This document is written in my own rather crude, simplified dialect of Gaulish, in 2010.  I still use long and short vowels, which are essential to the rhythm of it, though not the official metre.  I wrote it during a long and boring meeting, in which I was not expected to speak.  I have not checked the vocabulary in Delmarre’s  Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise, nor in Matasovic’s Etymological dictionary of Proto-Celtic.  In any case, this is an artistic conceit, and not to be taken too seriously.  The myth is proto-Indo-European, from Bruce Lincoln’s Death, War, and Sacrifice, and not Celtic, though Ariomanus is a real Gaulish name, found in inscriptions in Pannonia and Noricum.  I’m using him here as a stand in for the proto-Indo-European Manu.

The poem is written in a rather simplified Saturnian metre, for the first 4 stanzas, though the last is non-metrical.  I use too much repetition to make it work, but it works nonetheless.  The scheme is essentially four lines per stanza, each line of 13 syllables, divided into half-lines separated by a caesura.  Each half-line has 7 to 8 syllables.  It alliterates fairly adequately.

So, on to Adbertos Yemoni:

Wer noxtion cinton                  nebuwânt bitus tirroswe
Nebuwânt in wiryî                   sâwelios lugrâwe
Nebuwânt ander nemon                caitoi abonâswe
Nebuwânt ander nemon                sleiboi swâ lânoiwe

In noxtiobi cintobi                 buwânt tri cawâroi
Buwântyos Aryomanus,                Yemonos, Tritiosc
Buwât bous co eyobi                 myolkobous co eyobi
Tri cawâroi bousc                   in noxtiobi cintobi

In notxtiobi cintobi                tri cawâroi âwont
Cawâroi âwont bitun                 es credê Yemoni
Seueyon credon swâ                  Yemonos adbertât
Sueeyon bîwin                       in noxtiobi cintobi

In noxtiobi cintobi                 cawâroi adbertânt
Aryomanus adbertât                  Yemonon adbertât
Sueeyon bratren                     Aryomanus adbertât
Bratren adbertâtis                  in noxtiobi cintobi

Au eyon cnamobi                     krakus âwonto
Au eyon cîcî                        talamun âwoto
Au eyon waitê                       morin âwoto
Au eyon anatlî                      weton âwoto
Au eyon râdiyins                    nellus âwonto
Au eyon enequon                     sâwelion âwoto
Au eyon anatiyin                    tenon noibon âwoto


On the first night                  there were not world or land
There were not, in truth            sun or moon
There were not, under heaven        forests or rivers
There were not, under heaven        mountains or plains

In the first nights                 there were three heroes
Who were Aryomanus,                 Yemonos, and Tritios
There was a cow with them           a milk-cow with them
Three heroes and a cow              in the first nights

In the first nights                 the heroes made
The heroes made the world from      the body of Yemonos
His own body, so                    Yemonos sacrificed
His own life                        in the first nights

In the first nights                 the heroes sacrificed
Aryomanus sacrificed                Yemonos he sacrificed
His own brother                     Aryomanus sacrificed
The brother he sacrificed           in the first nights

From his bones                      the stones were made
From his flesh                      the ground was made
From his blood                      the sea was made
From his breath                     the wind was made
From his thoughts                   the clouds were made
From his face/honor                 the sun was made
From his soul                       the sacred fire was made

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.

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/

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:

1. The sources for this column, and the places where you can go for more information.
2. 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.
3. 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
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. The basics of ritual and worship, which have been reconstructed very differently by different scholars.
7. The holidays, which can only be reconstructed very tentatively.
8. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.

Digression #1

Driving out of the suburbs, on Highway 42, into the deep country, certain signs become increasingly visible to the discerning eye. Three crows in a field sit silently, giving no omens except their presence. Omen enough. Less than mile further on, three horses stand in a field, living signs of Who else is there. No telling what Her business is, except it doesn’t appear to concern me. A few miles further, a field of cattle, the wealth of the land, grazing placidly.

Late in the day, a great thunderhead is rising above the green landscape, the Sky God in His terrible power and glory. Everywhere about, the woods are deep green and filled with shadows. I can feel the Presence in them. The God of Pathways lives in there, opening the Way to the Otherworld, guiding the dead. From below, I can feel the God and Goddess of the Underworld, dark but nurturing presences, not frightening at all, givers of wealth. The Sun Maiden is setting to the West, glory and radiance.

The bright Sky above balances the dark Underworld below. The evening is still and fragrant. Lights of homes glow in the forest. Dash lights shine. The road is a ribbon of black, leading homeward into the night.

 

About the Author:

Segomâros Widugeni is a well-known leader in Gaulish Polytheism, having been practicing for almost two decades, and in other related communities for more than 30 years. He is a co-moderator of the Gaulish Polytheism Community on Facebook, as well. He has been active in the Celtic Reconstructionist group Imbas, and the Druid group Ar nDraiocht Fein. He is also the author, under the name Aedh Rua, of the book Celtic Flame, on Irish Polytheism. He hold two Master’s Degrees, in 20th Century German History and Library Sience, and speaks two Celtic languages, one of them very rusty. He lives with his wife, who has her own careers, in the woods of rural Central Florida.

This column is about Gaulish Polytheism, for the most part, though it will no doubt include the odd foray into other territory here and there. You can expect to find scholarly discussion of concepts and worldview, discussions of deities and spirits, both scholarly and not, rituals, calendrics, invocations, poetry and personal spiritual experiences. You’ll probably find the occasional look at the life of a Northerner living in the woods of rural Florida. The place I live, it’s history and incorporeal inhabitants, are a constant presence in my spiritual life, so I’m sure I’ll be writing about them. Assuming I write a column once a week, I have many months of material to cover.

The question of whether I am precisely a Gaulish Reconstructionist is a vexed one, which does not admit of an easy answer. In the first place, I agree with C. Lee Vermeers that “reconstructionism” is really a method by which religions are developed, and not a religion per se. Secondly, as we will see, while much is known about early Gaulish religion, enough is uncertain to leave Gaulish Polytheism on the outer edge of where reconstructionism is even possible. In the end, the state of our evidence is such that we must rely on personal intuition to fill gaps. Sometimes we must make choices among various possibilities equally supported by the evidence we have. So, it is perhaps most accurate to regard me as a Gaulish Polytheist who uses the reconstructionist method where he can.

I am a hard polytheist, in that I believe that the Gods are essentially individuals, that they are not all faces of the One God or the One Goddess, or archetypes, or anything of that sort. Nevertheless this must be qualified to some degree. I am open to the possibility that some deities may be the same as others on a case by basis, particularly where their iconography is the same, and the names clearly the same name in different languages. I have in mind cases like Odhinn, Woden, and Wotan, or Thorr, Thunor, and Donner, or Lugh, Lleu, and Lugus. I am also open to the possibility that they may be different deities, or even that some cases like the three Brigids may, or may not, represent different deities with the same names.

My journey to Gaulish Polytheism has been a long and complicated one. It began with my finding a copy of Raymond Buckland’s Witchcraft from the Inside on my Junior High School library shelf in 1978, when I was 13 years old. I already had the idea from somewhere, probably television, that witchcraft was a surviving Pagan cult, though I believed it to be a bloody and awful one. The book cured that particular misapprehension, but I otherwise found it less intriguing than one might suppose. Its duotheism did not seem to match well with the polytheism of the other mythologies I had been studying.

Still, over time I found more books on witchcraft and came to identify with it. I became an initiate of an eclectic coven when I turned 18, in 1983. Indeed, I have continued to practice Wicca and other forms of witchcraft down to the present day, though now I keep such rituals separate from my Gaulish practice, and fit them into a hard polytheist theology. At the time I began studying Wicca, I read that it was the ancient Celtic religion, and I did not as yet have any reason to doubt it.

During my later high school years, I began reading on Irish mythology. This was a natural outgrowth of my interests in mythology, and Paganism. I quickly began to notice a discrepancy between the books I was reading on Irish myth, and the ones I was reading on Wicca. At first, it was possible to paper over the differences, but after my (eclectic) initiation, and the Wiccan rituals I participated in, it became clear that there was a gaping chasm between the two. So it was that, in 1984, still 18 years old, wholly on my own, I began developing a version of Gaelic Paganism.

In 1985, I went to Pagan Spirit Gathering. There, I met with Murtagh AnDoile and various other people, discussing how to develop a genuinely Celtic version of Celtic Paganism, as we called it then. The meeting with Murtagh, in particular was formative, influencing my development and confirming me on my Celtic path. In 1986, I taught a class at PSG, on Celtic myth, which was well-received. At PSG 1987, I held a private, non-Wiccan ritual in honor of the Irish deity Lugh, which was attended by three or four friends. I was a member of the Druid group Ar nDraoicht Fein from 1985 to about 1987 or 1988.

From 1987 to 1990, I studied in graduate school and alternated Wiccan with Celtic practice. Starting in 1991, I began practicing fully as a Celtic Polytheist, mostly in an Irish tradition. In 1994, I wrote an unpublished book entitled Walking with the Gods, which described my Irish practice as it had developed up to that time. In 1995, I joined Imbas , and was a member for a couple years.

In about 1998, I got hold of Alexei Kondratiev’s The Apple Branch: a Path to Celtic Ritual. This was the book that really got me interested in Gaulish Polytheism, convincing me that a Gaulish revival was really possible, that enough was known. Still, at this phase in my life, I was deeply invested in Irish Reconstructionism, and convinced that there was not enough interest in the Gaulish path for it to be anything but a waste of time. I began practicing a mixture of paths, mostly Irish, but Gaulish in certain private rituals.

My interests waxed and waned. I developed close ties with various Irish deities, but something didn’t feel right. I felt very close to Them, but missed…..something. There was a sense of wrongness, a sense that my own deities were not as close to me as I thought, or perhaps were almost the deities I sought, but not quite. I was stubborn, and held to my course.

In 2004, my work, and my wife’s, took us to Florida, where we settled in the deep woods on the southern fringe of the Ocala National Forest. In 2005, I began to practice exclusively Gaulish, although my practice was still much inferior to what it would later become. In 2008, wanting to get some good from them, I rewrote and published the class handouts from a Gaelic group I had led, along with material from Walking with the Gods, as the book Celtic Flame, under the pen-name Aedh Rua. That book received mixed reviews.

From 2009 on, a new job led to my having the money to afford the latest research materials, and my Gaulish studies leaped ahead. I finally had reliable material, that could stand up to at least some scholarly scrutiny. My Gaulish Polytheism began to take the form you will discover here

In November of 2011, I was diagnosed with renal carcinoma. I had my right kidney removed on November 27, 2011, and endured a long and painful recovery from a surgery with complications. At least they got the cancer in one go. I returned to work after a couple months, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. In October of 2012, I left my job and began managing my wife’s business. Over time, I again became active in online fora, and this has led me here.

My cancer diagnosis is directly related to this column. It made me far more aware of my own mortality, and the need to get things done in the limited time I have. No one, lying on their deathbed, remembers their career accomplishments. I want some good to come of my studies, of all the research I have done. I want to share my knowledge with you, help shape and develop the Gaulish Polytheist path. Information on Gaulish Polytheism is hard to get, and my column could be very useful to those who are called by the Gaulish Gods or Ancestors.

If you are so moved, I invite you to embark on this journey with me.