"Head" side of a coin of the Parisi tribe of Celts Digital Sketch © Sage Starwalker. All rights reserved. after the image of a coin at Cernunnos.com

Overview, Goddesses, Places of Worship, Temples, Times of Worship, Beliefs, Rituals, Sacred Objects

"...we find in Celtic mythology a strong foundation in ancient goddess (mother earth) and fertility religion (common throughout the ancient world), merged with the peculiar emphasis on the Otherworld and its accessibility to mankind found in the druid religion. More than any other people, perhaps, the Celts live with one foot in this world and one in the other." (Celtic Mythology and Celtic Religion)

Overview Speaking in the broadest of terms, the religion of the pre-Roman and pre-Christian Celts took two forms: organized religion and folk religion. Both of these are topics so huge and controversial that they cannot possibly be thoroughly covered by me here, but here's an overview, and some details follow later on this web page.

• The organized religious life of the Celts was managed by those Druids whose work focused on religious matters. My primary source was The Druids by Peter Beresford Ellis. A popular misconception is that "Druid" and "Celtic religious leader" are synonymous. However:

  "The Druids were educated men and women who served many functions in Celtic societies. They were judges, historians, educators, poets, astronomers, geographers, healers/physicians and religious leaders (priests and priestesses).
  They appear to have been a pan-Celtic phenomenon, though we only have direct evidence of them in Ireland, Britain, and Gaul (France and Germany). Their seats of power were Tara and Anglesey in Ireland, Chartres in Gaul.
  "...guardians of traditions and learning, (they) glorified the pursuits of war, feasting and horsemanship. They controlled the calendar and the planting of crops, and they presided over the religious festivals and rituals that honored local deities." (Wales History Timeline)

• Celtic folk religion reflects both the individual spiritual beliefs and practices of the various Celtic peoples and also various tribal beliefs and practices. To begin to understand this aspect of Celtic religion, I avoided most of the numerous neopagan books and publications and focused on The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (W. Y. Evans-Wentz) and the Dalriada Celtic Heritage Trust website. These sources are comprised of collections of folk belief and practice that have survived into the 19th and 20th centuries in Celtic countries. Here are a few gems:
  • On the Isle of Man, as late as the end of the 19th century, folks tried to make their first glimpse of the new (crescent) moon be direct (that is, not through glass). When they saw the moon, they jingled coins in their pockets and said "I see the moon, and the moon sees me." Today, we'd call that a money spell.
  • In the Scottish Highlands, a favorite form of divination was by fire-gazing.
  • In Scotland, the dandelion is known as "the little notched of Bride." Herbal healing was done by many, based on herb lore and the help of the fairies.
  • Berries are not to be gathered or eaten from "November Eve" (Samhain) on, because on November Eve fairies fly over and make them unfit to eat.
  • Rags tied on bushes over sacred wells carry petitions to the deities, as do pins, coins, buttons, pebbles and carvings cast into springs, rivers, and lakes.
  • Little spirits (variously named fairies, pixies, brownies, etc.) live among us and can be helpful or cause hindrances, depending on many things, including how we interact with them. For example, when milking a cow, one must always spill a little milk for the fairies, or they will take the cow away or turn its milk bad.

Goddesses (and Gods)

"...in the stories of how the rivers Liffey, Shannon, and Boyne got their names, the goddesses are undermined, being punished for their pride, haughtiness, or use of magic. Traces of the goddesses are usually only to be found in stories describing their overthrow or subjecting them to ridicule." (Mary Condren, The Serpent and the Goddess, p. 30)

• "The Celts did not form a single religious or political unity. They were organized into tribes spread across what is now several countries. As a result, of the 374 Celtic deities which have been found, over 300 occur only once in the archeological record; they are believed to be local deities. There is some evidence that their main pantheon of Gods and Goddesses might have totaled about 3 dozen - - perhaps precisely 33 (a frequently occurring magical number in Celtic literature). Some of the more famous are: Arawn, Brigid, Cernunnos, Cerridwen, Danu, Herne, Lugh, Rhiannon and Taranis. Many Celtic deities were worshipped in triune (triple aspect) form. Triple Goddesses were often sisters." (The Druids)
• The Gauls (Celts of present-day France and Germany) did not anthropomorphise their deities. Diodorus, the Sicilian historian of the 1st century BCE, wrote of a Celtic leader who laughed when he saw statues of the Greek gods. (Tina Deegan)
• Lists of Celtic deities abound on the Net and in books. I don't believe there's a need to rename them all here. Patricia Monaghan's The New Book of Goddesses and Heroines is an excellent reference for Celtic goddesses, as is Cheryl Straffon's Earth Goddesses.

Places of Worship

• groves
• the "between" places
  • shoreline, between water and earth (ocean, lake, river, stream)
  • mountain and hill tops, between earth and air
• living water (springs / holy wells, lakes, rivers, bogs)
• caves
• sacred islands (Carnac, Ys, the Hebrides, the mythic isles, various "islands of women")
• monuments (Stonehenge, Newgrange, etc.)
• mounds (tribal queen burial sites, etc.)
• sacred places (Emain Macha, Glastonbury, Tara, etc.)
  

Temples

• "The early Celts did not build temples in which to worship their deities, but held certain groves (nemeton) of trees to be sacred and worthy to be places of worship. Some trees were considered sacred themselves. 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. Only in the period of Roman influence did the Celts start to build temples, a custom which they would later pass on to the Germanic tribes that displaced them." (Celtic Mythology)
• "It has been said that the Druidic Circles cannot, in strictness, be termed temples, for the Druids taught that there were but two habitations of the Deity - the soul, the invisible - the universe, the visible. The word 'temple,' in its primitive meaning, is simply a place cut off, enclosed, dedicated to sacred use, whether a circle of stones, a field or a building. In the old British language a temple or sanctuary was called a 'caer', a sacred fenced enclosure. The stone circles or caers of Britain were therefore, essentially temples and held so sacred by the people that reverent behaviour in their vicinity was universal." (Druids: Truth About #2)
• It's probably quite true that the Celts as defined by most theorists (people sharing a common language and customs, dating from around 1500 BCE to 50 BCE) did not build temples. However, if you consider that the Celts were a hybrid of invading Indo-European warriors and native, matrifocal Europeans, then you have to consider that these European Celtic ancestors did indeed build temples. See this news article, for example.

Full Moon Rising, courtesy of Jon O'Sullivan

• "Much more seems to be known about the four fire festivals (which are still celebrated in many traditional ways) than the four solar festivals. Were the solar festivals mainly druidic sacred times in which lay participation was minimal (it would seem that some of the neo-druids have taken this view and make rather more of these dates than the Irish and Gaels do)? Or could the solar celebrations pre-date druidism, belonging to the Stonehenge builders, and falling slowly into disuse? This seems a possibility since the Celtic calendar is lunar based, rather than solar." (Celtic Mythology and Celtic Religion)
• According to British traditional witches, the fire festivals (cross-quarter days) were originally lunar holidays dated by moon-sun astronomy:
  • Samhain: dark moon and sun in Scorpio
  • Imbolc: dark moon and sun in Aquarius
  • Beltane: full moon in Scorpio, sun in Taurus
  • Lammas: full moon in Aquarius, sun in Leo
  • According to Janet and Stewart Farrar (The Witches Bible Compleat), the Celts observed the solar days (solstices and equinoxes) but they were not celebration/sacred holy days.
• The Celtic calendar, as stated above, is a lunar-based calendar.
• For the Celts, time begins in darkness. So the year and the day both begin in the dark time before (the new solar year and/or the new dawn).

Beliefs

• "To the ancients, the Heavens appeared to wheel overhead, turning on an axis which points to the north polar stars. At the crown of the axis, a circle of stars revolved about a fixed point, the Celestial Pole, which was believed to be the location of Heaven. At the base of the axis was the Omphalos, the circular altar of the Goddess' temple. The universe of stars turning on this axis formed a spiral path, or stairway, on which souls ascended to Heaven." (The 7 Celtic Nations)
• The Otherworld is with us; the gateway to it lies within.
• The Fairy-Faith: "By the Celtic Fairy-Faith we mean that specialized form of belief in a spiritual realm inhabited by spiritual beings which has existed from prehistoric times until now in Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, or other parts of the ancient empire of the Celts. In studying this belief, we are concerned directly with living Celtic folk-traditions, and with past Celtic folk-traditions as recorded in literature. And if fairies actually exist as invisible beings or intelligences, and our investigations lead us to the tentative hypothesis that they do, they are natural and not supernatural, for nothing which exists can be supernatural; and, therefore, it is our duty to examine the Celtic Fairy Races just as we examine any fact in the visible realm wherein we now live, whether it be a fact of chemistry, of physics, or of biology." (Introduction, The Faery Faith)
• Immortality of the soul - transmigration of the soul - reincarnation.
  

Rituals

• the seasonal feasts / rituals (originally the four cross-quarter dates, which were lunar/stellar celebrations); eventually, the solstices and equinoxes became celebration times also
• death rituals and ancestor worship (the ancestors were deities, the deities were ancestors) (Ancient Figures, Timeless Dancers)
• divinatory rituals
• magic rituals
• agricultural and pastoral rituals
• fire rituals
• rites of passage (birth, naming/accepting into the community, marriage, initiation as a warrior, a king, a queen, a druid, etc. death)
• sacrifice rituals
• prophecying rituals
• healing rituals
• blessings and curses
• protection rituals
• war rituals / military magic
• various religious rituals, for example, a temple reroofing ritual:
  "From the druidesses of one of the French channel islands we know of a yearly ritual, in which they unroofed their whole temple and then set up a new roof in one day. If one of the druidesses let fall what she carried of the roof, so it is said, she would be torn to pieces by the others. In fact, seemingly, the druidesses tried to make each other (or maybe also one of them that was choosen to previously) let fall pieces of the roof." (Celtic Religion)
  
• many others; consider the following:
  • "When the Scots emigrated from Ireland, they brought with them a rich blending of belief and tradition based on Celtic pagan myth and Christianity. Isolated in the islands and highlands, uniquely powerful and superstitious Scottish legends and myths developed in which tradition and a very strong belief in the 'second sight' and the faery world predominated. This worldview persisted well into the 20th century (and, we're sure, continues its influence to this day)."
    "The result was a culture circumscribed by ritual -- each and every day had its ritual elements (how to stir the pot, how to lead the cows, how to celebrate the feasts and saints' days), designed to ensure good luck and blessings and to avoid tragedy."
    "Scotland abounds in stories and legends of magical seafolk (selkies and mermaids), changeling legends about fairies stealing or possessing the bodies of babies, and tales of shape-shifting witches, ghosts, and family curses, not to mention their famous lake monster." (Celtic Mythology and Celtic Religion)
    

Sacred Objects and Symbols

• triskele
• spirals
• trees
• mistletoe
• plants
• cauldrons
• pendants (amulets)