RELIGIOUS RITUAL

When it comes to the ritual aspects of pre-Christian Celtic religion, archaeology constitutes our main source of evidence. Archaeological investigations have given us knowledge about many places of worship, but only limited knowledge about what actually took place there.

Two aspects of Celtic ritual that have generated a lot of interest in the past, and appear to continue to do so, are the evidence for a cult of the head and the question of druids. Both will be dealt with briefly here.

As mentioned above, the intellectual emphasis of Celtic culture would seem to fit well with a cult of the head. It is clear that representations of human heads figure prominently in Celtic art, and archaeology supports the notion that heads were held in high esteem, as both skulls and sculptures of heads are found at various settlement sites as well as at places of worship. Some classical commentators refer to the headhunting habits of the Celts, notably Strabo who, in his Geographica [Geography], from around 20 CE, says that the Celts hang the heads of their enemies from the necks of their horses and nail them to their doorposts. He further says that the heads of enemies of high repute were embalmed and carefully preserved (Strabo Geography 4.4.5). This is echoed in some of the Irish heroic tales from the Ulster Cycle, where warriors cut off the heads of opponents they have overcome and carry them around as trophies. Exactly what lies behind this custom is difficult to grasp; to say anything more than that, at some point and in some places, the head clearly played a significant role in Celtic religious thinking would be to read into the scant evidence interpretations founded on extremely narrow bases of evidence.

The issue of the druids is an even more precarious one, because the evidence for their existence in Celtic societies comes exclusively from classical authors.

These points seem, as far as can be gauged, to be valid for Celtic culture during extended periods and in many different geographical locations. That they were expressed in different ways at different times, in different languages and through different stories, rituals and structures would seem a reasonable assumption, but one that is as hard to prove as it is to disprove. It should not be assumed that Celtic tribes from different locations and periods would necessarily recognize each other as “fellow Celts” in spite of important cultural commonalities; from the literature one gets the impression that they would be much more likely to start arguing about who was more “Celtic”, if that were the issue, or about who was the better, the stronger, the cleverer and the more beautiful, and that they could indeed kill each other over such arguments. Undoubtedly, the tribal attitude partially accounts for why Celtic culture, with its lack of central organization, remained diffused and did not turn into an empire. But the very same attitude may also account for some of the tenacity and virtuosity that has allowed some aspects of the ancient Celtic world-view to persist, though in obviously changed and adapted forms, into modern times. This very adaptability may well have played its part in making the original concepts obscure to us now.

SUGGESTED READING

Brunaux, J.-L. 1988. The Celtic Gauls: Gods, Rites and Sanctuaries. London.

Green, M. 1995. Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers. London.

Green, M. [1986] 2004. The Gods of the Celts. Stroud.

Maier, B. 1997. Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture. Woodbridge.

Ritari, K. & A. Berholm (eds) 2008. Approaches to Religion and Mythology in Celtic Studies. Newcastle.

Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in 58-50 BCE to Tacitus’s ethnographic work in 98 CE. It is from these texts and the observations or reading of their authors that we gain the insight we have on the earliest of the Germanic gods and practices. How far their narratives should be taken as being trustworthy accounts of the state of Germanic religion is questionable as they were both writing with certain audiences and specific aims and concerns in mind. They do, however, give a starting point from which we can correlate further archaeological information and arrive at a fuller picture.