Chapter Xi. Primitive Nature Worship : p. 171 CHAPTER XI. PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP. IN early thought everything was a person, in the loose meaning then possessed by personality, and many such "persons" were worshipped--earth, sun, moon, sea, wind, etc. This led later to more complete personification, and the sun or earth divinity...
Chapter Ix. Gods And Men : p. 158 CHAPTER IX. GODS AND MEN. THOUGH man usually makes his gods in his own image, they are unlike as well as like him. Intermediate between them and man are ideal heroes whose parentage is partly divine, and who may themselves have been gods. One mark of the Celtic gods is their great stature...
Chapter Xxii. The State Of The Dead : p. 333 CHAPTER XXII. THE STATE OF THE DEAD. AMONG all the problems with which man has busied himself, none so appeals to his hopes and fears as that of the future life. Is there a farther shore, and if so, shall we reach it? Few races, if any, have doubted the existence of a future state, but...
Title Page : THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CELTS BY JOHN ARNOTT MACCULLOCH (b. 1868, D. 1950) T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh [1911] Scanned , February, 2004. John Bruno Hare, Redactor. This Text Is In The Public Domain In The United States. These Files May Be Used For Any Non-commercial Purpose, Provided This Notice...
List Of Abbreviations : p. xiii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES THROUGHOUT THIS WORK ("This list is not a Bibliography".)
Chapter Xiii. Tree And Plant Worship : p. 198 CHAPTER XIII. TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP. THE Celts had their own cult of trees, but they adopted local cults--Ligurian, Iberian, and others. The "Fagus Deus" (the divine beech), the "Sex arbor" or "Sex arbores" of Pyrenean inscriptions, and an anonymous god represented by a conifer on an altar...
Chapter Vi. The Gods Of The Brythons : p. 95 CHAPTER VI THE GODS OF THE BRYTHONS OUR knowledge of the gods of the Brythons, "i.e." as far as Wales is concerned, is derived, apart from inscriptions, from the "Mabinogion", which, though found in a fourteenth century MS., was composed much earlier, and contains elements from a remote past...
Chapter Iv. The Irish Mythological Cycle : p. 49 CHAPTER IV. THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. THREE divine and heroic cycles of myths are known in Ireland, one telling of the Tuatha D Danann, the others of Cchulainn and of the Fians. They are distinct in character and contents, but the gods of the first cycle often help the heroes...
Chapter Iii. The Gods Of Gaul And The Continental : p. 22 CHAPTER III. THE GODS OF GAUL AND THE CONTINENTAL CELTS. THE passage in which Csar sums up the Gaulish pantheon runs: "They worship chiefly the god Mercury; of him there are many symbols, and they regard him as the inventor of all the arts, as the guide of travellers, and as possessing gre...
Chapter Xiv. Animal Worship : p. 208 CHAPTER XIV. ANIMAL WORSHIP. ANIMAL worship pure and simple had declined among the Celts of historic times, and animals were now regarded mainly as symbols or attributes of divinities. The older cult had been connected with the pastoral stage in which the animals were divine, or with...
Chapter Viii. The Fionn Saga : p. 142 CHAPTER VIII. THE FIONN SAGA. THE most prominent characters in the Fionn saga, after the death of Fionn's father Cumal, are Fionn, his son Oisin, his grandson Oscar, his nephew Diarmaid with his "ball-seirc", or "beauty-spot," which no woman could resist; Fergus famed for wisdom...
Chapter Xvii. Tabu : p. 252 CHAPTER XVII. TABU. THE Irish "geis", pl. "geasa", which may be rendered by Tabu, had two senses. It meant something which must not be done for fear of disastrous consequences, and also an obligation to do something commanded by another. As a tabu the "geis" had a large place in Irish life...
Chapter Xix. Accessories Of Cult : p. 279 CHAPTER XIX. ACCESSORIES OF CULT. TEMPLES. IN primitive religion the place of worship is seldom a temple made with hands, but rather an enclosed space in which the symbol or image of the god stands. The sacredness of the god makes the place of his cult sacred. Often an open space...
Chapter X. The Cult Of The Dead : p. 165 CHAPTER X. THE CULT OF THE DEAD. THE custom of burying grave-goods with the dead, or slaying wife or slaves on the tomb, does not necessarily point to a cult of the dead, yet when such practices survive over a long period they assume the form of a cult. These customs flourished among...
Chapter I. Introductory : p. 1 THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CELTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. To summon a dead religion from its forgotten grave and to make it tell its story, would require an enchanter's wand. Other old faiths, of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, are known to us. But in their case liturgies, myths, theogonies...
Chapter Xviii. Festivals : p. 256 CHAPTER XVIII. FESTIVALS. THE Celtic year was not at first regulated by the solstices and equinoxes, but by some method connected with agriculture or with the seasons. Later, the year was a lunar one, and there is some evidence of attempts at synchronising solar and lunar time. But time w...
Chapter Xvi. Sacrifice, Prayer, And Divination : p. 233 CHAPTER XVI. SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION. THE Semites are often considered the worst offenders in the matter of human sacrifice, but in this, according to classical evidence, they were closely rivalled by the Celts of Gaul. They offered human victims on the principle of a life...
Chapter Xii. River And Well Worship : p. 181 CHAPTER XII. RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP. AMONG the Celts the testimony of contemporary witnesses, inscriptions, votive offerings, and survivals, shows the importance of the cult of waters and of water divinities. Mr. Gomme argues that Celtic water-worship was derived from the pre-Celtic...
Chapter Xxiii. Rebirth And Transmigration : p. 348 CHAPTER XXIII. REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION. IN Irish sagas, rebirth is asserted only of divinities or heroes, and, probably because this belief was obnoxious to Christian scribes, while some MSS. tell of it in the case of certain heroic personages, in others these same heroes are said...
Chapter Xx. The Druids : p. 293 CHAPTER XX. THE DRUIDS. PLINY thought that the name "Druid" was a Greek appellation derived from the Druidic cult of the oak (). 1 The word, however, is purely Celtic, and its meaning probably implies that, like the sorcerer and medicine-man everywhere, the Druid was regarded as "...
Chapter V. The Tuatha D'e Danann : p. 63 CHAPTER V THE TUATHA D DANANN THE meaning formerly given to "Tuatha D Danann" was "the men of science who were gods, danann" being here connected with "dn", "knowledge." But the true meaning is "the tribes or folk of the goddess Danu," 1 which agrees with the cognates Tuatha or Fir De...
Chapter Ii. The Celtic People : p. 8 CHAPTER II. THE CELTIC PEOPLE. SCRUTINY reveals the fact that Celtic-speaking peoples are of differing types--short and dark as well as tall and fairer Highlanders or Welshmen, short, broad-headed Bretons, various types of Irishmen. Men with Norse names and Norse aspect "have the Gaelic." But...
Chapter Xxiv. Elysium : p. 362 CHAPTER XXIV. ELYSIUM. THE Celtic conception of Elysium, the product at once of religion, mythology, and romantic imagination, is found in a series of Irish and Welsh tales. We do not know that a similar conception existed among the continental Celts, but, considering the likeness of their...
Chapter Xv. Cosmogony : p. 227 CHAPTER XV. COSMOGONY. WHETHER the early Celts regarded Heaven and Earth as husband and wife is uncertain. Such a conception is worldwide, and myth frequently explains in different ways the reason of the separation of the two. Among the Polynesians the children of heaven and earth...
Chapter Xxi. Magic : p. 319 CHAPTER XXI. MAGIC. THE Celts, like all other races, were devoted to magical practices, many of which could be used by any one, though, on the whole, they were in the hands of the Druids, who in many aspects were little higher than the shamans of barbaric tribes. But similar magical rites...
Preface : p. vii PREFACE THE scientific study of ancient Celtic religion is a thing of recent growth. As a result of the paucity of materials for such a study, earlier writers indulged in the wildest speculative flights and connected the religion with the distant East, or saw in it the remains...
Chapter Vii. The C'uchulainn Cycle : p. 127 CHAPTER VII. THE CCHULAINN CYCLE. THE events of the Cchulainn cycle are supposed to date from the beginning of the Christian era--King Conchobar's death synchronising with the crucifixion. But though some personages who are mentioned in the Annals figure in the tales, on the whole they deal...
