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/
