This is the first post I have written in response to an ongoing Polytheist controversy. Depending on how it is received, it may be the last. For several weeks, now, the Polytheist blogosphere has been roiled by the question of the question of whether early Polytheisms had concepts of impurity, spiritual contagion, and sin, and, if so, what they entailed. The controversy was started by a warning that attendance at this year’s Many Gods West…

I. This is a Gaulish ritual for Îuos Lugous, or Lughnasadh. It follows the pattern of other Gaulish rituals I have written, with the exception of the Natus, in this case, a praise poem directed to Lugus. Probably the best offerings to give would be hard apple cider, good wine, or hard liquor of any kind. The ritual should take place on the first of Elembiuos, or else the new moon closest to the first…

I. Rationale for the Placement of Holidays: As we have seen in our column on the Coligny Calendar, Garrett Olmsted translates the word IVOS as “festival”, and finds five major and two minor clusters throughout the year. If the calendar starts at Samhain, or close to it, as we have hypothesized, then we can very roughly place these clusters on the Gregorian Calendar as well. We find that they coincide very roughly with the traditional…

CE Year Gregorian Month Date BG Year Coligny Month Half Date Omens 2015 November 12 3034 Samonios Cemenolugrâ 1 IVOS 13 2 MD IVOS 14 3 AMB IVOS 15 4 MD 16 5 AMB 17 6 MD 18 7 19 8 20 9 MD 21 10 MD 22 11 AMB 23 12 MD 24 13 MD 25 14 MD 26 15 MD 27 Senolugrâ 1 28 2 MD Tri Sam 29 3 AMB 30 4…

1. Basics: The Coligny calendar was unearthed in 1897 at Coligny, in France.  It consists of 16 columns inscribed on a sheet of bronze.  At the time of its discovery, it was in fragments.  Much of it is missing.  It is the longest single text in the Gaulish language.1 As we will see, the calendar is a thorough application of the Samos and Giamos principles applied to time. The calendar consists of a cycle of…

The Gaulish word Iextâ apparently meant “language”.1 However it additionally meant rather more than that, for the cognates in modern Celtic languages include expanded meanings. The Goidelic, and later Irish icht meant “people” or “tribe”, without any linguistic connotation, while the Middle Welsh ieith, and later iaith, meant “language”, “nation” and “race”.2 We can assume, then, that the earlier Common Celtic and Gaulish word likely carried a similar connotation. Iextâ is the Gaulish word for…