In 1891, peat cutters found in a bog near Gundestrup, in Denmark, a dismantled silver cauldron, with the plates stacked inside the base. On one of the plates appears a seated figure with stag antlers on the head, a torc (a rigid metal collar) in one hand and a horned serpent in the other. Many scholars identify it with Cernunnos, a god whose name appears clearly on a single monument, the Pillar of the Boatmen, found in 1711 under Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris.
That cauldron shows clearly the problem of studying the religion of the Celts. We have impressive objects and images, almost no written explanation by the Celts themselves, and a great deal said by other peoples. This post belongs to the map presented in Magic and spirituality in ancient civilisations: a map to get started. In the series, the Celts come after Göbekli Tepe, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece.
Who the Celts were
“Celts” is a broad name. The Greeks spoke of Keltoi for peoples who lived to the north of them, and the Romans called Gauls the inhabitants of Gaul, present-day France. The archaeologist Barry Cunliffe, in The Ancient Celts, shows that the word covers very different peoples, spread from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Europe and the British Isles, who shared related languages and some styles of art, such as what is called La Tène.
There was no Celtic empire and no single Celtic religion. Each people had its own gods, and many deity names appear in only one region.
The three sources
Researchers use three kinds of evidence, and each has limits.
The first is archaeology: sanctuaries, offerings thrown into rivers and lakes, figurines, coins, burials. Miranda Green, in The Gods of the Celts, organises this material by themes, such as the cults of the sun and sky, the mother goddesses, war, death, waters and animals. Much of the imagery of gods is from the Roman period, when the Gauls began to carve in stone and to write names in Latin.
The second are the Greek and Roman authors. They wrote about the Celts from outside, often as enemies, and mixed observation with stereotype.
The third are the Irish and Welsh texts of the Middle Ages, written by Christian monks centuries after conversion. In them appear characters such as the Dagda, Lugh and Brigid. The historian Ronald Hutton, in Pagan Britain, reminds us that these texts may preserve memories of ancient gods, but they were composed in a world already Christian, and it is hard to know what is memory and what is literary creation.
The druids according to Caesar
The most detailed ancient account of the druids is in De Bello Gallico, Julius Caesar’s memoirs of the war in Gaul, written in the first century BC. In Book VI, Caesar says that the druids cared for sacrifices and religious matters, judged disputes and were exempt from war and taxes. According to him, the training of a druid could take twenty years, because they memorised a great number of verses. They did not put their teachings in writing, although they used Greek letters for other matters. They taught that the soul does not die and passes from one body to another.
Caesar also relates that the druids met once a year in the territory of the Carnutes, considered the centre of Gaul. And he describes human sacrifices, including large wicker figures filled with people, burned alive.
Hutton draws attention to who is speaking. Caesar was the general conquering Gaul, and the portrait of the druids served his political aims. That does not make everything false, but it calls for caution.
Another Roman author, Pliny the Elder, describes in the Natural History a rite in which the druids cut with a golden sickle the mistletoe that grew on an oak and sacrificed two white bulls. It is one of the most cited scenes about the druids, and also one of those we know from this single source alone.
What archaeology adds
Hutton, in The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, shows how archaeology sometimes confirms and sometimes complicates the classical authors. In 1984, the body of a man killed violently around the first century AD was found in a bog at Lindow, in England, and the press soon spoke of druidic sacrifice. Hutton discusses that interpretation and shows that it remains uncertain.
Another important find is the Coligny calendar, a bronze plaque found in 1897 at Coligny, in eastern France. It was made in the second century AD, in the Gaulish language and with Latin letters, and organises a five-year cycle of lunar months. One of the months is called Samonios, a name that many researchers bring close to Irish Samhain, although the exact link is debated.
The scholar Anne Ross, in Pagan Celtic Britain, gathered images and inscriptions from the British Isles and highlighted a theme that appears in many places: the human head as a sacred object.
The Irish festivals
The medieval Irish texts mention four great festivals, as Hutton shows in The Stations of the Sun: Samhain, at the beginning of November; Imbolc, at the beginning of February; Beltaine, at the beginning of May; and Lughnasa, at the beginning of August. These are the festivals that today inspire part of the Neopagan sabbats.
In the same book, Hutton reminds us that we know these festivals chiefly from medieval sources and that much of what is said about them, such as the idea that Samhain was the “Celtic new year”, does not appear clearly in the ancient sources.
What is modern reconstruction
Much of what is today called “Celtic” was born in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1792, the Welsh poet Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams) gathered bards on Primrose Hill, in London, in a ceremony he called a Gorsedd and presented as an inheritance of the druids. Much of the “ancient” material he circulated was written by himself.
In the twentieth century, Wicca and other Neopagan movements brought the four Irish festivals, the solstices and the equinoxes together into a single wheel of eight festivals. Hutton tells that story in The Triumph of the Moon. It is a modern creation inspired by ancient and medieval sources.
On the Gaelic expression anam cara, “soul friend”, the site has the text The Celts and the value of friendship: Anam Cara.
The next posts in the series deal with the druids, Celtic gods and myths and the Celtic calendar [coming soon].
Questions answered
Did the druids leave books?
Not that we know of. According to Caesar, they refused to write down their teachings and transmitted them from memory.
Was Stonehenge built by the druids?
No. Hutton, in Pagan Britain, reminds us that Stonehenge is many centuries older than any mention of the druids. The link between the two was made by antiquaries from the seventeenth century onwards.
Was Samhain the Celtic new year?
It is possible, but not proven. The sources that speak of Samhain are Irish and medieval, and Hutton, in The Stations of the Sun, considers that idea a modern interpretation without a clear basis in the ancient sources.
Mini-glossary
- Druid: member of the religious and learned class of the Gauls and Britons, according to the classical authors.
- Torc: rigid metal collar, used as a sign of status and present in images of gods.
- La Tène: style of art of the European Iron Age, associated with Celtic peoples.
- Coligny calendar: Gaulish bronze plaque of the second century AD with a calendar of lunar months.
- Gorsedd: bardic ceremony created by Iolo Morganwg in 1792 and presented as druidic.
Bibliography
CAESAR, Julius. The Gallic War [De Bello Gallico]. Trans. H. J. Edwards. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1917. (Loeb Classical Library, 72).
CUNLIFFE, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
GREEN, Miranda J. The Gods of the Celts. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1986.
HUTTON, Ronald. Pagan Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
HUTTON, Ronald. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
HUTTON, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
HUTTON, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
PLINY THE ELDER. Natural History. vol. 4 (books 12–16). Trans. H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945. (Loeb Classical Library, 370).
ROSS, Anne. Pagan Celtic Britain: Studies in Iconography and Tradition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.