Celtic polytheism

Series on Celtic mythology

Celtic polytheism Celtic deities (list)

Gaelic mythology

Irish mythology Scottish mythology Hebridean mythology Tuatha Dé Danann Mythological Cycle Ulster Cycle Fenian Cycle

Brythonic mythology

British Iron Age religion British mythology Welsh mythology Breton mythology Mabinogion Book of Taliesin Trioedd Ynys Prydein

Religious vocations

Druids · Bards · Vates

Festivals

Samhain, Calan Gaeaf Imbolc, Gŵyl Fair Beltane, Calan Mai Lughnasadh, Calan Awst Index of related articles

Celtic polytheism, commonly known as Celtic paganism,^[1][2][3] refers to the religious beliefs and practices adhered to by the Iron Age peoples of Western Europe now known as the Celts. These Celtic pagans left no written records about their religion, and as such relatively little is known about this historical religion. What is known comes from contemporary accounts left by neighbouring Greek and Roman writers, later mediaeval tales written in the vernacular Celtic lands of Ireland and Wales, and archaeological evidence. These show that there was a large degree of variation within the religious beliefs of the Celtic world, affected by differences amongst different regions and tribal chiefdoms, the influence of pre-Celtic religions and by the influence of the Mediterranean cultures like Ancient Rome, although "behind this variety, broad structural similarities can be detected"^[4] allowing there to be "a basic religious homogeneity" amongst the Celtic peoples.^[5]

The primary feature of Celtic paganism was polytheism, the veneration of a number of different deities, the names of more than two hundred of whom have been recorded,^[4] some of which, like Lugh, The Dagda and The Morrigan, come from later Irish mythology, whilst others, like Teutatis, Taranis and Cernunnos, come from evidence from Gaul. The Celtic pagans constructed temples and shrines to venerate these gods, something they did through votive offerings and performing sacrifices, possibly including human sacrifice. According to Greek and Roman accounts, in Gaul, Britain and Ireland, there was a priestly caste of "magico-religious specialists" known as the druids, although very little is definitely known about them.^[6]

Following the Roman Empire's conquest of certain Celtic lands such as Gaul (58 to 51 BCE) and southern Great Britain (43 CE), Celtic religious practices began to display elements of Romanisation. In the later fifth and sixth centuries of the Common Era, Christianity became the dominant faith in the Celtic area, supplanting the earlier pagan religion. However, it left a legacy in many of the Celtic nations, influencing later mythology, and served as the basis for a new religious movement, Celtic Neopaganism, in the 20th century.

Sources

Three Celtic goddesses, as depicted at Coventina's well.

We know comparatively little about Celtic polytheism because the evidence for it is fragmentary, largely due to the fact that the pagan Celts themselves wrote nothing down about their religion.^[7][8] Therefore all we have to study their religion from is the literature from the early Christian period, commentaries from classical Greek and Roman scholars, and archaeological evidence.^[9] The archaeologist Barry Cunliffe summarised the sources for Celtic paganism as "fertile chaos", borrowing the term from the Irish scholar Proinsias MacCana. Cunliffe went on to note that "there is more, varied, evidence for Celtic religion than for any other example of Celtic life. The only problem is to assemble it in a systematic form which does not too greatly oversimplify the intricate texture of its detail."^[10]

Greek and Roman records

Various Greek and Roman writers of the ancient world commented on the Celts and their beliefs. Barry Cunliffe stated that "the Greek and Roman texts provide a number of pertinent observations, but these are at best anecdotal, offered largely as a colourful background by writers whose prime intention was to communicate other messages."^[10] The Roman general (and later dictator) Julius Caesar, when leading the conquering armies of the Roman Republic against Celtic Gaul, made various descriptions of the inhabitants, though some of his claims, such as that the Druids practiced human sacrifice by burning people in wicker men, have come under scrutiny by modern scholars.

However, the key problem with the use of these sources is that they were often biased against the Celts, whom the classical peoples viewed as "barbarians".^[7] In the case of the Romans who conquered several Celtic realms, they would have likely been biased in favour of making the Celts look uncivilized, thereby giving the "civilized" Romans more reason to conquer them.^[11]

Irish and Welsh records

Literary evidence for Celtic paganism also comes from sources written in Ireland and Wales during the mediaeval, a period when paganism had become extinct and had long been replaced by Christianity. Those in Ireland have been recognised as being better evidence for paganism than that in Wales, being viewed as "both older and less contaminated from foreign material."^[12] These sources, which are in the form of epic poems and tales, were written several centuries after Christianity became the dominant religion in these regions, and were written down by Christian monks, "who may not merely have been hostile to the earlier paganism but actually ignorant of it."^[13] Instead of treating the characters as deities, they are allocated the roles of being historical heroes who sometimes have supernatural or superhuman powers, for instance, in the Irish sources the gods are claimed to be an ancient tribe of humans known as the Tuatha Dé Danann. Because they were written in a very Christian context, these sources must be scrutinized with even more rigor than the classical sources in assessing their validity as evidence for pagan Celtic religion.^[7]

While it is 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, 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 medieval monastic tradition.^[7]

Archaeological sources

The archaeological evidence does not contain the bias inherent in the literary sources. Nonetheless, the interpretation of this evidence can sometimes be colored by the 21st century mindset.^[7]

Various archaeological discoveries have aided our understanding of the pagan religion of the Celts. One is the minted coins of Gaul, Raetia, Noricum, and Britain, and another is the sculptures, monuments, and inscriptions associated with the Celts of continental Europe and of Roman Britain. 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 are difficult to interpret in the absence of a preserved literature on mythology. A notable example of this is the horned deity that was called Cernunnos; several depictions and inscriptions of him have been found, but very little is known about the myths that would have been associated with him or how he was worshiped.

Beliefs

Deities

Image of a horned figure on the Gundestrup cauldron, interpeted by many archaeologists as being cognate to the god Cernunnos.

Celtic paganism was polytheistic, believing in many deities, both gods and goddesses, some of which were venerated only in a small, local area, but others whose worship had a wider geographical distribution.^[14] The names of over two hundred of these deities have survived to us today, although it is possible that some of these names were different titles or epithets used for the same deity.^[4] The information about these deities, and their relation to one another, is however relatively complex and not fully understood. Some of the Greek and Roman accounts mention various deities worshipped in Gaul, for instance Lucan noted the names of Teutates, Taranis and Esus,^[15] although Julius Caesar instead conflated the Celtic Gaulish deities with those of his own Roman paganism, and did not mention their native Gaulish names. He declared that the most widely venerated god in Gaul was Mercury, the Roman god of trade, but that they also worshipped Apollo, Minerva, Mars and Jupiter.^[16]

According to Classical era sources, the Celts worshiped the forces of nature and did not envisage deities in anthropomorphic terms,^[17] as other pagan peoples such as the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians did. This appeared to change as the classical peoples grew in influence over the Celtic cultures, as the Celts did begin to give their deities human forms, and they moved from a more animistic-based faith to a more Romanized polytheistic view.

In the Irish and to a lesser extent Welsh vernacular sources from the Middle Ages, various human mythological figures were featured who have been thought of by many scholars as being based upon earlier pagan gods. The historian Ronald Hutton however cautioned against automatically equating all Irish and Welsh mythological figures as former deities, noting that whilst some characters "who appear to be human, such as Medb or St. Brighid, probably were indeed once regarded as divine… the warriors who are the main protagonists of the stories have the same status as those in the Greek myths, standing between the human and divine orders. To regard characters such as Cú Chulainn, Fergus Mac Roich or Conall Cernach as former gods turned into humans by a later storyteller is to misunderstand their literary and religious function… Cú Chulainn is no more a former god than Superman is."^[18]

Examining these Irish myths, Barry Cunliffe stated that he believed they displayed "a dualism between the male tribal god and the female deity of the land"^[19] whilst Anne Ross felt that they displayed that the gods were "on the whole intellectual, deeply versed in the native learning, poets and prophets, story-tellers and craftsmen, magicians, healers, warriors… in short, equipped with every quality admired and desired by the Celtic peoples themselves."^[20]

Insular Celts swore their oaths by their 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."^[21]

Several of these deities, including Lugus and Matrones, exhibited triplism, being found in a set of three.^[22]

Some deities of the Celts were deities of major natural occurrences, such as the sun. The Celts did not worship the sun, but saw it as a symbol for that aspect of divinity. These deities were generally worshiped across the Celtic lands, however, they often went under different names. An example of this was the god Lugus, who appeared in later Irish mythology as Lugh, and in later Welsh mythology, where he appeared as Lleu Llaw Gyffes.

Tree veneration

Some scholars, such as Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick,^[23] have speculated that the Celtic pagans venerated certain trees. The Celts were animists, believing that all aspects of the natural world contained spirits, and that these spirits could be communicated with.^[24]

These animistic deities were often worshiped, so places such as rocks, streams, mountains, and trees may all have had shrines or offerings devoted to a deity residing there. A similar belief is found in modern Shinto in Japan, through the belief of kami. These would have been local deities, known and worshiped by inhabitants living near to the shrine itself, and not pan-Celtic like some of the polytheistic gods. Among the most popular sites for the veneration of animistic deities were trees; the oak, ash, and thorn were considered to be the most sacred. 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).

Afterlife

A reconstructed Celtic burial mound located near Hochdorf in Germany. Such burials were reserved for the influential and wealthy in Celtic society.

There is no direct information that has survived on what the Celts believed happened after death. However, from archaeological discoveries, Roman accounts, and later mythology, possible ideas of a Celtic afterlife can be established.

Celtic burial practices, which included burying food, weapons, and ornaments with the dead, suggest a belief in life after death.^[25]

The druids, the Celtic learned class which included members of the clergy, were said by Caesar to have believed in reincarnation and transmigration of the soul along with astronomy and the nature and power of the gods.^[26]

A common factor in later mythologies from Christianized Celtic nations was the otherworld.^[27] This was the realm of the fairy folk and other supernatural beings, who would entice humans into their realm. Sometimes this otherworld was claimed to exist underground, whilst at other times it was said to lie far to the west. Several scholars have suggested that the otherworld was the pagan Celtic afterlife,^[27] though there is no direct evidence to prove this.

The Human Head

The iconography of the human head is believed by many archaeologists and historians to have played a significant part in Celtic paganism. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the 1st century BCE, described how Celtic warriors "cut off the heads of enemies slayed in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses."^[28] Strabo meanwhile commented in the same century that until the Roman authorities put a stop to it, amongst the Celts, "the heads of enemies held in high repute they used to embalm in cedar oil and exhibit to strangers."^[29] Archaeological evidence indicating that the Celts did indeed behead humans and then display their heads, possibly for religious purposes, has been unearthed at a number of excavations; one notable example of this was found at the Gaulish site of Entremont near to Aix-en-Provence, where a fragment of a pillar carved with images of skulls was found, within which were niches where actual human skulls were kept, nailed into position, fifteen examples of which were found.^[30]

The archaeologist Barry Cunliffe believed that the Celts held "reverence for the power of the head" and that "to own and display a distinguished head was to retain and control the power of the dead person"^[31] whilst the archaeologist Anne Ross asserted that "the Celts venerated the head as a symbol of divinity and the powers of the otherworld, and regarded it as the most important bodily member, the very seat of the soul."^[32] The historian Ronald Hutton however criticised the idea of the "cult of the human head", believing that both the literary and archaeological evidence did not warrant this conclusion, noting that "the frequency with which human heads appears upon Celtic metalwork proves nothing more than they were a favourite decorative motif, among several, and one just as popular among non-Celtic peoples."^[33]

Practices

Festivals

What is known of how the pagan Celts structured their year and of any religious festivals that they celebrated during it comes from both mediaeval Irish sources and from the Coligny Calendar, a late first century BCE bronze calendar found at Coligny in Gaul.^[34] In the Insular Irish sources, four festivals spaced equidistantly from one another, dividing the year into quarters, feature, for instance they are mentioned in the Ulster Cycle tale of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, when the character of Emer declares that in order to marry her, the hero Cú Chulainn must go without sleep from "Samhain, when the summer goes to its rest, until Imbolc, when the ewes are milked at spring's beginning; from Imbolc, until Beltine [sic] at the summer's beginning and from Beltine to Bron Trogain, earth's sorrowing in autumn."^[35]

The first festival was Samhain (Calan Gaeaf in Wales), held on November 1. It marked the end of one pastoral year, and the beginning of another, and was similarly thought of as the time when spirits of the Otherworld became visible to humans.^[8] It was Christianized as All Hallows Day or The Day of the Dead, the Eve of which is Halloween, which has kept its associations with spirits and the supernatural right into the contemporary period.

The second festival was Imbolc (Gŵyl Fair y Canhwyllau or Gŵyl y Canhwyllau in Wales), celebrated on the eve of February 1. It was sacred to the fertility goddess Brigit, and as such was a spring festival. It was later Christianized as the feast of St Brigid.^[8] The French scholar Joseph Vendryes compared it to the Roman lustrations.

The third festival was Beltaine (Calan Mai in Wales), held on the eve of May 1. It was devoted to the god Bel, and a common practice was the lighting of fires. It was later Christianized as the feast of St John the Baptist,^[8] and the festival of May Day is generally thought to have been based upon it.

The fourth festival was Lughnasadh (Calan Awst in Wales), which took place in August. It revolved around the god Lugh, who, according to mythology, was giving a feast for his foster mother Tailtu at that time.^[8]

Places of worship

Evidence suggests that amongst the Celtic pagans, "offerings to the gods were made throughout the landscape - both the natural and the domestic."^[36] At times they worshipped in constructed temples and shrines, evidence for which have been unearthed across the Celtic world by archaeologists, although according to Greco-Roman accounts, they also worshipped in areas of the natural world that were held to be sacred, namely in groves of trees. Across Celtic Europe, many of the constructed temples, which were square in shape and constructed out of wood, were found in rectangular ditched enclosures known as viereckshanzen, where in cases such as Holzhausen in Bavaria votive offerings were also buried in deep shafts.^[37] However, in the British Isles, temples were more commonly circular in design. According to Barry Cunliffe, "the monumentality of the Irish religious sites sets them apart from their British and continental European counterparts" with the most notable example being the Hill of Tara.^[38]

However, according to Greco-Roman accounts of the druids and other Celtic pagans, worship was held in groves, with Tacitus describing how his men cut down "groves sacred to savage rites."^[39] By their very nature, such groves would not survive in the archaeological record, and so we have no direct evidence for them today.^[40] Alongside groves, certain springs were also viewed as sacred and used as places of worship in the Celtic world. Notable Gaulish examples include the sanctuary of Sequana at the source of the Seine in Burgundy and Chamalieres near to Clermont-Ferrand. At both of these sites, a large array of votive offerings have been uncovered, most of which are wooden carvings, although some of which are embossed pieces of metal.^[41]

In many cases, when the Roman Empire took control of Celtic lands and Romanised their societies, earlier Iron Age sacred sites were reused, with Roman temples being built on the same sites. Examples include Uley in Gloucestershire, Worth in Kent, Hayling Island in Hampshire, Vendeuil-Caply in Oise, Saint-Germain-le-Rocheux in Chatillon-sur-Seine and Schleidweiler in Trier.^[42]

Votive offerings

The Celtic pagans produced votive offerings to their deities, which were buried in the earth or thrown into rivers or bogs. According to Barry Cunliffe, in most cases, deposits were placed in the same places on numerous occasions, indicating continual usage "over a period of time, perhaps on a seasonal basis or when a particular event, past or pending, demanded a propitiatory response."^[43]

In particular, there was a trend to offer items associated with warfare in watery areas, evidence for which is found not only in the Celtic regions, but also in Late Bronze Age (and therefore pre-Celtic) societies and those outside of the Celtic area, namely Denmark. One of the most notable examples is the river Thames in southern England, where a number of items had been deposited, only to be discovered by archaeologists millennia later. Some of these, like the Battersea Shield, Wandsworth Shield and the Waterloo Bridge Helmet, would have been prestige goods that would have been labour-intensive to make and thereby probably expensive.^[43] Another example is at Llyn Cerrig Bach in Anglesey, Wales, where offerings, primarily those related to battle, were thrown into the lake from a rocky outcrop in the late firth century BCE or early first century CE.^[43]

At times, jewellery and other high prestige items that were not related to warfare were also deposited in a ritual context. At Niederzier in the Rhineland for example, a post that excavators believed had religious significance had a bowl buried next to it in which was contained forty-five coins, two torcs and an armlet, all of which made out of gold, and similar deposits have been uncovered elsewhere in Celtic Europe.^[44]

Human sacrifice

An 18th century illustration of a wicker man, a form of human sacrifice that Caesar alleged the Druids, or Celtic pagan priesthood, performed, though no archaeological evidence has been uncovered to support this.

Celtic religious practice was probably sacrificial in its interactions with the gods. Greco-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 is 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.

However, there is also archaeological evidence from western Europe that has been widely used to back up the idea that human sacrifice was performed by the Iron Age Celts. Mass graves found in a ritual context dating from this period have been unearthed in Gaul, at both Gournay-sur-Aronde and Ribemont-sur-Ancre in what was the region of the Belgae chiefdom. The excavator of these sites, Jean-Louis Brunaux, interpreted them as areas of human sacrifice in devotion to a war god,^[45][46] although this view was criticised by another archaeologist, Martin Brown, who believed that the corpses might be those of honoured warriors buried in the sanctuary rather than sacrifices.^[47] At a bog in Lindow, Cheshire, England was discovered a body, designated the "Lindow Man", which may also have been the victim of a sacrificial ritual, but it is just as likely that he was an executed criminal or a victim of violent crime.^[48] The body is now on display at the British Museum, London. In Ireland similar discoveries in 2003 of two murdered individuals preserved in separate bogs, each subsequently dated to around 100 BCE, lends some credence to the ritual murder theory.^[49]

Ceremonies

An example of a ceremony was the ritual of the oak and the mistletoe.

Religious vocations

According to a number of Greco-Roman writers such as Julius Caesar,^[50] Cicero,^[51] Tacitus^[52] and Pliny the Elder,^[53] Gaulish and British pagan society held a group of magico-religious specialists known as the druids in high esteem. Their roles and responsibilities differed somewhat between the different accounts, but Caesar's, which was the "fullest" and "earliest original text" to describe the druids,^[54] described them as being concerned with "divine worship, the due performance of sacrifices, private or public, and the interpretation of ritual questions." He also claimed that they were responsible for officiating at human sacrifices, such as the wicker man burnings.^[50] Nonetheless, a number of historians have criticised these such accounts, believing them to be biased or inaccurate.^[55][56] Vernacular Irish sources also referred to the druids, portraying them not only as pagan priests but as sorcerers who had supernatural powers which they used for cursing and divination and who opposed the coming of Christianity.^[57] Various historians and archaeologists have interpreted the druids in different ways; Peter Berresford Ellis for instance believed them to be the equivalents of the Indian Brahmin caste,^[58] whilst Anne Ross believed that they were essentially tribal priests, having more in common with the shamans of tribal societies than with the classical philosophers.^[59] Ronald Hutton meanwhile held a particularly sceptical attitude to many claims made about them, and he purported the view that the evidence available was of such a suspicious nature that "we can know virtually nothing of certainty about the ancient Druids, so that - although they certainly existed - they function more or less as legendary figures."^[60]

Two druids, from an 1845 publication, based on a bas-relief found at Autun, France.

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 CE, 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.

History

Diachronic distribution of Celtic peoples:
     core Hallstatt territory, by the 6th century BCE      maximal Celtic expansion, by the 3rd century BCE      Lusitanian area of Iberia where Celtic presence is uncertain      the "six Celtic nations" which retained significant numbers of Celtic speakers into the Early Modern period      areas where Celtic languages remain widely spoken today

Origins

The Celtic peoples originated in the Hallstatt culture of central Europe in the 6th century BCE. Over the next three centuries the Celts spread both westward and eastward.^[61] They took their religious beliefs with them, however they also adopted local deities that they came across, and attributed deities to local natural phenomenon near to where they settled.

Romanization

The Celtic peoples of Gaul and Hispania (though not those of further away lands such as Ireland) began to be influenced by the Classical peoples of Greece and Rome. This culminated in the 1st century BCE when the Roman Republic conquered Gaul and Hispania and soon annexed it into the Roman Empire. In the 1st century CE they then conquered Britain.

The Romans' religion influenced that of the Celts, most notable in introducing the idea of deities having anthropomorphic, human forms.

According to Mircea Eliade, Celtic religion succeeded in retaining a number of pre-Indo-European motifs despite successive accretions from Mediterranean, Roman and Christian religions. Among these motifs were an emphasis on the magico-religious importance of women, and customs connected with the "mysteries" of femininity, destiny, death and the otherworld.^[62]

Christianization

The Celtic cross, a pre-Christian symbol which was later amalgamated with the Christian crucifix.

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 is 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 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 have 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 worshiped in those areas that did not have records before Christianity.

Neopagan revival

Various Neopagan 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 and iconography but place little significance on any sort of historical precedent, the most notable of which is Neo-druidry.

References

Further reading

• de Vries, Jan (1961) Keltische Religion, a comprehensive survey
• Duval, Paul-Marie (1976) Les Dieux de la Gaule, new ed. updated and enlarged.
• Green, Miranda (1986, revised 2004) Gods of the Celts,
• Mac Cana, Proinsias (1970) Celtic Mythology, copious illustrations.
• Nagy, Joseph Falaky (1985) The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition, tales and analysis in Gaelic and English.
• O'Rahilly, Thomas F. (1946, reissued 1971) Early Irish History and Mythology
• Sjoestedt, Marie-Louise (1949, reissued 1982; originally published in French, 1940) Gods and Heroes of the Celts comparisons between deities of the various Celtic cultures vs Classical models.
• Stercks, Claude (1986) Éléments de cosmogonie celtique, contains an interpretive essay on the goddess Epona and related deities.
• Vendryès, Joseph; Tonnelat, Ernest; Unbegaun, B.-O. (1948) Les Religions des Celtes, des Germains et des anciens Slaves.

External links

• Celtic folklore and mythology at sacred-texts
• Celtnet
• The Sacred Grove

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