What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

[SonoftheWaters]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

I still believe that each clan/tribe had a god and goddess associated with their own location rather that each tribe picking out one of the family of the Tuatha De Danann. '

As far as, the evolution of religion, this is very natural and occurs over time with all religions and we will never truly be able to reconstruct the old Celtic faiths because of the hodge podge that became of the Celtic histories.

Though I believe we will find more of the original beliefs if we look closer at some of the old Ogham writings that date back to before the Christian influance.

Interesting concept of the family lineage being set by the Christians and not one I thought of, because even the basic lore I have read about from average people points to a family/clan/tribe type concept for the Celtic deities. Is there a specific story or set of myth/legends/history that brings you to this concept?

I still believe that each clan/tribe had a god and goddess associated with their own location rather that each tribe picking out one of the family of the Tuatha De Danann. '

From my understanding you are correct and incorrect. That each clan within the tribe held one ancestor above others and this was the god/goddess of the location, as well as, higher primary gods.

Thus even when we discuss Celtic beliefs there may be differences based on time.

I agree with this 100%, I believe there are at the very least three Celtic faith periods for Druids and that is just for the isles (Ireland, Scotland, Anglo, Saxon, Welsh, Cornish) as well as regional difference but the regional difference would be more like diaglect difference, an example of this would be Danu-Don variance even though by most evidence they are the same deity.

The three time frames are the Son of Mil, the Dannan and the Fir Bolg (Fir Bholg being in the time frame of the rule of the giants though there are some vague referrence to druids in that time this very will could be nothing more then implacation then truth, though I do believe that at least the predecessor of druidism did exist.

Each river is associated with a different goddess.

This is very true however the name Danu is an older name, you can see this by the fact that the name is proment in the lore(even if never goes into detail about Danu her self) and even the main river that it appears the Celts originally followed was the Danube, which still carries her name even today.

The older pre-Christian beliefs appear more nature based where nature had both the natural and the supernatural in a close proximity. Later pre-Christian becomes more focused on the heros both of the tribe and outside the tribe.

This is true as the stories get closer to christian times you find them getting closer and closer to man rather than nature. This I see as part of the change over from the Dannan to the Son of Mil varities of Celtic faith.

The connection of the gods and goddesses being connected with the land certainly does not die out with Christianity but lives on in the folklore which clearly continued on even becoming incorporated into he evolving Christianity if Ireland. The spirits of the land change no longer seen as the gods and goddesses but become the spirits of the sidhe, The fairy folk. The fairy mounds (mounds of the sidhe) which were divided between the gods/goddess change to be the otherworld which became the fertile ground for the Romantic restoration of the pre-Christian beliefs.

This also appears to be a change form Dannan to Son of Mil, as more and more of the "deities" become less nature and less personal and more supernatural in the stories.

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I'm of the opinion (based on copious research over the years) that the early Irish monks are more accurate than most contemporary Pagans (who may or may not be swayed by teir own issues and biases) give them credit for. There is too much that they didn't censor that they should have, if they were truly concerned with being good Christians. The Irish monks had incredible leeway, they wrote in their own language (not Latin), and they did so before their culture shifted from pre-Christian ideals, which is why it (while not wholly unaltered) a pretty darn good source of information.

This original writing are still a good source of information. One must understand that you should always take them with a grain of salt but considering the are one of the only few writings we have left, we really can't dismiss them and have to take them as they are. Though I see know issue with taking the folklore and filling in some of the blanks or correcting some of the Abrahamic influenced areas. Peter Ellis makes a great comparison using language as a link to the Hindu faiths and used the Hindu faiths instead of the Abrahamic faiths to recreate the creation myth for the Tuatha de Dannan which I found very interesting myself and I personal thinks a lot more sense then what you get from the Christian influenced versions.

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I would point out that when we talk about myths they are subject to many variances over time and place. If we want to prove they are real, then real in what sense?

History is what myth isn’t. What history tells is true or else it would not be history. What myth tells is in some way false or else it would be history. Yet even within mythology there are graduations of credibility. (And this comes from Ken Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology, Routledge, 2000 - and he is, historically speaking, very reliable).

Forgive me for seeming a bit pedantic, but at this point it's worth looking at the word ‘Myth’ and what it really means. Back in the days of Homer, at the beginning of Greek literature, a mythos was not necessarily false. Later, by around the 5th century BCE, mythos was usually applied to fiction. (Logos was used then for non fiction).

By the mid 80's BCE, mythos was translated in Latin by fibula (which is where the words fable and indeed fib come from).
Basically we can say that myth deals with how a lost and powerful past created the present, i.e. it tells us about gods, heroes, beginnings and explanations.

However, the word legend comes from the Latin word, legenda, meaning ‘things to be read’ and includes stories based on real characters. Over time these stories developed to make them more significant and interesting for each new audience.

Couple of things, first "What history tells is true or else it would not be history." this is not actually a fact, history is written by the victor and only vary rarely will you find it to be completely true, though it is getting better today you still have this problem with todays history. The older you get in history the more true this holds. A great example of this would be the stories of the druids from the Romans.

For years people thought Roman depiction was true and that druids were blood thirsty barbarians and yet when you look at the times and what was happening in Roman you can tell that most of what was written by the Romans was propaganda not history even though it was taken as so for centuries and by many even today. When you look at what stories of the Celtic people have too say about themselves, even the vague stories left you can tell that what the Romans what was bumpkis.

You also have to take into consideration that what we have to go off of is only legends and myths. I wish I had the funds to Roam the isles just researching the old sites and translating the Ogham writings to get a better understand or going through all the old legends and myths that haven't even been translated little alone put out to the public, but that is a dream and would take a team of fetted people to be able to complete.

[anunitu]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

You know I am not at all into this discussion,but you peeps kinda remind me just why I detached myself from Christian belief,it was the absolute dogma that had no place for wiggle room ever...

If I read this and did not read the names of the deity's,I might mistake it for an argument on dogmatic concerns in a christian group.

[SonoftheWaters]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

You know I am not at all into this discussion,but you peeps kinda remind me just why I detached myself from Christian belief,it was the absolute dogma that had no place for wiggle room ever...

If I read this and did not read the names of the deity's,I might mistake it for an argument on dogmatic concerns in a christian group.

LOL, considering that we are basically talking dogma I can see that. Pre-Christian Celtic faith covers a ton of ground and no clear paths. So everyone has a tendency to add their own personal flare to it.

[anunitu]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

And I am Eclectic in my approach to spiritual things....but then I am just kind of free and easy in my approach to everything..Free your mind,and your ass will follow...from Funkadelic

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

I agree with this 100%, I believe there are at the very least three Celtic faith periods for Druids and that is just for the isles (Ireland, Scotland, Anglo, Saxon, Welsh, Cornish) as well as regional difference but the regional difference would be more like diaglect difference, an example of this would be Danu-Don variance even though by most evidence they are the same deity.

The three time frames are the Son of Mil, the Dannan and the Fir Bolg (Fir Bholg being in the time frame of the rule of the giants though there are some vague referrence to druids in that time this very will could be nothing more then implacation then truth, though I do believe that at least the predecessor of druidism did exist.

Would you help us all out here please with a few dates for these 'Celtic faith periods'?

[SonoftheWaters]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

Would you help us all out here please with a few dates for these 'Celtic faith periods'?

Woo now that is a hard question, I am sure others would have their own ideas.

By myth the Dannan lived hundreds if not thousands of years. Going by myths not hard facts, I would put the Son of Mil first appearance somewhere around 1200-1500BCE, the Dannan first appearance would be somewhere around the 8,000-12,000 BCE, the main reason for this is because many of the description of Fir Bog remind me of Neanderthal, the Fir Bog would be lost in time.

[sionnach]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

There are periods of time where patterns seen in archeology change as in the case of the stone circles and wooden circles. These megalithic structures occurred through a period of time then stopped. But this does not tell us if there was a change or people or what factors changed the behavior. There are the changes in burial patterns from complex structures such as those in Newgrange which were connected with sun position, in this case with the winter solstice. The building of the long barrows some of which had celestial orientations while some did not. Causewayed enclosures also had a time period before falling out of favor. These changes have tried to be aligned with our Notion of stone age, bronze age, and iron age but my understanding is that there is a great deal of overlap. Even the arrival of the Celts seems very unclear. There are opinions I have read that there were multiple successive immigrations and blending of cultures making time lines very difficult to pinpoint. Now trying to match the mythological history of Ireland to the archeological history seems impossible. I did read some books from the past trying to equate the fomorians with the invaders from the Norse lands ( no the Vikings for they come much later) and there are some interesting amber votive depositions along a line which peoples from the Scandinavian lands could have traveled but again the book of invasion I still believe must be seen as a mythological cycle and not a precise historical cycle and blended different myths of different tribes together.

[SonoftheWaters]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

There are periods of time where patterns seen in archeology change as in the case of the stone circles and wooden circles. These megalithic structures occurred through a period of time then stopped. But this does not tell us if there was a change or people or what factors changed the behavior. There are the changes in burial patterns from complex structures such as those in Newgrange which were connected with sun position, in this case with the winter solstice. The building of the long barrows some of which had celestial orientations while some did not. Causewayed enclosures also had a time period before falling out of favor. These changes have tried to be aligned with our Notion of stone age, bronze age, and iron age but my understanding is that there is a great deal of overlap. Even the arrival of the Celts seems very unclear. There are opinions I have read that there were multiple successive immigrations and blending of cultures making time lines very difficult to pinpoint. Now trying to match the mythological history of Ireland to the archeological history seems impossible. I did read some books from the past trying to equate the fomorians with the invaders from the Norse lands ( no the Vikings for they come much later) and there are some interesting amber votive depositions along a line which peoples from the Scandinavian lands could have traveled but again the book of invasion I still believe must be seen as a mythological cycle and not a precise historical cycle and blended different myths of different tribes together.

True no matter how hard we try we will never really know unless someone invents a time machine. What we can do is take the folklore, myths and legends and apply them to the archaeological findings and use these to get as close to the truth as we can.

[thalassa]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

DNA indicates that the first settlers of the British Isles were Basque...there are a couple of studies for this, but the best compilation of data and historical/archaeological/linguistic info that I've found is the book Britain Begins, which I mentioned *somewhere* in this thread or another one.

[sionnach]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

DNA indicates that the first settlers of the British Isles were Basque...there are a couple of studies for this, but the best compilation of data and historical/archaeological/linguistic info that I've found is the book Britain Begins, which I mentioned *somewhere* in this thread or another one.

That is a very tempting idea given the Irish tales of the milesians and their origin from the Iberian peninsula but I do not think we can conclude this any more that anything else about the Celts. I remember S. Oppenheimer discussing that there is a very high percentage of the R1b haplotypes in common with the Irish, welsh, and Basque people but there are sub types that are not. I have read recently an alternative view on the genetics of R1b in Europe with the people carrying this haplotype migrating from around the alps and then down to Spain and over to Britain and Ireland. The other possibilities on why they share many of the same genetic markers may have been social (closer clan affiliation/language/other social aspects) or due to isolation of geographic barriers after the spread of the Rib haplotypes had established in the area. There is a recent survey "People of the British Isles" printed in nature that did show an interesting division of Wales into two groups by north and south suggesting two separate migrations to Wales and the influence of the Anglo/Saxon genetics compare to little of the Roman or Viking genetic influence.

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[SonoftheWaters]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

DNA indicates that the first settlers of the British Isles were Basque...there are a couple of studies for this, but the best compilation of data and historical/archaeological/linguistic info that I've found is the book Britain Begins, which I mentioned *somewhere* in this thread or another one.

That is a very tempting idea given the Irish tales of the milesians and their origin from the Iberian peninsula but I do not think we can conclude this any more that anything else about the Celts. I remember S. Oppenheimer discussing that there is a very high percentage of the R1b haplotypes in common with the Irish, welsh, and Basque people but there are sub types that are not. I have read recently an alternative view on the genetics of R1b in Europe with the people carrying this haplotype migrating from around the alps and then down to Spain and over to Britain and Ireland. The other possibilities on why they share many of the same genetic markers may have been social (closer clan affiliation/language/other social aspects) or due to isolation of geographic barriers after the spread of the Rib haplotypes had established in the area. There is a recent survey "People of the British Isles" printed in nature that did show an interesting division of Wales into two groups by north and south suggesting two separate migrations to Wales and the influence of the Anglo/Saxon genetics compare to little of the Roman or Viking genetic influence.


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Interesting that they DNA shows Spain as a point of origin. In the 5th century the Greek historian Herodotus said the Celts were "Those who lived beyond the pillars of Hercules" (Spain) and had their rising was from Danube. Wonder how much the DNA from the Danube area matches that of the Isles.

[Jembru]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

Interesting that they DNA shows Spain as a point of origin. In the 5th century the Greek historian Herodotus said the Celts were "Those who lived beyond the pillars of Hercules" (Spain) and had their rising was from Danube. Wonder how much the DNA from the Danube area matches that of the Isles.

I saw a really cool documentary on what we've learnt about our (the English and our neighbours), heritage from the DNA evidence. I don't remember the name, but I posted about it at the time in the 'what I learnt today' thread.. to a decidedly underwhelmed reception... So it's nice to see I'm not the only person who was surprised, or bothered. I had been fed the 'we're Anglo-saxons' tripe in school, so I was really interested to learn the typical Englishman is around 70% Celt!

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

I saw a really cool documentary on what we've learnt about our (the English and our neighbours), heritage from the DNA evidence. I don't remember the name, but I posted about it at the time in the 'what I learnt today' thread.. to a decidedly underwhelmed reception... So it's nice to see I'm not the only person who was surprised, or bothered. I had been fed the 'we're Anglo-saxons' tripe in school, so I was really interested to learn the typical Englishman is around 70% Celt!

I agree. As a great fan of the Anglo-Saxon period of history, I think it's quite wrong to think that's all there ever was. There were huge chunks of the country where they really never had a foothold (Wales, for example) and there was massive interaction in various ways between them and the others. Nor were the rest of the country entirely Celtic. There were a number of different races, some from the Roman occupation (and I don't mean they were Roman. There is epigraphic evidence of many different races who came over as traders, soldiers, slaves etc.)

And the Anglo-Saxons didn't actually want to wipe out everyone. There is good evidence of fusion between the various cultures and also that they managed to co-exist in many areas. The problem is with some of the headline grabbing early writers, who portrayed them entirely as savages. Even now I find myself grinding my teeth when I read about 'barbarian Anglo-Saxons' or 'civilised Romans.' It was never that simple.

Though - when asked - Mr Penry claims to be Cheddar Man.

[Jembru]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

I agree. As a great fan of the Anglo-Saxon period of history, I think it's quite wrong to think that's all there ever was. There were huge chunks of the country where they really never had a foothold (Wales, for example) and there was massive interaction in various ways between them and the others. Nor were the rest of the country entirely Celtic. There were a number of different races, some from the Roman occupation (and I don't mean they were Roman. There is epigraphic evidence of many different races who came over as traders, soldiers, slaves etc.)

And the Anglo-Saxons didn't actually want to wipe out everyone. There is good evidence of fusion between the various cultures and also that they managed to co-exist in many areas. The problem is with some of the headline grabbing early writers, who portrayed them entirely as savages. Even now I find myself grinding my teeth when I read about 'barbarian Anglo-Saxons' or 'civilised Romans.' It was never that simple.

Though - when asked - Mr Penry claims to be Cheddar Man.

I know there are different listings in Wales, but did you happen to see the Horizon, 'First Britons' on BBC2 earlier (or last night actually, as it's gone 3:30 here now)? It was fascinating. I was really surprised to see just how much we can learn about a society, who left so little behind. One thing that peaked my interest was that they said farming spread (and quite rapidly too), from the Middle East into what is now Europe, and eventually England. If societies were sharing such sophisticated information as how to farm, then it makes me all the more convinced that religious practices could have been shared too. The Celts may have been widely spread about, but I don't think they lived in bubbles, suspicious and fearful of their neighbours. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been so quick to adopt the technologies used by other tribes. It all makes me less quick to accept that clues left by, say, people in Wales, have no relation to the lives of those in Northumberland around the same time. Sure, it's not concrete evidence either, but, for lack of anything better, I wouldn't be too quick to disregard it now.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: What do we know about Celtic pre-Christian religion?

I know there are different listings in Wales, but did you happen to see the Horizon, 'First Britons' on BBC2 earlier (or last night actually, as it's gone 3:30 here now)? It was fascinating. I was really surprised to see just how much we can learn about a society, who left so little behind. One thing that peaked my interest was that they said farming spread (and quite rapidly too), from the Middle East into what is now Europe, and eventually England. If societies were sharing such sophisticated information as how to farm, then it makes me all the more convinced that religious practices could have been shared too. The Celts may have been widely spread about, but I don't think they lived in bubbles, suspicious and fearful of their neighbours. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been so quick to adopt the technologies used by other tribes. It all makes me less quick to accept that clues left by, say, people in Wales, have no relation to the lives of those in Northumberland around the same time. Sure, it's not concrete evidence either, but, for lack of anything better, I wouldn't be too quick to disregard it now.

Unfortunately I missed the program, but I have alwaysx been interested in the very ancient past - hence my book Sacred Shadows, which tries to uncover spirituality from the Ice Age. It was mind blowing research! I also did a podcast on Doggerland (which I think was covered in the same program). You can find it here : http://tylluanpenry.podbean.com/e/lo...sunken-cities/

The missing or magical islands around Britain are another fascination of mine, particular since a distant family member was actually named after one of them!