The Celtic God Lugh

Episode 6 The Celtic Religion and Druids

The Celtic World

Dr Jennifer Paxton (2018)

Film Review

Most information about the Celtic Gauls comes from Greek historian Posodonius, Roman historian Pliny the Elder and Roman conqueror Gaul Julius Casar.

According to Posodonius, the Celts were extremely fixated on “treasure,” especially gold, and frequently offered gold as a sacrifice to their gods, often by  dropping it into lakes. French peasants were still depositing precious objects in their lakes in the Middle Ages. After the Roman conquest, Roman emperors would sell off Gaul’s lakes to wealthy landowners, who drained them to access any treasure the Gauls deposited by the Gauls.

Julius Caesar wrote of the Celts’ special connection to birds and severed heads and their belief in reincarnation. The Celts offered special prayers to birds to eat locusts that infested their crops, In some regions, their priests allegedly drank from the skulls of conquered enemies.

Ancient Druids served as lawyers and judges, as well as priests, in Gaul, Britain and Ireland. However there’s no evidence there were ever Druid priests in Celtic Spain. Caesar wrote that Druids went to Britain to study and were exempt from combat and war taxes. He believed the Druids were the primary force behind Gallic resistance and deliberately destroyed their centers of learning.

Required to train for any years, Druids mastered numerous sacred texts by memory in the absence of written language. They played an important role in choosing auspicious dates for battles and other tribal activities. According to Pliny the elder, the Druids only practiced their religion in oak groves and were devoted to mistletoe.*

There are early Greek and Roman records of Druids sacrificing war prisoners to the gods. According to Posodonius the Druids used the slaughter of human victims (the blood splatter, how they fell, etc) to predict the future. Many people who have been ritually killed have been recovered from former Celtic territories (as well non-Celtic territories, such as Scandinavia). Posodonius describes a community of female Druids on Gaul’s west coast at the mouth of the Loire River.

The Celtic calendar was distinctly different from that of Rome, with an eight-day week and days commencing at sunset rather than sunrise. The Roman calendar (adopted by most of the Western world) divides the year into seasons by solstice an equinox dates.

Celtic seasons started on February 1 (with lambing), May 1 (when animals are sent to summer pasture), August 1st (harvest) and November 1 (when animals return from summer pasture and are slaughtered for winter). Since the Celtic day began at sunset, November 1 (our October 31) was associated with fairy folk and remnants of the gods “walking abroad.”

Caesar claimed the Gauls worshiped the Mercury, which Paxton disputes. Late written inscriptions (transcribing the Celtic language into Roman script) refer to the god Lugh, the god of lightening, storms, war, blacksmithing and poetry; the horse goddess Epona; and the fertility goddess Brigid, the origin of the place name Britain.

*Mistletoe was reputed to make barren cattle fertile and to counteract all poisons.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5701024/5701036