Uoxtlos ambi Keltûs Galatîsc – A Word about the Celts and Gauls

Celts and Gauls: Matters of Terminology and Identity: Before we go any further, we need to address one of the simplest and yet most divisive questions found in Celtic Polytheist circles. To be sure, we won’t be able to come up with a final answer here, but we can at least come up with very provisional answers for the purposes of this column. Every few months, the Celtic Polytheist internet is convulsed by yet another debate on the question of the meaning of the word “Celtic” and of the Celtic identity. The issue goes to the heart of modern Celtic Polytheism, because the answer to the question may, depending on whom one asks, have to do with who has the real right to practice various kinds of Celtic spirituality. Questions of ethnicity, nationalism, colonization, and cultural appropriation are involved. The exact nuances of the issue are complex, and there is no consensus of opinion, even among those actually native to modern Celtic countries.

We cannot hope to solve those issues here. That would take a whole book, and even then no minds would be changed. What we can do is use such scholarly consensus as exists to put down tentative and provisional definitions of some terms, so that this column uses a consistent and understandable vocabulary.

According to Celtic scholar Bettina Arnold, modern Celtic studies scholars assign the word Celtic a primarily linguistic significance. To them, it means the groups of historic peoples known to have spoken a Celtic language. Among these clearly are the inhabitants of the modern Celtic countries – Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man.¹ Arnold further contends that archaeologists, however, give the term has a different significance, denoting an ancient people sharing a common material culture and a distinctive art style. This definition includes the peoples of Central Europe and the British Isles who shared this complex, beginning in the late Halstatt period, and continuing down to the Roman conquest.² Celtic linguist Raimund Karl has a related view, holding that the Keltike, as he calls it, denotes a cultural continuum linking various peoples in Iron Age and modern Europe. Among the structuring factors of this cultural continuum are the presence of Celtic languages and of a related material culture.³

These definitions share much, including a focus on two sources of Celticity – the presence of Celtic languages and, in the archaeological context, of a shared material culture. For our purposes here, we will use the definition that “Celts” are effectively two groups of people united in a shared cultural and linguistic continuum. Modern Celts are those who either currently speak, or whose ancestors recently spoke a Celtic language. These include the inhabitants of the six modern Celtic countries: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man. Ancient Celts are those who participated in the Halstatt and LaTene archaeological horizons, and who, for the most part, also spoke ancient Celtic languages, among them the ancestors of the modern Celtic languages, and extinct languages like Gaulish.

To make this definition work, we need to define what we mean by Celtic languages. According to archaeologist and Celticist Barry Cunliffe, the Celtic languages are one division of the Indo-European family of languages, most closely related to the Italic languages. Today spoken on the Atlantic fringe of Europe, they were once spoken over a large area of the Continent, from ancient Iberia, through Gaul, the Alpine region, down the Danube Valley, and into the Balkans.⁴ According to Cunliffe, the Celtic languages are divided into two groups – the Continental Celtic languages and the Insular Celtic languages. The Continental Celtic languages were spoken on the European mainland. All are now extinct, except insofar as modern people are reviving some of them. The Insular Celtic languages were, and with the exception of Breton still are, spoken in the British Isles. They are divided into two groups, Q-Celtic and P-Celtic. The modern Q-Celtic or Gaelic languages include Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx. The P-Celtic, or Brythonic, languages include Welsh, Cornish, and Breton.⁵

Celtic linguist David Stifter agrees with Cunliffe, seeing the Celtic languages as one of the 12 attested branches of the Indo-European family. He likewise divides the Celtic languages into Continental and Insular, though he notes that some scholars have made the division into P-Celtic and Q-Celtic primary, which is a perfectly legitimate alternative view.⁶ Stifter includes a fascinating list of ancient Celtic languages in his discussion, all spoken at the time of the maximum extent of the Celtic languages:

1.Celtiberian (spoken in Iberia, today Spain),

2. Transalpine Gaulish (spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Austria, the Danube Valley, and the Balkans),

3. Cisalpine Gaulish (spoken in northern Italy),

4. Galatian (spoken by Celtic migrants to Anatolia, today Turkey),

5. Lepontic (also spoken in northern Italy),

6. Lusitanian (spoken in roughly Portugal, and only para-Celtic, with significant divergences),

7. British (spoken in England, Wales, and Southern Scotland, ancestral to the modern Celtic languages of Welsh, Cornish, and Breton),

8. Goidelic (spoken in Ireland, ancestral to Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx), and

9. Pictish (spoken in northeast Scotland)⁷

This brings up the question of who we mean by the Gauls. Now that the Celts have been defined, the Gauls need to be defined more specifically. For our purposes here, the Gauls, then, are the ancient Celtic peoples who spoke the Gaulish language, including both Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaulish, as well as Galatian. We can see from the discussion of languages above, that they inhabited much of Europe, including France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Austria, western Hungary, Slovenia, the modern Czech Republic, and Slovakia. They eventually expanded by conquest to include the rest of Hungary, Croatia, northern Italy, the Banat, Romania, Bulgaria, and central Turkey, among other regions. It should be noted that they never formed a unified empire, but were divided into many independent tribes who often fought each other. “Gaulish” identity was always subordinate to tribal identity.

Nonetheless, they did have a name for themselves, according to Celtic linguist Kim McCone, in his ground-breaking study of the subject. According to McCone, the term Κελτος is first used in Herodotus to refer the inhabitants of Europe north of the Greek Colony at Massilia. Julius Caesar, in his Gallic War, clearly recognized Celtae as the native Gaulish term for the inhabitants of Gaul.⁸ Based on this and some linguistic analysis, McCone is able to reconstruct *Keltoi as the native term used by the Continental Celtic peoples to refer to themselves.⁹ McCone derives the name from *klitos (the Hidden One), a likely by-name for the deity called Dis Pater by Caesar, from whom the Gauls apparently claimed descent.*Keltos would thus mean roughly “Offspring/Descendants of the Hidden One”.¹⁰

McCone also analyzes the word Galatis, used by the Greeks to refer to the Gauls, and thought by many to be a self-designation. Galatis makes a somewhat later first appearance in Greek than Keltos, but is firmly attested by early 3^rd century BC.¹¹ According to McCone, it is probably derived from a native Celtic word, itself derived from the root galā, having the primary meaning of “can, to be (physically) able to, have the power to”, but also having connotations of “warlike ardor, hatred, ferocity, enmity”. A galatis, then, is someone endowed with galā.¹² McCone’s take on the matter is that galatis refers to an unmarried member of the warband, who fights in a state of rage and ecstasy.¹³ This kind of mystic, ecstatic warrior is an old part of several Indo-European traditions, the Celtic included. Probably the best known example was the Nordic berserker. Another example of this heritage of warrior frenzy is found in the Iliad, where battle frenzy is referred to as λνσσα (lyssa), probably referring to “wolfish rage”, the warrior becoming like a wolf or predator. Still another example, of great importance to us here, is the warrior frenzy of the hero Cú Chulainn in the Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, where it is referred to as ríastrad. Here, we see the physical and psychic transformation of the warrior described in great detail, the reversal of the joints within the skin, one eye squinting to a tiny size while the other bulges out, the hair standing on end, a fierce light appearing about his head, and so on. Indeed, light and heat were important features of ecstatic warriors in several Indo-European traditions, suggesting that they were general by-products of galā.¹⁴ Be that as it may, McCone argues that the term came into Greek as a result of the Celtic invasions of Italy and Greece. Given that those invasions were likely led by warbands, with young, unmarried warriors prominently represented among them, it was natural enough for the Greeks to pick up this word and apply to it the Keltoi as a whole. It is important, however, to understand that therefore galatis is not an ethnonym or ethnic self-designation.¹⁵

The Laton term gallus, also meaning “a Gaul” is analyzed by McCone in terms of the word galatis, but in this case he proposes a complex derivation from Etruscan to explain the peculiar features of the particular Latin word.¹⁶

The most important result of McCone’s study is that we are left with only a single native self-designation for the ancient Gaulish Celtic people. The ancient Gauls called themselves Keltoi, a term that in ancient times was not used to refer to the inhabitants of Britain or Ireland. In this column, we will use these terms in the following way: the modern Celt and Celtic will be used to refer to the Celtic peoples in general, using both the meanings advanced by Celtic studies and by archaeologists. The term Keltos/Keltoi will be used to refer specifically to the Gaulish-speaking Celts of the Continent. It will be treated as synonymous with the modern term Gaul, which we will also use, as most people know what it means, though the Keltoi themselves did not in fact use it.

Modern Gaulish Polytheist Self-Designations: Modern Gaulish Polytheists tend to use various terms for themselves and for what they are doing. The most common and straightforward, in English, is to call the tradition Gaulish Polytheism and those who follow it Gaulish Polytheists. Gaulish Paganism is perhaps a broader term. Once upon a time, the terms were synonymous, but they have since diverged. The term Gaulish Reconstructionist has a more specific meaning, which I follow C. Lee Vermeers in using to refer to the use of the reconstructionist methodology – the use of the best available modern research and scholarly methods to as much as possible reconstruct accurately what early Pagans really thought and did. While some Gaulish Polytheists are also reconstructionists, others are not, and still others are only to a degree. Many modern Gaulish Polytheists are also modern Druids, and many others are not. It should only be noted here that modern Druidism has its own history and to some extent community, centered less on belief than on the use of typically modern Druid symbols and rituals.

Another term for specifically Gaulish Polytheism is Senobessus, a modern coinage taken from the Gaulish seno-, meaning old, and bessus, meaning custom, thus “The Old Custom”. The term is deliberately designed to be similar in sense and meaning to terms like Forn Sed, used for Scandinavian Heathenry. I coined it on September 10, 2011, at 12:58 a.m., in a conversation on Facebook with Cainogenos, the founder of the Gaulish Polytheism Community on Facebook. He put the term into a poll in the community, which it won a couple days later. Cainogenos then used the term in a number of posts and egroups for a while, but it never quite caught on. I still like it. A different term was coined by Condêwios, another former leader of the Gaulish Polytheism Community. He suggested Celtocrabion, meaning simply “Celtic Religion”. Still other folks have suggested Creddîmâ Celticâ, which I dislike on all kinds of levels, to be honest, including the Christian-derived notion that religion is primarily belief, and the lack of distinction between Gaulishness and broader Celticity, which to me smacks of appropriation.

In the German speaking world, the Celtic Reconstructionist community, most of whom are in fact followers of Gaulish traditions and deities, use the term Celtoi to refer to themselves. This obviously is another spelling of Keltoi. Except for an inadvertent, unfortunate, and unavoidable resemblance to the English term Celtic, the term is well-nigh perfect. This resemblance does not exist in German, by the way. Celtoi does not especially resemble the German word for the Celts, Kelten.

The term Galatis, in various forms, is also still in use by some Gaulish Polytheists, especially in the Portuguese-speaking world. I rather favor a version of it. Although it is a-historical, it has the advantage of preserving a unique and recognizable form that cannot be confused with “Celts”. It therefore does not appropriate Celticity, which is important, at least to me. There is, moreover, the possibility that the term for “warband warrior” did in fact at some point come to be used by at least some Gaulish-speaking tribes as a name for themselves, although we cannot prove it. The plural form of this word would be Galaties or Galatîs, by the way.

Out of respect for the modern Celtic peoples, when discussing modern Gaulish Polytheism in this column, we will mostly use the term “Gaulish Polytheism”, and “Gaulish Polytheists” when writing in English, though other terms will occasionally make an appearance, including especially Keltoi/Celtoi and maybe Galatîs.

We need to be careful in all of this to stress that Gaulish Polytheism is a wholly reconstructed tradition. The Gauls no longer exist as an ethnic or cultural group. There is no unbroken Gaulish lineage, no cultural continuity. There is only what we can reconstruct from the best sources we have. At the same time, the modern Celtic people do still exist, do preserve their culture today, and are struggling for linguistic survival. We must not allow our reconstruction to become a cultural colonization of the existing Celtic peoples. We must be careful not to claim labels like “Indigenous Celtic” or “Indigenous European”, or to argue with them about what constitutes authentic practice. They exist, modern Celtic culture exists, and we must not harm it in our own efforts.

Another nasty little danger we must put to rest at the outset is that of race. There is no place is Gaulish Polytheism for racism or racial theories. Race is a modern concept, part of the process of European expansion and global colonization that began post-1500. In particular, it did not exist as part of any premodern Celtic culture. The Gauls did have a concept of some kind of common relationship among them, but there is no evidence that was anything like racial identity in any sense. Some myths preserved in Greco-Roman texts would seem to argue that they regarded themselves as a mixed people, made up of one part indigenous Celts, one part colonists from the islands in the ocean, and one part migrants from across the Rhine. Racial theories are thus particularly problematic when applied to Gaulish Polytheism. This is doubly so because Gaulish “blood”, to the extent it can even be said to have existed, is from a culture that became extinct so far in the past that it is distributed throughout the global population. While there are no doubt people with more “Gaulish blood” than others, everyone has some. Everyone has the kind of blood right to practice Gaulish Polytheism that the racists go on about. Anyone who is called by the Gaulish Gods, Spirits, and Ancestors is welcome. There is no reason to exclude anyone.

I must also be careful to stress that in no way does this column speak for anyone but me. In particular, I cannot and do not speak for the modern Celtic peoples. Nothing here represents any modern Celtic tradition, Pagan or otherwise. It cannot be used to gain access to Irish or any other modern Celtic culture. You cannot become “Celtic” by reading it or practicing anything I will write about. It will represent my own reconstruction of the culture of the ancient Gauls, adapted for modern practice. It will represent nothing more or less than that. Other Gaulish Polytheists have their own ideas which resemble mine in some ways, differ in various particulars, but are still valid. While I use some of their ideas and they use some of mine, in both cases only with proper attribution, they do not speak for me nor I for them. Still, I think readers will find that this column will represent a good introduction to Gaulish practice, and is a perfectly valid approach, as valid as any other, and reasonably well backed by the sources. That is really all that anything of this type can offer.

1 Arnold, Bettina and Gibson, D. Blair. “Beyond the Mists: forging an ethnological approach to Celtic studies”, in Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State: the evolution of complex social systems in prehistoric Europe/ edited by Bettina Arnold and D. Blair Gibson – New York: Cambridge University Press, c1995, p 2

2 Arnold, “Beyond the Mist”, p. 2

3 Karl, Raimund, “*butācos, *wossos, *geystlos, *ambactosCeltic Socio-economic Organisation in the European Iron Age†” Studia Celtica 40 (2006), 21-41.

4 The Ancient Celts/Barry Cunliffe – New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p 21.

5 Cunliffe, The Ancient Celts, pp 21-22

6 Sengoidelc: Old Irish for Beginners/David Stifter – Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, c2006 pp1-2

7 Stifter, Sengoidelc, p. 3

8 McCone, Kim, “Greek Κελτος and Γαλατις, Latin Gallus ‘Gaul’” in Die Sprache, 46, 1 (2006), p 94

9 McCone, “Κελτος”, p 94

10 McCone, “Κελτος”, p. 94-95

11 McCone, “Κελτος”, p 95

12 McCone, “Κελτος”, p. 98

13 McCone, “Κελτος”, p. 102

14 McCone, “Κελτος:, p. 98-102

15 McCone, “Κελτος”, p. 102

16 McCone, “Κελτος”, p. 103-107

Reading List

Segomâros Widugeni in Nemeton Segomâros

Here we have a few books to help you learn about the Gaulish path. Many of them will be cited as this column progresses.

1) Celtic Heritage – Alwyn and Brinley Rees. General Celtic.

2) Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise – Xavier Delmarre. Essential for Gaulish language study.

3) Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic – Ranko Matasovic. Also essential for Gaulish langauage.

4) La Langue Gauloise – Pierre-Yves Lambert. Very good for Gaulish grammar.

5) How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics – Calvert Watkins. Indo-European studies. Good for poetic formulae, meters, and anything to do with dragon-slayer myths.

6) Deep Ancestors: Practicing the Religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans – Ceisiwr Serith. Indo-European studies, but very good.

7) The Gods of the Celts and Indo-Europeans – Garrett Olmsted. Indispensible, but must be used with *great* caution. Don’t take Olmsted’s myths at face value, but his list of deities and where they are attested is wonderful.

8) The Celtic Gauls: Gods, Rites, and Sanctuaries – Jean Louis Brunaux. Original edition in French. Very good for ritual and sanctuaries. Less useful on the Gods.

9) Lady with a Mead Cup: Ritual Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from LaTene to the Viking Age – Michael J. Enright. Excellent for sovereignty, prophecy, and warband culture.

10) European Paganism: the Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages – Ken Dowden. General ancient Paganism.

11) Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice – Bruce Lincoln. Indo-European studies, but useful for the journey to the Otherworld and for creation by dismemberment.

12) The Apple Branch: a Path to Celtic Ritual – Alexei Kondratiev. General Celtic, but very good for Gauls.

13) Celtic Values – Alexei Kondratiev. A list of Celtic values, including some Irish material, but some Gaulish and Old Common Celtic terms as well. Available online, here: http://www.imbas.org/articles/celtic_values.html

14) Celtic Virtues – Alexei Kondratiev. A somewhat different list of Celtic virtues and values, taken from the Old Irish text, Audacht Morainn. http://www.druidcircle.org/library/index.php?title=Celtic_Virtues

15) The Gods of the Celts – Miranda Green. Good but some cautions. The wheel, for example, not a solar symbol.

16) Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend – Miranda J. Green. An excellent general dictionary, with much specifically Gaulish material.

17) A Guide to Irish Mythology – Daragh Smyth. Really, a good source on Irish traditions, but good for comparative purposes.

18) The Celts – edited by Venceslas Kruta et. al. General Celtic, but a lot of Gaulish and other Continental Celtic archaeology.

19) Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology – James Mackillop. General Celtic reference work.

20) Altkeltische Sozialstrukturen – Raimund Karl. The essential, and exhaustive, work on old Celtic social structures and institutions. Really incredible research. And available online, here: http://homepage.univie.ac.at/raimund.karl/Sozialstrukturen.pdf

21) “*butācos, *wossos, *geystlos, *ambactos: Celtic Socio-economic Organisation in the European Iron Age” Studia Celtica 40 (2006) – Raimund Karl. An English-language recapitulation of some of the material in Altkeltische Sozialstrukturen . Very Good.

22) The Court of Law in Iron age Celtic Societies – Raimund Karl. A look at law and legal procedure in the Iron Age. Very detailed. Also good for Gaulish terms for the directions, and their meanings.

23) Goddesses in Celtic Religion: Cult and Mythology: A comparative study of Ancient Ireland, Britain, and Gaul – Noémi Beck. A dissertation from the University of Lyon, discussing, as the title would indicate, Goddesses in early Celtic religion. While there is Irish and British material here, there is also very much of use to the student of Gaulish Polytheism. It is available here: http://theses.univ-lyon2.fr/documents/lyon2/2009/beck_n#p=0&a=title

24) Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State: the evolution of complex social systems in prehistoric Europe – edited by Bettina Arnold and D. Blair Gibson. A collection of articles on the history and archaeology of Celtic European society. Some very good things here on Celtic political institutions, and on the history and nature of Celticity.

25) The Ancient Celts – Barry Cunliffe. A basic, really good history of the Celtic peoples, with special emphasis on the Gaulish Celts.

26) Sengoidelc: Old Irish for Beginners – David Stifter. Really a textbook of Old Irish, but it contains much of the prehistory of the language, and therefore some grammar of interest to students of the Gaulish language.

27) “Greek Κελτος and Γαλατις, Latin Gallus ‘Gaul’” – Kim McCone. In Die Sprache, 46, 1 [2006]. The essential article on what the ancient Gauls called themselves.

28) A Consideration of the Iconography of Romano-Celtic Religion with Respect to Archaic Elements of Celtic Mythology – Kevin Jones. A BA dissertation on the Celtic wheel, the Celtic sky-God, and their symbolism. Some very useful information. Available here: http://www.summerlands.com/crossroads/library/kevin_dissertation.html

29) The Integration of Mercury and Lugus: Myth and History in Late Iron Age and Early Roman Gaul – Krista Ovist. A dissertation on the existence and nature of the cult of Lugus, the concepts of sovereignty among the Iron Age Celts, the ways in which Lugus was integrated with the Greco-Roman Mercury, and how this served the interests of the Roman authorities and the process of Romanization. Offers some of the best data available on the settlement at Lugudunum. At once differs with an complements Lady with a Mead Cup.

30) The Book of the Great Queen – Morpheus Ravenna (not yet published). An excellent book on the Morrigan generally, with one chapter on Gaulish Goddesses, and many interesting and well-researched things to say about Celtic generally, including Gaulish religion.

31) War Goddess: the Morrigan and her Germano-Celtic Counterparts – Angelique Gulermovich Epstein. A dissertation on the Morrigan and related figures from other Celtic and Germanic mythologies. The best source on the topic, and invaluable for understanding Cathuboduâ. Available here: http://web.archive.org/web/20011204120238/http://members.loop.com/~musofire/diss/#ems

32) Cernunnos: Looking a Different Way – Ceisiwr Serith. An excellent article on Cernunnos, originally published in the Harvard Review, that is the basis for my treatment in this class. Available here: http://www.ceisiwrserith.com/therest/Cernunnos/cernunnospaper.htm

33) Cernunnos: Origin and Transformation of a Celtic Deity/ American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 55, No. 1 (January, 1951) – Phyllys Fray Bober. Another excellent article on Cernunnos, arguing he was an Underworld deity equivalent to the Roman Dis Pater. Available here: http://www.thelapisgates.com/articles/Cernunnos.pdf

34) Further to tongu do dia toinges mo thuath [“Mi a dyngaf dynged it”], &c. – Prof. John Koch. An excellent article on Irish, Welsh, and Gaulish formulae for swearing, words for “oath”, concepts of destiny, and deities of the oath and of fate. An excellent resource. Available online here: http://www.academia.edu/7242277/Further_to_tongu_do_dia_toinges_mo_thuath_Mi_a_dyngaf_dynged_it_and_c

35) Epigraphik Datenbank. A database of almost all Latin inscriptions ever recorded, including most that call on the Continental Celtic deities. Available here: http://www.manfredclauss.de/gb/index.html

36) Deo Mercurio. An excellent website on Gallo-Roman religion, which agrees with on some issues, and disagrees on others. In French and English. Available here: http://www.deomercurio.be/en/

37) Epona.net. Excellent, scholarly information on Eponâ. Available here: http://epona.net/

38) Gaulish Polytheism Community. The home of Gaulish Polytheism on Facebook. Some excellent discussions. https://www.facebook.com/groups/162531797160858/

39) Religião Iberocéltica. A Celtiberian Polytheist community on Facebook. Mostly in Portuguese. https://www.facebook.com/groups/258301010873237/

40) Celtoi.net. The former website and forum for the German-speaking Celtoi, currently an archive only. Mostly in German, with an English sub-forum. http://www.celtoi.net/

41) Celtoi.org. The new German Celtoi forum. Not nearly as extensive as the old Celtoi.net. Entirely in German. http://forum.celtoi.org/

42) Celtic Café. A German-language, general Celtic Reconstructionist forum with some Continental Celtic material. Many Austrian members, and Dr, Raimund Karl posts here occasionally. http://forum.celticcafe.de/

Lectio Divina Heathen Style

Galina Krasskova in Wyrd Ways

Those of you who are familiar with Heathenry will assuredly be familiar with the fixation some (most) Heathens have on lore. With a demographic drawn largely from Protestant Christianity, and working in an over-culture that is doggedly Protestant Christian in its attitudes, it is perhaps not surprising that there is deep suspicion and even hostility toward anything not immediately and apparently mediated by the written word. Given that the majority Heathen demographic is also largely working class, there is also a noticeable insecurity and ambivalence toward mysticism (i.e. direct experience often dismissed in Heathen circles as “U.P.G” or the dreaded unverified personal gnosis) and you have, well, a mess.

Before going further, let me clarify what passes for ‘lore’ in Heathenry. When one of us speaks of “lore,” we’re referring to written texts. That includes the Prose and Poetic Eddas, the Icelandic Sagas, Anglo-Saxon texts, and contemporary historical, archaeological, linguistic, as well as any other relevant scholarly work. None of these texts may be considered ‘revealed’ texts, nor were they ever intended to serve the purpose of “scripture’ in the way we are accustomed to think of that term. This is the context in which most Heathens frame their religion, and in many cases, it’s also the context by which their experiences is consciously limited. I find that unfortunate. It is not however to be unexpected.

Let’s unpack that a bit. One of the dominant features of Protestant Christianity is a liturgical focus on Scripture. This was, historically, one of its criticisms of Catholicism: that the latter’s praxis and liturgy veered too far away from Scripture. Bible study, memorizing and quoting scripture, the emphasis (here shared with Catholicism) on reading and of Christ as the embodiment of the “Word” are all key facets of this approach to faith. This is one of the reasons why Christianity is referred to as a ‘religion of the book.’ Even before the Protestant Reformation, in the medieval period with the early Christian fathers, there was this emphasis on text.

Essentially for religions of the book, there is holy writ, and it has tremendous authority in guiding practice and approach to faith. Since Vatican II, unfortunately, Catholicism has also been — all in the spirit of “modernism” and “ecumenism” of course –doing its best to cull its more mystical elements, including devotion to Mary on the grounds that it’s not textually authentic. I find it depressing and sad that a rich, complex, mystical theology would be exchanged for a pseudo-rational, unemotional, modern, scripture based approach. But that’s just me. When this was restricted to the Christians, it wouldn’t be something I felt the need to address, but it’s been a struggle over the past twenty years to avoid having this same reductionist approach dominate Heathenry. We are raised surrounded by the cultural and social trappings of Protestant Christianity. That is the dominant voice of American culture, even amongst our intellectual “elite” — even if one is not Christian. One of the unspoken facets of this is that we assume religious experience to have a textual base. We look for “Scripture” to tell us what to do, what to believe, and whether or not we’re doing our religion right. This is one of the reasons why it’s so important to examine our religious expectations, to drag all our unspoken, ingrained assumptions about how a tradition works and how we ought to engage out into the light. There will be parts useful and parts not, but it’s important to see it all clearly. (1)

So with Heathenry, we have a contemporary religion trying to restore what is a conglomeration of ancestral traditions. That’s awesome. What we need to take into account, however, is the influence of our over-culture, birth religion, and the fetish we seem to have for “progress,” and “modernity.” Sometimes it isn’t and sometimes, what we are expected to trade for the trappings of “modernity,” is too high a price to pay for what we get. I don’t think we’ve quite all figured that out yet. It’s so much easier after all when humanity is at the top of the hierarchy, the center of the world, the apex of experience and we don’t have to worry about pesky Gods. It’s so much easier when engaging with the Gods as individual Powers is viewed as déclassé. It’s so much easier when our only obligations are social ones, oh, and reading an authorized text of course.

I’m being more sarcastic with the above statements than I initially intended, but this is the lay of the land in Heathenry. It’s ironic, given that such an attitude would have been utterly incomprehensible to our Heathen ancestors, who knew the wisdom of piety and reverence, and when to go on their knees in the dirt before their Gods out of awe, and when to sacrifice without bitching about giving too much, and that the Gods were Powers capable of impacting our world and us.

In a way, we’re having to do now, what the very early Christians had to do in order to grow their faith. It’s ironic, this role reversal, but it struck me during my reading the other day: early Christians developed their monastic traditions and powerful traditions of interiority and prayer because they had to worship in secret, or at best in small groups away from the public eye. It wasn’t until later, once they’d gained political power that they were able to effect large churches and public spheres of worship (and oppression). First, there were small groups, and individual prayer. This made the hunger for texts, I would think, all the more powerful. If i can’t be celebrating my God with a group of my co-religionists, then allow me to summon that community, and the presence of my God to my memory by reading stories and accounts that we all share in common. Let the absence be filled by memory evoked by engagement with the text. Let me engage with my community –spread out and hidden–in a unity through that very absence as it were. Now, Christians are everywhere (everywhere *sigh*) and it is the polytheist contingent that meets in small groups, often quite spread out, and perhaps — i’m speculating here–we also find ourselves deferring to written texts for prayer and meditation more than our polytheistic ancestors may have done, ancestors for whom the core beliefs of religion were contained and transmitted via intergenerational household and social practice. They could see their religion and veneration for the Gods reinforced all around them. We who don’t have that, depend much more on written media. It’s an interesting juxtaposition.

Christians engaged with their texts every bit as assiduously as the best (worst — i suspect it depends on your pov) Heathen lore thumper. They didn’t just read and take pride in their ability to memorize and regurgitate (as many a Heathen lore-hound has been known to do). They engaged in a certain amount of exegesis. Each reading opened the door to meditation and prayer, and that in turn opened the door to the potential at least — with the grace of God–for direct experience. Each text, led one on a meditative journey with the goal of drawing closer to one’s God.(2)

This really came home for me when I had to read an article about how small prayer books were used for personal devotion in the medieval period (c. 11-12 Centuries) when there was a shift in focus from communal liturgical devotion to private, personal prayer. I won’t quote the description of the process one would go through when using a Christian breviary for private use, but I am going to re-contextualize that process for a Heathen audience. (3)

Firstly, and this is something Rachel Fulton notes in her article, to own a book was to participate in privilege. Now, I realize that may not be quite the same with us today, especially not with the proliferations of e-readers, but there are parts of the world where reading and writing are a gift, and a privilege. Also, there’s magic there. Think about the first of our ancestors who realized that potential in making marks on the surface of a rock or bit of bark or clay. Think about the work that went into the book you hold or read, it was first formed in the mind of its creator, brought into being, translated to text, and pushed through the publishing process, disseminated online or to bookstores and finally ended up in your hands. This process was much more laborious in the medieval period, but each book is still a miracle, still an act of creation and craft. There is something very special in text that ties us to each and every reader who may likewise be influenced and inspired. This is all the more true of religious texts where the readers share a common cosmology and devotional approach.

So drawing upon and expanding upon the description offered in Fulton’s article, here is how — were I as a Heathen to engage in lectio divina–engaging with the lore might look.

Many medieval prayer books, like prayer books today were drawn off of scriptural readings, as well as set prayers. So using that as my paradigm, I’ll choose a section from the Poetic Edda focusing on one of Odin’s mysteries, the Runatal section of the Havamal. (I should note, the same process that I shall uncover below might be used with a prayer too, to equal effect). Here’s the text for those who might be unfamiliar with it:

Veit ec at ec hecc vindga meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr oc gefinn Oðni, sialfr sialfom mer, a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn.	I know that I hung on a windy tree nine long nights, wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin, myself to myself, on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run.
Við hleifi mic seldo ne viþ hornigi, nysta ec niþr, nam ec vp rvnar, opandi nam, fell ec aptr þaðan.	No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn, downwards I peered; I took up the runes, screaming I took them, then I fell back from there.(4)

First, I might read it quietly aloud in Norse and English. There is a rhythm after all, to the Norse verse that the English translation, however well done, lacks. Certain of the Norse phrases I might have (in fact personally do have) committed to memory. These I might linger over, letting the tones of my words resonate through my body. Odin is, after all, a God of empowered speech, of galdr, of poetry, of incantation. I would strive in my private prayer to make of these phrases, whichever I choose, an incantation that reverberates through the memory hall of my heart, that strikes at the core of my soul, kindling devotion, opening me up, bolstering a desire to connect, to reach outward to Him.

Perhaps I have recently read academic commentary on this section that brought some insight applicable to my spiritual life to light. I might mull that over for a time. My mind might segue to an image of a Tree that calls to mind Yggdrasil. Perhaps I’ll parse that word out: “Steed of the Terrible One.” What does that mean about this Tree. What does it mean about its agency and awareness? When I think of Odin hanging, there are a thousand images that come to my mind. Perhaps I have included one, a prayer card, or even a photocopy of the image in my Edda where I can look at it as I read and pray. Or perhaps I have an image on my altar or shrine, and I am praying and reading with this in my sight.

In my case, part of my ordeal cycle was a hook suspension in imitatio of this exact experience. It is Odin’s greatest mystery and the point of most powerful (for me at any rate) connection to Him. When I read about the windy tree, I think of the november night that I underwent this ordeal. I think about how cold and damp it was, what effect that had on my skin and my muscles, how I watched the sun set with growing dread. I wonder what it was like for Odin approaching the Tree, what preparations He might have made, and what it must be like to be a God and still be afraid.

I have a chant that I use for Him that recounts His time on the Tree and perhaps that will come to mind and if I am alone, I might even offer it to Him aloud. We don’t yet have the tradition of devotional images to which medieval Christians could turn in illuminating their psalters and prayer books, but we do have some. Many, particularly older images show Him in armor on the Tree, or at least a helmet. I wonder why when it was the moment of His greatest power but also His greatest self-chosen vulnerability. What does it say about a God who would choose that? I think about all the images I’ve seen of Him on the Tree—does He have both eyes, or has the artist portrayed Him as already having made His offering to the Well? What do I think of that? What does my own experience tell me there about the variations of mythic time?

maybe I cross-reference this with articles or passages about the sacrifice of His eye. Was this presaged by His encounters with specific runes? Had He been trained for this? What about the fact that Mimir is His maternal uncle? That was a powerful role in many cultures including the early Germanic. What do I know of Mimir? What do I know of the wells that sit at the base of the Tree? Are they all one well, or many? Why are they located with the Tree? What does that mean? What came first: offering to the well or offering to the Tree and does it matter?

When I read the line about Him being wounded by His own spear, I think about sitting beneath my tree, the hooks going into my flesh: how that felt, what it did to me, where it allowed me to go. I remember the disorientation of swinging beneath the branches of the tree, watching the world fall away as I was lifted off the ground. What did He see when He rose into its boughs. I recall other experiences with Him in the woods, and the sound of His body falling sharply down through the boughs.

I remember some of His heiti, his praise names, particularly one’s having to do with the Tree. I think about how the Tree is always nourished in blood, and what such an initiation would mean. I think about the runes and why it took this type of ordeal and sacrifice to win them. I might call to mind the rune poems and see how they too are connected to the Old Man. Maybe, if I am in a mood to do so and if, in the flow of my contemplation, it feels correct, I galdr the rune itself with the goal of being given insight into that moment, that time, that experience.

I read and think on Odin, and think about all the parts that went into suspending me in my tree. How was He suspended? Did the Tree itself grasp Him up? Did the branches pierce HIs flesh and hold Him true until He was empty of screaming and could be filled by something else? Or was that process too an ordeal to be surmounted, a tactical challenge to be met?

I might turn to prayers that I have written or collected that tie to that experience in some way, that bring to my heart’s mind and senses, Odin on the Tree. I might say them, and then return to the Edda passage going over those lines again, rooting out connections to other things, all so I can find my way to Him. If emotion comes, I will sit with it and allow it its voice. That too can be a connection to Him.

The passage talks about the roots of the Tree. Images of ancient Trees with huge, gnarled, tangled roots come to mind and I let them. I think about how when I was lowered to the ground again after my ordeal, after however long I hung suspended in the tree, my feet touched the ground and there was relief, release, and pain, such pain as the muscles in my lower back went into full, several days long spasm. (The angle of the body when hanging in the type of suspension is not the best for those with bad backs. I knew this going in). I wonder if it hurt Odin just as much when He was released from the Tree as when He ascended it to be taken up. I think about all the things that can never be remotely comprehended save by initiatory experience and how it breaks one’s world into a before and an after and how there’s never any going back. I wonder what regrets He left at the Tree, or whether He didn’t have them until later, or whether He had them at all. I wonder how He contextualized the experience that of necessity must have changed Him so in its aftermath.

I pray to be opened up to understanding, to greater connection to Him knowing that it will change my life and I contemplate how far I might go in my devotions to ready myself and make this possible. I think about how far He went. I return to some of my personal prayers, that I’ve written for Him at various times as well as my extempore utterances in the moment and I offer these up to Him again, moving away from the Runatal text and back again and again and again.
I happen to have this particular text memorized, which adds another layer to the experience of engaging physically with a written text. The text is already present in my memory, but I involve my sensorium (sight, touch, sound if I choose to read aloud) when I’m looking at a book and that ads another layer of both engagement and meaning. Being a language person with more than a smattering of Old Norse, I might also ponder both meaning and syntax and grammar of the original to see what can be gleaned there. We all bring different experiences and skills to the table in our devotional life and I think it’s good to use what you have to begin these practices.

I could go on from here, line by line with the Edda, or with any other text, but I think the process is relatively clear. The important thing isn’t being well-read in lore, the important thing is to read lore — if it’s a tool you find helpful–always keeping the ultimate goal in mind: veneration of the Gods, developing a devotional relationship with the Gods, calling Them into the seat of the heart, developing greater understanding of that place in which one dances in relationship with Them. If you’re going to use lore, understand that it is not an end in itself. It’s a map and as with any map, there is a goal external to the process.

Notes

For more discussion of the Protestant attitudes dominant in American secular culture see “Love the Sin” by Ann Pellegrini and Janet Jacobsen and also “Secularisms” by the same authors. For information on the impact of Vatican II on the devotional life of the Church, and the absence of Mary see “”Missing Mary” by C. Spretnak, “Alone of all Her Sex” by M. Warner, and for the focus of the Protestant Reformation I highly recommend E. Duffy’s “THe Stripping of the Altars.”
Guigo II “Ladder of Monks and the Twelve Meditations” Cistercian Press. See also the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs, works of John Cassian, Anselm of Canturbury, even Origen if you can stomach it.
Praying with Anselm at Admont: A meditation on practice by Rachel Fulton. First published in Speculum, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Jul, 2006), pp. 700-733, published by Medieval Academy of America.
Taken from Carolyn Larrington’s translation of the Poetic Edda.

PantheaCon, Paganism, and Syncretism; Or, “Let’s Get Literal!”

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus in Speaking of Syncretism

[Cue a filk of an Olivia Newton John song…!?!]

In a short while, PantheaCon will be happening once again in San Jose, California. It is one of–if not the–largest indoor Pagan festivals in the United States, and it draws several thousand attendees over President’s Day weekend. I have attended all of them since 2007, and this year will be no exception.

But, you may wonder what this has to do with syncretism as a general topic. And that’s where we have to “get literal,” as my subtitle above suggests.

Before we get literal, however, I’d like to point something out. Many modern Pagans, polytheists, and others of an alternative and specifically non-Christiaan outlook are somewhat biased against the entire concept of “literality” when it comes to anything religious. Enforced biblical literalism in some denominations is what a great many people who eventually leave Christianity cite as one of the things about it which is intolerable. This same idea is then carried over to non-Christian religions, including various forms of polytheism and Paganism.

I suspect that this “non-literal” approach to things, and the near-insistence upon it, is why so many mainstream Pagans do not understand polytheism and tend to call us “fundamentalists” and so forth. I know very few (if any) polytheists who insist on a literal interpretation of any myth in any one of the cultures from which we draw our inspirations and our practices; I also know very few who, whatever about the factual impossibility or non-literal approach they might have to myths, do not approach myth as something containing deep truths not only about cultures and their outlooks, but also (and more importantly) about their theologies and the personalities of our deities.

Things get deeper than that, however, and the critique of polytheism often arises from other forms of Paganism along the lines of “You actually believe in the literal existence of your deities,” as if a deity is in some sense “more powerful” if it remains a figment of someone’s imagination, an archetype that is only a localized form of some more universal “force” inherent in the human psyche, or some other notion which robs the deities in question of individual and independent identity, volition, and existence. As I have said on other occasions in other places, modern mainstream Paganism is one of the only religions I’ve ever encountered that considers actually believing in the supernatural aspects of its religion as “fundamentalism.”

However, no matter how important it is to understand these matters as a backdrop to talking about the term “literal” in relation to anything pagan (in the adjectival/descriptive sense) or polytheistic, these matters are a bit too large to deal with in the present context…and yet, also knowing they are issues which are present does foreground one of the questions I hope to address seriously and in a provisionally complete fashion in the present column.

While Edward Butler pointed out in the comments to one of my earlier columns the possibility of Plutarch’s apparent coining of the word synkretismos by creating a story about it involving Cretans banding together and putting aside their differences (and Butler’s ideas on this should be taken very seriously indeed!), nonetheless folk etymologies are important to take into consideration when getting into the minds of the people in a particular culture. Though modern “scientific” etymologies are based more on morphology and comparative phonology and semantics, and arrive at derivations of terms which are more likely than the folk etymologies, nonetheless they’re often far less colorful and infinitely less rich in terms of the intra-cultural information they convey about a given culture’s self-understanding and prioritization of meaning within its own boundaries. So, “syncretism” as “doing as the Cretans do” has an important element in it that needs to be considered, and especially so in the present circumstance.

Often, when I have presented on syncretism and I give this earliest explanation of it from Plutarch in the early 2nd c. CE, I then immediately suggest that many modern religious and social movements–including and perhaps especially, at least in recent decades, modern Paganism itself–is thus inherently syncretistic, not because of its diversity of theologies and practices and the ways in which these are combined despite their often wide disparity in sources and cultural origins, but instead in a more bare and political sense of “banding together despite differences for a common goal.” Over and over again in the wider modern Pagan community, we have been entreated and sometimes even admonished to support certain causes, like the “pentacle quest” for the Wiccan pentacle to be recognized by the Veteran’s Administration as a legitimate religious symbol for use on tombstones, no matter what form of (likely non-Wiccan) paganism one might practice. I’ve even heard, on occasion, a suggestion that on some censuses in other countries, that “everyone” who is pagan should identify as Wiccan so that their numbers appear to be unified in order to secure certain rights and recognitions by various governments. Sometimes, these efforts for recognition are positive and useful, and can pave the way for further recognition of diversity down the road. Sometimes, though, these calls for unity of purpose and support of causes serve to be a substitute hegemony that seeks to erase diversity, silence dissent, and to disguise the plurality of our profound and important differences on the ground and in our daily functioning.

It is often under these kinds of auspice that we are encouraged to attend events like Pagan Pride Days, or large Pagan conventions like PantheaCon. We are told that we, as polytheists, are included under this “large tent” and the greater “umbrella” of modern Paganism, whether we want to be or not (and, certainly, some of us do want to be, while others do not), but do we do so at a cost that sacrifices our individuality, or elides our differences, all in the interests of peace?

PantheaCon in particular often refers to itself as “the gathering of the tribes” for modern Pagans. I have certainly found this to be the case, but what it has never done, and which I don’t think it claims to do, is to equally represent all of those tribes, or even to recognize some of them at all. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? How much diversity becomes too much diversity? And, if groups do not attempt to at least participate in some fashion or other, they will never be represented. On the other hand, many of us have proposed a plethora of events over the years, and are participating quite extensively, and yet because our groups do not have the numbers and our practices remain marginal (though I’d have to point out that there may be some relationship between this and the fact that polytheist events often get slotted in marginal positions which have far less attendance, even by other polytheists, than certain other prime time slots), we still get told that we’re not doing enough, that we haven’t made the effort that others have, and any number of other excuses that contravene the facts on the ground and that serve as a kind of self-justification of our continued marginalization.

This is one of the very uncomfortable questions which the emergence of the modern polytheist movement has posed to the wider world of modern Paganism: are we too different to have a comfortable space under the umbrella, and are there active reasons that we are kept from recognition under it? And if so, can these be addressed in a way that does not force us to cede some of our uniqueness and our own particular traditions, theologies, and practices in order to gain more recognition and respect?

In other words, at what point does this political form of syncretism become not for the good of the people, but for the good of Crete–here understood as the wider Pagan movements and communities rather than the individual factions and traditions within it which are said to comprise it?

I, for one, hold out some hope that possibilities will emerge and that further engagement and cooperation is, has been, and still can be useful. I have encountered many wonderful people in the broad modern Pagan community, and have allied myself both personally and as a representative of my group with other non-explicitly-polytheist Pagan groups, and hope to do so with others eventually as well.

And yet, the question must remain, and must be asked over and over again: can ceding, ignoring, or downplaying one’s differences ever really lead to a “common good” when it involves compromising–in the negative sense (i.e. one doesn’t want “compromised health, for example!)–and a watering down of what makes a particular group or tradition unique? Is any effort which asks its individual constituents to cede such uncomfortable aspects of itself in order to have public and apparent unity an effort worth making?

I will be interested to know what people think on these matters, as ever.

What Do the Gods Know When They Know Us?

Edward P. Butler in Noēseis

‘Like is known by like’ is an ancient and widely applied axiom in Hellenic thought,¹ and some similar axiom probably can be found in many other traditions of thought—albeit we must always remember that being widely held is no index of truth. Rather, axioms must be assessed by the value of the system(s) that can be generated from them. In some sense, to say that like is known by like is the same as to say, with Parmenides, that “the same thing is there for thinking and for being,”² because we recognize that the thinking of something belongs to the same substance as the being of it.

Another Hellenic axiom is that the Gods know things in the best way it is possible to know them. The notion which founds metaphysics, according to Aristotle, is two-sided.³ On the one hand, it is the aspiration to know the best things, on the other hand, to know things in the best way. For Aristotle, both of these paths lead to the Gods; the former seeks to know about Them, insofar as They are the best things, while the latter seeks to know things in the way the Gods do, for this would be the best way in which to know them. But we can see how the double-sidedness of metaphysics also follows from the axiom that like is known by like, because we would have to know the Gods by learning to know things in a godlike way. But this also implies that our knowledge of the Gods is at once, in some sense, Their knowledge of us.

Moreover, Their knowledge of us must be at once of what is best about us, and of what we truly are. And if the God’s knowledge is a unity, then the best that we are must also be the truth about us, and be what is most real and accurate about us. It can’t just be a portion of me, some particularly valuable trait of mine, because the God, as a whole and a unity Herself, would know me as a whole and as unified myself; and this totality and unity of myself must also be the best me. It cannot be a potential, that is, what I could be, with sufficient effort, because the God, as an actuality Herself, would know me as an actuality, and not as a mere potential. So the best me, who is known to the God, must be the totality and actuality of myself, and this is better than any part of me or any potential I might have. Understanding the parts and potentials is valuable, but would fall below the level of divine knowledge qua divine.

The God, as an end and not a means to an end, must know me as an end in myself and not a means to an end, not, that is, as a mere instrument or vessel. The formula of ‘an end and not a means’ is familiar from Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, but the terminology of ‘end’ in this sense is thoroughly Aristotelian.⁴ of a body with organs” (De Anima 412a27-29), where the term organikos is from organon, an instrument or tool. The soul, then, is that by virtue of which an end-in-itself arises from instrumentalized parts.] An end or goal is telos, and something which operates as an end in this sense throughout the whole of its being is an entelecheia, a term which also embodies the sense of being teleios, complete or perfect, or as a process, accomplished or fulfilled, and telos and teleios are also the roots of many terms having to do with sacrality. In the case of a God, this fulfillment or accomplishment in process would be a perfection at every moment in the process, rather than a coming-to-perfection at some point. In the same way, the sacral terms sharing the telos or teleios root refer at once to the perfection or accomplishment of a process, and to the event culminating it. But the event as culmination is the purest individuation of the event as such, and so what is teleios or perfect is the event qua event. In this fashion, the Gods can be with us in process without being, like artifacts, the mere outcome of a process. They can be with us in process without being, by virtue of that, ‘imperfect’. And as known by Them, we are also perfect in process, which does not negate the worldly sense of the processes by which we seek to become more perfect, but it does subordinate these processes in which we instrumentalize or objectify ourselves to the pure evental experience of us in the now.

Finally, the God, as a unique individual, must know me as a unique individual primarily, and only secondarily as this or that type or kind of being. The God, as a perfect intellect, does of course know what a human is, and knows me as a human, but She is a God prior to being an intelligence and so She knows me in my uniqueness prior to my species-nature. This applies necessarily to every other kind of entity as well, every other species. To look at it another way, this follows from the Gods’ knowledge of the species itself as a unique individual in its own right, which requires that the relation between me and my species be real, and hence that both terms in the relation be real. A species or other ‘form’, as known by the Gods, therefore is known also as perfect-in-process and evental, as opposed to the way in which these entities are generally conceived in doctrines that are spuriously described as ‘Platonism’, but which have subtracted the Gods from their account, and therefore removed from the cosmos that divine knowledge which perfects everything in knowing each thing in its perfection.

What are the implications of this for relationships with the Gods which do not have these characteristics, in which the worshiper is objectified or instrumentalized? If these were the only options for how the worshiper could relate to the God, then we would have to accept that there was a more adequate knower than the God, that some other class of entity has knowledge superior to the Gods, not merely with respect to some accident, but with respect to the essence of a being. Rejecting this conclusion, it follows that such relationships can only manifest particular potencies of a God, and that a different relationship between the worshiper and their God, established on different terms and with different practices, is possible, not as a matter of idle speculation, but a priori.

Some Basics

Segomâros Widugeni in Nemeton Segomâros

Of necessity, this post will resemble material from my earlier book Celtic Flame. We are establishing ground rules here, what this column will address, and, insofar as it is using a similar format to my earlier work, it is going to resemble it to a great degree. The resemblance will decrease as the column goes on.

So, then, the Gaulish polytheism which is the subject of this column has a number of elements, among them are:

The sources for this column, and the places where you can go for more information.
The Gaulish identity, which is basic. This is not a modern ethnicity, and cannot be blood-based. It is open to anyone who is called by it. We will discuss how it relates to the modern Celtic identity, the modern Celtic nations, and what is known about how it was framed in ancient times. Indeed, we must discuss these issues, for they are very contentious.
The ancient Gaulish worldview, including cosmic principles, worlds, ethics, and so on. While not as well known as the ancient Irish worldview, there is nonetheless a surprising amount that can be known about it
The Dêwoi, the Gods and spirits that form the center of Gaulish polytheistic feeling and practice, however one sees them in theological terms. These are the best known of the elements of Gaulish religion. We have many sources that allow us to know their names, and something about their attributes.
The Coligny Calendar, which is the Gaulish calendar, and is itself the subject of fervent academic debate, but which may allow us to reconstruct certain festivals and time concepts.
The basics of ritual and worship, which have been reconstructed very differently by different scholars.
The holidays, which can only be reconstructed very tentatively.
And the institutional framework for practice, which of necessity must differ both from the surrounding host culture, of which we are not a part, and from the Gaulish culture of ancient times, because we no longer live in self-sufficient agricultural tribes, with economies based on land-holding, in which even the necessities of life are in chronically short supply.

These elements were only part of a total Continental Celtic tradition, which included elements like magical practice, poetry, music, crafts, and so on. Unlike the case of the modern Celtic peoples, however, other elements of the Gaulish tradition are for the most part lost to the ravages of time, history, and colonization. We have only a small amount of magical lore, and can reconstruct more, but the majority is now lost. Certain poetic forms and formulae can be assumed to have existed based on the examples of other Celtic and Indo-European peoples (see Calvert Watkins’ How to Kill a Dragon for examples from several Indo-European cultures), as well as the evidence of the existing inscriptions, but the majority are not recoverable. We know nothing about Gaulish martial arts and warrior techniques, though we can recover some words for them. There have been surprising efforts made at the recovery of Gaulish music, by musicologists, linguists and archaeologists, in projects like the Austrian band Imbraxton. These do not amount to a musical tradition, but at least allow us to have some limited idea what Gaulish music sounded like. The Swiss metal band Eluveitie, by the way, cool as they are, do not count here. They are modern folk-metal in Gaulish, not ancient Gaulish music, nor do they pretend to be. We also have next to nothing left of ancient Gaulish literature, though a surprising amount of mythology can be picked out of Greco-Roman texts. Gaulish folk dancing is also lost, though we have a couple statues showing that ancient Celts did indeed dance. The one thing of the ancient Gaulish cultural tradition, outside religion, that we may be able to recover is part of the material culture. We have a lot of examples of objects, especially metal work. From these, modern artisans have been able to recreate a lot of ancient techniques and styles. More will no doubt be done with the passage of time, and Continental Celtic design will survive to some extent.

To present Gaulish Polytheism accurately and completely, I intend to alternate informational posts that contain information on ideas, practice and history, with more personal posts giving some idea of how my Polytheism is lived out in daily life. A certain number of the dry, information pieces are needed, however, to set the groundwork for all others, so people will have some idea what I’m talking about.

Sources of Gaulish Polytheism: The discerning reader is probably going to want to ask what the sources are for any religious tradition, how we know where we got it. It is important to do this, though the situation isn’t so bad as for Irish and Welsh Paganism. There is still bad information out there, but for Gaulish traditions, which are less popular in New Age circles, the problem isn’t so much deliberate misinformation as out-of-date sources. Of necessity, the sources for a wholly revived tradition like Gaulish polytheism will be different than for living traditions like those of the modern Celtic peoples. A few of them will include:

The corpus of inscriptions in the Gaulish language, mostly, though not all of a religious nature. These are often sketchy, and open to scholarly interpretation, but contain the best remains we have of the Gaulish language, and much on the names and natures of deities. Several of these are magical inscriptions, including important evidence as to cosmology and spiritual concepts.
An even larger, indeed vast, corpus of Latin inscriptions from Gaul allows us to know much as to the names and attributes of the deities, as well as other cultural and religious information.
Other archaeological evidence allows us to know much about the material aspects of worship, about sanctuaries, offerings, and so on, and allows us to know much about the social context in which that worship took place. We know much about Gaulish settlements, arts, crafts, architecture, agriculture, and so on from this evidence.
The accounts of Greco-Roman writers form a basic source. They cannot be used uncritically, as they are the accounts of foreign observers who have nothing resembling objectivity, and use nothing remotely like sound scholarly methods. Moreover, they are sometimes hostile to those they observe. Nonetheless, the Greeks and Romans came to know their neighbors well over centuries of interaction, and their writings form a valuable source of eye-witness accounts.
Early Irish and Welsh vernacular texts can throw a great deal of light on Gaulish practices and beliefs. They must, however, be used with caution. They were all written about after the introduction of Christianity, centuries after the period we are interested in. Moreover, they are from a different, if neighboring and closely related society. We cannot treat them as authoritative for Continental Gaulish religion, nor can we treat Gaulish religion as just a local version of Irish. But the vernacular texts can indeed be used, and throw light on wider Celtic traditions when used cautiously.
The work of scholars in Indo-European studies and related cultures can shed a good deal of light on Gaulish traditions. They can show us the origins of words, and give us cross cultural information on mythology and ideology. Still, caution is in order. These studies are highly theoretical and open to multiple interpretations.
The folklore of the modern Celtic peoples and of peoples descended from the ancient Gauls can form a source of knowledge. Such lore can give us information regarding practices of worship, and the belief in certain spirits or spirit-types that appear to have survived the ages. The usual cautions still apply, however. Modern Celtic folklore is not Gaulish, but that of a related people. And the modern descendents of the Gauls have undergone more than a thousand years of radical cultural change, including the adoption of a different language, and another religion.
Certain medieval documents can also be useful for our purposes. From them we can get scraps of lore that might be otherwise be unavailable. Such documents, for example, give us much information on the spirits known as dusioi. The medieval capitularia can give us information as to late Pagan practices, by telling us what the Christian Church wished to forbid. However, we must be careful, for these documents come from so late a date, that we cannot be sure what in them is truly Gaulish, and what is of Germanic or Romance provenance.
Finally, we still interact directly with the Gods, spirits, and ancestors themselves. This is commonly known today in Reconstructionist circles as UPG, an acronym for Unverified Personal Gnosis, and is commonly disdained. But it still happens, and even the people who disdain it usually make an exception for their own gnosis. It is perfectly true that UPG is subject to a very high rate of error. We often see what we want to see, and let our assumptions and egos blind us. The best way to prevent this is to check any insight received from spiritual sources against other information. If a given piece of UPG contradicts the lore as we have it, it should probably be viewed with a great deal of skepticism. However, to disdain UPG entirely, especially when dealing with a tradition like Gaulish polytheism, where so much has been lost, is to create the dry skeleton of a tradition without the flesh it needs to live again.