals and the ritual of the hunt highlight a different relationship to nature. The animal elements in half-human, antlered deities suggest that the forest and its denizens possessed a
numinous quality as well as an economic value. For this reason they were deified as gods. Some scholars explain shape-shifting and magical motifs in terms of Celtic beliefs about rebirth and the afterlife, but it's more likely that such deities had a regenerative function. Attributes like
fruit and
grain imply fecundity, while animals such as
snake and
deer (who shed their skins and antlers) suggest cycles of growth. .
Hunter-gods were venerated in Celtic
Europe and they often seem to have had an ambivalent role as protector both of the hunter and the prey, not unlike the functions of
Diana and
Artemis in
classical mythology . From
Gaul, the armed deer-hunter depicted on an image from the temple of
Le Donon in the
Vosges lays his hands in
benediction on the antlers of his stag companion. The hunter-god from
Le Touget in
Gers carries a hare tenderly in his arms.
Arduinna, the eponymous boar-goddess of the
Ardennes, rides her ferocious quarry, knife in hand, whilst the boar-god of
Euffigneix in the
Haute-Marne is portrayed with the motif of a
boar with
bristles erect, striding along his torso, which implies conflation between the human animal perception of divinity.
Arawn of
Welsh mythology may represent the remnants of a similar hunter-god of the forests of
Dyfed.
As with many traditional societies, the hunt was probably hedged about with prohibitions and rituals. The
Greek author Arrian, writing in the second century AD, said that the Celts never went hunting without the gods’ blessing and that they made payment of domestic animals to the supernatural powers in reparation for their theft of wild creatures from the landscape. Hunting itself may have been perceived as a symbolic, as well as practical, activity in which the spilling of blood led not only to the death of the beast but also to the earth’s nourishment and replenishment.
Weather worship
Meteorological patterns and phenomena, especially the
sun and
thunder, were acknowledged as divine and propitiated. Inscribed dedications and iconography in the Roman period show that these spirits were personifications of natural forces.
Taranis’s name indicates not that he was the god of thunder but that he actually was thunder. Archaeological evidence suggests that the sun and thunder were perceived as especially potent. Inscriptions to
Taranis the ‘Thunderer’ have been found in
Britain,
Gaul,
Germany and the former
Yugoslavia and the Roman poet
Lucan mentions him as a savage god who demanded
human sacrifice.
From the early
Bronze Age, people in much of temperate Europe used the
spoked
wheel to represent the sun and, by the late
Iron Age and Roman periods, solar deities were represented with wheel-symbols (see
sun cross). The Romans imported their own celestial god,
Jupiter, to Celtic lands and his imagery was merged with that of the native
sun-god to produce a hybrid sky-deity who resembled the Roman god but who had the additional native solar attribute of the wheel. This Celtic sky-god had variations in the way he was perceived and his cult expressed. Yet the link between the Celtic Jupiter and the solar wheel is maintained over a wide area: altars decorated with the wheels were set up by Roman soldiers stationed at
Hadrian's Wall, and also by supplicants in
Cologne and
Nîmes.
Water worship
The spirits of watery places were invoked as givers of life and as links between the earthly and the
other world.
Sequana, for example, seems to have embodied the
River Seine at its spring source and
Sulis appears to have been one and the same as the
hot spring at
Bath, not simply its guardian or possessor.
There is abundant evidence for the veneration of water by the Celts and indeed by their Bronze Age forebears. In the
Pre-Roman Iron Age,
lakes,
rivers,
springs and
bogs received special offerings of metalwork, wooden objects, animals and, occasionally, of human beings. By the Roman period, the names of some water-deities were recorded on inscriptions or were included in contemporary texts. The ancient name for the
River Marne was
Matrona ‘Great Mother;’ the
Seine was
Sequana; the
Severn,
Sabrina; the
Wharfe,
Verbeia; the
Saône,
Souconna, and there are countless others. Natural springs were foci for healing cults: Sulis was invoked as a healer at
Aquae Sulis and the goddess
Arnemetia was hailed as a healer at
Aquae Arnemetiae .
Nemausus, for example, wasn't only the
Gallic name for the town of
Nîmes but also that of its presiding
spring-god. He had a set of three female counterparts, the
Nemausicae . In the same region, the town of
Glanum possessed a god called
Glanis: an
altar from a sacred spring is inscribed ‘to Glanis and the
Glanicae’ .
The hierarchy of the Celtic gods
Evidence from the Roman period presents a bewildering array of gods and goddesses who are represented by images or inscribed dedications. Sorting these multifarious and divine beings into some kind of hierarchy is necessary, though not always easy, if one is to make any sense of the religious system in place in Celtic
Europe. By examining the distribution of images and god-names, it's possible to make distinctions between deities who were venerated all over the Celtic world, those who were popular in more restricted regions - perhaps corresponding to tribal boundaries - and those who were linked to a specific locality, sometimes worshipped only at a single sanctuary . The establishment of patterns of frequency and distribution may point to the relative popularity of certain gods, but not necessarily to any order of importance. For example, in east-central
Gaul, the local
Burgundian healing goddess
Sequana was probably more influential in the minds of her local devotees than the
Matres, who were worshipped all over Britain, Gaul and the
Rhineland.
Certain cults transcended tribal boundaries and were followed everywhere. Examples of universal divinities include the
Matres, the
sky-god and
Epona, the horse-goddess, who was invoked by devotees living as far apart as
Britain,
Rome and
Bulgaria. A distinctive feature of the mother-goddesses was their frequent appearance as a triad: they were perceived as a triple entity in many parts of Britain, in Gaul and on the
Rhine. Although it's possible to identify strong regional differences between them.
The Celtic sky-god too had variations in the way he was perceived and his cult expressed. Yet the link between the Celtic Jupiter and the
solar wheel is maintained over wide areas, from
Hadrian’s Wall to
Cologne and
Nîmes. .
The importance of local deities
Regional divinities can sometimes be identified, perhaps especially associated with tribal and sub-tribal territories. Specific to the
Remi of northwest
Gaul is a distinctive group of stone carvings depicting a triple-faced god with shared facial features and luxuriant beards. In the
Iron Age, this same tribe issued
coins with three faces, a motif found elsewhere is
Gaul . The inference is that a specific Remic divinity is represented. Another tribal god was
Lenus, venerated by the
Treveri. He was worshipped at a number of Treveran sanctuaries, the most splendid of which was at the tribal capital of
Trier itself. Yet he was also exported to other areas:
Lenus has altars set up to him in
Chedworth in
Gloucestershire and
Caerwent in
Wales.
Many Celtic divinities were extremely localised, sometimes occurring in just one shrine, perhaps because the
spirit concerned was a
genius loci personifying the
natural balance of a particular place. In
Gaul, over four hundred different Celtic god-names are recorded, of which at least 300 occur just once.
Sequana was confined to her
spring shrine near
Dijon,
Sulis belonged to
Bath. The divine couple
Ucuetis and
Bergusia were worshipped solely at
Alesia in
Burgundy. The British god
Nodens is associated above all with the great sanctuary at Lydney. Yet he appears at one other site, at
Cockersand Moss in Cumbria. Two other British deities,
Cocidius and
Belatucadrus were both Martial gods and were each worshipped in a clearly defined territories in the area of
Hadrian’s Wall . There are many other gods whose names betray their origins as
topographical spirits.
Vosegus presided over the mountains of the
Vosges,
Luxovius of the
spa-settlement of
Luxeuil and
Vasio to whom belonged the town of
Vaison in the Lower
Rhône Valley.
The evidence for Celtic religion
The evidence for the nature of Celtic religion comes partly from ancient literature (from the Classical commentators on the Celts, and from the vernacular mythic sources of Ireland and Wales) and partly from archaeological evidence, especially in the Roman period when inscribed dedications and religious images contribute significantly to our knowledge. What we lack because of the virtual non-literacy of
Iron Age Celts is written testimony from the Celts themselves .
It is important to exercise some care in using all three of these sources for Celtic religion. The classical historians were inevitably subject to bias, distortion, ignorance, misunderstanding, literary convention and barbarian stereotyping, all of which combine to present a picture of Celtic religion which is somewhat skewed and, to a certain extent, unreal
.
Because of their chronological separation from the pre-Christian world, the early
Welsh and
Irish vernacular sources, written in the
Welsh and
Irish languages, must be scrutinized with even more rigour than the classical sources in assessing their validity as evidence for
pagan Celtic religion . While it's possible to single out specific texts which - because of their pagan content - can be strongly argued to encapsulate genuine echoes or resonances of the pre-Christian past, the
earliest mythic stories of Ireland and
Wales were not compiled in written form until the
mediaeval period. Opinion is divided as to whether these texts contain substantive material derived from
oral tradition as preserved by
bards or whether they were the creation of the mediaeval
monastic tradition.
The
archaeological evidence doesn't contain the
bias inherent in the
literary sources. Nonetheless, our interpretation of this evidence is inevitably coloured by the twenty-first-century mindset.
Four main types of source provide information on Celtic polytheism: the minted
coins of Gaul, Raetia, Noricum and Britain; the sculptures, monuments and inscriptions associated with the Celts of
continental Europe and of
Roman Britain;
Greek and
Roman literature; and the insular literatures of
Celtic mythology that have survived in writing from medieval times. All pose problems of interpretation. The pre-Roman coins of the 1st century BC and early 1st century AD bear few relevant inscriptions, and their iconography derives partly from standardized Hellenistic numismatic prototypes and partly presents highly local emblems. Most of the monuments, and their accompanying inscriptions, belong to the
Roman period and reflect a considerable degree of
syncretism between Celtic and
Roman gods; even where figures and motifs appear to derive from pre-Roman tradition, they're difficult to interpret in the absence of a preserved literature on mythology.
Only after the lapse of many centuries – beginning in the 7th century in Ireland, even later in Wales – were Celtic mythological traditions consigned to writing, but by then Ireland and Wales had been Christianised and the scribes and redactors were monastic scholars. The resulting literature is abundant and varied, but it's much removed in both time and location from its epigraphic and iconographic correlatives on the Continent and inevitably reflects the redactors' selectivity and something of their Christian learning. There are nevertheless many points of agreement between the insular literatures and the continental evidence. This is particularly notable in the case of the
Classical commentators from
Posidonius (c. 135–c. 51 BC) onward who recorded their own or others' observations on the Celts.
Cosmology and eschatology
Though there are records of deity names, and archaeological remains including altars and temples, little is known about the specific
religious beliefs of the Celts of Gaul. Their burial practices, which included burying food, weapons, and ornaments with the dead, suggest a belief in
life after death. The
druids, the early Celtic priesthood, were said by
Caesar to have taught the doctrine of
transmigration of the soul along with astronomy and the nature and power of the gods.
The Irish believed in an
Otherworld, which they described sometimes as underground, such as in the
Sídhe mounds, and sometimes located on islands in the Western Sea. The Otherworld was variously called
Tír na mBeo ("the Land of the Living"),
Mag Mell ("Delightful Plain"), and
Tír na nÓg ("Land of the Young"), among other names. It was believed to be a country where there was no sickness, old age, or death, where happiness lasted forever, and a hundred years was as one day. It was probably similar to the
Elysium of the
Greek mythology and both may have a shared origin in ancient
Proto-Indo-European religion. In Irish
Immrama ("voyage") tales, a beautiful young woman often approaches the hero and sings to him of this happy land. Sometimes she offers him an apple, or the promise of her love in exchange for his assistance in battle. He follows her, and they journey over the sea together and are seen no more. Their journey may take place in a boat of glass, in a chariot or on horseback (usually upon a white horse, as in the case of the goddess
Niamh of the Golden Hair). Sometimes the hero returns after what he believes is a short time, only to find that all his companions are dead and he's actually been away for hundreds of years. Sometimes the hero sets out on a quest, and a magic mist descends upon him. He may find himself before an unusual palace and enter to find a warrior or a beautiful woman who makes him welcome. The woman may be the goddess
Fand, the warrior may be
Manannán mac Lir or
Lugh, and after strange adventures the hero may return successfully. However, even in cases where the mortal manages to return to his own time and place, he's forever changed by his contact with the Otherworld.
This conception of the Otherworld is also preserved in the Welsh story of
Branwen, daughter of Llyr, which ends with the survivors of the great battle feasting in the presence of the severed head of
Bran the Blessed, having forgotten all their suffering and sorrow, and having become unaware of the passage of time. In Irish lore,
Donn, a god of the dead, reigned over
Tech Duinn ('The House of Donn'), which was seen as existing on or under
Bull Island, located off the Beare Peninsula in the southwest of Ireland. It was believed that the newly-dead journeyed to
Tech Duinn, either to remain there forever, or perhaps as a starting-point on their journey to the
Blessed Isles across the Western Sea. A
Welsh corollary to
Tech Duinn is
Annwfn, ruled by the Otherworld kings
Arawn and
Gwyn ap Nudd.
Insular Celts swore their oaths by their personal or tribal gods, and the land, sea and sky; as in, "I swear by the gods by whom my people swear" and "If I break my oath, may the land open to swallow me, the sea rise to drown me, and the sky fall upon me." Or, in more detail, as sworn by the King of
Ulster,
Conchobar mac Nessa, in the
Ulster Cycle tale,
Táin Bó Cúailnge ("The Cattle Raid of Cooley"):
Worship
According to
Poseidonius and later classical authors Gaulish religion and culture were the concern of three professional classes—the
druids, the
bards, and the
vates. This threefold hierarchy had its reflection among the two main branches of Celts in Ireland and Wales, but is best represented in early Irish tradition with its
draoithe (druids),
filidh (visionary poets), and
Faidh (seers). However these categories are not always fixed, and may be named or divided differently in different primary sources.
Classical sources claimed that the Celts had no temples (before the Gallo-Roman period) and that their ceremonies took place in forest sanctuaries. However, archaeologist have discovered a large number of temple sites excavated throughout the Celtic world, primarily in Gaul. In the Gallo-Roman period, more permanent stone temples were erected, and many of them have been discovered by archaeologists in Britain as well as in Gaul. Indeed, a distinct type of Celto-Roman temple called a
fanum also was developed. This was distinguished from a common
Roman shrine by having an ambulatory on all four sides of the central
cella.
Celtic religious practice was probably
sacrificial in its interactions with the gods. Roman writers stated that the
Celts practiced human sacrifice in Gaul:
Cicero, Julius Caesar,
Suetonius, and
Lucan all refer to it, and
Pliny the Elder says that it occurred in Britain, too. It was forbidden under
Tiberius and
Claudius. However there's also the possibility that these claims may have been false, and used as a sort of propaganda to justify the Roman conquest of these territories. There are only very few recorded archaeological discoveries which preserve evidence of
human sacrifice and thus most contemporary historians tend to regard human sacrifice as rare within Celtic cultures. There is some
circumstantial evidence that human sacrifice was known in Ireland and was later forbidden by
St. Patrick, a claim which has also been disputed.
The early Celts considered some trees to be sacred. The importance of trees in Celtic religion is shown by the fact that the very name of the
Eburonian tribe contains a reference to the
yew tree, and that names like
Mac Cuilinn (son of holly) and
Mac Ibar (son of yew) appear in Irish myths. In Ireland, wisdom was symbolized by the salmon who feed on the hazelnuts from the trees that surround the well of wisdom (
Tobar Segais).
There was also a
warrior cult that centered on the severed heads of their enemies. The Celts provided their dead with weapons and other accoutrements, which indicates that they most likely believed in some form of an afterlife.
Pliny the Elder, writing in the
first century AD, describes a religious ceremony in
Gaul in which white-clad
druids climbed a sacred
oak, cut down the
mistletoe growing on it, sacrificed two
white bulls and used the mistletoe to cure infertility:
Pliny was primarily interested in natural history and some scholars have dismissed the testimony in relation to the druids’ ceremony as largely fanciful, particularly as he's the only classical author to mention this ceremony. Yet Pliny specifically associates druids with oak trees. Oaks were held sacred by both druids and Celts alike.
Drunemeton, the ‘oak sanctuary,’ is described by
Strabo as a place where the
Galatian Council met and oak was used to construct the great
Iron Age multi-ring timber structure at
Navan Fort in
County Armagh . The
Poole Logboat and the
Corlea Trackway were both made of oak in the
Iron Age.
Central to Pliny’s statement is the sanctity of the
mistletoe, both as a healing agent and as an aid to
fertility. Both these concerns are emphasised in Celtic religious expression. Interestingly, in modern
pharmacopoeia, mistletoe is reputed to be beneficial to sufferers of
insomnia,
high blood pressure and certain
malignant tumours . Moreover, that mistletoe may have possessed important symbolism for the Celts is suggested by its presence as a motif in early Celtic art. Human heads bearing curious leaf-shaped
crowns are common decorative themes on both
jewellery and stone
monuments . The lobed shape of the leaves on these objects closely resembles the leaves of
European mistletoe and, if such an identification be correct, it may be that the faces depicted in this pre-Roman art are those of
priests or
gods.
In Pliny’s comments, three other points of significance concern
banqueting, the
moon and
bull-
sacrifice. All three are familiar to the repertoire of Celtic religion. Ritual
banquets are represented in some rich tombs of both the early and late
Iron Age of Celtic Europe: the
Hallstatt chieftain’s tomb at
Hochdorf was furnished with a set of nine
drinking horns and a nine-piece dinner service, for the
otherworld
Banquet, as well as a huge
cauldron of
mead. certain shrines exibit abundant evidence of ceremonial banquets: excavators of the sanctuary at
Mirebeau, in northern
France, found a veritable carpet of bones from butchered animals and broken pots, which appear to be the remains of feasting.
Pliny makes allusions to the moon on its sixth day, a
waxing crescent moon, as an instrument of healing: here again there's corroborative evidence in that Celtic goddesses associated with healing and regeneration are sometimes depicted wearing lunar amulets; and the great temple of the healer-goddess
Sulis Minerva at
Bath, Somerset bears a carving of the Roman moon-goddess
Luna. Among the finds at
Bath, Somerset was a lunar
pendant, possibly once part of a priest’s sceptre.
Lastly, bull-sacrifice is attested in other evidence. Cattle were commonly used as sacrificial animals: the shrine of
Gournay in
Picardy was the scene of repeated
ox-sacrifice and cattle were ritually slaughtered in numerous Celtic sanctuaries. Bull-sacrifice is twice depicted on the
Gundestrup cauldron and was probably made in the
first century BC. In
Irish mythology, the
Tarbhfhess, the ‘bull-sleep,’ was a ritual closely associated with
druids. : a selected individual was fed on bull flesh before being chanted to sleep by four druids; while he slept he dreamt of the next rightful
High King of Ireland and when he awoke he gave this information to his druid attendants.
Religious vocations or castes
Druids
A
Druid was a member of the learned class among the ancient Celts. They acted as priests, teachers, and judges. The earliest known records of the Druids come from the
3rd century BC. Some scholars have suggested that the Druids were the Celtic counterparts of the Brahmans of India.
Bards and filid
In Ireland the
filid were visionary poets, associated with lorekeeping, versecraft, and the memorization of vast numbers of poems. They were also magicians, as Irish magic is intrinsically connected to poetry, and the
satire of a gifted poet was a serious
curse upon the one being satirized. To run afoul of a poet was a dangerous thing indeed to a people who valued reputation and honor more than life itself.
In Ireland a "bard" was considered a lesser grade of poet than a
fili - more of a minstrel and rote reciter than an inspired artist with magical powers. However in
Wales bardd was the word for their visionary poets, and used in the same manner
fili was in Ireland and Scotland.
The Celtic poets, of whatever grade, were composers of eulogy and satire, and a chief duty was that of composing and reciting verses on heroes and their deeds, and memorizing the genealogies of their patrons. It was essential to their livelihood that they increase the fame of their patrons, via tales, poems and songs. As early as the 1st century AD, the Latin author Lucan referred to "bards" as the national poets or minstrels of Gaul and Britain. In Gaul the institution gradually disappeared, whereas in Ireland and Wales it survived. The Irish bard through chanting preserved a tradition of poetic eulogy. In Wales, where the word
bardd has always been used for poet, the bardic order was codified into distinct grades in the
10th century. Despite a decline of the order toward the end of the European
Middle Ages, the Welsh tradition has persisted and is celebrated in the annual
eisteddfod, a national assembly of poets and musicians.
Festivals
Insular sources provide important information about Celtic
religious festivals. In Ireland the year was divided into two periods of six months by the feasts of
Beltane (
May 1) and
Samhain (Samain;
November 1), and each of these periods was equally divided by the feasts of
Imbolc (
February 1), and
Lughnasadh (
August 1). Samhain seems originally to have meant "summer," but by the early Irish period it had come to mark summer's end. Beltine is also called Cetsamain ("First Samhain"). Imbolc has been compared by the French scholar
Joseph Vendryes to the Roman lustrations and apparently was a feast of purification for the farmers. Beltane ("Bright Fire") was the festival of the beginning of summer, and there's a tradition that on that day the people drove their cattle between two fires as a protection against disease. Lughnasadh was the feast of the god Lugh and a celebration of the
first fruits or early harvest.
The
Coligny calendar has sometimes been looked to for information regarding the Gaulish year including
holy days.
Beltane
Beltane is a festival held on the first day of May in Ireland and Scotland, celebrating the beginning of summer and open pasturing. In early Irish lore a number of significant events took place on Beltane, which long remained the focus of folk traditions and tales in Ireland, Scotland, and
the Isle of Man. Like Samhain, Beltane was seen as a time when the spirit realm is especially close at hand.
Samhain
The beginning of the month of
Samhain (
Old Irish samain), was one of the most important calendar festivals of the Celtic year. At "the three nights of Samhain", held around the beginning of November, the world of the gods and spirits was believed to be made visible to humans. The deities and spirits may play tricks on their mortal worshipers, and it was a time filled with supernatural episodes. Samhain was traditionally a time of sacrifice, whether in offering to the deities or due to the need to slaughter any livestock that it would be impossible to feed for the entire winter. Samhain was an important precursor to the later festival of
Halloween, as it was a time for the Celts to honour the dead, the spirits and deities, and to face the realities and fears of the coming winter.
Syncretism with other polytheistic systems
The
locus classicus for the
Celtic gods of
Gaul is the passage in
Julius Caesar's
Commentarii de Bello Gallico (
The Gallic War, 52–51 BC) in which he names six of them, together with their functions. He says that
Mercury was the most honoured of all the gods and many images of him were to be found. Mercury was regarded as the inventor of all the arts, the patron of travellers and of merchants, and the most powerful god in matters of commerce and gain. After him the
Gauls honoured
Apollo, who drove away diseases,
Mars, who controlled war,
Jupiter, who ruled the heavens, and
Minerva, who promoted handicrafts. He adds that the Gauls regarded
Dis Pater as their ancestor.
In
characteristic Roman fashion, Caesar doesn't refer to these figures by their native names but by the names of the Roman gods with which he equated them, a procedure that greatly complicates the task of identifying his Gaulish deities with their counterparts in the insular literatures. He also presents a neat schematic equation of god and function that's quite foreign to the vernacular literary testimony. Yet, given its limitations, his brief catalog is a valuable witness.
The gods named by Caesar are well-attested in the later epigraphic record of Gaul and Britain. Not infrequently, their names are coupled with native Celtic theonyms and epithets, such as Mercury
Visucius,
Lenus Mars, Jupiter
Poeninus, or
Sulis Minerva. Unsyncretised theonyms are also widespread, particularly among goddesses such as
Sulevia,
Sirona,
Rosmerta, and
Epona. In all, several hundred names containing a Celtic element are attested in Gaul. The majority occur only once, which has led some scholars to conclude that the Celtic gods and their cults were local and tribal rather than national. Supporters of this view cite
Lucan's mention of a god called
Teutates, which they interpret as "god of the tribe" (it is thought that
teuta- meant "tribe" in Celtic). The multiplicity of deity names may also be explained otherwise – many, for example, may be simply epithets applied to major deities by widely extended cults.
Cults within Celtic polytheism
Antlered gods
A recurrent figure in Gaulish iconography is a cross-legged deity with antlers, sometimes surrounded by animals, often wearing or holding a
torc. The name usually applied to him, Cernunnos, is attested only a few times, on a relief at
Notre Dame de Paris (currently reading ERNUNNOS, but an early sketch shows it as having read CERNUNNOS in the 18th century), an inscription from
Montagnac (αλλετ[ει]υος καρνονου αλ[ι]σο[ντ]εας, "Alleteinos [dedicatedthis] to Karnonos of Alisontia"), and a pair of identical inscriptions from
Seinsel-Rëlent ("Deo Ceruninco"). Figured representations of this sort of deity, however, are widespread; the earliest known was found at
Val Camonica in northern Italy, while the most famous is plate A of the
Gundestrup Cauldron, a 1st-century-BC vessel found in Denmark. On the Gundestrup Cauldron and sometimes elsewhere, Cernunnos, or similar figure, is accompanied by a ram-headed serpent. At Reims, the figure is depicted with a
cornucopia overflowing with grains or coins.) is found chiefly in
southern France and
northern Italy.
Apollo Grannus, though concentrated in central and eastern Gaul, also “occurs associated with medicinal waters in Brittany [...] and far away in the Danube Basin”. Another name,
Lugus, is inferred from the recurrent
place-name Lugdunon ('the fort of Lugus') from which the modern
Lyon,
Laon, and
Loudun in
France and
Leiden in
The Netherlands derive their names; a similar element can be found in
Carlisle (formerly Castra Luguvallium) and
Legnica in Poland. The Irish and Welsh cognates of Lugus are
Lugh and
Lleu, respectively, and certain traditions concerning these figures mesh neatly with those of the Gaulish god. Caesar's description of the latter as "the inventor of all the arts" might almost have been a paraphrase of Lugh's conventional epithet
samildánach ("possessed of many talents"), while Lleu is addressed as "master of the twenty crafts" in the
Mabinogi. An episode in the Irish tale of the
Battle of Magh Tuiredh is a dramatic exposition of Lugh's claim to be master of all the arts and crafts. Inscriptions in Spain and Switzerland, one of them from a guild of shoemakers, are dedicated to
Lugoves, widely interpreted as a plural of Lugus perhaps referring to the god conceived in triple form.
The Gaulish Mercury often seems to function as a god of sovereignty. Gaulish depictions of Mercury sometimes show him bearded and/or with wings or horns emerging directly from his head, rather than from a winged hat. Both these characteristics are unusual for the classical god. More conventionally, the Gaulish Mercury is usually shown accompanied by a ram and/or a rooster, and carrying a
caduceus; his depiction at times is very classical.
In Gaulish monuments and inscriptions, Mercury is very often accompanied by
Rosmerta, whom
Miranda Green interprets to be a goddess of fertility and prosperity. Green also notices that the Celtic Mercury frequently accompanies the
Deae Matres (see below).
Cult of Taranis
The Gaulish
Jupiter is often depicted with a thunderbolt in one hand and a distinctive wheel in the other. Scholars frequently identify this wheel/sky god with
Taranis, who is mentioned by
Lucan. The name Taranis may be cognate with those of
Taran, a minor figure in
Welsh mythology, and
Turenn, the father of the '
three gods of Dana' in
Irish mythology.
Cult of Toutatis
Teutates, also spelled Toutatis (Celtic: "god of the tribe"), was one of three Celtic gods mentioned by the Roman poet
Lucan in the
1st century, the other two being
Esus ("lord") and
Taranis ("thunderer"). According to later commentators, victims sacrificed to Teutates were killed by being plunged headfirst into a vat filled with an unspecified liquid. Present-day scholars frequently speak of ‘the
toutates’ as plural, referring respectively to the patrons of the several tribes.
Of two later commentators on Lucan's text, one identifies Teutates with
Mercury, the other with
Mars. He is also known from dedications in Britain, where his name was written Toutatis.
Paul-Marie Duval, who considers the Gaulish Mars a syncretism with the Celtic
toutates, notes that:
Cult of Esus
Esus appears in two monumental statues as an axeman cutting branches from
trees.
Gods with hammers
Sucellos, the 'good striker' is usually portrayed as a
middle-aged bearded man, with a long-handled
hammer, or perhaps a beer
barrel suspended from a pole. His companion,
Nantosuelta, is sometimes depicted alongside him. When together, they're accompanied by symbols associated with prosperity and domesticity. This figure is often identified with
Silvanus, worshipped in southern Gaul under similar attributes;
Dis Pater, from whom, according to Caesar, all the Gauls believed themselves to be descended; and the Irish
Dagda, the 'good god', who possessed a caldron that was never empty and a huge club.
Gods of strength and eloquence
A club-wielding god identified as
Ogmios is readily observed in Gaulish iconography.
In Gaul, he was identified with the Roman Hercules. He was portrayed as an old man with swarthy skin and armed with a bow and club. He was also a god of eloquence, and in that aspect he was represented as drawing along a company of men whose ears were chained to his tongue.
Ogmios' Irish equivalent was
Ogma, who was impressively portrayed as a swarthy man whose battle ardour was so great that he'd to be controlled by chains held by other warriors until the right moment.
Ogham script, an Irish
writing system dating from the
4th century AD, was said to have been invented by him.
The divine bull
Another prominent
zoomorphic deity type is the divine bull.
Tarvos Trigaranus ("bull with three cranes") is pictured on reliefs from the cathedral at
Trier,
Germany, and at
Notre-Dame de
Paris. In
Irish literature, the
Donn Cuailnge ("Brown Bull of Cooley") plays a central role in the epic
Táin Bó Cuailnge ("The
Cattle-Raid of Cooley").
The ram-headed snake
A distinctive ram-headed snake accompanies Gaulish gods in a number of representations, including
the horned god from the
Gundestrup cauldron, Mercury, and Mars.
Deities
This table shows some of the Celtic and Romano-Celtic
gods and
goddesses mentioned above, in Romanized form as well as ancient Gaulish or British names as well as those of the
Tuatha Dé Danann and characters from the
Mabinogion. They are arranged so as to suggest some linguistic or functional associations among the ancient gods and literary figures; needless to say, all such associations are subject to continual scholarly revision and disagreement. In particular, it has been noted by scholars such as Sjoestedt that it's inappropriate to try to fit Insular Celtic deities into a Roman format as such attempts seriously distort the Insular deities.
The effect of Christianity
The conversion to
Christianity inevitably had a profound effect on this socio-religious system from the
5th century onward, though its character can only be extrapolated from documents of considerably later date. By the early 7th century the church had succeeded in relegating Irish druids to ignominious irrelevancy, while the
filidh, masters of traditional learning, operated in easy harmony with their clerical counterparts, contriving at the same time to retain a considerable part of their pre-Christian tradition,
social status, and privilege. But virtually all the vast corpus of early
vernacular literature that has survived was written down in monastic
scriptoria, and it's part of the task of modern scholarship to identify the relative roles of traditional continuity and ecclesiastical innovation as reflected in the written texts.
Cormac's Glossary (c. 900) recounts that St. Patrick banished those
mantic rites of the
filidh that involved offerings to "demons", and it seems probable that the church took particular pains to stamp out
animal sacrifice and other rituals repugnant to Christian teaching. What survived of ancient ritual practice tended to be related to
filidhecht, the traditional repertoire of the
filidh, or to the central institution of sacral kingship. A good example is the pervasive and persistent concept of the
hierogamy (sacred marriage) of the king with the goddess of sovereignty: the sexual union, or
banais ríghi ("wedding of kingship"), which constituted the core of the royal inauguration seems to have been purged from the ritual at an early date through ecclesiastical influence, but it remains at least implicit, and often quite explicit, for many centuries in the literary tradition.
Nagy has noted the Gaelic
oral tradition has been remarkably conservative. The fact that we've tales in existence which were still being told in the 19th century in almost exactly the same form as they exist in ancient manuscripts leads to the strong probability that much of what the monks recorded was considerably older. Though the Christian interpolations in some of these tales are very obvious, many of them read like afterthoughts or footnotes to the main body of the tales, which most likely preserve traditions far older than the manuscripts themselves.
Mythology based on (though, not identical to) the pre-Christian religion is still common place knowledge in Celtic-speaking cultures. Various rituals involving acts of pilgrimage to sites such as hills and
sacred wells which are believed to have curative or otherwise beneficial properties are still performed. Based on evidence from the European continent, various figures which are still known in folklore in the
Celtic countries up to today, or who take part in post-Christian mythology, are known to have also been worshipped in those areas that didn't have records before Christianity.
Revival
Various groups claim association with Celtic polytheism. These groups range from the
Reconstructionists, who work to practice ancient Celtic religion with as much accuracy as possible; to
new age, eclectic groups who take some of their inspiration from Celtic mythology but place little significance on any sort of historical precedent.
Celtic Reconstructionism
Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism is an effort to reconstruct, in a modern Celtic cultural context, Celtic polytheistic practices from surviving written, archaeological and cultural examples of Celtic polytheism.
Neo-druidism and Wicca
Modern eclectic religions such as
Wicca and
Neo-druidism place little emphasis on historical basis or reconstruction, instead blending many outside influences into a modern religion that draws little influence from, or resemblance to, historical Celtic polytheism outside of borrowed imagery or terminology.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Celtic Polytheism'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://celtic_polytheism.totallyexplained.com">Celtic polytheism Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
