In what ways is it possible to speak in a meaningful manner about 'Celtic Religion'?

The problem begins with the fact that the term itself does not originate from the people it is used to describe - it is a Greek word (Κελτοι). Further it wasn’t until the 18^th century that scholars began to use it to describe a family of languages. The Greeks themselves used it originally to describe a group of Gaulish peoples, distant ancestors of the French, north of today’s Marseille. Gradually classical commentators began to apply the term to groups speaking apparently similar languages. In the Latin speaking world the term ‘Celtae’ was used in a number of different ways; Julius Caesar, in his commentaries, used it to describe people within central Gaul, but others used the term freely to denote many of the continental peoples we now describe as ‘Celtic-speaking’. It is interesting to note, according to J. Mackillop, that the term was never applied to the population of the British Isles.¹ The problem continues with the fact that the ‘Celts’ had very little to say about themselves.

‘The Celts’, according to M. Green, ‘had no tradition of written records and therefore cannot identify themselves to us directly’.² They are known, therefore, by virtue of archaeological evidence […]’, ‘[…] the writings of ‘literate Mediterranean societies’,³ and considerably later vernacular sources.

In this short introduction to the subject I do not profess to cover all the relevant information; the field with which this piece deals is vast and by no means decided. I have not, for example, gone into the etymology of the ‘Celtic’ language and its relation to the so-called Indo-European family. Nor have I delved into much of the archaeological evidence, which provides much of the ‘first hand’ evidence we have, though the interpretation thereof could be called into issue.

However, my intent in this paper is to look at the various different sources we have available to reconstruct Celtic religion. I believe that although there is certainly enough evidence to show Celtic religions existed there is not enough upon which to build a coherent picture of said Celtic religions or to unify them as a Celtic Religion.

As previously stated there are essentially two main literary sources: Mediterranean writings and actual Celtic writings, displaced temporally, which are of two main spatial origins: Wales and Ireland.

Hutton dismisses the Graeco-Roman sources, stating; ‘Only one author has any first hand experience of Britain, and none was primarily interested in the Celts themselves.’⁴ Miranda Green is also dismissive, saying: ‘Classical writers have to be used with caution […]’ ⁵ These writers, she also says, are more useful with regard to the druids and ritual rather than the Celtic gods.⁶

The different authors might conveniently be arranged into a number of sub-groups. The first group, according to Hutton,⁷ tended to portray the Celts as ‘noble savages’⁸ in an attempt to highlight moral and societal defects in Graeco-Roman civilisation by virtue of their example. These writers based their works largely upon Alexandria. They included historians such as Timaeus and Polyhistor. Timaeus was later copied by Polybius who was in turn copied by Livy. ‘Neither had much detailed material’ ⁹

Another group, continues Hutton, ‘[…] is defined by their determination to prove that the Celts were barbarians who required the civilising influence of Greece and Rome’.¹⁰ Take for example this extract from Strabo (circa 20 CE), in which he describes a process of divination used by the Cimbri (though they were probably Teutonic, not Celtic):

[N]ow sword in hand these priestesses would meet with the prisoners of war throughout the camp, and having first crowned them with wreaths would lead them to a brazen vessel of about twenty amphorae; and they had a raised platform which the priestess would mount, and then, bending over the kettle, would cut the throat of each prisoner after he had been lifted up; and from the blood that poured forth into the vessel some of the priestesses would draw a prophecy, while still others would split open the body and from an inspection of the entrails would utter a prophecy of victory for their own people …¹¹

A particularly blood thirsty scene and a not uncommon focus. M. Green suggests also that such classical writers were ‘[…] biased by what interested them[…] Only weird and obscene rites – head-hunting, human sacrifice, divination by ritual murder – were curious and distasteful enough to be commented upon.’¹²

Athenaeus and Diodorus also belonged to this group, all of whom relied heavily upon a lost writer named Poseidonios. Who, again according to Hutton, knew only of southern Gaul; Britain to him remained mysterious and distant.¹³ He was also a stoic philosopher and was biased against the Celts; Hutton suggests this may have resulted in him exaggerating the sophistication of Barbarian religious belief.¹⁴

The third group Hutton delineates consists of writings that concern military campaigns against the Celts. This group includes writers such as Tacitus, Lucan and Cassius. These writers had not taken part in the campaigns themselves and were often writing about events that took place generations before their own time.

Finally then, we come to Julius Caesar. Though he had first hand experience of the Celts he ‘[…] devoted little time to his enemies, and when he did so he had a powerful motive for disparaging them in order to justify his aggressive warfare against them’.¹⁵ With regard to the gods, Caesar, says Green, often spoke of the Celtic deities as identical to Roman ones, giving them Roman names. Though this is not surprising: J. Assmann suggests that ‘Polytheistic religions overcame the primitive ethnocentrism of tribal religions by distinguishing several deities by name, shape and function.’ And that though names and images vary ‘[…] the functions are surprisingly similar.’¹⁶ He argues that for polytheists the gods acted as a common ground, a universal constant.^{17 18} Several examples of this fact still exist today: the temple in Bath to Sulis-Minerva, where a local non-Roman deity has been syncretised with one more familiar to the Roman citizens. The roles the two goddesses played seem to have been so close in nature that this union of the two in one temple and indeed as one goddess was easy. ¹⁹

Though Hutton is quite dismissive of such evidence in ‘The Pagan Religions of The Ancient British Isles’, M. Green suggests, in ‘The Gods of the Celts’, that such writings are useful when backed up by archaeological evidence, and that indeed such a concordance does exist. Take for instance the example she gives of human sacrifice and head collecting, practices for which evidence exists on both counts.

At any rate, for a more complete picture of Celtic religion a look at the Welsh and Irish vernacular texts is required. This also has problems: the temporal disparity (the periods are separated by a span of around 900 years), and that the texts deal with the fringe of Celtic society; there is no reference for example to either La Tène or the Roman period.²⁰ Further, all of these texts were written after the British Isles had become Christianised (since the 1900s scholars have rejected forgeries such as the Barddas as sources of pre-Christian origin ²¹). Hutton proclaims the recent loss of faith in these texts showing an accurate glimpse of Celtic pagan society and being the product of an ancient oral tradition ‘One of the achievements of the last thirty years’²². He points out that the texts refer to a ‘[…] vanished system of belief to which the authors themselves were perhaps hostile’²³.

We are then left with some of the Triads and some of the tales collected by Lady Charlotte Guest in the nineteenth century, namely, The Mabinogion. However, in 1961 K. Jackson pointed out that far from having Celtic origins such sources are in fact popular international tales with their roots in Egypt, China or India.²⁴ Though they contain some insight in paganism they are ‘[…] all too far removed from their sources to be of use in reconstructing the original religion.’²⁵ Furthermore since the 1980s there has been yet more of a decline in specialists’ ‘faith’ in the antiquity of Welsh literature: recent evidence, or rather the lack of it, suggests the works of Taliesin, Aneurin and Llywarch Hen date back no further than the ninth century AD as opposed to the previously accepted date of the sixth/seventh century AD. There is, according to Hutton ‘[…] increasing reason to believe that early medieval Welsh poets wrote under the names of illustrious predecessors, holding that they were inspired by the spirits of these bards.’²⁶ Hutton concludes:

None of the original work of people like Taliesin may survive, if indeed they ever existed. There is no longer any reason to suppose that the earliest surviving verses had any career as oral poetry before they were committed to writing, or to assert that any of the tales that appear in them belong to a pre-Christian age. All the personalities who feature in these oldest poems are not deities but warriors, and it may have been the function of those who composed them to extol human heroism rather than treat religion. In brief what little value the welsh vernacular texts may once have been thought to posses for our quest has now largely evaporated.’²⁷

What then of Irish sources? They have long been recognised as the better source; they are more numerous and considered to be older and less contaminated by foreign material.²⁸ Jackson describes them as a ‘window on the Iron Age’²⁹. He also, however, says they are of more use to the student of society than to the student of religion. According to Hutton the earliest extant versions of them are from the twelfth century AD, and although some were thought to be about one thousand years older, all were transcribed by Christian monks who were potentially not only hostile to the content but also ignorant of the religion and culture from which it sprang. Later in the 1980’s a further blow was dealt to the Irish sources: the Law Codes, long considered to be the product of a pagan oral tradition, were dated to the eighth century AD and attributed to Christian church men who were part of the Latin literary world.³⁰ Archaeology also places these stories at this later date; ceremonial halls had become royal halls filled with aristocrats, heroes fought with Viking Age swords rather than Iron Age ones.³¹ Hutton continues:

The tales do not show any of the classic techniques of an oral tradition. They are in prose, not verse. They lack a formulaic structure, key phrases often repeated, alliteration, rhyme, rhythm, meter, assonance and other devices used to commit works to memory.³²

Furthermore these authors would have been familiar with Greek and Roman works on the Celts. How much did these earlier works influence the latter? Hutton concludes:

So the earliest Irish literature does, after all, seem to be much older than the earliest in Welsh, and both date from a period of at least two centuries after their societies had become Christian.³³

In spite of all this Hutton does agree that these sources, along with archaeological findings, do provide some insight into Celtic pagan religion. Literary sources give us the names of gods, but reveal very little about their nature and about the rites and ceremonies used to worship them. The main problem with archaeology is that peoples of the Iron Age seemed to feel no compulsion to construct representations of their deities and further that any statues found from that period could easily be of a non-divine nature.³⁴

The problem with temples and shrines is that they are difficult to identify; places can only be so attested by the presence of votive offerings. On this basis around 24 have now been identified in Britain.³⁵ Part of the reason so few pre-Roman shrines have been found is just that they are so hard to identify, but there is also evidence that many religious activities took place outside. Dio attests to this in his recording of Boudicca’s sacrifice to Andraste.

The final difficulty is to be found in the nature of historical research and nature with which it is received and interpreted: if one goes fishing in the right place with the right bait, one is likely to catch the fish one set out for. Celtic history is particularly prone to manipulation as it is useful. From spirituality to politics the term ‘Celtic’ has been used as a banner and an excuse behind which to unite. If we look at the mnemohistory³⁶ of the Celts we find many historical inaccuracies and self-serving creations. For example Edward Williams (a.k.a. Iolo Morgannwg) and The Barddas. Consider the desperation of scholars to hold onto the validity of the antiquity of their Irish source texts, the recurring ignorance to outdated theories and their constant employment in modern Paganism. The problem also arises where attempts to construct rather than reconstruct a system of mysticism or religion occur, there is nothing wrong with this per se but problems arise when non-specialist groups fail to notice the difference. As an example we might consider Caitlin Matthews; she states that a series of quarterly festivals were important and further that they were employed all over some unified and consistent Celtic world. No such consistency exists, she refers to a Gaelic tradition that may not have operated beyond a relatively small locality: Ireland and Scotland.³⁷ She also names these as ‘fire feasts’, a term employed first by Frazer³⁸, but only, and correctly according to Hutton³⁹, to two of the festivals.

There are other examples of people imposing erroneously held views on literary and archaeological finds. The Venus of Willendorf for a long time was thought to be representations of an universal, prehistoric earth mother. This conclusion was not at all based on evidence but rather on theoretical assumption. Hutton says: ‘The figurines were slotted into a pre-existing mould of thought, much as earlier generations had considered Palaeolithic flints to be the discarded weapons of elves.’⁴⁰

As far as politics goes, the Celts were often used by nationalists as a call to arms. One might argue that, like in the case of Judaism and the monotheistic religion of Akhenaten⁴¹, the idea of a national identity had been repressed and subsequently found an outlet during the Celtic revival. Cunliffe says: ‘The new Celtomania, which provides a vision of a European past to comfort us at a time when ethnic divisions are becoming a painful and disturbing reality’.⁴²

Even more recent ‘evidence’ is dubious, for example to suggest that the allegiance in 1401 between the Welsh and Scots implies a Celtic unity is erroneous and anachronistic. It was rather a common grievance against the English that united them, they would not have been aware of their shared Celtic⁴³ roots.

In conclusion, though there is much evidence of the existence of religion and some concerning the practices and rites carried out by the Celts, there is not enough upon which to base a reconstruction of the religion. And although Celtic religion can be used as a practical term, the practices and beliefs vary too widely across the - somewhat dubious - Celtic world to be considered universal or coherent. Further the evidence that does exist is fragmentary and often misleading; it is too easily manipulated and too easily distorted. We have no real primary evidence concerning the specific nature of large parts of Celtic religion.

Harrison Mansfield is a practitioner of ‘Silver Moon Fairy Magic’. He likes nothing more than dancing among flowers while calling upon the universal goddess. In his spare time he reads as much Silver Ravenwolf as he can get his hands upon. [Ed.: Read: He’s a grumpy Thelemite who definitely can’t dance and would probably eat $ilver Ravenwolf for breakfast if he had the chance.]

Bibliography

P. Sims-Williams: Celtomania and Celtoscepticisim, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies (1992)

M. Green: The Gods of The Celts, (Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2004)

Cunliffe “The Celts: The First Europeans?” Antiquity, 66 (1992)

J. Assmann: Moses The Egyptian, (Harvard University Press, London, 1997)

R. Hutton: The pagan Religions of The Ancient British Isle, (Blackwell Publishing, Malden, 2007)

A Crowley: Liber LXV

The Mabinogion, trans Lady Charlotte Guest (HarperCollins Publisher, London, 2000)

B. W. Cunliffe, The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath, Vol. 1, The Site. Oxford : Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1985.

J. Frazer: The Golden Bough, (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, Hertfordshire, 1993)

I. Regardie: The Golden Dawn, (Llewellyn, Woodbury 2006)

J. Mackillop: Myths and Legends of The Celts, (Penguin Books, London, 2005)

43 P. Sims-Williams Celtomania and Celtoscepticisim: Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies (1992) pp. 11