Celtic Pagan Quotes

The Goddess has a fourth face. It is secret, and you should prey, as I do, as I do Igraine, that Morgause will never wear that face.

Treasured Pagan Deities were misrepresented and distorted by the Christians for political and religious gain. Dressing their own Satan, who has remained one of the most opressive symbols of evil in our time, in the horned antlers of Cernunnos, a revered Celtic God, was one of the more recognizable ways Christians robbed Pagans of their way of life.

The Green Man has also become synonymous with Cernunnos, the Celtic horned God, often portrayed in Celtic art as part man, part stag, who roams the greenwood wild and free. He is a character of strength and power, but often sadly mistaken for the devil by the Christian fraternity due to his horned appearance.

Ireland is still what novelist Edna O'Brien calls a "pagan place." But that paganism does not conflict with a devout Catholicism that embraces and absorbs it, in a way that can seem mysterious, even heretical, elsewhere. In Ireland, Christianity arrived without lions and gladiators, survived without autos-da-fe and Inquisitions. The old ways were seamlessly bonded to the new, so that ancient rituals continued, ancient divinities became saints, ancient holy sites were maintained just as they had been for generations and generations.

The tales told of the Cailleach can be seen as exemplifying the spiritual mindset, and changes therein, of the peoples of Britain, especially those of Scotland and Ireland. From being viewed as a benevolent pagan giantess who shaped the land, she became seen as a neutral figure by the early Christians, respected as part of the process of natural development, only to be demonized as time passed and Christianity became ever more rigid and unilateral.

O’ Cernunnos, with antler crown, you rid us all of the ungrateful kind with new life sown, amongst the moss, we’ve lain down to weep, diolch for the peace of mind, the pain you have (for centuries) known, hir yw pob ymaros, in wake and sleep, we knew you’d return to us!

As Christianity spread across Europe, the Church basically adopted these various pagan, Norse, Roman, and Celtic traditions as their own, choosing to celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25,31 for example, because it was already associated with feasting, sacrament, and rebirth.

On the conversion of the European tribes to Christianity the ancient pagan worship was by no means incontinently abandoned. So wholesale had been the conversion of many peoples, whose chiefs or rulers had accepted the new faith on their behalf in a summary manner, that it would be absurd to suppose that any, general acquiescence in the new gospel immediately took place. Indeed, the old beliefs lurked in many neighbourhoods, and even a renaissance of some of them occurred in more than one area. Little by little, however, the Church succeeded in rooting out the public worship of the old pagan deities, but it found it quite impossible to effect an entire reversion of pagan ways, and in the end compromised by exalting the ancient deities to the position of saints in its calendar, either officially, or by usage. In the popular mind, however, these remained as the fairies of woodland and stream, whose worship in a broken-down form still flourished at wayside wells and forest shrines. The Matres, or Mother gods, particularly those of Celtic France and Ireland, the former of which had come to be Romanized, became the bonnes dames of folklore, while the dusii and pilosi, or hairy house-sprites, were so commonly paid tribute that the Church introduced a special question concerning them into its catechism of persons suspected of pagan practice. Nevertheless, the Roman Church, at a somewhat later era, reversed its older and more catholic policy, and sternly set its face against the cultus of paganism in Europe, stigmatizing the several kinds of spirits and derelict gods who were the objects of its worship as demons and devils, whom mankind must eschew with the most pious care if it were to avoid damnation.

I have since learned that although the festival of Imbolc was far less romantic and far more practical to our Celtic ancestors than the initial image portrayed to me by Mrs Darley, it was no less magical, for it marked the beginning of the lambing season which to the Celts meant the difference between survival and extinction.

When the aged countrywoman stands at her door in the evening and, in her own words, 'looks at the mountains and thinks of the goodness of God,' God is all the nearer because the pagan powers are not far: because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for hawks, the white square door swings open at sundown, and those wild unchristian riders rush forth upon the fields, while southward the White Lady, who is doubtless Maive herself, wanders under the broad cloud nightcap of Knocknarea.

In contrast to the historical-religious approach of the Reconstructionists are the modern Druids, practitioners of Druidry. Historically it is possible to trace the roots of this movement to the 18th century English revival, which had more in common with Freemasonry than with any ancient Celtic religion. The approach today has been influenced by the environmentalism of the 60’s and is altogether more wild and pagan than the Romantic gentry of England intended. Druidry is an ever shifting thing; to some a religion, to some a philosophy, to some a spiritual path. Although it includes historical inspirations from the ancient Celts, it is more focused on the present and exhibits more freedom in its innovations.

Isis is the Egyptian mother goddess of magick, whose worship prevailed in the Greco-Roman world.  Her name means “Throne”, reflected in her headdress which is shaped like a throne.  Her spouse was originally Osiris, but became Serapis in the Greco-Roman myths, and her son became transformed from Horus to Harpocrates. Evidence of her worship in Britain has been found in an inscription on a jug  found in Southwark (London).[369]  The inscription on the jug indicates an Iseum (Isis temple) in London, but the location of this temple has yet to be determined.  An altar found in Blackfriars records the restoration of a temple to Isis in the third century CE, further reinforcing evidence of her worship.[370]  It has been suggested by some modern writers that the river Isis in Oxfordshire was named after this goddess, though this may in fact be a coincidence. The name of the river Isis is most probably a contraction of the name Thamesis. It is likely that "Thamesis" is a Latinisation of the Celtic river names "Taom"(Thames) and"Uis"(is), giving "Taom-Uis"meaning "The pouring out of water". An engraved onyx intaglio found at Wroxeter (Shropshire) dating to the third century CE shows Isis bearing a sistrum in her right hand.[371]  Another gem from Lockleys (Hertfordshire) dating to the fourth century CE shows Isis standing between Bes and a lioness, all surrounded by a serpent ouroboros.[372]

Even if no equations could be found, the veneration of local deities was not deemed offensive to the Roman authorities. The evidence of inscriptions from British Romano-Celtic sites shows that Roman soldiers, who came from across the Empire, made dedications to local Celtic gods, and also to deities from Germanic cultures such as the war god Vheterus and the goddesses known as the Alaisagae.

The American definition of paganism is especially suspect among the Irish, too, when it seems to imply adherence to some British cult. The fact that most of the self-proclaimed "witches" in Ireland are English does not escape comment, and notice is also given to the number of American tourists who traipse through on pilgrimages to these minor celebrities and make no inquires about local beliefs.

In other Celtic lands, destruction of the ancient bardic orders meant the loss of history and myth as well as of poetry. But not in Ireland -- at least, not entirely. There, the melding of the Christian and the pagan began early, during the great period of Celtic monasticism. Irish monks of that period provided most of our written records of Celtic mythology. In continental Europe, evidence of Celtic beliefs is found only in sculpture; in Britain, it is found only in a few verbal shards and the occasional inscribed statue; but in Ireland we find entire epics, whole chants and songs, lengthy narratives. In the curvilinear script for which they are justly famous, Irish monks wrote down the stories, poems, place-names, and other lore of their pagan ancestors before it disappeared in the mists of history.

Today, we give thanks to the cycle of rebirth For the grains, corn, and fruit that we pluck from the earth To those who carry with them the seed of new life That we reap during harvest with the basket and scythe We give thanks for the blessings upon fertile ground That keeps us fed and hale all the year-’round Everything that is and all that has been Carried forth by faithful servants within A blessing unto nature and the goddess of three Ever sacred is your will that is worked through me.

the Greek аnd Rоmаn stereоtype thаt the Celts were crude, viоlent, аnd "uncivilized" peоple is untrue. Rаther, this nаrrаtive served Julius Cаesаr аs а pretext tо аnnex severаl Celtic peоples under the rule оf Rоme in the Iberiаn аnd French prоvinces.

Ronald Hutton in The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles points out that it is difficult to tell whether these were real reflections of the Goddesses, role models for Celtic women, fantasies of the Celtic men, or the nightmarish visions of the Roman explorers or the Christian monks who eventually wrote down the descriptions.

The fire covered the field, the flames worked fast. I glanced over at Preston who was watching the destruction with a dark grin. The fire reflected in his eyes; shadows moved across his face illuminating the deep creases as he gazed ahead with great conviction. He looked evil. Was he evil? Lord knows he’s done evil. Or was he a man who thought he was doing the right thing, just reacting to situations and conditions that were thrust upon him? Each man is the protagonist of his own life. Always right in their own mind, altruistic and correct no matter what society deems acceptable. Nobody thinks they're evil. Nobody thinks they’re a bad person. All deeds, no matter how harmful or offensive to others can be rationalized in the perpetrators mind; perhaps that is the definition of evil? I looked away, who am I to judge? I thought. I don’t have the theological qualifications or the clean track record to deem anyone evil, he’s just a man. I focused back on the inferno. Watching the fire spark and dance forming grinning malevolent shapes, I thought of the ancient Celtics when they’d set their world on fire with their Samhain bonfires; their unholy pagan ritual for summer’s end. That sacred night when the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest. The night of the great sacrifice. Blue-red flames licked the sky crackling and hissing their macabre cleansing cacophony that drew our unblinking stares and didn’t let go, it had us, it made us watch. Corynne clutched me close, her breathing was soft and warm; the air was beginning to cool. October was coming.

During the tenth century the Vikings must have become Christians, for there are very few pagan graves from this period but many highly decorated stone crosses. Runic inscriptions of several of them tell that sometimes there were very close relations between Vikings and the local population, for some sons had Celtic names.

The sentiment Never Promise Anyone Forever, as I understood it, was a Celtic/Pagan wedding vow that was in opposition to the Catholic idea that two people unite until death. Never Promise Anyone Forever meant only remaining wed while there was love in the relationship. Dan, however, took it literally and (much to his amusement) all of his future girlfriends hated it.

Celtic myths of the Mabon and of the powerful forces of nature that we anthropomorphise into gods and goddesses. And I can touch the hand of the Christ child there too, for he is representative of us all, of our own divine status as daughters and sons of God.

The Aryans were nomadic horsemen from the Pontic steppe, in present-day Ukraine. Their language is the common ancestor of Latin, Greek, Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Celtic, and Indic. It predates the invention of writing, and exists only in reconstructed form. “The Aryans transformed our culture, language, and religion. The pagan gods of Europe, including the Norse, Greco-Roman, Slavic, and Celtic, are descended from

And please don’t give me some crap about it being Celtic in origin. I’ve researched the subject far more than you and your crackpot crowd and I can assure you that the pagan thing is total bollocks. To start with, the festival of Christmas is not derived from Yule. Yule dates back to 400 AD at the earliest, whereas Christmas is referred to in Roman records some two centuries before that. Also, the birth of Jesus is not a Christianised version of the birth of Mithras … Mithras was not born of a human mother, and his cult came much later during the Empire. There is no provable connection between Christmas and the solstice celebrated by the druids. We don’t even know if the druids celebrated the solstice because they didn’t write anything down, whereas the Romans wrote an awful lot down about Christmas. Sorry to disappoint you, Soph, but Christmas is solidly Christian with a few pagan trappings that the Victorians added because they were midwinter emblems.

The leaders of the hunt can be viewed as fertility spirits, representations of unrestrained sexuality. In earlier times, the Wild Hunt was associated with fertility cults, but in Christian times it became a symbol of the devil at work, which perhaps highlights the differing sexual attitudes of pagans and Christians. To the former, the sexual urge is wild, chaotic, and celebrated, while to the Christians it is fearsome, demonic, and strange.

The spring celebration of the Germanic goddess Eostre merged over time with the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection to become the Christian festival Easter. Christians adopted the Celtic festival of Samhain at the end of October, sometimes known as the Feast of the Dead, by moving All Saints’ (Hallows’) Day from May to November, making All Hallows’ Eve a time to remember the dead. The midwinter pagan festival of Yuletide became Christmas.

Animals associated with Samhain include bats, black cats, owls, ravens, and spiders. You can incorporate animal carvings of these animals in your Samhain rituals, donate to shelters and conservation organizations focused on them, or honor them in another way that works for your celebration of Samhain.

The triad of Matres/Matronae, who generated and guaranteed well-being, abundance, and fertility, eventually changed into “Three Maries.”31 These Celtic pagan goddesses, made visible when Romanized folk remembered their local ancestral deities in dedicatory inscriptions, continued to exist in a new religious context, that of Christianity.

The Roman invasion of Britain in 43 CE imported the full pantheon of pagan gods and goddesses. In 313 the emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the official religion of the new Holy Roman Empire. In the ensuing trickle-down across Europe, Christianity emerged in the British Isles as one cult among many – a largely Celtic brew of beliefs seasoned by the sporadic invasions of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Missionaries kept returning to Britain’s Celtic fringes – Cornwall, Wales, Ireland – but inland, where it was more perilous for them to penetrate, the divine family tree became gnarled and tangled, with the pagan gods twisted around the Christian Trinity as an ivy binds itself to an oak. The story of the death of Christ was, in any case, mystically aligned with the older religion, with its depiction of a sacrificed saviour king and the ritual consumption of body and blood. Paganism may have rejected the pantheon of state-sanctioned gods, but it grafted itself firmly onto the Christian gospel.

Such moments – the first glimmer of dawn sunbeams, lengthening shadows, star-glitter permeating the darkening sky, ‘a perilous pagan enchantment haunting the midsummer forest’3 – saturate the music of Arnold Bax, the principal figure in what is sometimes referred to as the Celtic Twilight movement in British music, when the land without music was transformed into a sonorous Neverland.

The Celts have left us two cups - perhaps the two most famous cups in all of history - which beautifully reveal the story of transformation of Irish immigration from its fearful and unstable pagan origins to its baptized peace. The first cup is the Gundestrup Cauldron, found in a Danish swamp where it was thrown as a votary offering by a Celtic devotee a century or two before Christ. ... The other cup is the Ardagh Chalice. found in a Limerick field and dating to the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century - the same period in which the "Breastplate" reached its final form. ... Like the Cauldron, it was forged for ritual, but it makes a happier statement about sacrificing, for the God to whom it is dedicated no longer demands that we nourish him and thus become one with his godhead. The transaction has been reversed: he offers himself to us as heavenly nourishment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Often the question of which books were used for research in the Merry series is asked. So, here is a list (in no particular order). While not comprehensive, it contains the major sources. An Encyclopedia of Faeries by Katharine Briggs Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend by Miranda J. Green Celtic Goddesses by Miranda J. Green Dictionary of Celtic Mythology by Peter Berresford Ellis Goddesses in World Mythology by Martha Ann and Dorothy Myers Imel A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz Pagan Celtic Britain by Anne Ross The Ancient British Goddesses by Kathy Jones Fairy Tradition in Britain by Lewis Spense One Hundred Old Roses for the American Garden by Clair G. Martin Taylor’s Guide to Roses Pendragon by Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd Kings and Queens from Collins Gem Butterflies of Europe: A Princeton Guide by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington Butterflies and Moths of Missouri by J. Richard and Joan E. Heitzman Dorling Kindersly Handbook: Butterflies and Moths by David Carter The Natural World of Bugs and Insects by Ken and Rod Preston Mafham Big Cats: Kingdom of Might by Tom Brakefield Just Cats by Karen Anderson Wild Cats of the World by Art Wolfe and Barbara Sleeper Beauty and the Beast translated by Jack Zipes The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm translated by Jack Zipes Grimms’ Tales for Young and Old by Ralph Manheim Complete Guide to Cats by the ASPCA Field Guide to Insects and Spiders from the National Audubon Society Mammals of Europe by David W. MacDonald Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham Northern Mysteries and Magick by Freya Aswym Cabbages and Kings by Jonathan Roberts Gaelic: A Complete Guide for Beginners The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley Holland The Penguin Companion to Food by Alan Davidson

Britain provides an example of the often paradoxical nature of pagan revival. The actually existing witchcraft of the British Isles in the early modern period bears little resemblance either to ancient Celtic or Saxon polytheism, nor to Wicca, which arises in 20th century Britain as a synthesis of pagan ritual seen through the lens of 19th and early 20th century scholarship, along with the occult tradition and elements of Tantric Hinduism from colonial informants. Actually existing British witchcraft, known especially in the form of so-called ‘cunning men’ (and women), was instead inseparable from folk Christianity. To the degree that other Gods featured in its practices, ‘Classical’, that is, Graeco-Roman paganism, was rather more accessible to its literate practitioners than any surviving elements of Celtic or Saxon traditions. The ‘Classical’ Gods, however, were firmly identified by such practitioners with the planets, and Their agency tightly constrained through this determinism. The ‘spirits’ per se known to such witches and magicians, highly eclectic in origin, and accorded more agency, were in turn engaged not through theistic worship, but through pacts.