The figures beneath each entry give reference numbers for the Bibliography
# 701: The symbol that we call the Celtic cross was known to the Hindus as the Kiakra, a sign of sexual union: the cross (phallus) within the circle (yoni).
# 687: The seventh century saw the introduction of a monument similar in intent to the old inscribed stones, but wholly different in origin and craftsmanship from them. The cross-shaft in the lonely, picturesque churchyard atBewcastle on the Cumberland Fells is cited as the first known example and, for all we know, is the original of the whole series. The two striking differences between this type of memorial and the earlier sort in the west are (1) that they are the product of Christianity as re-introduced by Augustine among the Angles and Saxons and not of the Celtic Church, and (2) that they are the work of highly trained craftsmen. Who these craftsmen were and in what country they learned their art is quite unknown. The mystery is heightened by the fact that these crosses are confined with one exception to the Northern area, and (of that date) are not known elsewhere.
From this source, however, they spread to the whole of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The exception mentioned is Reculver, where a similar cross was seen by Leland in the sixteenth century, standing within the old seventh century Saxon church between the nave and chancel. The fragments of this same cross are now kept (but not well kept) in the neighbouring church at Hillberough. In Ireland development came late, but nowhere else is the high cross seen in such magnificence. The principal examples are at Monasterboice and Kells. In Wales, development was also late. Here crosses were made elaborate, but were never of first-rate craftsmanship. In the North, the principal example is the Maen Achwyfan at Whitford (in Flintshire) which is preserved by the Office of Works.
# 687 - 701
The classical writers felt rightly that the Celtic idea of immortality was something altogether different from the Egyptian conception. It was both loftier and more realistic; it implied a true persistence of the living man, as he was at present, in all his human relations.
# 562
There is little doubt that Celtic mythology, particularly that of Ireland, tells of the gods of the Celts. The myths themselves speak of Celtic belief in their deities and, although it is impossible to be certain how strong was Christian belief at the time they were written down, it is possible that a good proportion of this mythology is directly derived from the sacred lore of the Druids. In no way do either the references to Celtic beliefs by Greek and Roman writers or the archaeological evidence conflict with modern interpretations of the mythology. Provided that too rigid a rapprochement is avoided all three sources may be made to provide material for the study of the beliefs of the Celts.
All the evidence points to the existence of comparatively localised cults and it is rare to find deities worshipped over wide areas. The cult of Lug is exceptional. Place and tribal names hint at his cult in Spain, Switzerland and Gaul as well as in Ireland. The restricted distribution of Romano-Celtic inscriptions and the existence of eponymous tribal deities suggest local tribal interpretations of chieftain-gods and mother-goddesses, although the latter frequently enjoyed a wider distribution than those of male gods. The mythology itself cannot be taken as evidence that there was normally a widespread belief in specific gods. This is not to say that similar gods were not worshipped under different names among different tribal groups. The strongly marked aristocratic nature of Celtic society in the days of independence suggests that the mythology relates to the gods of the aristocracy and it is not certain either how far the ordinary peasant shared in these beliefs, or how far he was allowed to participate in ritual observances. The sorceress, Mongfhinn, to whom 'the women and common people adressed their prayers' is the only figure in mythology who appears to have been definitely worshipped by the ordinary people. The large number of single inscriptions from RomanoCeltic times may refer to similar popular cults centred on very localised Genii Loci who were frequently associated with a more primitive worship of minor natural features. Among the common people, too, there were many of pre-Celtic descent to whom the cult-practices of earlier times may have proved adequate. To such people the aristocratic gods of the Tuatha de Danann may have been too unapproachable, even if access had been allowed them. It seems likely that the secret lore of the Druids would have been denied to such people. Even the Celtic aristocracy seems to have been impressed by the burial places of earlier inhabitants, so much so that they were brought into their myths. To the peasantry in close contact with the soil such relics of earlier cults, in which their ancestors perhaps participated, may have seemed more potent than the gods of their newly arrived overlords. As part of the earliest European literature after Greek and Latin, Celtic Mythology has a value over and above that of a source for ancient beliefs. In it is a rich store of priceless evidence for the way of life of the Celtic aristocracy, their hopes and fears. It is an important part of the record of a people who have made no small contribution to the European heritage, in no way diminished by its lack of general recognition.
# 428: Although the Celtic myths are relatively familiar to us, we know virtually nothing about Celtic gods and even less about the cults practised throughout the druidic area. In a passage on the Pharsalia which has given rise to much comment, Lucan mentions 'cruel Teutates, horrible Esus and Taranis whose altar is as bloody as that of the Scythian Diana'. Lucan, however, was very much of a sycophant to Julius Caesar, and it is only to be expected that he should have emphasised the savagery of Gallic cults so as to justify the massacres ordered by the bald dictator and his successors, and their policy of systematically exterminating druidism. The manuscript of Lucan's work is covered with notes and comments by a zealous medieval christian, who also had something to gain from pointing out the barbarity of paganism; and it is from these that we learn that men were hung from trees and torn into pieces in honour of Esus, that men were immersed in basins until they asphyxiated in honour of Teutates and that the victims sacrific to Taranis were burnt in the hollow trunk of trees. The last of these three confirms Caesar's words about certain tribes who placed their condemned men in huge cane dummies and burnt them (Gallic Wars, VI, 17). Anxious to demonstrate his knowledgeability, Lucan's commentator identifies Teutates with Mercury, Esus with Mars and Taranis with Dispater, whereas Gallo-Roman inscriptions identify Teutates with Mars, Esus with Mercury and Taranis with Jupiter. Obviously this kind of discrepancy is very little help. And then there is Caesar (VI, 18) who says of the Gauls that 'the god they reverence most is Mercury... next to him they reverence Apollo, Mars, Jupiter and Minerva.'
Up until now all commentators on Gallic religion have based their arguments on Lucan, Caesar and the many anthropomorphic images of supposedly 'Gallo-Roman' gods. There is considerable contradiction between these sources and yet it is they which lie behind recent attempts to classify Celtic divinities in some rational way. Interesting though such attempts may be, they rest on the false premise that all Roman or Gallo-Roman sources can be totally relied upon. In fact, the contradictions are evidence that even in Gallo-Roman days there was confusion about Celtic gods. It would seem that the Romans knew next to nothing about them but being unwilling to admit as much blithely identified any one god with any other. More seriously still, it would appear that from Caesar's time onwards, the Romans did not even know about their own gods any more.
# 382 - 428
In his book WHERE TROY ONCE STOOD, Iman Wilkens suggests that the combatants in the Trojan War must have been Celts, and it is not only because of the names of the persons and places involved, but also because the two territories correspond to a large extent, bearing in mind that not necessarily all Celtic peoples were involved in the war. As regards the Achaeans from continental Europe, it can be assumed that they were all Celts, in view of the apparent unity of language and religion, though there were some Celts, notably the Egyptians and the Libyans (from southwest France), who did not participate. In the Troad, however, the demographic situation was different. While the inhabitants of southeast England were Celts, their allies, mainly from Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, were probably pre-Celtic peoples (but already converted to Celtic religion) who spoke different and mutually incomprehensible languages, as Homer mentions on several occasions, for example: But for the Trojans, even as ewes stand in throngs past counting in the court of a man of much substance to be milked of their white milk, and bleat without ceasing as they hear the voices of their lambs: even so arose the clamour of the Trojans throughout the wide host; for they had not all like speech or one language, but their tongues were mingled, and they were a folk summoned from many lands. (Ill. IV, 433-438)
The pre-Celtic peoples are considered to be the builders of the megalithic monuments found all over northern and western Europe. They are also thought to be the first peoples to have been led by the Druids, who worshipped the sun at sites such as Stonehenge in England. It would appear that the Celts adopted and continued the Druidic tradition, which was in fact a much more ancient Indo-European tradition close to that of the Brahmins. Through displacing or absorbing the neolithic peoples, the Celts established themselves over the greater part of Europe during the second and first millenium BC. A comparison of two of several maps in Iman Wilken's book shows their expansion towards Ireland, the Celtiberic peninsula, the southern half of France, Italy, the Balkans, Greece (which during the Roman Empire was called the Prefecture of Illyricum after the Celtic Illyrians), and even Turkey, while they lost ground in Scandinavia and Germany. Not surprisingly, many western European place-names were given to the new places to which Celts migrated. For example, the Galates, originating in Gaul as their name indicates, who invaded Turkey, must be at the origin of this country's present name, taken from the village of Turkeije, near the left bank of the Schelde mouth. The Gauls also gave their name to Galicia in northwest Spain and Galicia in Poland. The expansion seems to be mainly due to their population growth.
The Celtic alliance dominated Europe in the way the Roman Empire was to do much later, the difference being that the Celts were united by a kind of confederation based on consensus, while the Romans relied on centralized political and military power. The Celtic alliance was nevertheless a force to be reckoned with, as the Romans experienced, for example, when Rome was sacked by the Celts in 387 BC. A few centuries later, the Druids of Gaul were to conspire against the Romans with the Druids of the Galates in Turkey. In view of the cohesion of the Celtic peoples and the effiency of the Druids in political and military coordination, it is not so difficult to understand how it was possible to unite the peoples of western continental Europe to wage war in England. It was certainly there that the war took place, for according to Thucydides, as we have seen, Greece at that time was inhabited by a great number of tribes, with little or no contact with one another, living at mere subsistence level.
# 730
Diodorus Siculus has given us a comprehensive description of Celtic armour and weapons: 'For arms they have man-sized shields decorated in a manner peculiar to them. Some of these have projecting figures in bronze, skilfully wrought not only for decoration but also for protection. They wear bronze helmets with large projecting figures which give the wearer the appearance of enormous size. In some cases horns are attached so as to form one piece, in others the foreparts of birds or quadrupeds worked in relief... Some of them have iron breastplates, wrought in chain, while others are satisfied with the arms Nature has given them and fight naked. Instead of the short sword they carry long swords held by a chain of iron or bronze and hanging along their right flank. Some of them have gold - or silver - plated belts round their tunics. They brandish spears which are called Lanciae and which have iron heads a cubit in length and even more, and a little less than two palms in breadth: for their swords are not shorter than the spears of others, and the heads of their spears are longer than the swords of others. Some of these are forged straight, others are twisted and have a spiral form for their whole length, so that the blow may not only cut the flesh but also tear it in pieces and so that the withdrawal of the spear may lacerate the wound.'
# 556
The initial C of Celtic may be pronounced either soft (s) or hard (k) Inasmuch as the Greeks, whose sources were oral rather than written, spelt their word for the Celts KELTOI and inasmuch as c in Modern Irish and Welsh is without exception hard, we can assume that the Celts themselves pronounced this initial consonant as a k.
# 237
Never inhabited by a single pure and homogenous race. - Greek type of civilisation preserved by Celtica. - Art of enamelling originated in Celtica. - The Druids formed the sovran power in Celtica. - Brigit (Dana) widely worshiped goddess in Celtica.
# 562
The country we call France today, was called Argos by the Celts in Homer's time and subsequently Gallia by the Celtic Gauls in Roman times. To the Romans, 'Gallia' sounded like 'Land of the Roosters', as Gallus is Latin for rooster (and, of course, the cock has become the emblem of France). The present name of the country stems from the Franks, a Teutonic tribe who invaded the territory around 500 AD. As to the people of central Europe, they never called themselves Germans nor their country Germany, which is probably not a German word at all. According to the Italo-American linguist Mario Pei, it comes from a Celtic root meaning 'neighbouring', seemingly akin to the Latin Germanicus meaning 'having the same parents' (whence the English 'germane'). The Germans themselves call their country Deutschland, meaning 'Land of the people' from the Gothic root Deudisko, meaning 'people'. The French name for that country, Allemagne, is a reminder of the Alemani, a tribe living in the Black Forest in Roman times. Germany was often equated with Prussia, which is a contraction of Borussia, the Russians themselves being of Swedish Viking descent. They were called Rus for the first time by an Arab diplomat, Ibn Fadlan, who arrived in Russia in 922 AD.
# 730
Countless studies on European pre-history, ancient languages and religions have brought to light a surprising number of similarities between cultures of the various peoples that lived in the vast area from Ireland to India and from Scandinavia to North Africa. It also appears that the Druids had much in common with the Shamans of Eastern Europe and the Brahmins of India. In Iman Wilkens' book Where Troy Once Stood we find many names that are identical in East and West. Cultural exchange over such great distances must have taken place both via the Mediterranean and over land via the Russian plains. The first route was taken by the 'Sea Peoples' who must have been Celts from the Atlantic coastal areas, who arrived in the countries around the Eastern Mediterranean around 1500 BC. Conversely, peoples from the Levant sailed west to venture out in the Atlantic in search for tin and amber. The Celts gave new names to existing places in the East including a name for the newly discovered continent: Asia, after a daughter of Oceanus, while Persia was named after Perseus and India after Indus. Other Europeans were in contact with India and Persia via the land routes from the north as evidenced by the origin of the Hindu religion, as described in the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, India was invaded around 1500 BC by European peoples living in Siberia and Russia who called themselves Aryans. They brought with them their language, Vedic Sanskrit (which is much older than classical Sanskrit), the horse and the Vedic religion. Hinduism then developed slowly from the synthesis of the sacrificial cults of the invaders with the religions of the various indigenous peoples. According to the same source, Iran had known even earlier contacts with the northern invaders, as evidenced by a near-kinship between Sanskrit and the earliest Iranian language. In Europe, Sanskrit grammar and word roots were also very similar to those of the 'younger' classical languages, such as Greek, Latin, Gothic and Celtic. Linguists therefore classify virtually all the languages which were spoken between Ireland and India as 'Indo-European' languages, which include the Semitic languages but exclude those whose structure, verb conjugations and word roots are of entirely different origin, such as Basque, Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish. The modern language which is closest to Sanskrit is, according to Mario Pei (The Story of Language), Lithuanian, spoken on the Baltic coast. Cultural exchanges between West and East could have taken place here as in Homer's time the influence of the Druids extended as far east as Poland. West Europeans still use many Sanskrit words today, such as Zodiac, Paradise, Karma, Shakra or Mandala, while many are familiar with 'oriental' notions such as reincarnation and karma which may well be of European origin.
# 730
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