Celtic deities

The ancient Celts appear to have had a pantheon of deities comparable to others in Indo-European religion, each linked to aspects of life and the natural world.

More tentatively, links can be made between ancient Celtic deities and figures in early medieval Irish and Welsh literature, although all these works were produced well after Christianization.

The locus classicus for the Celtic gods of Gaul is the passage in Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico (The Gallic War, 52–51 BC) in which he names six of them, together with their functions.

Mercury was regarded as the inventor of all the arts, the patron of travellers and of merchants, and the most powerful deity in matters of commerce and gain.

After him, the Gauls honoured Apollo, who drove away diseases, Mars, who controlled war, Jupiter, who ruled the heavens, and Minerva, who promoted handicrafts.

Not infrequently, their names are coupled with native Celtic theonyms and epithets, such as Mercury Visucius, Lenus Mars, Jupiter Poeninus, or Sulis Minerva.

The majority occur only once, which has led some scholars to conclude that the Celtic deities and their cults were local and tribal rather than national.

[2] Evidence from the Roman period presents a wide array of gods and goddesses who are represented by images or inscribed dedications.

A distinctive feature of the Matres, or mother-goddesses, was their frequent depiction as a triad in many parts of Britain, in Gaul, and on the Rhine, although it is possible to identify strong regional differences within this group.

Yet the link between the Celtic Jupiter and the solar wheel is maintained over a wide area, from Hadrian's Wall to Cologne and Nîmes.

Specific to the Remi of northwest Gaul is a distinctive group of stone carvings depicting a triple-faced god with shared facial features and luxuriant beards.

Vosegus presided over the mountains of the Vosges, Luxovius over the spa-settlement of Luxeuil, and Vasio over the town of Vaison in the Lower Rhône Valley.

[7] One notable feature of Gaulish and Romano-Celtic sculpture is the frequent appearance of male and female deities in pairs, such as Rosmerta and ‘Mercury’, Nantosuelta and Sucellos, Sirona and Apollo Grannus, Borvo and Damona, or Mars Loucetius and Nemetona.

[8] A recurrent figure in Gaulish iconography is a deity sitting cross-legged with antlers, sometimes surrounded by animals, often wearing or holding a torc.

The name frequently now applied to this deity, Cernunnos, is attested only a few times: on the Pillar of the Boatmen, a relief in Paris (currently reading ERNUNNOS, but an early sketch shows it as having read CERNUNNOS in the 18th century); on an inscription from Montagnac (αλλετ[ει]νος καρνονου αλ[ι]σο[ντ]εας, "Alletinos [dedicated this] to Carnonos of Alisontea"[9]); and on a pair of identical inscriptions from Seinsel-Rëlent ("Deo Ceruninco"[10]).

Apollo Grannus, although concentrated in central and eastern Gaul, also “occurs associated with medicinal waters in Brittany [...] and far away in the Danube Basin”.

[16] Similarly, Étaín has at times been considered to be another theonym associated with the sun; if this is the case, then the pan-Celtic Epona might also have been originally solar in nature,[16] although Roman syncretism pushed her toward a lunar role.

[citation needed] The Welsh Olwen has at times been considered a vestige of the local sun goddess, in part due to the possible etymological association [20] with the wheel and the colours gold, white, and red.

In Lusitanian and Celtic polytheism, Borvo (also Bormo, Bormanus, Bormanicus, Borbanus, Boruoboendua, Vabusoa, Labbonus, or Borus) was a healing deity associated with bubbling spring water.

[8] Iconographically, Celtic mother goddesses may appear singly or, quite often, triply; they usually hold fruit, cornucopiae, or paterae;[2] they may also be full-breasted (or many-breasted) figures nursing infants.

Mother goddesses were at times symbols of sovereignty, creativity, birth, fertility, sexual union, and nurturing.

[8] Another name, Lugus, is inferred from the recurrent place-name Lugdunon ('the fort of Lugus') from which the modern Lyon, Laon, and Loudun in France, Leiden in the Netherlands, and Lugo in Galicia derive their names; a similar element can be found in Carlisle (formerly Castra Luguvallium), Legnica in Poland and the county Louth in Ireland, derived from the Irish "Lú" that comes from "Lugh".

The Irish and Welsh cognates of Lugus are Lugh and Lleu, respectively, and certain traditions concerning these figures mesh neatly with those of the Gaulish god.

Caesar's description of the latter as "the inventor of all the arts" might almost have been a paraphrase of Lugh's conventional epithet samildánach ("possessed of many talents"), while Lleu is addressed as "master of the twenty crafts" in the Mabinogi.

Duval (1993)[2]: 73 Mars' representations, much rarer [than Mercury's] (thirty-odd bas reliefs) and more monotone in their studied classicism, and his epithets which are more than twice as numerous (about fifty), balance each other to place his importance roughly on the same level as Mercury, but his domination is not of the same kind.Esus appears in two continental monuments, including the Pillar of the Boatmen, as an axeman cutting branches from trees.

Sucellos, the 'good striker' is usually portrayed as a middle-aged bearded man, with a long-handled hammer, or perhaps a beer barrel suspended from a pole.

Tarvos Trigaranus ("bull with three cranes") is pictured on reliefs from the cathedral at Trier, Germany, and at Notre-Dame de Paris.