Popularity of Celtic spirituality
Plan
Introduction
Celtic spirituality: past and present
Conclusion
Introduction
Celts are an ancient tribe that inhabited most part of the Northern Europe between
800 BCE and 400 CE. Their unique culture has always attracted attention of people.
Especially interesting and popular is Celtic diversity – Celtic spirituality.
Celtic religion is appreciated and honoured by all Christians: Catholic and
Protestant. They are interested in different sides of this religion but it goes
without saying that Celtic culture should be observed and analysed.
Celts see the necessity of collaboration between people and the earth, people
and the spirits of nature and the Holy Spirit that is the head of all living
creatures and is beyond all names. Celts believe in existence of many gods and
angels and image them as living beings, not just abstract creations. According
to the Celtic understanding of the world, these divine beings can communicate
with people in their own mystical way.
We can trace the influence of their outlook to many modern religions, including
Christianity. There are two many manifestation of Celtic spiritual prophesy
in the modern world. It can be in a form of religious trends, which derive directly
from Celtic or Druid system of believes or in the form of rites, which have
entered other religions and made their organic part.
Celtic spirituality: past and present
Celtic spirituality has some distinguishing features, one of them is its diversity:
it combines polytheistic and monotheistic features, earthy rituals and transcendental
mysticism. The appearance of Celtic spirituality is dated back to first mythological
mentions. Second feature of Celtic spirituality is its natural character, ties
with earth. The Celtic spirituality is contained in sky, earth, sun, and sea
– in all nature. Celts believed in sanctity of nature and tried to take
care of it. The third thing is mystical and relational directivity. Celtic diversity
comes more from experience than from theological dogmas. Celts are looking for
the religious origins in their hearts and souls; they don’t accept philosophical
substantiation of the belief.
Another interesting thing about the Celts is their love to poetry, beauty and
creativity. Celtic diversity, which combines mysticism, love of nature and comes
from the relational spirituality, is in natural harmony with beauty and poetry.
The development of Celtic culture is the way of unique, rich culture. Every
religious and philosophical doctrine can find familiar features just to itself
but the understanding of Celtic culture needs neutrality and objective sensation.
Celtic culture can be compared with a magnificent tree with a lot of branches.
These branches got their further development and now have become common values.
The pre-Christian world was the world of Celts, who worshiped nature. To the
Celtic outlook, the land was the main goddess, the rivers were her helpers and
they enriched the earth. Celts used to live in forests, where they were close
to the nature and could learn the language of trees and wisdom of animals. With
the appearance of Christianity ancient Celts didn’t disturb their close
ties with nature, they connected their love to nature with the main principles
of Christianity. Celtic monks lived in deep forests and wrote their religious
works for the gifts of nature. The most important thing was to understand the
divine origin of all things and god’s existence in nature. Celts saw life
as a constantly changing circulation of life and death. Everything moved in
a spiral and nature’s observation gave a possibility to find mechanism
of development of the world. Nowadays we have practically completely lost the
awareness of spiral development and it’s difficult to gain an understanding
of the world.
Life of Celts is an integration of spirit, community and nature, and these concepts
were a single whole and couldn’t exist separately that can be scarcely
imagined in our modern society. The returning to these Celtic dogmas can help
us understand who we are.
Celtic Christians strongly believed in Holy Trinity. By the Celtic outlook the
world is created by the main god who surrounds the entire world with his two
arms of love: the left arm is the spirit and the right one is Christ. Christ
is the supreme example of human life. Being close to the Christ means the understanding
and getting of supreme and eternal love and wisdom. Early Celtic Christians
didn’t go to church they preferred worshipping in small communities and
sharing their food, money, work with the representatives of this small group.
They saw Christ in their neighbour and shared everything with him.
Celts had a lot of traditions and cults that were directly connected with nature,
animals and different gods and spirits. Every family had special rites aimed
to protect all the members of the family from evil spirits. Feasts and banquets
were one of the components of ritual including special food and atmosphere.
During a feast a minstrel usually sang songs about deeds of famous warriors.
After the minstrel’s songs his listeners began to boast of their own brave
deeds. As they all had drunk too much, they began quarreling and fighting and
even some men could be killed.
Early Celtic spirituality is characterised by animal divinity. Even now we can
find statues of horses, bears, birds created by the Celts. Only later with the
influence of Mediterranean culture it took anthropomorphic element. Not all
animals were thought sacred and this explains specific sensitive attitude to
horses and cattle.
Celtic hierarchy of Gods combined Christianity and Greek religion and at the
same time developed its own peculiarities. Cernunnos is the god that is responsible
for money and grain and is correlated with variety of both domestic and wild
animals. There are also such Celtic gods as Jupiter Taranis, Sulis Minerva,
Lenus Mars, Rosmerta, Mercury, Epona and other. Celts were polytheistic, so
believed in many gods. They thought gods to be inhabitants of the thickest and
darkest parts of the forest. Such plants as mistletoe and oak-tree were considered
sacred. There is a big group of historians that think that the Celts were headed
by a class of priests called Druids. Stonehenge was the temple of Druids. Druids’
way of worshiping was rather cruel and proposed sacrifices of human beings to
get god’s pardon. The Druids put the men in huge baskets and burned them
in the presence of people. But this historical opinion isn’t still improved
or disapproved.
So, to sum up, Celtic spirituality is characterised by love of nature, art and
poetry; relationship between saints and gods; respect for Mary and the importance
of Liturgy; union of secular and sacred; the power of abbots; monasteries; ancient
calendar system for celebrating Easter; closeness between natural and supernatural;
importance of family and kinship. Celtic historical motherland is Ireland and
territories around it. The isolation of Ireland didn’t allow spreading
Roman authority on it. Monasteries were the places of holly atmosphere and looked
just like big tribal villages inhabited by all people: monks, slaves, freemen,
usual men and women and priesthood. These people used to be representatives
from the one clan of relatives. Some monasteries were situated in isolated places
and others were just the crossroads of main towns.
Celts also made invaluable deposit in the development and making of the educational
system. They took part in the spreading of the literacy among Ireland and other
Celtic lands and reservation of dogmas of learning during “dark ages”.
Celtic liturgy started its existence in ancient times and included components
that are eternal and won’t lose its actuality with the further development
of the society. Their main themes are monasticism, closeness between God and
nature, importance of the family and kinship, storytelling, love and respect
of the Mother of the god, peace and justice, hospitality and education. Irish
monks are still famous for their inestimable work as educators of Europe.
Many modern seasonal festivals have Celtic origin. From a lot of sources we
can find information about assemblies of Druids but exact dates are not given.
The building of the Imperial temple at Lugdunum was probably dedicated to the
feast of Lugh. The lack of dates makes it difficult to determine the origin
of some traditions and feats that are rooted in the Celtic culture.
The invention of the Coligny Calendar is the oldest inscription in Celtic language
and gives us the flavour of the development of Celtic civilisation. It was invented
between first century BCE and first century CE and contains reconciliation between
two years. According to this calendar the year is divided in 12 months with
29-30 days each. Every two years the 13th month has to be added. By this calendar
ancient Celts hold their feasts and every five years had a great sacrifice.
It was the first attempt to lock in the changes of constant motion of nature
and so of time. This calendar became the foundation of the modern one.
Votive offerings are a kind of Celtic worshipping that helps us to dive deeper
in Celtic outlook and understand reasons and motives of these ceremonies. Workers
and artificers were fastened to big temples and produced special holy souvenirs
and mass-produced offerings. They were usually made from wood, later from clay
and metal. The most popular and common offerings were coins. Special tiny coins
were invented that could be used just for offerings. For example, there were
coins devoted to the Goddess and were her properties. The number of these coins
is high and they can be find practically in every Celtic temple during diggings.
The next votive offerings were personal jewellery, such as rings, bracelets,
earrings, pins, and necklaces. Sometimes special rites of “killing”
the personal spirit of these things were hold before the sacred deposition.
Even now we don’t know the exact purposes of this rite.
Another type of offerings was creation of anatomical models and representation
of diseases on the statues of ancient Celtic gods. For example, Seguana, Goddess
of the River Seine was depicted with models of eyes, limbs, heads and internal
organs. Sometimes particular diseases that had pilgrims were reflected on the
statues these pilgrims worshiped.
The esoteric traditions of Celtic spirituality allow us develop our inner capacities
and contact many resources for healing and wisdom. We may develop a relationship
with Brigit, who used to be a goddess of the abundant earth and life-giving
sun, later a Christian saint; or Morgan of the Isle of Avalon, known for her
skills in herbal medicine. Celtic spirituality is the way to open supernatural
powers for those who believe in this.
Celtic spirituality is not just a form of ancient religion, even now it has
a lot of followers and is very popular. The number of sources, which refer to
Celtic civilisation is great and you can find practically everything you want
to know. The rebirth of Celtic culture is growing stronger and there are a lot
of groups practising Celtic religion.
One of the most popular religious groups, Neo-Pagan Druids of Ar n’Draiocht
Fein takes the basis of the Celtic religion and combines them with main features
of Indo-European cultures. Another groups such as “Celtic Wicca”,
“Celtic Magic” and others try to render Celtic culture. Such popularity
is explained by relevant and eternal principles of this religion.
Sometimes modern follows can have nothing familiar with Celtic spirituality
except of names of the gods. The best method of finding your place among numerous
religions is to follow the summons of your voice. You choice can be based on
knowledge about different religions and but it’s important to make own
you conscious choice. Just basis on your own experience can lead you to all
mysteries and wonders of religious world. Following ancient kind of religion,
for example Celtic one, is a very important and meaningful choice. You should
research and understand Celtic worldview.
Conclusion
All the religions are good and unique. I think that religion is very personal
choice and it should be made individually. The religious freedom is guaranteed
by the Constitutional law and can’t be limited or neglected. The main
aim of the Church is to unite people, to bring peace to the earth. It’s
very painful for me that sometimes exactly religion is the reason of wars and
conflicts. I have a strong determination that religion mustn’t judge the
representatives of other confessions.
Celtic religion gained its popularity among people because of its generality
and eternity. It advocates main principles of humanity: love and respect for
family and kin; love of nature, poetry and other kinds of art. Celtic spirituality
assumes communication with god and spirits that are closely connected with nature.
It combines natural and supernatural and pictures the god as a supreme human
being with perfect intelligence and power.
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