Celtic Belief The popular conception of Celtic religion is that it was dominated by druids and human sacrifice. Both played a substantial part in Celtic belief, but their importance has been exaggerated, largely by the Romans. The Romans had an almost paranoid distrust of the Celts, partly due to the near-constant threat they posed to Rome for over two centuries, until the end of the Punic Wars. The Celts were demonized and the apparent excesses of their religion were amplified for their sensational propaganda value. Certainly druids played a significant role in Celtic Society. As well as supervising religious ceremonies, they also served as archivists, diplomats, and arbiters. Among the Celts, druids were prized for their knowledge and even their healing skills rather than their ability to preform blood-curdling ritual sacrifice. Roman historians grossly over-emphasized the incidence of human sacrifice and its importance to Celtic tribes. Animal sacrifice was far more common, as indeed it was in the Roman sphere of influence. Human sacrifice seems to have been reserved for periods when the Celts themselves were threatened by external forces, such as Roman invasion. Far more widespread was the less sensational "sacrifice" of votive offerings; bronze or wooden statues or images that were cast into rivers, lakes, and bogs throughout Celtic Europe. (legend of Zelda -Honest WoodCutter) For the Celts, rivers, lakes, trees, and even rocks could hold special religious significance, and the evidence of their gods were all around them. Roman historians attempted to link the leading Celtic deities to Roman gods in an attempt to help bind the conquered Celtic peoples of Gaul, Spain and Britain to Roman beliefs. This was only partially successful, and Romano-Celts continued to worship their old gods throughout the Roman period, and beyond, until their conversion to Christianity. The Christian religious calendar itself was adapted to conform to the Celtic one, and even today the traces of annual Celtic ceremonies can be found. Much of the Celtic belief system was based on the annual cycle of seasons, harvest, and movements of the sun, since it was an agrarian society. Long before the Celts the indigenous peoples of western Europe governed their lives by seasonal changes. They were also aware of the cycles of the moon, sun and the major celestial bodies. Evidence from stone circles such as Stonehenge suggests that cosmology was widely practiced. The Celts further developed the cosmological discoveries made by earlier peoples. The Coligny Calendar is the earliest known Celtic calendar, and dates from the first century BC. Of Gallic origins, it consists of a series of engraved bronze plates, inscribed with Gallo-Celtic inscriptions. Since its discovery in 1897 (anagram of 1987 hmm), historians have studied it very extensively and, by combining this with other sources, researchers can understand how the Celtic people used their calendar and linked it to religion, farming cycles, and solar or lunar events. The Coligny calendar was based on a 30-year cycle, confirming the observation made by the historian Roman Pliny. Comparisons with other calendar systems from older Indo-European cultures suggest a relationship between the Celtic version and these earlier systems. The Celtic calendar was certainly more advanced and complex than the Roman Julian one that replaced it. The annual cycle centered around the month of midsummer (Samon) and that of winter (Giamon). This divided the year into a light period (after midsummer) and a black period (after midwinter). Months were also labeled as either Good (Mat) or bad (Anm). Each month consisted of 29 or 30 nights - The Celts measured by nights rather than days as we do today. Pliny suggests that the beginning or end of a month followed the lunar cycle (either a full moon or no moon). The months themselves followed a 62 month (or five-year) cycle rather than a 12 month one, which was repeated six times in the cycle of the calendar. Cycle of life and death. The yearly cycle was a crucial point of reference for an agrarian community, and festivals marked the transition from one season to the next. Samhain(linked with death, and not to be confused with Samon) is the period now celebrated as Halloween. Beltane (now Mayday) represented youth and love. Midsummer and midwinter also formed crucial phases of the calendar, and marked the start of the light or dark phases of the annual cycle. Early Irish literature provides details of the four main seasonal festivals in the Celtic year, marking important points in the annual agrarian cycle or to simply mark the passage of the four seasons. Samhain was seen as a time when spirits roamed among the living, giving rise to the Halloween mythos of today while Beltane marked the beginning of summer, when livestock was released to pasture. Light or fire has been associated with this festival, and a ninth century Irish chronicler recorded that during the Beltane cattle were driven between two bonfires to symbolically ward off disease. Spring was marked by the festival of Imbolc (Feb 1) and marked the start of the lambing season, while Lunghnasadh was an autumnal harvest festival celebrated on August 1st, and was celebrated by gaming and feasting. Imbolc is still marked by a Celtic New Year ceremony in BURGHEAD in notheast SCOTLAND, while Harvest Festival and Halloween have Celtic roots. The Coligny calender provides a timetable for religious festivals which suggests that the festivals celebrated by the Irish in the Dark Ages had also been marked by the Gauls in the first Century BC. Following the Roman conquest of Gaul in the mid-first century BC, the Roman calendar was adopted, although it was sometimes adapted to incorporate local festivals. A similar abandonment of the Celtic calendar took place in Roman Britain. Another Romano-Celtic development was the adoption of the Roman astrological symbols in preference to the OLDER CELTIC ONES.
Labels: Celtic, Metaphysical
