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Celtic polytheism refers to the religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Celts. (Other terms, such as Druidism or Celtic paganism, are also sometimes used with a similar meaning.) The religion of the Celts was practised from the time of their divergence from the Proto-Indo-Europeans until the Christianization of the Celtic lands. At various times those lands included Gaul, Britain, Ireland, Celtiberia, certain territories on the Danube, and Galatia in Asia Minor.
Celtic religious practices bear the marks of Romanization in the wake of the Roman conquest of Gaul (58–51 BC) and Roman Britain (AD 43), although the depth and significance of Romanization is a subject of scholarly disagreement.
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Sources
Three main types of sources provide information on Celtic polytheism: the minted coins of Gaul; the sculptures, monuments and inscriptions associated with the Celts of continental Europe and of Roman Britain; and the insular literatures of Celtic mythology that have survived in writing from mediaeval times. All pose problems of interpretation. The pre-Roman coins of the 1st century BC and early 1st century AD bear no 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 are 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 Christianized and the scribes and redactors were monastic scholars. The resulting literature is abundant and varied, but it is 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 Poseidonius (c. 135–c. 51 BC) onward who recorded their own or others' observations on the Celts.
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Syncretism with other forms of polytheism
The locus classicus for the Celtic gods of Gaul is the passage in Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico (52–51 BC; The Gallic War) in which he names five of them together with their functions. 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, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. Of these gods they held almost the same opinions as other peoples did: Apollo drove away diseases, Minerva promoted handicrafts, Jupiter ruled the heavens, and Mars controlled wars.
In characteristic Roman fashion, Caesar does not 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 is 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. Unsyncretized 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 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.
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Cosmology and eschatology
Little is known about the religious beliefs of the Celts of Gaul. They believed in a life after death, as they buried food, weapons, and ornaments with the dead. The druids, the early Celtic priesthood, are said to have taught the doctrine of transmigration of souls and discussed the nature and power of the gods.
The Irish believed in an otherworld, imagined sometimes as underground and sometimes as islands in the sea. The otherworld was variously called "the Land of the Living," "Delightful Plain," and Tír na nÓg "Land of the Young" and 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 similar to the Elysium of the Greek mythology and may have belonged to ancient Proto-Indo-European religion. In Irish vision or voyage tales, a beautiful girl often approaches the hero and sings to him of this happy land. He follows her, and they sail away in a boat of glass and are seen no more; or else he returns after a short time to find that all his companions are dead, for he has really been away for hundreds of years. Sometimes the hero sets out on a quest, and a magic mist descends upon him. He finds himself before a palace and enters to find a warrior and a beautiful girl who make him welcome. The warrior may be Manannán mac Lir, or Lugh himself may be the one who receives him, and after strange adventures the hero returns successfully. These Irish tales, some of which date from the 8th century, are infused with the magic quality that is found 400 years later in the Arthurian romances.
Something of this quality is preserved, too, 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. But this ‘delightful plain’ was not accessible to all. Donn, god of the dead and ancestor of all the Irish, reigned over Tech Duinn, which was imagined as on or under Bull Island off the Beare Peninsula, and to him all men returned except the happy few. This appears in Welsh mythology as Annwfn and ruled by otherworld kings such as Arawn and Gwyn ap Nudd.
Still less is known of Celtic eschatological beliefs. One aspect that has survived is the belief that the world will end with the falling of the sky. Alexander the Great, in his treaties with the Celts noted that they were afraid of nothing but the falling of the sky, and oaths were held to be binding "until the sky fell" (meaning forever).
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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 druids, filidh (singular fili), and bards.
Classical sources claimed that the Celts had no temples (before the Gallo-Roman period) and that their ceremonies took place in forest sanctuaries. Archaeology demonstrates this to be incorrect, with a large number of temple sites excavated throughout the Celtic world. 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 Classical temple by having an ambulatory on all four sides of the central cella.
Celtic religious practice was evidently 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 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. There is much archaeological evidence that sacrifice involving the menstrual blood of prominent female members of the druidic class was an integral part of Celtic worship across the British Isles. As women held a place of high esteem in Celtic society, this was probably performed as a ritual to ensure the fertility of crops during the festivals of Beltane and Lughnasadh.
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.
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 believed in an afterlife . Before burial, they also severed the dead person's head and shattered the skull, perhaps to prevent the ghost from wandering.
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Druids
A Druid (often cited as being from the Celtic: "knowing the oak tree") was a member of the learned class among the ancient Celts. They seem to have frequented oak forests and acted as priests, teachers, and judges. The earliest known records of the Druids come from the 3rd century BC.
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Bards and filid
A bard was a poet, especially one who wrote impassioned, lyrical, or epic verse. Bards were originally Celtic composers of eulogy and satire; the word came to mean more generally a tribal poet-singer gifted in composing and reciting verses on heroes and their deeds. 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.
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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 ("Fire of Bel") was the summer festival, and there is a tradition that on that day the druids drove cattle between two fires as a protection against disease. Lughnasadh was the feast of the god Lugh and a celebration of the sun. Ritual bread was also baked as a tradition on Lughnasadh.
The Coligny calendar has sometimes been looked to for information regarding the Gaulish year including holy days.
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Beltane
Beltane was 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.
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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, originally at plenilune, the world of the gods and spirits was believed to be made visible to mankind, and the gods played many tricks on their mortal worshipers; it was a time filled with supernatural episodes. It is believed sacrifices may have been held, for without them the Celts believed they could not prevail over the perils of the season or counteract the activities of the deities. Samhain was an important precursor to the Christian festival of Halloween, as it was also a time for the Celts to honour those who had passed on into the Under World.
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Cult of Lug/Mercury
According to Caesar the god most honoured by the Gauls was ‘Mercury’, and this is confirmed by numerous images and inscriptions. Mercury's name is often coupled with Celtic epithets, particularly in eastern and central Gaul; the commonest such names include Visucius, Cissonius, and Gebrinius.
Lugh is said to have instituted the festival of Lughnasadh, celebrated on 1 August, in commemoration of his foster-mother Tailtiu.
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).
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Cult of Toutatis/Mars
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,[Marcus Annaeus Lucanus. c.61-65. Bellum civile, Book I, ll.498-501. Online translation] 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:
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Cult of Jupiter/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.
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Healing gods
Healing gods are known from many parts of the Celtic world; these frequently have associations with the sun or with thermal springs, and are commonly identified with the Celtic ‘Apollo’.[ Belenus (from Celtic: ‘bright’) 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”.]
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Goddesses of sacred waters
There are dedications to ‘Minerva’ in Britain and throughout the Celtic areas of the Continent. At Bath Minerva was identified with the goddess Sulis, whose cult there centred on the thermal springs.
Other goddesses were also associated with sacred springs, such as Icovellauna among the Treveri and Coventina at Carrawburgh. Damona and Bormana also serve this function in companionship with the spring-god Borvo (see above). A number of goddesses were deified rivers, notably Sequana (the deified Seine), Matrona (the deified Marne), Souconna (the deified Saône) and perhaps Belisama (perhaps the deified Ribble).
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The god 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 had 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.
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The god with the hammer
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 are 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.
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Mother goddesses
Mother goddesses are a recurrent feature in Celtic religion. The epigraphic record reveals many dedications to the Matres or Matronae, which are particularly prolific around Cologne in the Rhineland.[ Iconographically, Celtic mothers may appear singly or, quite often, triply; they usually hold fruit or cornucopiae or paterae; ][ they may also be full-breasted (or many-breasted) figures nursing infants.]
Welsh and Irish tradition preserve a number of mother figures such as the Welsh Dôn, Rhiannon (‘great queen’), and Modron (from Matrona, ‘great mother’) and the Irish Boand, Macha, Ernmas, and Danu.
Mother-goddesses were maternal symbols of creativity, birth, fertility, sexual union, nurturing, and the cycle of growth. The essential moments in the myth of the mother goddess is her disappearance and reappearance and the celebration of her divine marriage. Her disappearance had cosmic implications: decline in sexuality and growth. Her reappearance, choice of a male partner, and intercourse with him restored and guaranteed fertility, after which the male consort is frequently was set aside and sent to the underworld to be replaced the next year.
Possibly a goddess of fertility, of wisdom, and of wind, Danu was believed to have suckled the gods. Her name was borne by the legendary Tuatha Dé Danann ("People of the Goddess Danu"), the Irish company of gods, who survive in Irish lore as the fairy folk, skilled in magic.
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The horned god
A recurrent figure in Gaulish iconography is a cross-legged deity with horns or antlers, sometimes surrounded by animals, often wearing or holding a torque. 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 (αλλετειυος καρνονου αλισοντεας, "Alleteinos dedicated this to Karnonos of Alisontia"
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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").
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The horse-goddess
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Divine couples
One notable feature of Celtic sculpture is the frequent appearance of male and female deities in pairs, such as ‘Mercury’ and Rosmerta, Sucellos and Nantosuelta, Apollo Grannus and Sirona, Borvo and Damona, or Mars Loucetius and Nemetona.
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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.
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Esus
Esus appears in two monumental statues as an axeman cutting branches from trees.
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A cult of the human head?
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Deities
This table shows 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.
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The effect of Christianity
The conversion to Christianity had inevitably 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 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.
Mythology based on (though, not identical to) the pre-Christian religion was 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 take part in post-Christian mythology can be known to have also been worshipped in those areas that did not have records before Christianity.
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Revival
Some people of the modern Celtic cultures or of Celtic descent are attempting to revive what they regard as their indigenous religion. Such is the case with Neo-druidism and Celtic reconstructionism, which is practiced in Europe and the Americas.
The modern religion of Wicca which assumed its present form in the 20th century also borrows some terminology and theonyms from Celtic religion.
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See also
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Works cited
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Literature
John Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom, 3rd ed. (1898, reprinted 1979), although the classic work in English, is now out-of-date.
Joseph Vendryès, Ernest Tonnelat, and B.-O. Unbegaun, Les Religions des Celtes, des Germains et des anciens Slaves (1948).
Paul-Marie Duval, Les Dieux de la Gaule, new ed. updated and enlarged (1976).
John MacNeill, Celtic Religion (1911?), provides a brief outline for an overview of the subject.
Thomas F. O'Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (1946, reissued 1971), contains massive learning based on a great wealth of material, including some fanciful conclusions.
Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, Gods and Heroes of the Celts (1949, reissued 1982; originally published in French, 1940), is an extremely perceptive reading of the heroic function in Celtic mythological tradition.
Jan de Vries, Keltische Religion (1961), is a comprehensive survey, useful as a reference work.
Proinsias Mac Cana, Celtic Mythology (1970), contains a concise presentation and evaluation of the evidence, with copious illustrations.
Claude Stercks, Éléments de cosmogonie celtique (1986), contains a fine interpretive essay on the goddess Epona and related deities.
Miranda Green, Gods of the Celts (1986, revised and reissued 2004), is a good introduction, but relies on some controversial interpretive stands.
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