REVIVAL, REBIRTH AND RENAISSANCE, YES!

RESURRECTION LIKE BEFORE, NO!

"It’s by following the walking one that we find the way.”

Comparison is a fundamental mental process: grouping some facts together under common categories but also noticing differences. Such connections and relationships are the basis of thought and science. Otherwise, there are only isolated facts without links between them. It is therefore on the basis of comparison that generalizations, interpretations and theories are formed. Comparison creates new ways of viewing and organizing the world.

Comparative religion is therefore old as the hills. Herodotus was already doing it. As far as ancient religions are concerned, this intellectual approach has produced many books stored in the "comparative mythology" shelves since Max Muller (1823-1900).

As far as religions are concerned, it is quite different.

Each religion was, of course, compared to those with which it was competing but first to denigrate or affirm its superiority.

The first elements of a more objective beginning of comparative religion are currently scattered under the label of "religious dialog" and generally come from religions that define themselves as monotheistic because of their worldwide extension. The whole for an apologetic or missionary purpose, of course. Hence problems.

We also find useful reflections in circles more or less coming under atheism but they are

-either detailed but focused on a particular religion.

-or being more general but rather basic.

And, moreover, they also are most often found in the history of religions, but all in a non-religious perspective.

Great names punctuate this story from William Robertson Smith (religion of the Semites) to Mircea Eliade through Emile Durkheim.

Other authors have opened many insights in this field.

Our idea is TO LENGTHEN A CERTAIN NUMBER OF THEM BY GOING FURTHER IN THIS COMPARATIVE RELIGION (widening of the field of anthropological research, deepening of the psychological foundations, end of the overvaluation, decolonization, antiracism, new hypotheses ....) AND BY RESUMING THE INTERRUPTED THREAD OF THEIR FASCINATING QUEST FOR THE GRAIL BECAUSE ancient druidism is a little like the famous story of the grail of Perceval and Gawain.

It is an unfinished story, which stops abruptly after the first 9000 lines of verse. Our project is to write the rest of it. A continuation it was said at the time.

These small notebooks intended for future high-knowers, want to be both an imitation (a pastiche) and a parody. An imitation because they were composed in the manner of theologians (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, etc.) at least in what they had, all, of better (elements in fact often of pagan origin). One of the functions of the imitation was always, indeed, in the popular oral literature, to answer the expectation of audiences, frustrated by the break of the original creation [in this case the druidic philosophy]. To this expectation, in the Middle Ages, the cyclic narrative technique of the epics singing the heroic deeds, or of the Romances of the Round Table, has responded.

The way of the pastiche is the one which consists in enriching the original by supplementing it with successive touches, by developing just outlined details, or by interpreting its shadows. And this, the thought of our ancestors needed well!

But the reasoned compilation, due to the hand of Peter DeLaCrau, also is in a way a parody, because it was never a question, nevertheless, for the project supervisor of this collective work, of supporting such as it was and unconditionally, the whole of these doctrines.

He wished on the contrary, by all sorts of literary means (reversal of arguments, opposing views, etc.) to bring out their often negative, harmful, alienating or obscurantist, aspects; and if this text can sometimes seem, to pay indirect homage to the capacity of reflection of the various current theological Schools, Christian, Muslim, Jewish or other, it is involuntary; because his purpose is well, to do everything, in order to wrest from their hands, the monopoly of discourses on the divinity (see on this subject the remarks of Albert Bayet), even if it means finishing discredit them definitively in the public eyes.

Except as regards the best ideas they have borrowed from paganism, of course, and which are enormous; because in this last case, it is, let us remember it once again, from the prospect supervisor of this compilation, a readjustment to our world, of the thoughts of these theologians' apprentices ((the god of philosophers, the Ahura Mazda, the immortality of souls, the god-men, the sons of a god, the messiah Saoshyant, the Trinity, the tawaf, the sacrifices, the life after death, not to mention cherubim paradise, etc.).

In other words, not history, but historical fictions, according to the works of...see the bibliography at the end. In accordance with this, our "imitation” is only a return to our roots. In short a homage.

"Druidism" is an independent review (independent of any religious or political association) and which has only one purpose: theoretical or fundamental research about what is neo-paganism. The double question, to which this review of theoretical studies tries to answer, could be summarized as follows:

"What could be or what should be a current neo-druidism, modern and contemporary?”

"Druidism" is a neo-pagan review, strictly neo-pagan, and heir to all genuine (that is to say non-Christian) movements which have succeeded one another for 2000 years, the indirect heir, but the heir, nevertheless!

Regarding our reference tradition or our intellectual connection, let us underline that if the "poets" of Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill still had imbas forosnai, teimn laegda and dichetal do chennaib 1) in their repertory (cf. the conclusion of the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach, of Urard Mac Coise, a poet who died in the 11th century), they may have been Christians for several generations. It is true that these practices (imbas forosnai, teimn ...) were formally forbidden by the Church, but who knows, there may have been accommodations similar to those of astrologers or alchemists in the Middle Ages.

Anyway our "Druidism" is also a will; the will to get closer, at the maximum, to ancient druidism, such as it was (scientifically speaking). The will also to modernize this druidism, a total return to ancient druidism being excluded (it would be anyway impossible).

Examples of modernization of this pagan druidism.

— Giving up to lay associations of the cultural side (medicine, poetry, mathematics, etc.). Principle of separation of Church and State.

— Specialization on the contrary, in Celtic, or pagan in general, spirituality history of religion, philosophy and metapsychics (known today as parapsychology).

— Use in some cases of the current vocabulary (Church, religion, baptism, and so on).

A golden mean, of course, is to be found between a total return to ancient druidism (fundamentalism) and a too revolutionary radical modernization (no longer sagum).

The Celtic PAA (pantheistic agnostic atheist) having agreed to sign jointly this small library *, of which he is only the collector, druid Hesunertus (Peter DeLaCrau), does not consider himself as the author of this collective work. But as the spokesperson for the team which composed it. For other sources of this essay on druidism, see the thanks in the bibliography.

* This little camminus is nevertheless important for young people ... from 7 to 77 years old! Mantalon siron esi.

1) Do ratath tra do Mael Milscothach iartain cech ni dobrethaigsid suide sin etir ecnaide 7 fileda 7 brithemna la taeb ogaisic a crech 7 is amlaidsin ro ordaigset do tabairt a cach ollamain ina einech 7 ina sa[ru]gad acht cotissad de imus forosnad [di]chetal do chollaib cend 7 tenm laida .i. comenclainn fri rig Temrach do acht co ti de intreide sin FINIT.

PROLOG.

“ When the whims will stop biting me so that I can focus on the Truth? When my anxiety will be completely calmed? When my concerns will end? When my soul will open out in the fullness of the Big Whole (Pariollon)? When my soul will be absorbed in the universal Soul like an agitated wave calming down in the bosom of a calm sea?

When the light of the reason will disperse the dark cloud of ignorance which covers my divine essence under the veil of this pitiful shape? “

“My father Niall did not allow me to accept the faith* , but bade me to be buried on the ridges of Tara. In the manner of men at war, for the pagans, armed in their tombs, have their weapons ready, until the day of erdathe, that is, the day of the Lord's judgment according to the druids” (Memoir of St. Patrick by Tirechan).

Patrick went afterwards to the fountain, i.e., Clibech, on the slopes of Cruachan, at sunrise, Laeghaire’s daughters, viz., Eithne the Fair, and Feidelm the Red, went early to the fountain to wash, as they were wont to do, when they found the synod of clerics with white garments, they wondered at the appearance of the clerics, and imagined they were fir-sidhe (people of the sidhe), or phantoms. They questioned Patrick. “Whence are you, and whither have you come? Is it from the sidhe? Are you gods?”

Patrick said to them, “It would be better to believe in God than to ask regarding our race.”

The elder daughter said, “Who is God, and in what place is he, in heaven or in earth? Is it under the earth, or on the earth, or in seas, or in streams, or in hills, or in valleys? Has He sons and daughters? has He gold and silver? Is there a profusion of every good in his kingdom?Tell us plainly how we shall see Him, and how is He to be loved, and how is He to be found. Is He young or old? Or is He everliving? Is He beautiful, or have many fostered His son, or is His daughter handsome, and dear to men of the world?”

St. Patrick, full of the Great Sacred Spirit, responded, “Our God is the God of all, the God of heaven and earth, the God of the seas and rivers, the God of the sun and moon, and all the other planets; the God of the high hills and low valleys; God over heaven, in heaven, and under heaven; and He has a mansion, i.e., heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them. He inspires all things. He quickenes all things. He enkindles all things. He gives light to the sun, and to the moon.

He created fountains in the dry land, and placed dry islands in the sea, and stars to minister to the greater lights.

He has a Son, coeternal and coequal with Himself; and the Son is not younger than the Father, nor is the Father older than the Son. And the sacred Spirit breathes in them. And the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are not divided.

I desire, moreover, to unite you to the Son of the heavenly king, for ye are daughters of an earthly king, etc.”

They received the Communion, and fell asleep in death, people placed them under covering, and in one bed and their friends made a great lamentation over them. The druids also who brought them came in order to cry , on account of the daughter, Patrick preached to them (Tripartite Life of St. Patrick part II).

The weak light of the reason is always eclipsed by the dark clouds of passions and covetousness. How to distinguish what is right from what is false in such an account, what is relevant from what is not such?

Because mind, on the one hand, leads us, of course, to spiritual knowledge but on the other it diverts us towards the concerns of this world (Mediomagos).

* In anything ?

ON THE VARIOUS SHAPES, THE GODS OR DEMONS CAN TAKE

IN THE EYES OF THE HUMAN BEINGS IN OTHER TRADITIONS.

WE DO NOT SPEAK HERE ABOUT THE METAMORPHOSES OF A HUMAN BEING, FOR EXAMPLE INTO A WEREWOLF, BUT WELL ABOUT THE SHAPES THAT CAN TAKE IN THE EYES OF MEN, ENTITIES COME FROM ANOTHER WORLD THAT THEIRS IN ORDER TO COMMUNICATE WITH THEM.

An angel is a heavenly creature in many traditions, particularly in Avesta and the three mass religions that are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This word designates an envoy from the Higher Being , i.e., an intermediary between the Higher Being kind Ahura Mazda and men. Sometimes he sends a divine message, sometimes he acts himself but always according to the will of the Ahura Mazda or higher being who needs intermediaries.

As we said it, therefore, Zoroastrianism admits the higher being that is Ahura Mazda is accompanied by the Amesha Spentas, Yazatas and Fravashis.

The Yazatas are the “Angels,” some spiritual beings honored by Persians, they personify the abstract ideas and virtues, guardians of human morals. They protect us from the evil.

In the Zoroastrian angelology lastly, the fravashi or fravasi is the guardian angel of an individual, who sends the urvan (generally translated by “soul”) in the material world in order to take part in the battle of the good against the evil. The morning of the fourth day after death, the urvan comes back to its fravashi, who collects its experiments in the material world.

Jews Christians and Muslims too believe in angels (Muslims, moreover, believe in jinns what is perhaps not the best evidence of their collective intelligence but come on).

Here some of their characteristics, according to them.

The seraphs have six wings.

Cherubs have a sword equipped with a flaming blade (with which they keep the earthly Paradise)

They can fight against human beings, example Jacob (Genesis 32, 22-32)

Last, but not least, they can have children by the daughters of humans (Genesis 6,1-8).

* Unless these jinns are the equivalent of the elementals or egregores (teutates) in druidism.

Why now you will tell me not to imagine that the envoys of God can appear in the eyes of the human beings in the shape of flying snakes or slugs??? Why not indeed ? Snakes (according to certain Gnostics the snake of the Garden of Eden who tempted Eve was a spirit who wished to men really some good , him), some aliens endowed with twisted shapes . ..... This was already tried. Particularly in movies! And by Irishmen with their legends about the anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians.Nothing more beautiful than a toad for a she-toad said already Voltaire.

Let us admit nevertheless that it is logical to think that in the eyes of a human being there is nothing more beautiful than human shape, and even, I do not know why, I leave to the specialists the care to find, than the body of a woman. Perhaps that me too I am a member of the race of poets so denigrated by certain theologists (like Varro Tertullian, etc.).

It was besides here already one of the great arguments of pagan intellectuals during Antiquity since we find it in the Natura Deorum by Cicero.

N.B. We do not speak here of the higher being by definition, kind Ahura Mazda, but of the intermediate beings between men and him. With regard to the higher being, it is obvious we can design him differently than in a human form: a circle a point (Welsh lle bo cydbwys pob gwrth ) an equation a letter (eabadh in the ogham alphabet) or so forth. But there we speak about the intermediate beings particularly in their relationship with men.

Cicero, on the nature of the gods, Book I.

His tactics are the same with regard to the divine nature; in the effort to avoid an accretion of indivisible particles, for fear it should be overtaken by dispersion and decay, he asserts that the gods have no body, but quasi-body, and no blood, but quasi-blood.

XXVI.

It seems marvelous that one soothsayer should not laugh at the sight of another, but it is more marvelous that you Epicureans should be able to keep from laughter among yourselves. “Not body, but quasi-body.” I should understand what this meant if it were applied to figures of wax or clay, but I cannot understand the meaning of quasi-body and quasi-blood as applied to God…

XXVII.

I see that your contention is that the gods possess a kind of form which has no compactness, solidity, relief, or prominence, but is without admixture, and volatile, and transparent. Well, we will say of it what we say of the Venus of Cos. That figure is not a body, but resembles a body, that diffused glow intermingled with white is not blood, but a certain semblance of blood, and similarly we will say that in the god of Epicurus there is nothing real, but only the semblance of reality. Suppose me to be convinced of that which cannot even be understood, and acquaint me next with the forms and features of your shadowy deities.

On this question there is not wanting an abundance of arguments by means of which you would be glad to prove that the gods are of human form; firstly, because our minds have formed an idea and preconception of them which makes the human form suggest itself to a man when he thinks of God; secondly, because the divine nature, since it excels in all respects, ought also to possess the most beautiful kind of form, and there is no form more beautiful than man’s; and thirdly, you bring forward the following argument—because no other figure can be the abiding place of mind. Now I will ask you to consider the nature of each of these arguments in turn, for you seem to me to be arrogating to yourselves, as though in the exercise of a right that you possessed, an assumption that cannot by any means be allowed. Was there ever any one at all who looked upon the world with so blind an eye as not to see that these human figures of yours were attributed to the gods either designedly by wise men, in order that they might the more easily wean uninstructed minds from a degraded mode of life to the worship of the gods, or else in consequence of a superstitious desire for images, in paying homage to which men might believe that they were approaching the gods themselves? This same tendency, moreover, has been increased by the poets, painters, and workers in art, for it was not easy, in imitating other forms, to preserve the appearance of action and effort on the part of the gods. Perhaps, too, the feeling to which you referred contributed its share, man’s belief, I mean, in the superior beauty of man. But do you not see, my good natural philosopher, what an insinuating go-between, and, so to speak, pander to herself dame nature is? Or do you suppose that there is any creature in land or sea that is not most pleased by a creature of its own kind? If that were not the case, why should not a bull take pleasure in union with a mare, or a horse with a cow? Do you believe that an eagle, or lion, or dolphin prefers any shape to its own? And if in the same way nature has enjoined upon man that he should think nothing more beautiful than man, is it at all strange that this feeling should be the cause of our thinking the gods to be like men? Do you not believe that, if animals possessed reason, each species would have assigned pre-eminence to itself?

XXVIII. Yet really, if I am to express my own sentiments, though not devoid of self-complacency, I do not for all that venture to affirm that I am more beautiful than the bull that carried Europa; for we are considering at this moment outline and form, and not intelligence, or the human faculty of speech. And if it were our pleasure to invent and combine forms for ourselves, should you object to being like the Triton of the deep, who is depicted as riding upon swimming sea creatures that are attached to a human body? I am touching on difficult ground, for the force of nature is so great that no one who is a man wishes to be like anything but a man—no, nor an ant, I presume, like anything but an ant! Still, like what kind of man? For it is only a few who are beautiful; when I was at Athens scarcely one would be found in each division of the ephebi.1 I understand why you smile, but nevertheless the fact is so. Besides, those of us who take pleasure, as the ancient philosophers allow us to do, in the society of youths, often find even their imperfections charming. “A mole on a boy’s finger delights Alcæus.” Yet it is a bodily defect. To Alcæus, however, it seemed an ornament. Quintus Catulus, the father of the Quintus Catulus who is our contemporary, and my friend and colleague,2 had a fondness for your fellow-townsman Roscius,3 to whom he also addressed the following verses:—

I chanced to have stood doing reverence to the rising dawn, when suddenly Roscius rises on my left. Powers of heaven, with your leave may I say it, the mortal seemed to be fairer than the god.

Fairer, that is, to him, though Roscius had, as he has today, a most pronounced squint. However, what did that matter, if his admirer found the squint itself attractive and becoming? But I return to the consideration of the gods.

And let us return to our angels as intermediate beings between the men and the higher god.

The druids themselves were nevertheless more logical than the authors of the Bible and of the Quran , they also had difficulties to imagine man’s bodies really provided with wings, two wings of four wings and therefore in a way as mixed or hybrid as the horrible tritons mentioned above by the character staged by Cicero.

They found simpler to think than the beings come from the next world f in order to communicate with the men

PUT ON ENTIRELY, AS REGARDS THE OUTSIDE, THE SHAPE, BUT TEMPORARILY, THE BODY OF A BIRD THAT EVERYONE AGREED THEN TO FIND SPLENDID, BEFORE COMPLETELY TAKING AGAIN A HUMAN APPEARANCE AT THE TIME TO ENGAGE IN THE DIALOG. A “STRONG-ARM” DIALOG BESIDES.

What could be more natural indeed?

See winged men coming in the sky and to land on the ground to speak to you in the best case, even to fight against you as in the case of Jacob’s fight against the angel?

to see birds being out of the ordinary in the sky and, a few minutes later to see unknown persons as come out of the blue to move in your direction to make contact with you?

You I do not know but the second scenario would seem to me less contrary to the natural laws than the first one.

In any event the druids having composed this account were cautious to the extent of making so that it is an appearance in a dream. IT IS A DREAM!

One of the second characteristics.

If in the Bible and the Quran angels are primarily of absolutely undeniable male gender (since they are able to have children with the daughters of humans , unless, of course, it is only a nth stupidity of these sacred books which hurt so much Mankind) among Celts they are very predominantly of the female gender. It is like this , perhaps women search others and foreigners more readily than men, or men are more home-loving, who knows?

We will not dwell, on the other hand, on this a little sadomasochistic streak of this “dialog” between the angels and the Hesus Cuchulainn. It is true that this story of strokes of riding crop is at the very least strange but it is one of the consequences perhaps there of the fact the text was shortened or attached rather artificially to another.

And then in any case all that occurs….in a dream.

Let us also notice that some of the sacred texts of our Irish brothers ...... are quite muddled or disconcerting. There is also sometimes either duplicates or later developments of the same topic.

This phenomenon is frequent in the sacred texts of our poor Mankind. See the two accounts of creation in the Bible, the priestly story (Genesis 1,1 to 2, 4) and the Yahvist story (2,4 to 2, 24). In the same way, there are also many repetitions in Quran, difficult to locate nevertheless because this book emanating from a man or from several and intended for other men, is a true hodgepodge following no precise plan, its chapters with a few exceptions (one?) being simply classified in decreasing length order. What is excellent for the memory perhaps but constitutes a real challenge for intelligence.

The attentive study of the Irish legends shows well nevertheless that the Irish Pantheon is in reality double,its best-known part is designated under the name of Children or Clan or Tribes of the goddess Danu (bia), but another fraction is designated under the name of Children of Tarn/Toran/Tuireann (cf. the Oidhe Chloinne Tuireann).

We will be therefore in this case in the presence of a primeval divine couple of type “fire into water” i.e., the Thunder and the Flash (Tuireann, Taran on the Continent) and the Danube River viewed as an element of female nature.

But let us not forget that there also exists a second or third divine family, that of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians in Ireland and Andernas on the Continent representing the underground forces (underground better than negative, in any case especially not of the type angels against demons, let us leave this simplistic Manicheism to the Judeo-Islamic-Christians) working in the universe even in the heart of the man. Nature is neither perfect nor imperfect it is what it is and there is only it. Air, celestial, and chthonian, god-or-demons, form a gigantic Pantheon, more than an ordinary Pantheon in the Greek way, a pleroma.

In what concerns us, it is an additional proof perhaps there that the initial panceltic myth staging the founding conflict between both divine great families ruling the world (air gods, sons of Danu - bia or of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, and the chthonian or underground gods, sons of the goddess Domnu, etc., in other words, the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomoire in Ireland)… was so much arranged after its establishment in Ireland that it became incoherent in many respects.

N.B. We will reconsider in another of our opuscules the superhumanizing function of the Celtic-druidic myths (whereas the Sumerian myths which are the cause of the Bible and therefore of the Quran are making childish).

The important thing therefore, what matters, it is to show critical mind with respect to all these sacred texts, and to remember only the best of their spirit, not the conductive to crime spirit but the spirit which can help us to surpass us as a human being because “to you alone it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know; great trees of remote groves are your dwelling place, etc. ” (Lucan, Pharsalia, Book I).

FOREWORD.

The Tuatha De Danann or children of the goddess, or fairy, Danu (bia), in Ireland, form the tribe of the heavenly or celestial gods in the beginning, equivalents of the Olympian gods in Greek mythology or of the Aesir gods in Germanic mythology. They are in a permanent conflict with their great rivals, the Tuatha De Domnan.

The Tuatha De Domnan or children of the goddess or demoness, Domnu, in Ireland, constitute the tribe of the underground or chthonian gods in the beginning, equivalents of the Titans gods of Greek mythology or of the Vanir gods, masters of the seidhr in Germanic mythology. The seidhr is a kind of magic. From the Indo-European stem “sed/sidh”. They are in a permanent conflict with their great rivals, the Tuatha De Danann.

The multi-field team having made this study have preferred nevertheless to give up this type of presentation or classification which is quite too Manichean.

The heresy which developed in Ireland under the influence of Christianity dramatized excessively the traditional competition which can exist between celestial gods or demons, or the world of the fairies if you prefer; and underground gods, wyverns, nymphs, and others. The Tuatha De Danann and the Tuatha De Domnan.

THE MINOR OR ANDEDIOI (SECONDARY) GODS AND THE WORSHIPS OF DULIA.

“This Celtic law I follow with my fellows, because I declare no human undertaking to have a prosperous issue without the interposition of the gods…” (Arrian. Hunting)

Caesar B.G. VI, 16. The Celts are a “gens admodum dedita religionibus “.

What characterizes Judeo-Islamism it is that the monolatrous people ascribe to one cause and always the same one the various phenomena of the life of the men or of the planet: mysterious ( God works in mysterious ways) the higher entity they call God or Allah. Matthew 10,28. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”

The primordial druids were a little more moderate, and careful, more “pre-scientists,” and ascribed these phenomena to multiple causes, variable according to cases.

We have reviewed in the previous volume the more or less related to nature deities, but there was also the crowd of the deities who helped the major god-or-demons to fulfill their function and with whom they shared the honors. These deities, who act in a very restricted field generally indicated by their name, are called andedioi in Celtic language, certi in Latin language by Varro. Ucuetis or Luchta in Ireland are good examples of them.

The religion of the first druids was rather of the type: “such or such god-or-demon, such or such spirit, is responsible for such or such activity “; it ascribed to a higher and uncontrollable power each event of the life. A multitude of god-or-demons therefore accompanied them in everything, without there is a true limitation established for each one of them, and it would be necessary to speak about “deity “rather than about god or goddess, even about poly-demonism, rather than about poly-theism, in this case.

God-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if you prefer to use this word, were not either clearly physically defined, like the main god-or-demons of the Panth-eon or pleroma which one will find during the Iron Age or in the Gaelic legends?

The primitive druidic religion was indeed deeply different from the Greek religion. For the former druids, the universe or bitus was filled of divine beings; the divine one was present everywhere and took part in every physical phenomenon, in every act of individual life, domestic life, social life, political life; there was no object, so to speak, in which somewhere a deity is not supposed to reside. No great religion* perhaps did not imagine a larger number of god-or-demons or of goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, if you like; the action of some of these supernatural beings sometimes was therefore very limited, but consequently also very precise.

* Although according to Daniel (7,10) there are millions angels and that according to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, there exist nine orders of angels strictly hierarchically organized in which each one has his place.

Just like angels therefore some god-or-demons presided over the paramount events and the main phases of the human life, birth, childhood and adolescence, marriage, death, and there were also the god-or-demons of agricultural and pastoral, or craft life. The druidic religion was thus polytheist at a stage, at least equal, if not higher, with the Greek religion itself, but in a different way. In the beginning it was not anthropomorphic. Perhaps in its case it would be better, as we saw it, to speak of polydemonism. The divine beings were not designed, at least hardly appear to have been designed in the beginning, in human shape by the druids. The Celts venerated the multiple forces of nature, conceived as some occult influences, some immaterial wills, incorporated, so to speak, to the objects they moved. The river which runs, the wind which goes, the fire which kindles, are acts, demonstrations, products of these invisible powers; of whom nobody knows the essence and who are designated by generic names, or more simply by the common noun “gods “. These beings, attached to an eternally started again task, could not be designed as concrete personalities, with human shape, with a mobile and changing will. Their first representations were called besides “simulacra” in Latin.

“Ar ro ráidseom na aidérad clocha ná crunnu acht no adérad intí dosroni & ropo chomsid ar cul na uli dúla .i. in t-óenDia nertchomsid ro crutaig na dúli …“

“ For he [Cormac] said that he would not adore stones, or trees, but that he would adore him who had made them, and who had power over all the elements, i.e., the one powerful God who created the elements…“( (senchas na relec. History of the cemeteries).

The druidic religion, guided by its imperturbable logic, refused to detach its god-or-demons from nature or to recognize a distinct personality to them. All in all, these god-or-demons and these goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if it is preferred, were rather divine forces than true deities. The only distinction that the druidic religion made between the divine beings, to which it paid worship, it was the distinction of the gender. It knows god-or-demons and it knows goddess-or-demonesses; or some fairies if you prefer, it knows divine couples. In spite of the small number of known cases, the combination by couples was to be usual more especially as there were specifically female or dependent on the female condition, deities.

These divine beings have neither feelings, nor passions; they apply, because of their superhuman power, an action which can be favorable or unfavorable to the individual, the house, the family, the tribe. But former druids gave as a source to this action, neither a sympathetic nor hostile feeling to man, nor the will to punish the bad and to reward the good guys. In other words, exactly what Lovecraft thought about the god or demon Noadatus/Nuada/Nodens in his famous Cthulhu Cycle (the strange high house in the mist, 1926).

The druidic religion had to begin, like the others, by animism, the infinitesimal parceling out of the driving forces of nature. The multiplicity of the powers catalogued in the inscriptions discovered to date represents rather well the primitive state of the druidic religion. We can even say that, for a long time, the druidic religion knew only abstract, almost disembodied, deprived of mythology, god-or-demons, because representing only mental categories and/or functions.

To these divine forces, to which the popular faith did not ascribe a human shape, unlike the Judeo-Islamic-Christians with their angels, it was impossible to attribute benevolent or malevolent feelings concerning the human being. It was not therefore a question in the beginning of gaining or of preserving their favor, of diverting or of disarming their hostility. What it was necessary to get, it was the divine force, necessary to the normal and favorable achievement of such or such act of the individual, domestic, social, life, acts at the exact moment when this act was accomplished. Lastly, it was necessary to know if such or such action, that you proposed to achieve, was to be supported by a favorable divine force (Arrian, on Hunting) or, on the contrary, was to come up with the invincible obstacle of an unfavorable (anmat) divine force.To act, in a direction or the other, on impersonal divine forces, to try to know in advance, how these forces were to be applied in such or such a particular case; former druids practiced rites, of which the resemblance with the rites of the Greek religion was only external. What imported, in the offerings, libations and sacrifices, it was more the inner force or the self-confidence which moved the one who offered the libation or the sacrifice (as if they were themselves Brahmans), that the rigorous observance of the liturgical and ritual instructions by the druid.

As we already have had the opportunity to say it on several occasions, another characteristic of the god-or-demons of druidism is their infinite multitude. Each tribe has its guardian deity. And it is necessary to add to it the great initiates, the heroes, the deified virtues, and even in fact the deified gestures or techniques, these dii certi or indigitamenta that Tertullian and Saint Augustine compare with the angels of the Bible; we could say that they also make us think of some saints of the Christian popular beliefs. You had some of them for all the acts of the existence, since the birth until the death. Not only each tribe, but each family, each man, honored particular god-or-demons as well as guardian genies of his life and of his goods (matres). This divine democracy necessarily escaped the authority as the control of the great god-or-demons and of their druids. It is in fact why the religious tolerance was therefore one of the bases of druidism.

The innumerable god-or-demons of this part of the druidic Panth-eon or pleroma therefore formed a separate class. They have this singular feature to preside over all the acts of life, since the birth until death, even most negligible, all the needs for man, food, clothing, dwelling, all his work; but so that each one of them answered one of these needs. We know them only through the epithet which designates their function. The once satisfied need or the once achieved act, people send no longer prayer to them, and they seem no longer to exist. The ones deal with conception or pregnancy; others, with delivery; those take care of the breast-feeding of the child; these make him push his first cry, and, so on for the whole life. Either it is his private interests or the public interest, the Celt wanted to have a god-or-demon at his disposal. A little like Catholic people with their patron saints. These people of such a terrible energy, these men of action, could do nothing alone. “This Celtic law I follow with my fellows, because I declare no human undertaking to have a prosperous issue without the interposition of the gods…” (Arrian. Hunting)

The Greeks managed their political assemblies in the theater, the Galatians deliberated in their sanctuaries (drunemeton).

In addition or beneath the twelve (3X4) tetrarchs i.-e. pan-Celtic great god-or-demons (7 or 10 –archangels- in Judeo-Christianity, 20 for the Romans according to Varro), there existed therefore a series of subordinated (or assistants) specialized god-or-demons called upon during particular activities, as the harvest, the plowing or the sowing, the childbirth, the forging, the framework , and so on. The name of each deity is often derived from the verb which expresses operation. As we have had the opportunity to say it, the first druidic religion is not so much polytheism than poly-demonism: the design of the called upon being, hardly exceeds its name or its function, and its power appears in a very specialized way.

The majority of the andedioi whose Christian authors like Tertullian or Saint Augustine or Dionysius the Areopagite made had a good laugh, are in reality minor deities (some angels) who personified * the daily activities or the original Celtic values, because the ethical values, guarantors of a healthy society, were also deified at the time and people called them upon when it was necessary. Theses minor gods therefore show the importance attached, at the origin, to the activities they embodied. It should be noted that many functions and roles ascribed to these andedioi were, either some female functions, or some functions corresponding to a common noun in the feminine. These powers obey subtle precedence rules, which take into account the hierarchical structure of the Panth-eon or pleroma, but also the particular context of each ceremony; granting an enviable place to the divine owner of the sanctuary which houses it but also, naturally, to the powers of which you require the intervention particularly. Their status is affected by a light shift compared to the uxedioi or higher deities.

This type of purely functional and deprived of true personalities, deities, has equivalents in the Roman religion (because perhaps of a common Italo-Celtic origin: cf. certain (latin certi) gods, the gods indigetes and the Indigitamenta) and in Christian angelology (undoubtedly because of its Platonic inspiration).

* In the first place this truth must be declared that the superessential Deity, having through His Goodness established the essential subsistence of all, brought all things into being. For 'it is the very nature of that God which is the Supreme Cause of all to call all things to participation in Itself in proportion to the capacity and nature of each.

Wherefore all things share in that Providence which streams forth from the superessential Deific Source of all; for they would not be unless they had come into existence through participation in the Essential Principle of all things.

All inanimate things participate in It through their being; for the 'to be' of all things is the Divinity above Being Itself, the true Life. Living things participate in Its life-giving Power above all life; rational things participate in Its self-perfect and pre-eminently perfect Wisdom above all reason and intellect.

It is manifest, therefore, that those Natures which are around the Godhead have participated of It in manifold ways. On this account the holy ranks of the Celestial Beings are present with and participate in the Divine Principle in a degree far surpassing all those things which merely exist, and irrational living creatures, and rational human beings. For molding themselves intelligibly to the imitation of God, and looking in a supermundane way to the Likeness of the Supreme Deity, and longing to form the intellectual appearance of It, they naturally have more abundant communion with Him, and with unremitting activity they tend eternally up the steep, as far as is permitted, through the ardor of their unwearying divine love, and they receive the Primal Radiance in a pure and immaterial manner, adapting themselves to this in a life wholly intellectual.

Such, therefore, are they who participate first, and in an all-various manner, in Deity, and reveal first, and in many ways, the Divine Mysteries. Wherefore they, above all, are pre-eminently worthy of the name Angel because they first receive the Divine Light, and through them are transmitted to us the revelations which are above us.....

They also invest them with the likeness of men because of the human powers of intellect and aspiration, the straight and erect form, the inherent power of guiding and governing; and because man, although least in sense- perception in comparison with the powers of irrational creatures, yet rules over them all through the pre-eminence of his intellect, the lordship of his rational knowledge, and the intrinsic freedom of his unconquerable soul.

Thus it is possible, I think, to find in the various parts of our bodies fitting symbols of the Celestial Powers by taking, for example, the power of sight as an image of their most transparent upliftment to

the Divine Light, their single, free, unresisting reception of that Light, their responsiveness and pure receptivity without passion to the divine illuminations.

The human power of distinguishing odors signifies the power to receive the inconceivable and most fragrant divine influences, as far as is attainable, and the definite recognition and utter rejection of others not of this kind.

The power of the ears denotes participation in and conscious gnostic receptivity to divine inspiration. The power of taste represents an abundance of spiritual food and the reception of divine streams of nourishment.

The power of touch symbolizes the power of distinguishing that which is of advantage from that which is harmful. The eyelids and eyebrows represent the guarding of intellectual conceptions in divine contemplations. The images of youth and vigor denote their perpetual bloom and vigor of life. The teeth symbolize the distribution of the sustaining perfection supplied to them; for each Intellectual Order, receiving a unitive conception from the Divine, with Providential Power divides and multiplies it for the proportionate upliftment of the one below.

The shoulders, arms and hands signify the powers of activity and accomplishment. The heart is a symbol of that Divine Life which imparts its own life-giving power beneficently to those within its care. We may add that the chest, being placed over the heart, represents the indomitable power which guards its own life-giving dispensations. The back denotes that strength which holds together all the life-giving powers. The feet signify the power of motion, swiftness and skillfulness in the ever-moving advance towards divine things. Wherefore the prophet described the feet of the Celestial Intelligences as being covered by their wings which symbolize a swift soaring to the heights, and the heavenly progression up the steep, and the exemption from everything earthly through the upward ascent. The lightness of the wings shows that they are altogether heavenly and unsullied and untrammelled in their upliftment on high. The naked and unshod feet symbolize their free, easy and unrestrained power, pure from all externality, and assimilated, as far as is attainable, to the Divine Simplicity.

But since that single and manifold Wisdom both clothes the naked and assigns to them implements to carry, let us unfold, as far as we can, these sacred garments and instruments of the Celestial Intelligences.

Their shining and fiery vestures symbolizes, I think etc.etc....(Celestial Hierarchy. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite)

Editor’s note. There are there three different Latin words, if they are not three different notions. The certain gods (the dii certi). The indigetes gods (dii indigeti). The book of invocations (the Indigitamenta).

Here what the dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities by Daremberg and Saglio teaches us on this subject.

The Indigitamenta are a collection of prayers where appeared the names of Roman deities to call upon in various circumstances of life, with indications contained either in the text of the incantations themselves, or in the explanations after, and defining the specific function ascribed to each divine assistant, a function already “indicated “ by the name itself. The Indigitamenta are mentioned by grammarians who by no means claim to have seen the pontifical documents in question, but speak about it according to Granius Flaccus, and Varro. It is possible besides that Granius Flaccus borrowed from Varro the elements of his monograph on the subject, therefore that all accounts are based, in the final analysis, on the authority of the latter.

What is sure, on the other hand, it is that Varro drew his information in the pontifical records, when he wrote the 14th book of his divine Antiquities, from which are extracted more from nine tenth of the names we regard as representing the deities mentioned by the Indigitamenta. Only we know through Saint Augustine that this book dealt with the dii certi, a title on which the exegetes don’t agree completely, and it is said nowhere besides that these “certain” gods “ were those of the Indigitamenta.

It is therefore necessary to establish initially that these dii certi are, or include, the deities recorded in the Indigitamenta. We succeed in that by comparing the functions reserved for the ones and the others. It is the same system of analysis to excess, the fractionation of the divine interference in a

multitude of small distinct works, achieved by as many different actors, named according to their work even. Equating once made, it is necessary to avoid pushing it too far, because it appears well that Varro has also classified in his dii certi the god-or-demons of whom he knew the function (all those who were not incerti therefore) and he even made entering it for this reason a certain number of great god-or-demons, of dii praecipui atque selecti. The little god-or-demons of Indigitamenta therefore formed only a category among others, in a collection amplified by Varro, and thus is asked the embarrassing, even unsolvable question, of knowing what, in the remains of the 14th book of the divine Antiquities, must be allocated or not to the Indigitamenta. As the authors who drew from Varro did not even have the idea to attempts it, the sorting tried by the modern scholars remains always arbitrary.

The author of most recent and most complete work on the subject, R. Peter, devoted much time, science and patience, to the criticism of the sources, the analysis and the classification of the opinions; lastly, to the search of a criterion making possible to determine the personal contribution of Varro (that Tertullian and Saint Augustine consult directly), or of Cornelius Labeo, a disciple of Varro (followed by Arnobius); who appears to have rearranged or put in alphabetical order the lists of dii certi drawn up by the Master. By eliminating from these lists the god-or-demons who did not belong to the national religion, in particular the Greek deities or the deities equated with the Greek deities; those who, belonging to it, were already endowed with worship celebrated by the State or were called upon by priestly corporations; the great god-or-demons, even homonymous of the minuti dii through their epithets; lastly, the names which appeared to be forged by Varro himself, R. Peter thinks to have managed to reconstruct thus the amount of the authentic remains coming from the Indigitamenta.

R. Peter claimed to clear up the question by again introducing there, after Klausen, in the name of etymology, a problematic data, I persist in regarding as a foreign even disturbing element: the equating of all the god-or-demons of the Indigitamenta to the dii Indigetes. For this researcher, Indiges (from indu and agere) means a god who “acts in “a given circumstance, time and place: indigitare, it is “to make an Indiges “ i.e., if I understand the thought of the author well, to activate his virtual power through a charm or an invocation spell, called for this reason indigitamentum. The indiges, god of the Indigitamenta, is the type of deity that Varro multiplied, under a title of his invention and of identical meaning, in his dii certi.

Etymology always provides arguments to the preconceived opinions, and it should be agreed that, between Indigetes and Indigitamenta, the etymological link seems obvious first of all. It is precisely for this reason that it is necessary to deny resolutely, if not the affinity of etymology (which has little importance and always remains debatable), at least the affinity, even more so the identity, we claim then to induce from that, between the Indigetes and the god-or-demons of the Indigitamenta. If this real affinity had been a little bit apparent or simply justifiable, the Ancients,connoisseurs of etymologies and of easy comparisons, would not have failed to rely on it. However, while they translate indigitare by invocare, precari, imprecari, implorare, exorare, supplicare, incalare, and indigitamenta by incantamenta, indicia; they understand through Indigetes the “indigenous “god-or-demons, the patron saints or the mythical ancestors of the race, guards of the land, symbols of the homeland. The difference between the idea that people have of the Indigetes and the nature ascribed to the deities of the Indigitamenta, shows through clearly in the equating of the Indigetes with the dii patrii, the deified ancestors of the race. The definition which is appropriate for those: dii ex hominibus facti, is the absolute negation of that scholiast gave of the dii certi in Varro; and consequently also, if the dii certi include the deities of the pontifical collection, the negation of every relationship between Indigetes and Indigitamenta. Moreover, the deities of the Indigitamenta are forces of Nature, available in all places and in indefinite number. By way of Indigetes, on the contrary, is quoted only one Jupiter or Pater Indiges, localized as genie of the river Numicius and identified afterwards with Aeneas. People knew so little the Indigetes, and distinguished them so badly from Lares and Penates, that some people had believed to recognize in them the mysterious owners of the City, those whose name was not to be revealed, through fear of the evocations. However, it is generally supposed that the purpose of the writers of the Indigitamenta had been, on the contrary, to make been known, if not to the public, at least to the patients, the helpful deities, their names and their particular aptitudes. Whatever the track we follow in this jumble of traditions and contradictory hare-brained ideas, we always end in an irreconcilable opposition between the lndigete, patriotic, fixed in the ground, rare and mysterious even, type, and the busy multitude of the divine workmen, named, then defined, in the Indigitamenta. It remains therefore proven that the Ancients considered to be incompatible the ideas

contained in the two words in question, and there is temerity to claim to go, on the strength of a conjectural etymology, against all these texts. The whole without really appreciable result. Even though it would be shown that the god-or-demons of the Indigitamenta are some Indigetes, we would draw from this tautology no explanation, no reason for classification, nothing which helps us to fix the list of the aforesaid deities.

I will indicate now the solutions, hypothetical too, I regard as probable on this subject. Let us make initially the share of Varro as broad as possible. It is his book, and not the Indigitamenta, which saw and quoted all the later scholars except perhaps Granius Flaccus. It is him who is responsible for the qualification of dii certi, applicable to other god-or-demons than those of the Indigitamenta; it is of him that come the classification, the etymological explanations. But he at least consulted the Indigitamenta, and it is from that he borrowed this type of divine workman, with very limited function, that he studied in his 14th book. It is not necessary to believe that the Indigitamenta contained another thing, that they were a general repertory of all the national god-or-demons, or a collection of all the invocation spells used in the Roman worship. If it had been thus, the existence of this collection would not have been known only by scholars; and Granius Flaccus would not have needed to write a book on this subject to inform Caesar, himself pontiff or high pontiff. It is necessary also here, to react against the self-interested exaggerations of the Christian polemicists. Cicero, who was not without having heard of the Indigitamenta in question, ensures, we saw it, that the divine names were not very numerous in these pontifical books. Neither Censorinus, who speaks expressly of the Indigitamenta, nor Servius, who consults Varro on every subject, speak about a “multitude “ or a “mob “of little god-or-demons; even more so, of hardly sufficient to contain their names large volumes (Saint Augustine the City of God Book IV, chapter VIII).

Christian polemicists, wanting to deride Roman polytheism, took care to spread out oddest among its superstitions, but we don’t have to accept their word when they say that they overlook much from there. It is still necessary to avoid an illusion in which is engaged obligingly modern scholarship, and more especially as it aims for being more exact. It consists in regarding as distinct deities, cut out in the same data by pontifical subtlety, simple variants in the derivation or the orthography of the names collected on various sides. I refuse to believe, for example, that Segetia is other than Segesta: it is not obvious that this verbal distinction was regarded as real, so much so that the two names had to be called upon in different circumstances. It is, on the contrary, infinitely more probable, than the pontiffs, noting the coexistence of the two names, in order to avoid coming to a conclusion about this point and through fear to be mistaken, joined them in the same formula. In the same way, it is an error, according to me, to think that the deities classified in a determined kind of operation had such a limited function there that they had to take turns to conclude the operation.

Editor’s note. It goes without saying the same reasoning must apply to the many deities of the Celtic Pantheon mentioned by the epigraphic discoveries or the Irish manuscripts.

The complication here comes from the scholarship of Varro or of the Pontiffs who, compiling and bringing closer various traditions, sporadic superstitions, gave them the appearance of a system where competition is avoided by the fractionation of employment. Thus is simplified the jumble which swells and rises under the whiplash of Tertullian and St. Augustine. Falls at the same time the faith towards the subtle abstractions thought out at leisure, over the centuries, by the pontiffs. We touch the basic problem here, a question which interests psychology as much as History. Is it probable that the pontiffs, writing the Indigitamenta, filled them with their own inventions, by breaking up the primitive god-or-demons into various aspects expressed by different epithets, then by detaching these epithets from their subject, while instilling into them an own life; so as to pulverize each day more, in order to make it like supernatural remedies, the divine substance?

Specialists were not far from thinking that, in Rome like elsewhere, polytheism had been widening through proliferation of the divine attributes, and that, while going back towards the past, into the most remote of the perspective, expert eyes would distinguish a primeval couple or even androgynous person. There was for that only to follow the way traced by Varro, Varro, on whom is based all our knowledge of the Roman theology and who could have introduced well there the pantheism in Stoic fashion of which we enjoy noting the traces. And he was all the more readily followed as we were thus

able to agree with the biblical tradition of the primeval monotheism, a tough idea, which controls still the history of religions, for example Islam. It is Varro who recognized Janus in Consivius; Jupiter in Ruminus and even in Pecunia; Juno in Fluonia, Lucina, Iterduca, Domiduca, Opigena, Ossipagigina, Unxia, Cinxia; Venus in Lubentina; Fortune in Barbata and Virginiensis; so that, as notices it St. Augustine himself, a certain number of great god-or-demons (dii selecti) end up appearing in the small fry of the god-or-demons with fixed function. It was not to disapprove them that he quoted the lines of verse where Valerius Soranus defines Jupiter as Progenitor genitrixque deum, deus unus et omnes. If it noted in Roman mythology up to three hundred Jupiters, his purpose was not to differentiate them, but on the contrary to confuse them in the unity of their common name.

Editor’s note. The remarks which follow and which are previous can apply very well to the Celtic-druidic religion which was moved by a double ascending and descending, synthetic and analytical, movement to arrive to a philosophical and thought paganism of the type Indian philosophy in Sankara’s way.

The moment is come to oppose to the authority of Varro an experiment broader than his, to the theories of Julius Ambrosch or Max Muller. The comparative study of the religions shows indeed that they do not go from the synthesis to the analysis, but well from analysis to synthesis; the latter works of thought and combination, priestly works where there is a priesthood able to work out theological doctrines [former druids] . We are here, as a result, in absolute contradiction with the common ideas. The Roman religion had to begin, like the others, by animism, the infinitesimal parceling out of the driving forces of Nature, brute forces which can be dominated only by magic incantation, and to be forwarded then through syncretism to a higher and broader design of the Divinity. The multiplicity of the powers (numina) catalogued in the Indigitamenta, represents rather well the primitive state of the Roman religion, stopped at this stage of its development by the formalism of the race and the tenacity of the popular superstitions. It is there the native old collection of beliefs, half hidden under the Etruscan-Hellenic decoration, which constitutes the official worship and the literary mythology. The purpose of the pontiffs who collated these relics was probably to save them from the oblivion: it was no longer believers, able to create new entities while concentrating on a restricted topic the energy of prayer, but already some archeologists and almost scientists. It is not even sure that they preserved intact, in all its antiquated puerility, this legacy of the ancient ages. According to Servius, they gave, with the names of the deities, the “reasons of the names themselves. “ As Varro did it after them, they therefore explained themselves what they knew badly.

I am struck by the fact that, except for some names, perhaps even of the only name of Mutunus-Tutunus, all the other names quoted by Varro are perfectly understandable and form part without difficulty of the vocabulary of the classical Latin. However it is not possible to admit that these names are contemporary of the song of the Salian priests, and come from the Pompiliana Indigitamenta dating back to the time of Numa. Moreover, we don’t need for that to recuse the witness statement of Arnobius: some archeologists making an inventory of the traditions could classify under this heading these which appeared to them dating back to the primitive time. In any case, we may suspect them of having renovated the form of the names, or even of having translated into more modern language these which had become unintelligible. This thesis will appear indefensible to those who think that the writers of the Indigitamenta were keen to compose themselves for that effective spells and weighed words and syllables anxiously. The objection falls if they are antiquarians in the way of Varro, for whom these names and spells had had only the interest of curiosity, but who did not believe prohibited from altering, in order to make them accessible, the letter of the old spell books. Let us go further: people exaggerated unrestrainedly the importance and the magic effectiveness of the names in the pontifical spells in general, and in these in particular. Perhaps, the pontiffs were meticulous and they had the superstition of the letter, the “legal actions “prove it; but, when they were names, the excess even of their scruple produced the same effect as the indifference. I want to say that, through fear of omitting the effective and true form, they piled up in their invocations several possible forms, by adding sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare. They had at their disposal expressions si deus, si dea es, sive mas, sine femina, which enabled them to deal with deities of whom they claimed not to know neither the name nor the gender. They preferred even much these anonymous adjurations to the risk to which you exposed yourself while being mistaken in the name. And you would want these same pontiffs, concerned about writing effective spells, had severely proscribed all the variants, and decided, for example, that Statanus and Statilinus were well two distinct genies! Is it not more probable, on the contrary, that they brought closer the similar names and the god-or-demons having a similar function;

in a word, that they attenuated their best (as dangerous if they were believers; as indifferent in oneself, if it was for them matter of scholarship) these subtle distinctions that our modern philologists exhaust themselves to restore? We manage thus, while respecting, it seems to me, the texts and the rules of criticism, to take the exact opposite course of the doctrines which are current since Ambrosch. For us, the content of the Indigitamenta is well indeed a legacy of the old ages, older even as it was said, but the drafting of them is relatively very recent, perhaps slightly previous the studies of Varro; “to indigit “is not to call upon in the priestly way, but in the way of the popular wizards; it is the popular faith, and not the college of pontiffs in search of legal precision, which freely created names and spells, at random of the circumstances, without preoccupation of a classification nor of quintessential distinctions.

Then came pontiffs, who, as professional theologists, collected these wrecks, not to divide and subdivide their elements, not to make a body of doctrines and to oblige the private individuals to come to ask them held secret receipts; but by curiosity of scholars or, as we would say today, of folklorists, in order to let lose nothing what could be still preserved from the national traditions. Curiosity but also duty at the same time; because a certain number of the small god-or-demons with given functions had antiquated sanctuaries, of which the pontiffs themselves would have ended up forgetting the commemorative meaning and the holders. Here is therefore half solved, i.e., as it can be, the question which torments our scholars so strongly, i.e., which deities were therefore registered in the Indigitamenta and which were excluded from it. If the pontiffs sought to fix fluctuating and disseminated traditions, they had no need to deal with these which were already fixed in the rituals, their rituals or these of the other priestly corporations. It was the case for all the deities endowed with a public and official worship, including the sacra popularia, and especially for those who had particular incumbents, dependent on the college of pontiffs. It is not that there was here dissimilarity of nature between these deities, or between all these deities in question, and those who were to be catalogued: the limits of the collection of Indigitamenta were posed in a completely empirical way. It was the repository of all that was not officially known, as belonging neither to the State religion, nor to the private worships. Thus is solved, by an addition, the antinomy which is created by admitting that the useful to everyone god-or-demons were “gods of priests “ buried in the secrecy of the pontifical files. The Indigitamenta were neither secret according to their origin, nor hidden intentionally, but were simply ignored by the public, which was very little concerned with them.

Wether Varro had, like Granius Flaccus, the idea that the “Genius “was the domestic Lar, or whether he followed the common opinion, which allocated a genius to each individual, in a way or another, he was to refuse to recognize “Genii “and “Junones “ in public god-or-demons, accessible and helpful to each and everyone. In any case, the two genders were represented in the dii certi of Varro and, consequently, in the occult powers of the Indigitamenta. All the religions of the world gave genders to their divine entities, and, the idea of gender necessarily calling the idea of union, they more or less paired these superhuman beings, even designed as rather incorporeal entities. So abstract that the gender of the Roman deities is, we meet among them couples: only they are barren couples. There is not in Rome divine genealogies. Did all the deities, or, to limit the question, all the deities of the Indigitamenta, live in couples, and do we have to attribute to the gaps of the tradition the empty places where the spouses are missing? These gaps existed already in the catalogue of Varro, because Seneca made fun of the unmarried god-or-demons and of the non married goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies. Saint Augustine himself says positively that there was a dea Pertunda, but no Pertundus. There is even a pair of names with which Varro did not want to make a marital couple, Ruminus (Jupiter) and Rumina.

Perhaps because, Ruminus being a Jupiter, i.e., a recognized aspect of Jupiter, he judged Rumina being of too poor scale to make her a Juno, in the meaning where he understood it. At first sight, it is impossible to grasp an unspecified rule in this cluster of juxtaposed names; but it is necessary to think that they are there remains of a collection born incomplete, upset, ransacked by Christian polemicists of which the single purpose was to underline the contradictions and the inconsistency of the Roman pagan theology. If there were some rule observed, we are badly placed to grasp it. However, it is not forbidden us to seek to introduce into the question some more general ideas, likely to enlighten it. In spite of the small number of couples matched by Varro, I am persuaded that the marriage in Roman fashion,an association by homonymous couples, was the rule for the god-or-demons of the Indigitamenta, ruled based itself on the fact that there were in Rome a religion for men and a religion for women. Allowing exceptions, there is for all the rules, the male god-or-demons were called upon

there by and for the men; female divinities by and for the women. The practice was on this point so categorical, that theologists were concerned to seek partners for the public god-or-demons, of official worship, who did not have one. But they were here marriages in the recent fashion, the wife keeping her name instead of taking that of the husband.

The god-or-demons resulting from popular imagination were married in the Roman way, and the wife could say: “Ubi tu Gaius ego Gaia! “(Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia). It is not necessary nevertheless to admit that they all were so. We see very well why certain deities, either were not coupled, or lost their consort. The deities with purely gynecological function , like the midwives, did not need a double. The existence of certain couples in the protective deities of childhood suggests that one of the two spouses was called upon for the boys, the other for the girls; and perhaps even, by a strict application of the rule, one for the boys and by the father, the other for the girls and by the mother. Let suppose the fathers ignoring these practices, and the use (or the pontifical casuistry) allowing the mothers to call upon female deities for their children of the two genders; and a whole half of the divine staff, the male side, disappears then, disuse bringing the oblivion.

The male god-or-demons are, indeed, in a negligible minority in this series, and it is hardly if we see some of them reappear, among the god-or-demons presiding over the education of children. We also understand why the majority of the dii conjugales protect the wife, and not the husband. The reason pled here does not suffice nevertheless to explain everything. The agriculture, which was in the hands of men, counts among its divine workmen a considerable proportion of female deities, proportion which still increases if we eliminate from the popular work the twelve epithet names (of Tellumo probably), called upon by the flamen of Ceres. If they are remains of incomplete couples, we may suppose that the male spouses disappeared because the dominant idea, included in these names, is the idea of Earth, and that the imagination of the people, guided by the usual language, started by eliminating the male genie of Earth (Tellumo), however, postulated by this rule of the couples and preserved besides in the rituals. It is useless to multiply the conjectures: the gender of the divine entities is the effect of causes similar to these which determined the gender of the names of inanimate objects, those at least as unknown of the grammarians as these of the mythographers.

Such deity could be imagined preferably male or female, and be supplemented then by a spouse of the other gender, or remain isolated; such original couple could be separated through disuse. Let us say while finishing that, in such an encumbered with assumptions subject, there is no system against which we cannot object. The best is most understandable, and, in the absence of positive evidence, the one which gives less angles of attack for refutation 1). The religions are done like the languages: the people creates, the learned ones record, and the reflection bring them not to multiply the particular concepts, but on the contrary to attach them to more general ideas. The attempts made to limit the extent of the Indigitamenta and to release them from the dii certi of Varro, thereby posed rules and led to completely arbitrary results. It is allowed, without having to reject other things that the exaggerations of Christian polemicists of which none saw nor targeted directly the Indigitarnenta, it is allowed, I say, to regard this collection as having been of modest size, incomplete, representing a surface investigation; such finally that Varro could absorb of it all the names at once, and even to lengthen it in his chapter devoted to the dii certi. We understand better thus that these famous documents have in their time, before being given to the mockery of the philosophers or of the Christians, held such a little place, and caused such a little stir in the world. I will therefore conclude this article while repeating what Varro himself said after Xenophanes, and also in connection with the theology: quid putem, non quid contendam, ponam: I will state what I think, not what I am prepared to maintain 2).

A. BOUCHE-LECLERCQ.

1. Wise maxim which can guide us as regards the look to have on the current mass religions.

2. Wise maxim of which the author of this booklet takes responsibility with regard to the contents of the Indigitamenta of druidism which will follow.

THE INDIGITAMENTA OF DRUIDISM.

We saw in the previous volume what it was necessary to think of the chthonian even air gods (that we also gathered in this category considering their rather reduced number).

The air gods or demons are personifications of the atmospheric forces as the wind (the Santa Anna, the Circius in old Europe, the Galerna in France, etc.) the storm the flashes.

The celestial gods are “air” only by convention, but they are especially active in the world of the men (besides the original druidic myth locates them often on the same level as the human beings, but in remote islands).

And there is, of course, the case of the gods or demons like the god of lightning or thunder (Taran/Toran/Tuireann) who are at the same time air and celestial.

Air, celestial, and chthonian, God-or demons, form a gigantic Pantheon, more than an ordinary Pantheon in the Greek way, a pleroma.

We use the word pleroma which means “full” in Greek, in order to show well here that we are not satisfied with the only celestial superhuman entities, but that we also include in what we intend to take on…. unconscious underground chthonian superhuman entities.

We will come now to the gods who are neither chthonian neither air nor watery.

The Celtic religion was (in the first times, and in the majority of the cases, daily at least) initially a private religion; each one therefore called upon one or the other of these god-or-demons according to one’s needs, the shaman (the druid) taking part only in most serious cases. This type of deity has equivalents in the Roman religion as we could see it, because of a common Italo-Celtic origin, but, on the other hand, has no equivalent in the Greek religion.

The difficulties of the transmission initially oral, then written, but in the hands of the Christian copyist monks thereafter, resulted in to completely scramble the personalities of some of these supernatural characters in Ireland; and the part played by many Gaelic deities of the list which follows (our “druidic” Indigitamenta to us in a way) is no longer at all so perfectly clear. Most total confusion prevails at times, it should be well admitted.

A good comparison can be found in the Muslim notion of tawassul. Tawassul is a religious practice based on the concept of intercession. Its method and its exact definition are prone to a lot of litigations within the Muslim community. If the intercession through the alive persons is accepted by all the Schools of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), the tawassul through the dead persons is prohibited by Orthodox Sunni Islam, allowed by the Sufi, Shiites and Alawis branches .

But the best comparison which is for a better rendering comprehensible the Indiges gods of druidism is still the list of the patron saints intercessors in the Catholic church and the concept of intercession.

A patron saint is a saint, guard of a group of people.

He can be linked:

- to a place, like St. Michael , patron saint of the town of Brussels;

- to a trade or an activity, like St. Sebastian, patron saint of bowmen, St. Patrick, patron saint of engineers, St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology, St. Isidore of Seville, patron saint of computer specialists, of computer users, Cyberspace and Net surfers;

- to risks, dangers or diseases, like Father Damien, patron saint of lepers (nature is neither perfect nor imperfect it is what it is and there is only it! The list of the healing saints is therefore long), St. Rita of Cascia and St. Jude Thaddeus patron saint of the desperate cases.

Not forgetting St. Antony of Padua for lost items, etc., etc.

Because the gods, we must say it, exist only for men, without human beings it would be no god, men designed gods in their image. To say that is almost a tautology. And the god of Abraham Isaac and Muhammad does not escape this rule.

Greeks had placed their city of gods on a mountain, the Celts themselves, made their gods coming from remote islands, places of all the possible ones, ecliptic of the thought. God-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Danu (bia) in Ireland, had been indeed exiled in islands in the north of the world before landing in the world of men (the Middle Earth or Mediomagos).

An island, it is a land, but in the mind of the high-knowers called druids, such islands belonged much more to the celestial world that to the purely earthly world. These remote islands were in any event gates or contact points with the other part of the universe. Such god-or-demons can come on earth. We can conclude deals with them.

Of course, we attach no longer importance to these poetic old hats but the fact remains that island produces dome dreams. It creates or causes or revives very old phantasms, registered in the consciousness of the men of all time. It is present in all mythologies.

Heavenly place, enclosed world, scale-down cosmos, the island is potentially a temple, or shrine. A place of preference, science and peace, ultimate refuge or ultimate stage. The island, we reach only at the conclusion of an often-difficult navigation, or of a flight, is the archetypal symbol of a primordial spiritual center.

Its color of preference is white. White the island of Thule in the Celtic legends. White par excellence, the island in which the druids were going to perfect their instruction in the sacred sciences: Alba, become Albion (which was not yet the Perfidious Albion).

The islands at the horizon or even behind the horizon in the far west or in the far north are separate worlds.

It is not the world of men, it is not the sea world, it is not the celestial world.

N.B. People of gods….people of gods ..... It is in fact more exactly the people ...... OF THE GODDESS.

Of the goddess Danu. Perhaps the former blue Danube. For the ancient druids, it was a goddess fertilized by the flash god (metaphor of the fire in water): Taranis, Tuireann in Ireland.

The remark proves in addition that this “deity” was not obvious in the eyes of the Irishmen of the Middle Ages who tended a little to consider the Tuatha de Danann as simple superheroes if we may say. Some magicians or wizards, but not some gods. Fortunately besides, if not they would have been either completely suppressed or systematically demonized, what is only partially or punctually the case.

And these gods are also gods from the Sky since to come to Ireland they had to take the air route (at least according to one of the variants of our manuscripts).

CELTIC INDIGES ABLE TO INTERCEDE WITH THE VERY POWERFUL FATE (TOCAD) IN ORDER TO INFLECT IT.

(Indigitamenta made without goofy Manicheism , i.e., including “angels and demons” since the Celtic demons are in reality only AMBIVALENT superhuman entities (i.e., neither good nor bad, or at the same time good and bad, according to the cases, shortly neutral) demonized by Christianity.

- Abarta/Abartach. Abarta is one of the god-or-demons of the tribe of the goddess or demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), in Ireland. His name means “doer of deeds “. He offers services to Vindos/Finn, the chief of Fenians, but in order to harm to them. For that, he will go as far as giving a gray wild horse, to the chief of the Fenians, by presenting himself under the name of “Giolla Decair “. This horse was so impetuous that nobody could ride him. Fourteen of the warriors of Vindos/Finn clung to the animal to break in, but the horse refused to move. It is only when Abarta mounted behind the fourteen warriors thus challenged that the animal sprang into the gallop, pulling even behind him a fifteenth man who had not had time to release his tail. Abarta took them in this way to the next world, because such was his objective in reality! The rest of the tribe of Fenians got a ship in order to find them or to punish Abarta. Of all the pursuers, the best was incontestably a warrior called Foltor, the right-hand man of Vindos/Finn, because he precisely arrived to the other world. Abarta was obliged to release the prisoners and to come back with them, hung to the tail of the horse. The honor being safe, Vindos/Finn and his warriors agreed to make peace with him.

Transposed into Christian mode that would produce: Abartach was the patron saint of the horse breakers.

- Adsagsona. Justice or revenge. We find his name on the lead of the Larzac, a tablet found in 1983, in the Larzac. Precisely. The sentence mentioning reads as follows: TIGONTIAS SO ADSAGSONASEUE. It is the druidic equivalent of the Greek Nemesis.

- Aed Abrat. Aedh Abrath. One of the many deities of the druidic Panth-eon, or then one of the many names of one of the deities, of the druidic Panth-eon . He is the father of Oengus, Fand and Li Ban (the latter is sometimes considered as having Eochaid as her father). At least in the Irish deviance. He is particularly quoted in the Seirglige ConCulaind & Oenet Emire (the sickbed of Cúchulainn and the only jealousy of Aemer), as being the father of the “bird women” (Fand and Li Ban), the only persons being able to treat the Hesus Cuchulainn. His name literally means “fire of the eye.” As Túatha de Danann, and especially father of Wanda/Fand and Oengus, there is no doubt about the divine nature of the character.

- Aed Ruad or Aed the red. One of the three kings reigning in alternation over Ulster, in the legend of Macha.

N.B. The name of Aed is to be brought closer to that of the tribe of the Aeduii who saw fit to call upon the Romans in general and Caesar in particular.

- Aericura, Aeraecura, Herecura, Heracura, Herequra, Aeraecura. The sources which identify her are of epigraphic nature and date back mainly to the period of the Roman empire. A large number of representations of this goddess were found in the Danube area, in Slovenia and in south Germany. There exist, however, also traces of her in Italy, Great Britain, France and even Algeria. The inscriptions are concentrated in Stuttgart and along the Rhine. The inscription found at Sulzbach in Germany combines her with Dispater through interpretatio romana. The inscription found at Mautern in Austria associates her with Pluto, Jupiter, Juno; other inscriptions combine her with Sylvan. It is therefore a goddess-or-demoness related to the world of the dead, perhaps of the soul/minds of the late on the verge of being reincarnated in our world (very rare cases probably, called bacuceos); others, vast majority, having to be again embodied in the next heavenly world called Vindomagos, Mag Meld, or differently.

- Airmed/Armeditrina. A daughter of the bonesetter Diancecht. Her name means “measurement, weighing “. During the second battle of the Plain of the standing stones or mounds, she will take part in the care of the wounded warriors while using the well of Health. A bath in this water cured the wounded warriors or brought back the dead to life. She has two brothers Miacos/Miach (“the bushel “) and Aremiacos/Ormiach (a duplicate of the previous one). Will try, but vainly, to collect all medicinal herbs or plants having grown on the grave of Miacos/Miach. Patron saint of the herbalists but medical function in reality was always taken on by various healing god-or-demons among Celts, and was never

reserved for one divine entity. A small stone votive stele found in Grand represents her in what appears to be a pharmacy (currently at the museum in Épinal).

- Alaisiagae. The dispatching terror. They are two goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if it is preferred, acting in concert, Beda and Boudihillia. Known by inscriptions discovered in the fort of Vercoviciivm on Hadrian's Wall (Housesteads, Northumberland).

DEO MARTI ET DVABVS ALAISIAGIS ET N AVG, GER CIVES TVIHANTI CVNEI FRISIORVM, VER SER ALEXANDRIANI. To the god Mars and the two Alaisiagae, and to the divine power of the Emperor, the German tribesmen of Tuihantis of the formation of the Frisians in Vercovicium...

DEABVS ALAISIAGIS BAVDIHILLIE ET FRIAGABI AND N AVG. To the goddesses Alisiagae Boudihillia and Friagabis as to the divine spirit of the emperor.

DEO MARTI THINCSO AND DVABVS ALAISAGIS BEDE AND FIMMILENE. To the god Mars Thinescus and the two Alaisiagae, Beda and Fimmilena.

Celtic *ad- (towards) *lai (j) - sija- (to send) *agai (frights).

Frigabis (Freya??) and Fimmilena being Germanic goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies; we thus have here four goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, two Celtic ones, Beda and Boudihillia and two Germanic ones, who are combined with them.

- Alatrom. King of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns especially known through his three sons, Dubros, Dub, and Mel.

- Andarta/Andrasta. According to Cassius Dio (Roman History. Book LXII) goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, of victory, called upon by the queen of the Iceni called Boudicca, at the time of her revolt against the Romans in year 61.

“When she had finished speaking, she employed a species of divination, letting a hare escape from the fold of her dress; and since it ran on what they considered the auspicious side 1), the whole multitude shouted with pleasure, and Boadicea, raising her hand towards heaven, said: "I thank you, Andraste, and call upon thee as woman speaking to a woman; for I rule over no burden-bearing Egyptians as did Nitocris, nor over-trafficking Assyrians as did Semiramis (for we have by now gained thus much learning from the Romans!), much less over the Romans themselves as did Messalina once and afterwards Agrippina and now Nero (who, though in name a man, is in fact a woman, as is proven by his singing, lyre-playing and beautification of his person); nay, those over whom I rule are Britons, men that know not how to till the soil or ply a trade, but are thoroughly versed in the art of war and hold all things in common, even children and wives, so that the latter possess the same valor as the men. As the queen, then, of such men and of such women, I supplicate and pray thee for victory, preservation of life, and liberty against men insolent, unjust, insatiable, impious — if, indeed, we ought to term those people men who bathe in warm water, eat artificial dainties, drink unmixed wine, anoint themselves with myrrh, sleep on soft couches with boys for bedfellows — boys past their prime at that 2) — and are slaves to a lyre player and a poor one too. Wherefore may this Mistress Domitia-Nero reign no longer over me or over you men; let the wench sing and lord it over Romans, for they surely deserve to be the slaves of such a woman after having submitted to her so long. But for us, Mistress, be thou alone ever our leader....

Boadicea led her army against the Romans; for these chanced to be without a leader, inasmuch as Paulinus, their commander, had gone on an expedition to Mona, an island near Britain. This enabled her to sack and plunder two Roman cities, and, as I have said, to wreak indescribable slaughter. Those who were taken captive were subjected to every known form of outrage. The worst and most bestial atrocity committed by their captors was the following. They hung up naked the noblest and most distinguished women and then cut off their breasts and sewed them to their mouths, in order to make the victims appear to be eating them; afterwards they impaled the women on sharp skewers runs lengthwise through the entire body. All this they did to the accompaniment of sacrifices, banquets, and wanton behavior, not only in all their other sacred places, but particularly in the grove of Andrasta. This was their name for the goddess Victory, and they regarded her with most exceptional reverence.”

See also the heading devoted to the egregore of bears, Artio, in the previous volume, since her name means “Big she bear” because we have the same difficulties as Varro to rationally classify all this little people of the assistants of Fate (neutral tokad, male tocad, female tocade according to my Parisian pen friends).

1. If the animal flees on the left, it is a good omen, if it flees it on the right it is a bad one.

2. A little like a future secretary of French culture at the end of the 20th century, but, as regards him, it was with Thai boxers in Patpong.

- Arnemetia. Celtic ar (in front of) and nemeton (temple in wood). Guardian of the entrance of temples or shrines. She was particularly honored in the thermal spa of Aquae Arnemetiae (Buxton, in Derbyshire).- Arnomecta, Arnomecte, Arnomectae. Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, known by an inscription found in Brough-on-Noe in Derbyshire.

DEAE ARNOMECTE, AEL MOTIO…

To the goddess Arnomectis, Aelius Motio…

Dubious etymology. Isarno = iron and mect = great. Perhaps a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of the blacksmiths, consort of Gobannos.

- Arvalus. God-or-demon of agriculture known by an inscription found in Blackmoorgate in Derbyshire. Combined with Saturn and Dis Pater, Hercules and Apollo. Celtic *aro- (agriculture) and **walo (powerful).

- Aufania. Plural Aufaniae. Celtic goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of the category matres or matronae, known by more than 90 inscriptions. She is sometimes represented as goddess-or-demoness or fairy, single, sometimes as a triad.

In Bonn, in Germany, for example, she is known by an inscription on a low-relief dedicated to the MATRONIS AVFANIABVS.

Her functions: to help where it is necessary, protect, take care of family or clan, fruitfulness, maternity, assistance in the event of war. N.B. I point out to my Parisian correspondents that she would have rather her place in the egregores of the previous volume.

- Aveta. Known by terra cotta figurines discovered in Toulon-upon-Allier and various inscriptions found in Trier in Germany, or Avenches in Switzerland. Is a member of the mopates, goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, because she is often represented with children in her arms and a puppy. Goddess-or-demoness, or good fairy, of childbirth and midwives. Cf Gwenn Teir Bronn in Wales. In the Indigitamenta by Varro it would be Partula.

- Be Chuille/Becuille/Be Chuma: the wife of Chuille. Presented in one of the legends reported by the metric metrical Dindshenchas as a good witch who will help the men of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu, to get rid of their last enemies: the Gallic princess Carman and her three sons. She had the power to transform the stones the clods and the trees into a gigantic army of wild warriors. In the adventures of Art son of Con (Echtrae Airt meic Cuinn), she appears as the wife of Eogan Inbir, but commits adultery with Gaidiar, son of Belenos Barinthus Manannan. She will be thus exiled on Earth for that, and will meet the king of kings Conn of the hundred battles she will marry. Besides this marriage will cause the ruin of his kingdom and therefore she will also be exiled from it.

- Beda. Pit, grave. The word bedum produced “bief “ in old French (section of a canal). Goddess-or-demoness of graves. With Boudihillia, Beda forms a tandem of goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if you prefer, known under the name of Alaisiagae.

- Befinn/Bebhinn/Bebhionn/Bebinn/Befind/Beibhinn/Bevin/Vevina. Many legend heroines have this name in Ireland. One of them is known as the wife of the god-or-demon Áed Alainn or of the mere mortal called Idath. Her name means “beauty “or “sweetheart “. Goddess-or-demoness or good fairy, of births, sister of the Irish goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Boann, who personifies the Boyne River. In certain legends concerning Fenians, she is described as a very tall woman looking aristocratic, pursued by a horrible giant, and coming to them to seek refuge and protection. Other sources mention Bebinn daughter of Elcmar. Some authors compare her to the character of the fairy Vivian. The fairy Vivian or the Lady of the Lake is a character of Arthurian legends. This fairy plays several parts in them; she provides the sword which is called Excalibur to Prince Arthur, guides the king dying towards Avalon after the battle of Camlann, enchants Merlin, or educates Lancelot du Lac after the death of his father. The various authors and copyists gave to this Lady of the Lake various names: Vivian but also Niniane, Nyneve…

- Blatoveda/Blodeuwedd. A female creature of Welsh mythology who appears in the fourth branch of the Mabinogi: Math son of Mathonwy. The meaning of her name is “flower face “.

Llew Law Gyffes is under of a prohibition (geis) of his mother Arianrod, who prevents him from having a human wife. King Math, who is also a magician, and his nephew Gwydion, therefore make to him a wife with flowers and plants (broom, primrose queen-of-meadows, hawthorn, and others). Thanks to this magic, their “creature “is more beautiful than most beautiful of women. The union is celebrated then Llew is endowed with a cantref (of a fief). But one day Llew visits King Math, in his residence of Caer Dathyl, Blodeuwedd receives a named Goronwy (sometimes called Gronw Pebyr), lord of Penllyn, who hunts in the surroundings. She falls in love with him and the lovers plan at once to kill the husband. But Llew is a god-or-demon who can be killed only according to certain very precise methods: he can be killed neither inside, nor outside, neither when her rides nor when he walks. In

fact, he can be murdered in one position: while bathing, a foot on a goat and the other on a cauldron, by a lance forged especially for this purpose. These conditions being one day miraculously gathered, the god-or-demon is slaughtered and is changed into an eagle. In order to punish her for her crime, Gwydyon changes Blodeuwedd into an owl, and revives Llew by giving again a human form to him.

The character of Blodeuwedd corresponds to that of Blathnat or Blathnait in the Irish legends. It was the wife of the prince Cû Roi of Munster. In love with the hesus Cuchulainn, she betrays her husband by indicating to our hero the means of getting into his, hitherto impregnable, fortress. During the battle which followed, Cu Roi died and the hesus Cuchulainn could therefore go away with Blathnat.

But the latter was killed by Fer Chertne or Cherdne, the faithful bard of Cu Roi, who pulled her away in death by precipitating with her from the top of a cliff.

- Brangaine/Branwen. Goddess-or-demoness or fairy, of the beginning love (whereas Wanda/Fand is the goddess of the simply or ending love. There is indeed between Brangaine/Branwen and Wanda/Fand the same difference as between Eros/Cupid and Aphrodite/Venus. A daughter of the sea god-or-demon Lero/Llyr by Iweridd. A sister of Bran the blessed , wife of the king of England (sic) Matholwch. Appears in the medieval legend of Tristan and Iseult. She is the follower or the lady's companion who makes a mistake in vases and serves Tristan and Iseult the famous potion which will make them madly in love one with the other. Her name is probably a francization of the Welsh Branwen (Bronvinda < vinda bronnia/vinda brannia = white chest or white crow) heroine of the second branch of the Welsh Mabinogi; where she plays apparently also the part of goddess-or-demoness, or good fairy, of love, at the very least that of “femme fatale.”

This mabinogi is almost the continuation of the Irish legend entitled “the intoxication of the Ulaid “ what consequently forms a fine example of the Celtic cultural unity. Like all the great druidic deities, this love goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, went down today on the human level, and was also parceled out in the multiplicity. She is in each woman, and in each man also besides.

Brangaine or Brangien was the maidservant of Iseult. Iseult had been promised in marriage to King Mark of Cornwall. Tristan, his nephew, therefore goes in this country to escort her. Before the departure of the boat, the mother of Iseult gives to Brangaine a love philter to give to Iseult and King Mark the evening of their weddings; this potion guaranteeing to those who drank it to love each other until the end of their lives. But at the time of the voyage, Tristan inadvertently drinks the potion before offering some of it to Iseult.

In spite of the difficulties, Brangaine will remain devoted to them until the end and will share their secrets; like when Tristan was introduced into the castle of King Mark, whereas people took him for a hermit; or when she replaced Iseult in the bed of the king, during the wedding night. Like in the case of the unhappy Wanda/Fand, the animal which is associated to her by (false) etymology, is the swallow or the pee wee. It is indeed a swallow which will start all the story while bringing one of the pieces of hair of Iseult to the court of King Mark…

- Bregsos/Bres or Eochaid Bres, Eochu Bres (Eochu the fair). Celtic equivalent of Varro's Segetia.

Very old god of agriculture “demonized” by the mythology in Ireland. His mother is the beautiful Eriu (personification of Ireland) and his father Elatio/Elatha, a gigantic anguipedic wyvern great lord, of the people of the Andernas (on the Continent. Fomorians in Ireland). The name comes perhaps from the Proto-Celtic *bregso-s, the brilliant one, the one who shines, from the stem *bhreg- to shine, to scintillate. His diabolical beauty became legendary. When he was seven years old, he was already tall as a twice older child. From his union with Brigit will be born a son, Ruadan. At the time of the first battle of the Plain of the standing stones or mounds, against the Fir Bolg Gauls, he faces one of their champions called Srengos

One of our many legends about him makes him die during an after hunting drinking.

“The Toutai Devas made Bregsos their king, and he was emperor for seven years. He died after taking a drink while hunting in the mountains of Gam, and Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd , his missing arm having been replaced, became king. And that is the story of the battle of Magos Turation/Mag Tuiread Cunga.”

However he will always reappear well alive for the second battle of Magos Turation according to the Irish bards as we will see it.

This phenomenon is frequent in the sacred texts of our poor Mankind. See the two accounts of creation in the Bible, the priestly account (Genesis 1,1 to 2, 4) and the Yahwist account (2,4 to 2, 24). In the same way, there are also many repetitions in Quran, difficult to locate nevertheless because this book coming from a man or several and intended for other men, is a true hodgepodge following no

precise plan, its chapters (suras) except for some exceptions (one?) being simply classified by order of decreasing magnitude. What is excellent for the memory perhaps but constitutes a real challenge for the intelligence.

In what concerns us, it is an additional proof perhaps here that the initial Panceltic myth staging the founding conflict between the two divine big families governing the world (air gods, sons of Danu - bia or Taran/Toran/Tuireann, and the chthonian or underground gods, sons of the goddess Domnu, etc., in other words, the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians in Ireland)… was so much arranged after its establishment in Ireland that it became incoherent in many respects.

The main thing therefore, what is important, is to show critical mind with respect to all these texts, and to retain only the best of their spirit, not the criminogenic spirit of all these texts but the spirit which can help us to exceed us as a human being. We will reconsider in another of our opuscules the super-humanizing function of the Celtic-druidic myths (whereas the Sumerian myths are behind the Bible and therefore of the Quran are childish making .

All that is not therefore to be taken literally. Let us not do like the Judeo-Christians who maintain that there would have been two Goliaths since this Philistine warrior is said to have been killed by two different men, by the young David….Or by a man of the guard of King David (Elhanan, 2 Samuel 21,19). Let us not be also stupid and let us remember only the broad outlines, in addition to the fact that the gods do not die really, the idea that there was formerly at the very beginning of meta history a gigantic war between men and gods for the control of the Earth. It is therefore important to retain only these broad outlines: men and gods ended up making peace by dividing the Earth. Because it goes without saying in this myth the Fir Bolg Gauls are only a metaphor of Mankind.

What is certain it is that in the Irish myth, he becomes interim king of the god-or-demons known as children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia), shortly after the wound in action of their prince Noadatus/Nuada. Noadatus/Nuada will be indeed wounded during the “First battle of the Plain with pillar stones or mounds” (Cath Maighe Tuireadh), and will leave it without his arm. This mutilation will involve his degradation besides, since the exertion of Celtic sovereignty requires the king is free from any infirmity.

Just elected by the women of the tribe, Bregsos quickly became very unpopular by increasing the taxes and by supporting outrageously the Andernas called Fomorii. During his reign the Tuatha De were overpowered with corvees (drudgeries). Ogmios was continuously to supply the palace of the new king with firewood and the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt to dig ditches. When Bregsos received, he had there almost nothing to drink or to eat in his home.

Carprios/Cairpre, one of the satirists of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), therefore cast a spell on him for this reason and he was the first of the country, it is said. At the end of seven years of tyrannical reign, the former king of the god-or-demons, Noadatus/Nuada, made a comeback, and Bregsos was constrained to abdicate. What will cause the second battle of the Plain of the stone pillars or of the mounds.

- Bricriu. Kind of Celtic Thersites. We allow ourselves to include here in our Panth-eon or pleroma, the legendary Bricriu Nemthenga (“poisonous tongue”), because he seems to us more coming under Mythology than under History. His name means “freckling,” but he is especially famous to stir up ill feeling and to cause quarrels.

Bricriu appears mainly in the Irish legend entitled Fled Bricrend (the Feast of Bricriu). He decides to put on a sumptuous party, in his residence of Dún Rudraige (currently Dundrum) in the honor of the king d' Ulster, Conchobar Mac Nessa, and of the Ultonian warriors. Many guests refusing his invitation, he must threaten them with a general squabble, the friends between them and the parents against their children, so that they agree to come. The feast having begun, he orders the usual hero’s portion is served to most famous of them. The three champions of the kingdom, the Hesus Cuchulainn, Conall Cernach and Lóegaire Búadach, dispute this choice cut at once; each one claiming to be most famous and to have right on it. To put an end to their quarrel, it was decided that they would call upon a monstrous giant in order to measure the courage of each one. Bricriu challenge them to cut the head of this giant, provided that the following day the winner in turn agrees to pose his head on the block.

The Hesus/Cuchulainn was the first to present himself. He decapitated the monster, after what this one got back on his feet , took his head, and went away. The following day, the Hesus/Cuchulainn offered his own head in return, and the monster proclaimed him most courageous man in the country.

When Fergus Mac Roich is dispossessed of his kingdom and that he will be exiled in Connaught, Bricriu will decide to accompany him there and he will therefore also develop his “talents” at the court of the queen Medb. But in spite of all his efforts Bricriu does not play in the same league as the war

goddess or demoness Catubodua (Bodb). All that he is able to do himself, it is to be a gossip and to start a general brawl (in the saloon of the locality). The war goddess or demoness herself, it is another thing, she urges really men to kill each other. She does everything which is necessary so that there are wars because it is through them that she comes to fame; although she can have when it is necessary the beauty of an angel (or of a fairy) when she wants it; in order to be more convincing.

The death of Bricriu will be tragic, during the driving off of the cows of Cooley (Táin Bó Cuailnge). Having been made responsible for arbitrating the fight of the bulls, he will be trampled.

Bricriu symbolizes the discord and, of course, since the god-or-demons can die only in dreams or symbolically, he is still well alive and working in the mind of much of our contemporaries, alas!

- Britovius. Britus. Brutus. The judge. God-or-demon of judgments known by an inscription found in Nimes, which compares him with Mars through interpretatio romana. From Celtic *brito-/a- (judgment) with a male ending Latinized in – us. His combination with Mars makes him perhaps also a god-or-demon judge of the fate of battles or of the fate of the individuals (those who have to die, those who have to live). This god-or-demon is also known under the name of Britus in Dijon as in Antigny in France.

- Calatin. A druid of the race of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians in Ireland, Andernas on the Continent, and who would have, according to the legend, studied magic for seventeen years. Medb (the queen of Connaught in the euhemerized version of the original Panceltic myth) sends him in the company of his 27 sons to face the hesus Cuchulainn, during the cattle raid of Cooley. Left hand and right foot were missing to each one of them, but they never missed their target with their poisoned lances. The hesus Cuchulainn managed to beat them only with the assistance of a warrior from Connaught who disapproved this unequal fight. The elimination of the Calatin did not mean therefore the end of every danger for the hesus Cuchulainn, because a little later the wife of the aforementioned Calatin gave birth to three girls, that queen Medb made blinded in one’s eye to make them witches. The three sisters thus became powerful enchanters and use their magic against our hero, what will result finally in his death, crucified on the standing stone of Muirthemne.

- Cagiris. God-or-demon of enclosed fields. Known by an inscription found in Saint-Beat, in the Haute-Garonne in France. From Celtic *kagyo- (low wall, fence) and rix (king).

- Carpentos/Carpentus. A technician god-or-demon known by an inscription found in France at La Farlede in the Var (in the form Carpantus) as in Huos, Peguilhan, and Sarrevave in Haute-Garonne, in the form Carpentus. From old Celtic *carbanto (war chariot). Would be today in a way the patron saint of the manufacturers of cars or of the mechanics.

- Cairpre/Coirpre/Carprios. A wizard satirist of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia). Son of Etanna. He was slaughtered by Nechtan. Cairpre/Coirpre/Carprios is a filé, i.e., a poet, who appears in the account of the “Cath Maighe Tuireadh “(battles of the Plain of standing stones or mounds) as a first druid having composed or pronounced a satire. This spell was cast on Bregsos/Bres, temporary king of the men of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia), who was a very bad sovereign, because of his avarice and of his tyranny. The satire of the poet will involve his abdication and his degradation. Patron saint of the critical journalists, therefore!

- Catubellona/Cathlionn/Cethlenn. In the Irish legend, wife of Balor, the chief of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomoriasin Ireland (Andernas on the Continent). They have a daughter, Eithne, who will be the mother of Lug. She predicts the defeat of the Andernas/Fomoire facing the god-or-demons known as children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu, the tribe of Danu (bia), and it is what will occur indeed. At the time of the battle of the Plain of the pillar stones or mounds (Cath Maighe Tuireadh), she will manage nevertheless to wound the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. She gave her name to the Irish town of Enniskillen (Inis Ceithleann), in county Fermanagh (Ulster, Northern Ireland). It is another of the aspects of Catubodua, the Celtic Kali.

- Cetturo/Cethor but also Mac Greine in Irish language, what means “son of the sun “: Grannognatos in Iarnbelre or old Celtic. One of the last kings of the god-or-demons before the advent of men. A son of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. His consort was called Iveriu even Eriu, at least according to the Irish apocryphal texts. “Son of the sun “ is a nickname difficult to understand. Was he a sun god-or-demon or, like Ogmius, a god-or-demon with a face burned by the sun?? Patron saint of successful tan therefore in a way.

- Cicolluis/Cicollus/Cicholl Gri-Cenchos. Underground warlike God-or-demon become king of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns people call Fomorians in Ireland, Andernas on the Continent. Continental documentation (inscription discovered in the French department of the Côte-d’Or in Dijon, Aignay-le-Duc and Malain) however makes him only a simple equivalent of the Mars of our Roman friends. Who to believe? Also discovered inscriptions mentioning him at Xanten in Germany, and Windisch in Switzerland. His name means “endowed with big muscles “. Consort: the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this term is preferred, Litavis. In Mutigney in France in the year 2000 a bronze plate was

discovered dating back to the 2nd century, and mentioning this deity. It is the dedication of a high priest of the imperial worship, called Tutillus. It was put inside a temple, probably in the lower part of an imposing statue representing her. The dedication mentions a sum of 48.000 sestertia, what represents a colossal sum of money for the time.

- Clota/Clouta/Cluta. Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of reputation or celebrity. See the name of the Scottish river called Clyde. Fame then was something important in the Celtic society. In a society marked by spoken word, the reputation was the only means of measuring the value of somebody. People expected from everyone that he is generous, honest, brave, loyal. But the more you were high ranked in the social scale, the more you had to satisfy these criteria. The bards were those who made or demolished the reputations. The fear of being the subject of a satire composed by one of them constituted without any doubt the first of the fears of all Celtic great lord. A song making fun with you could mean your downfall, a poem in your honor earned you a glory lasting through time. Caesar forgets in the report of his campaigns therefore a category of characters that the other compilers, however, place in the foreground. The bards, these cantors, equivalent of the former Greek aoidoi who were located in at the same time political and religious field and were responsible for the praise as for the blame, of the noble ones. Said differently, they played a part rather close to that of the censors of the antiquated Rome, supporting by their anthems the political and honorary place of each one.

- Credno Cerdos/Credne Cerd. Cred = bronze, cerd (anos) = craftsman. In the mythology of Ireland, Credne Cerd is the bronze maker of the men of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia). He makes lance rivets, sword hilts as well as shield bosses. He is the son of Brigit and Taran/Toran/Tuireann. He is a member of the artisanal class and therefore comes within the producing third function. He appears in the story of the Cath Maighe Tuireadh, which tells us the war opposing the god-or-demons to the anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians in Ireland, Andernas on the Continent; we see him there making weapons with his brothers Gobannos and Luxtanios/Luchta. He also helps Diancecht to make a silver prosthesis for Noadatus/Nuada who had his arm cut during the battle.

- Cú Roí (Cú Ruí, Cú Raoi) mac Dáire. King of Munster, who could change his form at will. He took part in two stories of the cycle of Ulster, the feast of Bricriu (fled Bricrenn) and the intoxication of the Ultonian (Mesca Ulad). His name means “Hound of the battlefield “.

The feast of Bricriu. Bricriu, known to sow the discord, organized a feast during which he will have the opportunity to cause quarrels. When Cúchulainn, Conall Cernach, and Lóegaire Búadach dispute the champion’s portion, Cú Roí is a jury member. He appears under the features of a hideous giant, named Uath (horror) and proposes to them a test: each one is invited to cut the head of the giant with an axe, on the condition of accepting himself such a lot the following day. Only Cúchulainn will therefore have enough courage and nobility to accept, he will be declared the winner. Another adventure. Cú Roí and the hesus Cúchulainn makes a raid on Inis Fer Falga (Isle of Man). They seize the royal treasure and abduct Blathnat, the daughter of the king. The princess is in love with the hesus Cúchulainn, but when it is asked to Cú Roí to choose his share of spoils, he will take Blathnat.

The hesus Cuchulainn tries to be opposed to it, but his rival cuts his hair and plunges him in patty down to his neck, before fleeing with the maiden. Thereafter, Blathnat will betray Cú Roí out of love for Cúchulainn. After the siege his fortress, the champion of Ulster manages to kill his rival. The soul/mind of Cú Roí takes refuge in an apple, which is in the belly of a salmon. The fish lives in a torrent of the Slieve Mish mountains and surfaces only every seven years. Blathnat discovers the secret and says it to Cúchulainn, who kills the salmon, thus destroying the soul/mind of Cú Roí. But, Ferchertne, the druid of Cú Roí, furious that his lord was thus betrayed, will seize Blathnat by the shoulders and will jump from a cliff with her, while thus involving her in his death.

The ruins of the fort of Caherconree (in Irish Cathair Con Raoi, the castle of Cú Roí), in County Kerry, preserve the name of this mythical king.

- Derbavergillia/Derbfogaille. A daughter of the king of Loccolandon/Lochlann (Norway). ). In the story of the violent death of Lugaid and Derbfogaille (Aided Lugdach ocus Derbforgaille), in love with Cúchulainn. With her maidservant, she is changed into swans bound by a gold chain. But Derbfogaille is wounded in her ribs by a sling shooting of Cúchulainn. Come back in her state of a woman, she complains about the cruel treatment, she has just undergone. Cúchulainn, in order to treat her, sucks her side to extract from it the bullet which came with a blood clot. Treated, she declares her love to Cúchulainn. But the latter announces to her that he cannot be married to a woman of whom he sucked blood. He proposes another marrying material to her Lugaid Reo nDerg. She therefore became the partner of the latter. The other women, through jealousy, tear off her eyes, nose, ears, hair, and the flesh of her thighs, then brings back her at home. Suspecting a drama had just happened, Cúchulainn and Lugaid Reo nDerg, precipitate towards the house. But the door is closed, and Derbfogaille sings a

lamentation while bidding farewell. The two heroes end up entering, but Derbforgaille is already dead (the history is not very clear).

- Dergos Boduos/Bodb the red. Gaelic Bodb Derg. Oldest son of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. His name means “raven “ or red (with blood ?) “crow“. With Belinos Barinthus Manannan, he will become king of the world of the god-or-demons, when the latter take refuge under ground to flee the human beings. Dergos Boduos (Bodb Derg) also appears after, in the story entitled in Gaelic language “Aislinge Oenguso “. Irishmen made him a king of Connaught at the time of the second battle of the plain of the standing stones or burial mounds. He was lord and master of different sidhs, called Femen, Na mRen, Mumu, according to the texts, and he is also known to have lived the Brug Na Boinne. He had three named sons Angus, Artrach and Aedos/Aedh, as well as a daughter called Scathniamh. Some texts ascribe to him two other sons called Aodh Aithfhiosach and Fergus Fithchiollach, responsible for finding the children of Lero/Lir as three other daughters: Doirend, Mesca, and Sadv. He had a famous musician called Fertuinne. At the time of the battle of Ventry, Bob the red came to help the Fenians in the throes of being overrun by the host of their enemies.

- Elatio/Elatha (Gaelic mythology). Son of Delbaeth. One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns leaders called Fomorians in Ireland (Andernas on the Continent), having taken part in the second battle of the Plain of the menhirs or burial mounds . Elatha means “knowledge, science “. He was young, handsome , good-looking, he was so much attractive that somepeople have even wanted to make him a lunar god-or-demon. From his union with the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer to use this word, Eriu, will be born Bregsos/Bres, temporary king of the Tuatha De.

- The Ennead in Avalon. Various Celtic traditions speak to us about nine sisters living in an island. Pomponius Mela, De Chorographia III, 6,48. “48. In the Britannic Sea, opposite the coast of the Osismi, the isle of Sena belongs to a Celtic deity and is famous for its oracle, whose priestesses, sanctified by their perpetual virginity, are reportedly nine in number. They call the priestesses Gallizenae and think that because they have been endowed with unique powers, they stir up the seas and the winds by their magic charms, that they turn into whatever animals they want, that they cure what is considered incurable among other peoples, that they know and predict the future, but that it is not revealed except to sea voyagers and then only to those traveling to consult them “.

Geoffrey of Monmouth. Life of Merlin. “The island of apples, which is called the “Fortunate Island” has its name because it produces all things for itself. There is no work for the farmers in plowing the fields, all cultivation is absent except for what nature manages by herself. On its own the island produces fertile crops and grapes and native apples by means of its own trees in the cropped pastures. On its own the overflowing soil puts forth all things in addition to the grass, and in that place one lives for one hundred years or more. There nine sisters give pleasant laws to those who come from our parts to them, and of those sisters, she who is higher becomes a doctor in the art of healing and exceeds her sisters in excellent form. Morgan is her name, and she has learned what usefulness all the herbs bear so that she may cure sick bodies. Also that art is known to her by which she can change shape and cut the air on new wings in the manner of Dedalus. When she wishes, she is in Brest, Chartres, or Paris when she wishes, she glides out of the air onto your lands. They say that this lady has taught mathematics to her sisters Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten,

Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe, and Thiten the most noteworthy on the cither. To that place after the battle of Camlann we brought Arthur, hurt by wounds, with Barinthus leading us, to whom the waters and the stars of the sky were known. With this guide for our raft, we came to that place with our leader, and with what was fitting Morgan did honor to us, and in her rooms she placed the king upon a golden couch and with her own honorable hand she uncovered his wound and inspected it for a long time, and at last she said that health could return to him, if he were with her for a long time and wished to undergo her treatment. Therefore rejoicing we committed the king to her and returning gave sails to the assisting winds.”

- Eogabal/Eogabail. Obscure figure of the Irish legends. One of the many foster sons or wards of Belenos Barinthus (Manannan mac Lir). King of the Sid in Knockainy. Father or perhaps grandfather of Aine as well as Grian, brother of Fer I. We cannot help but think of the Roman Emperor Elagabalus.

-Eogan of the river mouth. Another difficult to identify character. Apparently therefore still a resident of the next world of gods.

–Eis enchenn. Ir. eis, a band, a troop; Enchenn, bird-headed. A grotesque female adversary of Cuchulainn. Our hero encounters her while departing from Scathache along a very narrow ridge.

- Esdrios/Esras/Urias. Druid of the island of Gorre (Gorias for the Irishmen). It is from there that the lance of Lug was brought.

- Ethliu/Ethniu. The majority of the legends of the heresy developed in Ireland make her a daughter of Balaros/Balor, the king of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, but

people designate with the name of Fomoire over there. The Irish text called “Baile in Scáil “ calls her, “Maic Tigernmais “ which means “son of Tigernmas “(or “Maic Smretha Maic Tigernmais “according to the versions, which means this time “son of Smretha son of Tigernmas “).

The baile in Scail or “Phantom's Frenzy “is a very strange story. A ghost resulting from the next world enters a prophetic trance and gives to the king of Tara, Conn Cétchathach, the list of his descendants.

Some authors make this Tigernmas another name of Balor, but still....

In short, an ancient prophecy having predicted that Balaros/Balor would die under the hand even of his grandson, the latter had made his daughter Ethniu locked up in a tower firmly guarded by twelve matrons. But in vain, because she will become the mother of Lug nevertheless, by Ceno/Cian. She came to Tara after the second battle of the Plain of stone pillars or burial mounds , and married Tadg there, becoming thus also the mother of two girls named Tuiren and Muirne, herself mother of Vindos/Finn. Variant of the name: Ethlinn, Ethnea, Eithliu, Ethlend, Ethnen, Ethlenn, Ethnenn, Aithne, Etney, Eithnenn, Eithlenn, Eithna, Eithne, Ethni, Ethne, Edlend, Edlenn.

- Fedelma/Videlma. Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of destiny.

The Irish legend of the cattle raid of Cooley provides us an excellent description of her.

“And thus the maiden appeared: Weaving was she, and in her right hand was a shuttle of white bronze with seven threads of red gold. A many-spotted green mantle around her; a bulging, strong-headed pin of gold in the mantle over her bosom. A ruddy, fair-faced countenance she had. She had a blue-gray and laughing eye. Red and thin were her lips. Shiny and pearly were her teeth; you would believe they were showers of white pearls that had rained into her mouth. Like to fresh and crimson Parthian leather were her lips. As sweet as the strings of a harp (rote) when long sustained they are played by master players' hands was the melodious sound of her voice and her fair speech.

As white as snow in one night fallen was the sheen of her skin and her body that shone outside of her dress. Slender and very white were her feet; scarlet, even, sharp-round nails ; fair-yellow, long, golden hair she wore; three braids of hair she wore; a tress from behind threw a shadow down on her calves.”

We know, by the oldest version of the driving off of the cattle of Cooley, that of the Lebor na hUidre, that it is an ambividtu versonnions (imbas forosnai) or “incantation through enlightenment “; that the clairvoyant therefore learned in Scotland the science of the veledae (filid) and that she is, according to this old version, expert in handling of weapons. She has therefore a priestly initiation, not complete, but very extensive. She also has the perfect bodily beauty of the women of the Next World; but her whole poem, disastrous for the army of Ireland, is only a long prophecy announcing the misfortunes which will cause, throughout the expedition, the interventions of the Hesus/Cuchulainn. Let us add that, unlike the prediction of the druid, her prophecy was not requested. Fedelma came on her own initiative , as a member of the “family “of Queen Medb of whom she says to be the “maidservant “. We have to note lastly the detail of the weaving of a fabric, detail which was no longer understood by the transcribers, and which was not more by the contemporary observers. It is enough to do the character a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of the destiny, reason besides for what she prophesies with such an amount of exactitude.

- Fer Í (the yew man). In the Irish legends, divine harpist, remaining in a tree near or above a water fall. Brother (or probably son) of Eogabal, and uncle (or probably father) of Aine as well as of Grian. His music had the power to make people laugh, cry, or sleep, according to what he wanted. A kind of elemental of waterfalls in reality.

- Fininne, Finnen (and Fennel?) a sister of Aine. She resided at Cnoc Finnine, close to Lough Gur, in Ireland, in Munster. Associated with fennel by pun on her name.

- Forgall the wily. Character in the Ulster Cycle ( Irish mythology). He lives at Luglochta Loga (the gardens of Lug). Our gentle lord of Muirthemne, the hesus Cúchulainn, will fall in love with his younger daughter, Emer, but Forgall will be opposed to the match, ostensibly because his older daughter Fial is not yet married. He will visit Ulster, disguised as the king of the Gauls, and will suggest that Cúchulainn should go Albion (more precisely Scotland) to train in arms under the warrior-queen Scathache, hoping the ordeal will lead to his death. When Cúchulainn returns from Scotland fully trained, Forgall still refuses to let him marry Emer. Our hero will storm Forgall's fortress, killing twenty-four of Forgall's men, will abduct Emer and will steal Forgall's treasure. Forgall himself fall from the ramparts to his death.

- Giolla Decair/Gilla Dacar. See Abarta/Abartach. Son of Alchad. He appeared one day, with his broken-down mare, as a very ugly man and took service with Vindos/Finn.

- Inciona. Characteristic or technique of the forging known by two inscriptions found at Widdenberg in Luxembourg.

The first one.

[LE] NO MARTI VERAVDVN. ET INCIONE. MILITIVS. PRISCINVS. For Veradunus Lenus Mars and Inciona, the soldier Priscinius.

The second one.

IN.H.D.D.DEO. VERAVDVNO/ET. INCIONAE M. PL. RESTITVTVS/EX. VOTO ALPINIAE/LVCANAE. MATRIS.

In the honor of the household of the gods, Veraudunus and Iconia, M. Pl. Restitutus.

In Mensdorf, she is combined by the Roman interpretation, with Lenus Mars.

Celtic *ind- (fire) and *ken-o (to make rising, to leave).

- Labraid of the swift sword hand. One of the kings of the Next World married with Li Ban. He had therefore sent the latter to ask some assistance to the Hesus Cuchulainn against one of his enemies, while therefore promising to him in exchange the hand of his sister-in-law Wanda/Fand in marriage. Who was already married nevertheless. So, what to conclude about the Christian morality of each other? Perhaps it would have been a temporary or trial marriage. We find there in any case the topic of the “far-off love ” dear to the troubadours of the south of Europe like the prince of Blaye close to Bordeaux (Jaufre Rudel) but from a woman. Labraid is perhaps also only an epithet of Ogmios. Therefore also see Ogmios heading.

- Luxtanios/Luchtaine/Luctar/Luchta mac Luachaid. In the mythology of Ireland, Luchta is the carpenter god-or-demon of the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), he is a member of the the cottage industry class and therefore comes within the producing third function. In the story of the Cath Maighe Tuireadh or battle of the Plain of the standing stones, which tells us the war opposing the god-or-demons with the gigantic anguipedic wyverns that people called Andernas on the Continent and Fomoire in Ireland, he is responsible for making lance shafts ; his brothers are Gobannos and Credne Cerd.

- Miacos/Miach. Son of Diancecht, the bonesetter and healer of the god-or-demons. In a way patron saint of the surgeons. His name means “bushel “. Like Diancecht his father, he is an expert in medicine, he has a sister named Airmed (“measure “) and a duplicate brother : Ormiach. He appears in particular in the epic legend entitled “Cath Maighe Tuireadh “(the battle of the Plain of the standing stones or tumulus), which reports us the (mythical) war having taken place between the god-or-demons and the gigantic anguipedic wyverns.The king of the god-or-demons of then, Noadatus/Nuada, having had his right arm cut off , Diancecht, the doctor-god-or-demon of the Irishmen makes a silver prosthesis to him, from where his nickname of “Airgetlam “(i.e. “silver arm “); this operation enables him to recover his throne, but Miacos/Miach will try then, and will succeed, a more remarkable exploit : the graft of a true arm. What will unleash the fury of the great bonesetter: he will kill his son with three sword blows.

“And Medocios sought another arm of equal length and thickness to transplant to him, and all the people of the goddess Danu (bia) were sought, but there was not found (among them) an arm which would suit him, but that of Modhan, the swineherd.

"Would the bones of his arm suit you ?" the physicians inquired. " That is what we would prefer" .

And accordingly a person set out for it, and brought it back with him to Temhair, and it was given to Medocios.

Medocios said to Auromedocios : " Whether is it your pleasure to transplant the arm, or to go in search of herbs for the purpose of putting flesh upon it."

He replied : " I prefer to transplant the arm' .

Thereupon Medocios went to seek herbs, and drought them back with him, and then the arm was set.

Then Medocios said : ‘joint to joint of it and sinew to sinew,’ the he healed Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd in thrice three days and nights. The first seventy-two hours he put it over against his side, and it became covered with skin. The second seventy-two hours he put it on his breasts. The third seventy-two hours he would cast white ???? of black bulrushes when they were blackened in fire ????

That cure seemed evil to Diancecht. He flung a sword on the crown of his son's head and cut the skin down to the flesh.”

The least we may say therefore, is that this bonesetter was against all that could resemble closely or remotely a body organ trafficking.

The sister of Miacos, Airmed, specialist in medicinal plants, will take charge then of the three hundred sixty-five plants which grew over his grave.

The medical function was always assumed by different healing god-or-demons among Celts, and was never reserved to one divine entity.

- Mirene/Muirne/Muirenn/Munchaem. Mother of Vindos/Finn. She had many applicants, but as it had been predicted to his father, the druid Tadg, that her wedding would be the beginning of his fall, and that he would lose his domain of Almu, he opposed each time to them a categorical no. Camulos/Cumal, chief of the Fenians, thus preferred to abduct her. Tadg called upon the king of the kings in Ireland, Conn of the hundred battles, who outlawed Camulos/Cumal at once.

The latter was killed at the time of the battle of Cnucha, but Mirene/Muirne was already pregnant and Tadg therefore ordered that she is burned alive. Conn opposed that and made Mirene/Muirne put under the protection of Fiacal Mac Conchin as well as his wife, the fairy Bodhmall, who was the sister of Camulos/Cumal. Mirene/Muirne will be delivered there of a son whom she called Demne (deer): the future Vindos/Finn. She entrusted then the child to Bodhmall and to a called Liath Luachra, who left to live with him in the very heart of the forest of Sliabh Bloom, then she married the king of the area, Gleor Lamderg.

- Nehalennia. Fluctuat nec mergitur. It [the ship, nauson in Celtic language] is tossed, but does not sink.

Nehalennia is a goddess-or-demoness or a fairy if this word is preferred, known by various inscriptions found at Deutz, in Germany as in Domburg and Zierikeeze in Zealand, in the Netherlands. More than 160 votive altars were found in this area and two others were found in Cologne in Germany. The majority represents a young woman, accompanied by a dog, sitting on a throne, between two columns, and carrying a basket containing apples or breads in certain cases, a foot resting on the prow of a ship. The apples of Nehalennia evoke the next world (Avalon) and that therefore excludes by no means this goddess or demoness is also a psychopomp, and responsible for leading the soul/minds in the islands located at the west of the world.

One of the inscriptions in the honor of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Nehalennia, can read as follows.

DEAE NEHELENIE, VEGISONIUS MARTINVS, CIVE SEQVANVS NAVTA VSLM (for the goddess Nehalennia, Vegisonius Martinus, Sequanian citizen and trader).

Another inscription, preserved at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, in the Netherlands, is read thus. DEAE NEHELENIAE, M. EXCINCIUS AGRICOLA, CIVES TREVERVS NEGOTIATOR SALATIV CA CA A VSLM (To the goddesses Nehalennia, Marcus Exginggius Agricola, Trevirian citizen, salt trader for the Colony Claudia Ara Agrippinensium).

Another finally is read like below.

DEAE N (e) HALENNIAE OB MERCES RECTE CONSERVATAS M. (arcus) SECVND (inius) SILVANVS NEGOTIATOR CRETARIVS BRITANNICIANVS V (otum) S (olvit) L (ibens) M. (erito): for the goddess Nehalennia, this down payment on the arrived safe and sound goods , Marcus Secundinius Silvanus, pottery trader bound for [Great] Britain…

These inscriptions prove without ambiguity that Nehalennia was therefore a deity honored by Celts, in order to make sure a good crossing of the North Sea. And that for some people it was a multiple goddess-or-demoness, or fairy (a triad??). It is not known when the worship of Nehalennia began nor when it ended, but it is generally accepted it had its height in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. And that there were at least two and probably three temples located in the area of what is now Zealand. At the time, the place was an important commercial crossroads between Rhine and Great Britain.

As we have had the opportunity to say it, the votive stones discovered represent her sitting, with an apple basket, a dog at her side, sometimes a scepter in the hand. In certain representations, she poses a foot on a boat or holds the oar of a boat.

In August 2005, a reconstitution of the temple of Nehalennia located close to the old town of Ganuenta in Zealand, was inaugurated in Colijnsplaat, still in the Netherlands.

Many authors bring closer this goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer to use this term, of the kind of Isis worshipped by the Germanic tribe of the Suevi, according to Tacitus (Germania Book IX).

“Of all the Gods, Mercury is he whom they worship most. To him on certain stated days, it is lawful to offer even human victims. Hercules and Mars they appease with beasts usually allowed for sacrifice. Some of the Suevians make likewise immolations to Isis. Concerning the cause and original of this foreign sacrifice, I have found small light; unless the figure of her image formed like a liburna, shows

that such devotion arrived from abroad. For the rest, from the grandeur and majesty of beings celestial, they … etc., etc. “

Apart from the representation of the ship, there are nevertheless only quite thin clues to support such an assumption.

–Nemglan. This relatively obscure god is mentioned in only one Irish legend, that of the heroine Mess Buachalla to whom he appeared as a bird and whom he then seduced.

Some authors make him the egregore of birds but he is perhaps simply a prince from the next world. And all in all a legend as there exists such an amount, intended to confer on the men in high places a fabulous and superhuman origin.Their son, the great Conaire Mor, was raised by her husband, Eterckel, as his own son.

- Ocelus. Celtic *okita- (harrow). Agricultural technique known by three inscriptions found in Great Britain.

The first found in Caerwent: DEO MARTI OCELO AEL AGVSTINVS. To the god or demon Mars Ocelus Aelius Augustinus.

The second: DEO MARTI LENO SIVE OCELO VELLAVN ET NVM AVG M. NONIVS ROMANVS. For the god or demon Mars Lenus or Ocelus Vellaunus and for the spirit of the emperor, Marcus Nonius Romanus.

Third inscription found in LVGVVALIVM (Carlisle, Cumbria): DEO MARTI OCELO ET NVMINI IMP ALEXANDRI AVG ET IVL MAMAEAE, MATR CASTR ET SENATVS, PATR ET TOTI DOMVI DIVINAE. To the god or demon Ocelus Mars and to the spirit of the emperor, Alexander Augustus and Julia Mamaea, Mother of the Camp and of the Senate, of the homeland and of all the divine household.

The name of Ocelus is of the same family as that of Ocaere, found in a temple built in Sao Joao do Campo (Portugal).

- Ratis. Technique of fortresses known by inscriptions found in the forts of the Hadrian's Wall.

The first found in Birdoswald, Cumbria [RIB 1903]:

DEA RATI VOTVM IN PERPETVO. To the goddess Ratis , in ex-voto for ever.

The second found at Chesters, in Northumberland [RIB 1454]: DEA RAT. For the goddess Rat [is].

From the Celtic *rati: barrier, rampart.

One of the most famous places devoted to this goddess-or-demoness, or this fairy if you prefer to use this word, is the town of the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in France. The first explicit mention which was made about it dates back to the 4th century. It comes to us from the poet and geographer Festus Avienus, who, signaling several tribes in the area, quotes the oppidum priscum Ra. “Oppidum “meaning fortress and “priscum “ ancient, it would be therefore “the ancient fortress of Ra “.

In 513, the pope Symmachus admitted for saint Caesarius the right to wear the pallium, and made him his representative in the area. At that time, the bishop of Arles Christianized countrysides by changing if necessary ancient pagan worship places into Christian buildings. He thus founded a monastery or a church in the Saintes Maries de la Mer : Sancta Maria in Ratis. It is only in the 12th century that this name will be changed into Our-Lady-of-the-Sea.

In 1448, under the impulse of King Rene, “invention “(in other words discovery) of the relics of Saint Mary of Clopas as well as of Saint Mary Salome. The reports of the time mention a primitive church inside the current nave. For some people, this building could correspond to the Merovingian chapel of the 6th century.

The legend. Mary Salome, Mary of Clopas, Mary-Magdalene, Martha, and perhaps Sarah, their maidservant, Maximinus, Lazarus, leave Jerusalem driven out by the Romans. Other versions of the legend include Joseph of Arimathea, the carrier of the holy Grail. In Joppa (Jaffa), they are captured then thrown in a boat without sails, without oars. The boat carried by the currents, drifts in the Mediterranean Sea, then is washed ashore in Camargue. On the beach, they erect an altar to pray then disperse. Maximinus goes towards Aix, becomes the 1st bishop of the city; Mary-Magdalen withdraws in the grotto at Saint Baume; Lazarus settles in Marseilles and becomes the 1st bishop of the city, Martha goes up in Tarascon. Mary Salome like Mary of Clopas, too old, remain on the spot with their maidservant Sarah.

The narratives divergent as for her origin. Some people think that she was already their maidservant in Palestine, others she was recruited on the spot after their landing. In the gipsy tradition, during the

migrations which led the Gipsies of the Eastern European countries towards the ocean, there is a black-skinned woman they identify with this Sarah, become their great Patron saint. Her statue is in the crypt and is the subject of an important worship, many candles are burned there, which gives to the place a temperature of drying oven.

It goes without saying that it has nothing historical , and that it is again one of the multiple deceptions of the Christian religion.

At all events, in 1838, the village takes the name of “Saint-Maries-of-the-Seas “and shortly after is mentioned for the first time the pilgrimage of the Gipsies. May 24th, they come from all Europe to honor their Patron saint, Sarah, the black virgin. The festival of Saint Sarah proceeds nevertheless on August 19th of each year. Her statue is drawn from the sea in order to play again her arrival. The film by Tony Gatlif, Latcho Drom (1993) shows us well this annual ceremony.

- Rocloisio. A young god-or-demon, his neck decorated with a torc and grafted with an animal ear, found here or there, perhaps a personification of hearing and listening. Or of the sleep, of which responsiveness with regard to the prayers of mere mortals is amplified, even equalized with the finest hearing of the light sleeper wild quadrupeds.

-Ruad. Father of Dervogilla/Derbforgaille. See this name.

- Rudianus (continental documentation). Warrior fury. Celtic *roudo- (red). Human characteristic known by inscriptions found in France. At Saint-Michel-de-Valbonne in the Var, was discovered a strange statue having man’s heads in each hand, and undoubtedly representing the god or demon in question.

N.B.The Irish legend of the destruction of Da Derga’s hostel (Togail Bruidne Dá Derga), stages three red dressed warriors called Ruadchoin, and this Da Derga too is a “red god or demon “. Conaire Mor, the great king of Ireland, after having transgressed one by one all his taboos, will lose his life there. The aristia (aristeia), one of the great characteristics of Iliad, amplified by the usual processes of epic rhetoric (magnification of the hero, hugeness of the masses, extent of the metaphors), is always presented to us without nuances. The absence of nuances is a manifestation of this statement: it is it which prevents the hero to evolve or decline seriously; it is it which also explains why the facts to come are often announced, like the sign of a universal arrangement to which the king of the god-or-demons himself is constrained to subject himself. This perfection of the model intended to legitimate the hegemonic ambition is particularly perceptible in the characteristics of the hero according to Homer and, especially, in the figure of Achilles. He is young, strong and fast-acting in his chosen field n which is the warlike action. He is good-looking because the field of the appearance is also that of the warrior function: the kouroi or aristoi are the required extras of the celebrations, dances, feasts and games. But this appearance is also terrifying: that explains the solemnity with which Achilles gets ready for the fight (book XIX, 330-374), and the fascination he develops with the blaze of his armor (XXII, 120-150).

He has the sense of the moral values (arete, which designates every quality through which you excel). Thus Hector is more occupied by his sense of duty with regard to others than by his own glory: by yielding also to warlike fury, he loses his heroic identity. Because he is especially the guard of his people, the one for whom there exists no other omen but “to fight for his country “(XII, 240), the one who, related to the family, represents a hero fallen within social conformism. It is, however, here that Hector meets his tragedy: because this concern of the other is combined in him with the fear of insult and dishonor. His parents thus beg him, in vain, to give up fighting Achilles: the fear of dishonor prevails (XXII, 74-120). Hector accepts the fight and dies without true glory.

He is trained in all the forms of struggle, including the verbal sparring matches since the art of the argument, more than of the discussion, constrained and subdues the adversary as well as the weapons (embassy of Nestor XI, 660-800).

He is also in prey to hubris, this disproportion which makes him avoid the happy and leads him out of the common limits, even if it means to contravene ethical rules. It is the warlike fury (Achilles in the fight, XX, 459-504), but also the passion violence (thus the sorrow of Achilles XVIII, 1-110).

He enjoys the divine favor, what explains why he is also particular subject of curse for certain god-or-demons. Lastly, he is promised to an early death: his vocation is to kill or to be killed, a freely accepted lot (Achilles kills Hector while knowing that an oracle, however, linked his own death with that of the Trojan one). But what would be a growing old hero? In short, it sounds like it was Cuchulainn.

- Sadbh/Sadb/Sahv. Spouse of Vindos/Finn and mother of Ossian/Oisin. As she had refused the advances of the druid Fear Doirche, she was changed into a hind and took refuge on the estates of the Fenians. Bran and Sceolan, the two famous hounds, saved her while seeing her, and she was brought back by these frightening warriors in their residence, where she was again changed into a splendid young woman. But one day, having been attracted outside, she was again changed into a

hind. Seven years later, the two hounds of Vindos/Finn discovered, in the forest, a child: her son, she had had to abandon to follow Fear Doirche.

- Scothache/Scathache/Scota/Scata/Scotia and so on. The shady warrior and healing goddess or demoness who lived in Scotland (island of Skye), expert in fight techniques. She initiates warriors into most various martial arts, but teach them to also treat themselves and more generally to survive. It is she who will form the hesus Cuchulainn. Scothache has a rival: Aife. The hesus Cuchulainn will overcome her in singular fight then will require from her to respect three promises: to make peace with Scothache, to accept her supremacy, and to grant “her friendly thighs“ to him.Scotland was named after Scothache (before people called it Caledonia). The bards of the Middle Ages ascribed an imaginary Egyptian origin to her. Some legends make her the mother of three girls called Inghean Bhuidhe, Lasair, and Latiaran.

- Semios/Semias. Druid of the island of Ogygia (Murias for Irishmen). It is from the city of Ogygia that was brought the cauldron of the god-or-demon of all trades (the Suqellus Dagodevos Gurgunt). It was left only with a full and satisfied stomach.

- Senach the devilish one. A prayer in Gaelic language ( the Cétnad nAíse ) begins as follows: Admuiniur Senach sechtamserach: I call upon Senach of the seven ages….etc. We translate by devilish the Gaelic adjective siaborthe which refers, of course, to the notion of siabra or of serriti. But this designation is, of course, due to heinous and racist

manipulations of a Christian monk having tried to demonize him because this character appears very sympathetic (it is a question of granting a long life).

- Setros/Sethor, but also Mac Cuill in Irish, which means “son of the hazel tree or of the filbert tree “: Coslognatos in Berla Fene or in Old Celtic Iarnbelre. One of the last kings of the god-or-demons before the arrival of men. A son of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. His consort was called Banuta/Banba/Banva (what means “female boar/sow “or “horned one “). “Son of the cobnut tree or of the hazel tree “ is a nickname difficult to understand. Was he a god-or-demon of the hazel tree or filbert tree, or a god-or-demon often using a magic wand cut in this wood?

- Sualtam son of Beccaltach son of Moraltach son of Umendruad. Adoptive father of Cuchulainn. But unlike the Joseph of Christianity, he too has also a divine origin. At least theoretically.

- Sunuxsalis/Sunucsallis/Sunuxalis/Sunxalis. The good night. The favorable night. Celtic *su- (good, very) and *noxt- (night). Known by inscriptions found in Bonn, Cologne, Cornelimünster, Eschweiler, Heimbach, and Hoven, in Germany. Many variants of his name due to difficulty in writing it using Latin alphabet. Sunucsallis in Zülpich, Sunuxalis in Remagen, Sunxalis in Neuss, in Germany. Perhaps also a psychopompous god or demon.

- Sinquatis/Sinquates/Sinquatus. Deity known by an inscription found in Geromont, in Belgium, where it is compared by Romans with the god-or-demon Sylvan. Sinquatis was also the elemental one of the area of Saincaize in France. The name of the village of Cinqueux in Picardy is perhaps also resulting from it. One of the assumptions most usually put forward in connection with its name, is that it would come from the Proto-Celtic sindo (demonstrative this) and quati/kwati (verb having the meaning to winnow or to sieve). Sinquatis would be therefore the one who decides who has to live or die at the time of hunting. It would be consequently at the same time a god-or-demon of hunters and game.

- Tetturo/Tethor but also Mac Cecht in Irish language, what means “son of the plowshare “: Cextiognatos in Berla Fene or in Iarnbelre Old Celtic. One of the last kings of the god-or-demons before the arrival of men. A son of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. His consort was called Votala (Irish Fotla, what means the underground one). “Son of the plowshare“ is a nickname difficult to understand. Was it a plow god-or-demon or a god often using plow?

- Tuiren/Tuirne/Uirne (Irish documentation). A sister of Muirne, therefore a maternal aunt of Vindos/Finn. Spouse of Fian Eachtach Iollan . A jealous one will change her into a bitch and she will thus give birth two greyhounds called Bran and Sceolan before taking again a human shape. Bran and Sceolan will become the two favorite, and somewhat exceptional, hounds, of Vindos/Finn. In a way therefore, a patron saint of hunting dogs. A female St. Hubert.

- Uaithne. Music god-or-demon, close to the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt in the mythology of Ireland. His name means “harmony “in Gaelic language. The care with which his harp was made, as well as the quality of its materials, is obviously enough to explain its charm and its power: to send to sleep or to make people die. Its music is not defined in bars nor in notes, but in resonances , which make every music known as instrumental, at the same time out of time and indistinct from word, song or voice. In other words, the music of the Next World. Uaithne is also named Coir-Cethar-Chuin.

- Ucuetis. Very specialized aspect of Gobannos, the “temperer “aspect of the bronze smith god-or-demon, or patron saint of this decisive action if you like, mentioned on three inscriptions, of which the famous fragment of text in Celtic language found in Alesia (Alise-Sainte-Reine, French department of the Côte-d’Or). On a bronze vase also discovered on the site of Alesia , he has as consort the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Bergusia.

First inscription.

MARTIALIS DANNOTALI IEVRV VCVETE SOSIN CELICNON

(ETIC GOBEDBI DVGIIONTIIO VCVETIN IN ALISIIA).

Martialis, son of Dannotalos, dedicated to Ucuetis this building

(with the blacksmiths who honor Ucuetis in Alisia).

Second inscription.

DEO VCVETI ET BERGVSIAE, REMVS PRIMI FIL (ius) DONAVIT.

To the god or demon Ucuetis and to Bergusia, Remus, son of Primus, gave (this offering).

Ucuetis was therefore the name of one of the owners of the bronze makers. His consort was Bergusia.

In the city of Alesia, in the north of the forum, was found the monument known as “of Ucuetis,” the headquarter of the bronze makers corporation. It was also used as a shrine to honor the deities Bergusia and Ucuetis there.

According to the French linguist P.-Y. Lambert, his name, based on an Indo-European stem *okuo- (acute, sharpened), followed by a *ti agent name, will mean rather: the sharpener.

Whatever the exact meaning of the word, it is certain there that we have a deity in connection with metals and metallurgists, since on the inscription in question the persons who offer it are some blacksmiths.

- Uiscios/Uiscias/Arias. Druid of the island of Abalum (Findias for Irishmen). It is from there that the sword of Noadatus/Nuada was brought. Nobody could escape it or resist it when it was drawn from the sleeve of the Bodua (of the Bodb), and whom it had reddened with blood, would be of one drop, could no longer flee after that.

- Vocusmnaca/Fuamnach. First wife or legitimate wife of Medros/Midir. She was a frightening magician having been trained by the druid Bresal Etarlam. Medros/Midir decides to meet the beautiful Etanna/Etain, whose charms were praised to him (according to certain versions, he would have claimed the most beautiful girl in Ireland as compensation for a wound undergone to his eye, and it was precisely Etain). He falls in love with her at once and makes her his mistress, what causes the quite comprehensible fury of Fuamnach; who will therefore pursue her rival by using most powerful magic spells. She changes her into a water pond by touching her with the branch of a rowan tree, then into a butterfly a magic wind carries in the airs during seven years. She becomes a tiny midge then and falls into a cup of drink. In this shape, she is swallowed then “ delivered“ by the wife of the king of Ulster, Etar. She therefore reappears thus for a new existence, but on earth this time. Vocusmnaca/Fuamnach will not be able to recover Medros/Midir who, wearied with these adventures, will then make her murdered.

- Wanda/Fand. Goddess of ending love. Celtic patron saint of break-up.

Specialists usually explain the name of this unhappy one by that of tear (fand) or of peewee and swallow (fannal) in Gaelic language. It is undoubtedly necessary to go further and to go back to an Indo-European root wen- we find in the name of Venus. Wanda/Fand would be therefore a kind of Venus but for Celtic people. Some experts make her a prototype of the character called Laudine or Lunet in the romances of the Round Table.

Goddess-or-demoness or fairy, of the unhappy love affair. She had a sister called Li Ban.

Following a quarrel with her husband Belenos Barinthus Manannan, Wanda/Fand leaves him and is exposed to the hostility of three anguipedic wyverns (some entities called Andernas on the Continent, Fomoire in Ireland). She therefore decides to call upon the hesus Cuchulainn. Some versions claim that he would then have wounded her involuntarily, because she had been changed into a bird. In the next world, they become lovers for one month then she will try to keep him with her, from where the quite comprehensible reaction of Aemer, the legitimate wife. Urged by the jealousy, the latter, with fifty maidservants provided with knives, will try to kill her. A quarrel will follow between Aemer, the Hesus/Cuchulainn and Wanda, who will come back finally with Belenos Barinthus (Manannan). He will agitate his invisibility coat between him and Wanda/Fand to prevent them forever from meeting once again.

The hesus Cuchulainn having been beside oneself with grief, Aemer went to find Conchobar and informed him about in what state he was. Conchobar sent at once poets, musicians, and druids, to seek him, to seize him, and to bring back him with them into Ulster. The hesus Cuchulainn tried to kill

the doctors, but they recited in front of him some prayers, people took his feet as well as his hands and his reason come back to him. Then, he asked something to drink. The druids gave him a potion of forgetfulness . Result: as soon as he had had from this beverage, the Hesus forgot Wanda and all the rest.

The shamans also gave to drink from such a potion to his wife Aemer so that she forgets her jealousy, because she was not in better state than the hesus Cuchulainn.

The Irish apocryphal text having preserved us the main thing of this myth is that which is entitled “Serglige ConCulaind” (the sickbed of Cuchulainn).

As usual considering the dislocation which followed Christianization, the genealogies lost every logic and were gotten mixed up. In this account therefore Aed Abrat is the father of Wanda/Fand and of Li Ban. But in other legends Li Ban has as father a named Eochaid. We will not say that all that is no import because we regret on the contrary that it is so difficult now to break even. Finally, fortunately, the soul or the spirit of all these accounts remains.

As for the male character called Oengus, is it the Mabon/Maponos/Oengus of our basic accounts or another one god??? Difficult to say. See our booklets on druidic Panth-eon and mythology. In any event the Bible is quite so muddled so… Once again what has to differentiate it is the frame of mind presiding over these accounts: there exists a world parallel to ours peopled with of beings living one hundred cubits above us. And there exists no hermetic barrier between the two worlds.

Some inhabitants of the next-world can appear in ours and reciprocally some human beings can be found in the other.

The very special moment for the manifestations of this phenomenon turn around the festival of Samon (November 1st).

There also exist places more favorable than others for these contacts.

It goes without saying that, what we call a parallel world we uns poor human beings, perhaps logically has to be put in the plural, the best of the images in this case being that of the massive tome (the existing universe-being is like a massive tome of which we would occupy only a little piece).

Besides we are quite unable to say more. It belongs to each one to see!

SECOND LIST OF THE INDIGES GODS OF DRUIDISM.

(Small notebook found by the oldest son of Peter DeLaCrau, John-Wolf, torn in a cardboard box ) and entitled by him

“THE 1000 AND 1 FACETS OR REFLECTIONS (OR AVATARS) OF THE GRAIL.THE 1000 AND 1 FALLEN ANGELS OR JINNS, OF DRUIDISM.”

They are divine hypostases or epithets or epicleses, difficult to attribute well. By difficult to attribute well, we want to say thereby that we do not have sufficient information to determine if it is a really independent (of the hypostasis type) divine figure or if it is in reality only in the beginning an adjective which can qualify such or such deity, even the local or particular form taken by such or such deity.

The bards of the Middle Ages had a large imagination indeed, and they were able to embroider a whole story from nothing. It is up to our successors therefore to find the response to be brought to this challenge.

We gathered in this chapter the various theonyms collected here (Irish legends) or there (Celtic-Roman inscriptions in Great Britain or Europe). But as each one knows it from now on, all these divine names are only aspects or manifestations of more important god-or-demons, themselves aspects, manifestations , or avatars, of higher god-or-demons, and are therefore ultimately only the various attributes of an identical To be One.

N.B. This short inventory of the divine representations or hypostases was carried out mainly, in major part even, thanks to the true Herculean task performed in this field by our fellow-member Dyfed Lloyd Evans.

-Abeianus/Abhean (Irish documentation). Son of Bicelmos. One of the harpist poets of the Tuatha De Danann and particularly of Lug.

-Abianius (continental documentation). From the Celtic abon = river?

-Adsullata (continental documentation). Known by an inscription found in Saudoerfel in Austria, where she is combined with the eponym god or demon Savus (the Sava Valley in Slovenia). Perhaps is it in the beginning a sun and healing goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, then linked with a river?

-Aebh/Aobh (Irish documentation). A wife of Lero/Lir. Mother of a girl and of three boys who will be changed into swans by her sister Aife/Aoife. This metamorphosis will last nine hundred years.

-Aed Abrat (Irish documentation). Father of Wanda/Fand.

-Aedos/Aedh/Aodh (Irish documentation). One of the four children of Lero/Lir. Changed into a swan by his mother-in-law during nine hundred years.

-Aedos/Aedh (Irish documentation). Most seductive of the three sons of Bodb Derg. He liked to be surrounded by poets and people therefore called his residence, “the castle of Aedh the poet “.

-Aedos/Aedh (Irish documentation). One of the men of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), son of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. Killed by a jealous husband named Corrgenn.

-Aedumanda/Aimend (Irish documentation). The name means literally “burning spot “. A sun goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, compared to Brigit by some people. The Irish legends make her a daughter of the king of the Corcu Loigde.

-Aeron (Welsh documentation). Warrior god or demon whose name means the “killer “.

-Aerten/Aerfen (Welsh documentation). War goddess or demoness called upon in the fights against Saxons. She had a temple in Glyndyfrdwy on Dee, and presided over the declarations of war. Human sacrifices were performed then by immersion and drowning in the river.

-Afagddu/Afang the black (Welsh documentation). Ceridwen, or Kerridwen (many possible writing), mainly known as a magician, was a Welsh war and fertility goddess-or-demoness. As a wife of Tegid Foel, she gave birth to two completely opposite children: Afagddu who was regarded as the ugliest man on earth, and a superb girl, Creirwy. Managing no longer to accept the handicap of her son Afagddu , Ceridwen made boil in a cauldron a magic potion intended to enable him to become at least, on the other hand, a respected wise man. She entrusted the task to take care of the cauldron to Morda and Gwion Bach, but a drop fell on the finger of the latter , he licked it and got thus the gift in question in the place of Afagddu. Afagddu had a not very common ugliness. He is perhaps in the

beginning a god-or-demon of the underground other world, of the family of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomore in Ireland. He was also known by the name of Morvran.

-Agaunus (continental documentation). Known by an inscription found at Vienna in Austria. He is combined there with the Celtic god-or-demons Danubius and Salacea, as with the Roman god-or-demons Jupiter IOM [Jupiter Optimus Maximus] Neptune and the nymphs. His combination with the elemental of the Danube (Danubius) tends to show that he was there too to be a question of an elemental of water. From *ag-e/o- (to go, leave, move) + the particle - un/on, and the masculine suffix – us.

-Agrona (Brittonic documentation). Warrior goddess-or-demoness and goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of spring water or of wells. Has produced the character of Aeron in the Welsh documentation.

-Ai/Aoi (Irish documentation). One of the children of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Danu (bia). god-or-demon of poetry. Son of Ollaman.

-Aillbhe (Irish documentation). A daughter of Medros/Midir given in marriage to one of the sons of Lugaid Menn.

-Aillen (Irish documentation). Ghost who escapes from the sidh of Finnahaidh each year during Samon (November 1st). Son of Midhna. According to the legend, he would have stolen the harp of Dagda, and plays it each time in order to get everyone to sleep, then he sets on fire the city (Tara) in blowing on it . He will be killed by Vindos/Finn, who is protected the magic tip of the lance he inherited from his father, as a result of what he will become besides

King of the Fenians.

-Ainge (Irish documentation). A daughter of Dagda.

-Airgoen (Irish documentation). One of the daughters of Flidais.

-Airne (Irish documentation). A daughter of Modharn, who gave a famous cook to the sons of Lugaid Menn.

-Aixtacos/Echtach (Irish documentation). Father of Noadatus/Nuada.

-Alauda (continental documentation). God-or-demon with a lark or god-or-demon of the larks?? The Alauduni bear his name (area of Laon, France).

-Alaunus. An inscription found at Mannheim in Germany. The god-or-demon is equated here by the Romans with a genie of Mercurian type. There exists also an inscription mentioning him found in Salzburg (Austria), and one mentioning him with the name of Alaunius at Lurs in the Var in France (CIL 12,01517)… VS TACITVS […] ALAVNIO […] S (VA) P (ECVNIA) V (OTVM) S (OLVIT) L (IBENS) M (ERITO). The same egregore is perhaps evoked in a Greek inscription found in Nimes (Alauneinous), and he has to match the rest stop called Alaunio (nowadays Notre-Dame-des-Anges) in the South of France. It is the elemental in the masculine of a very full of fish river, or the egregore of a subtribe bearing this name.

-Allitio (Brittonic documentation). A god or demon known by an inscription (on terra cotta) discovered in Corstopitium (Corbridge Northumberland) and which represents a warrior. There remain only the feet as well as the legs, but the name appears here twice. Ann Ross sees there a god or demon of the next world. A possible etymology is that which makes his name come from an Old Celtic ulido “feast, banquet “ what is not incompatible.

-Allos son of Ollamos or Ai/Aoi mac Ollaman (Irish documentation). Bard of the Tuatha De Danann. Takes part in the protection of the harvests devastated by the son of Carman (who was a member of the people of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorian in Ireland).

-Ambirenae (continental documentation). Elemental known by two inscriptions discovered at Deutz in Germany. The first is an inscription dedicated to a whole series of deities among whom is noted the name of Ambiorenesibus (the Ambiorenses). i.e., those who live on both sides of the Rhine. It would be therefore a triad of fairies. The second is a votive stone being addressed to Hercules Magusanus but its reading is more dubious (matronis Abirenibus???).

-Angus (Irish documentation). One of three sons of Bodb Derg.

-Antargalios/Etargal (Irish documentation). One of the Tuatha De Danann.

-Antenociticus, Anociticus, Antocidius (Brittonic documentation). Two altars devoted to this god or demon were discovered in Conderecum (Benwell) on the Hadrian's Wall. In the inscriptions the god-or-demon is honored under the names of Antenociticus and Anociticus. In Cilurnum (Chesters), he is honored under the name of Antocidicus. Whereas in the majority of the cases, they are local deities called upon by indigenous soldiers, it should be noted that this god-or-demon is said honored by all the legions stationed in Great Britain, and by the officers of the auxiliary units. The head of the god-or-demon has a hair resembling the antlers of a young stag.

-Aodh Aithfhiosach (Irish documentation). One of the sons of Bodb Derg, responsible for finding the children of Lero/Lir changed into swans for nine hundred years.

-Aremiacos/Ormiach (Irish documentation). A brother or duplicate of Miacos/Miach, god-or-demon of medicine and of surgeons. His name means “big bushel “. The medical function in reality was always assumed by various healing god-or-demons among Celts, and was not reserved for only one divine entity.

-Arentius/Arentia (continental documentation). Divine couple well attested by several inscriptions discovered in Portugal.

-Ares (continental documentation). In Roman time, it is specified “Lusitani “to distinguish him from the homonymous god-or-demon of the classical Panth-eon. He is known in the north of the Tagus River. Livy reports that oxen and war horses were sacrificed to him.

-Artrach (Irish documentation). One of three sons of Bodb Derg. His house had seven doors. Fencing master of the son of the king in Ireland and Scotland.

-Aupa/Aife/Aoife (Irish documentation). A daughter of Medros/Midir given in marriage to one of the sons of Lugaid Menn.

-Aupa/Aife/Aoife (Irish documentation). One of the three daughters of Oilell of Aran brought up by Bodb Derg; she married Lero/Lir after the death of her sister, and changed the children of the latter into swans on the lake Dairbhreach. The metamorphosis lasted nine hundred years. Her crime having been discovered, she was changed into a vulture, sentenced to wander in the airs eternally.

-Aupa/Aife/Aoife (Irish documentation). A sister or rival of Scothache. War goddess-or-demoness, mother of the only son of Cuchulainn.

-Aupa/Aife/Aoife (Irish documentation). She lover of Illbrech changed into a crane by a jealous rival. On her death, Manannan, sometimes described as being her husband, will make a bag with her skin in order to arrange in it his invaluable objects.

-Be Thite/Be Teite/Beteide (Irish documentation). A daughter of Flidais with a doubtful reputation (licentiousness and lust).

-Beag (Irish documentation). One of the children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia), known for her magic spring or well (a fount of knowledge). This spring or this fountain was kept by her three daughters. They tried, but in vain, to prevent Vindos/Finn to drink of its water.

-Beli the great (Welsh documentation). Beli Mawr is a more than legendary character of the Welsh documentation. He is the son of Manogan, the husband of Don , as well as the father of Caswallawn, Arianrhode, Lludd and Llefelys. Several royal lines of the Welsh Middle Ages make him their founding ancestor. He also appears in the Historia regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh Triads. Beli Mawr is often nicknamed “ap Manogan “and his father Manogan , nicknamed Druid Eneid. Some authors think that his name is in reality resulting from the misreading of a text of Suetonius. Nihil autem amplius quam Adminio Cynobellini Britannorum regis filio, qui pulsus a patre cum exigua manu transfugerat, in deditionem recepto, quasi uniuersa tradita insula, magnificas Romam literas misit, monitis speculatoribus, ut uehiculo ad forum usque et curiam pertenderent nec nisi in aede Martis ac frequente senatu consulibus traderent.

“Adminio Cynobellini “thereafter would have produced “Ad Miniocyno Bellini “then Bellinus filius Minocanni in the Historia Brittonum. Nennius, wrongly, would have then compared Cassivellaunus with Belinus, from where the character of Caswallawn son of Beli Mawr. This Beli would have been king of the Isle of Great Britain , under the name of Heli, son of Cligueillus. According to the Welsh chronicler, he would have reigned for forty years, and would have had three sons: Lud, Cassibellan, and Nennius.

-Bergusia. The one who grants the force. Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of the bronze smelters, consort of Ucuetis, honored in the hill fort of Alise-Sainte-Reine , in France. DEO VCVETI ET BERGVSIAE REMVS PRIMA FIL DONAVIT V S L M (ERITO). What means: to the god Ucuetis and to Bergusia, Remus, son of Primus, gave (this object). He fulfilled his vow with joy and rightly.

-Betach (Irish documentation). Father of Fiachna.

-Bicelmos/Bec-Felmas (Irish documentation). Father of Abhean, a harpist of the tribe of goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia).

-Birog (Irish documentation). A druidess who helped Ceno/Cian to enter the tower where Balor had locked up his daughter Ethniu and who later saved the life of Lug when he was thrown into water by the latter, after the childbirth.

-Blathnat/Blathnait/Blaanid (Irish documentation). A daughter of Medros/Midir. Abducted by Cu Roi who will make her his wife, but she will be avenged for this abduction with the assistance of Cuchulainn. During the wild battle which followed, Cu Roi died and Cuchulainn flees with Blathnat. Cuchulainn also took with him Fer Cherdne or Ferchertne, the bard of Cu Roi. The latter will benefit from a break on the top of a cliff to avenge the death of hiss Master, while grabbing Blathnat and while leaping with her in the emptiness See Blodeuwedd.

-Bodhmall or Bodmall (Irish documentation). One of the two fairies who raised Vindos/Finn in the middle of the forest. A sister of Camulos/Cumal her father. She will teach him how to hunt then will help him in his first adventures. Then she will send Vindos/Finn through the big wide world to keep him safe from Goll mac Morna.

-Boudiga/Boudicca (continental documentation). An epithet attested in Bordeaux (French department of the Gironde) in an inscription found on the remains of a (disappeared today) Gallo-Roman temple, where she is equated with the Roman goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Tutela. Through her equating, her function was probably to ensure the protection of the city, and taking into account her name, of the enrichment or of the prosperity of the latter. Her name made up of *boudi- means “the victorious one “ and can be compared directly to that of the famous queen of Iceni (Boadicea, Boudicca).

-Boudihillia (Brittonic documentation). A battle goddess-or-demoness . With Beda, Boudihillia forms a tandem of goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if you prefer to use this word, known under the name of Alaisiagae. From the Celtic *boudi- (victory) and hillia (fullness, perfection).

-Boudina/Boudena (continental documentation). The victorious one. Celtic *boudi (victory). An epithet mentioned in two inscriptions found in Germany. The first, discovered in Coblentz, combines her with Smertrius and Vindoridius. The second, found in Pantenburg, combines her with Voroius and Alauna.

-Braciaca (Brittonic documentation). Ale elemental or divine attribute of Gobannos. Known by an inscription found on the site of Haddon Hall, in the Derbyshire.

DEO MARTI BRACIACAE Q. SITTIUS CAECILIANUS… for the god-or-demon Mars Braciaca, Quintus Sittius Caecilianus…

The association with the god-or-demon Mars by interpretatio romana, rises from the practices of the time (warlike fury and others): man drank much before leaving for war.

-Brea (Irish documentation). One of Tuatha De Danann.

-Bresal Etarlam (Irish documentation). Druid of the Tuatha De Danann, guard of Vocusmnaca/Fuamnach, the legitimate wife of Medros/Midir. He remained famous for having tried to erect a burial mound which would reach the sky. For this purpose, his sister stopped the path of the sun, but as he tried to rape her, she put an end to this enchantment, and decided that the name of this burial tumulus would be from now on Dubad: “darkness “. Currently Dowth (the tomb is 15 meters high and 85 meters wide. It contains two graves).

-Bri (Irish documentation). A daughter of Medros/Midir. Died of love for a man called Leith, from where the name of her grave : Bri Leith.

-Bricta (continental documentation). Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of the heights. Known by an inscription found at Luxeuil, in France, where she is combined with Lusovius. From the Celtic brig (top, height) and from the intensive suffix *ati. At Blackmoorgate in the Derbyshire, she is combined with Dis Pater , Hercules, Apollo and Arvalus. In Brescia, in Italy, she is combined with Bergimus.

-Brixia (continental documentation). Perhaps a deified spring ( The Breche at Luxeuil in France?) this goddess-or-demoness or fairy proves to be combined with the god-or-demon Luxovius.

-Buan (Irish documentation). Her nine filbert or hazel trees had nuts which fell into a well (the fount of knowledge) and then were swallowed by salmons.

-Buanann (Irish documentation). Her name means “the lasting one “. She is mentioned in the adventures of the Hesus Cuchulainn and of Vindos/Finn, where she is described as “mother of Fenians “.

-Buarainech/Buareinech (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyvern monsters. The father of Balor/Balar. Also called Dot.

-Brunios/Buidne/Bruinne (Irish documentation). One of the satirist druids of the Tuatha De Danann. Cut down by Ochtriallach at the time of the second battle of the Plain of standing stones or burial mounds.

-Cacher (Irish documentation). Son of Nama/Namha, brother of Nechtan.

-Cadra Eburomatia/Caer Ibormaith (Irish documentation). A daughter of Ethal, one of the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), king of the sidh of Uamuin. She lives every other year in the shape of a swan. The god or demon Mabon/Maponos/Oengus fell in love after having seen her in a dream. Once cured, the latter seeks to know who is this mysterious young girl. Mabon/Maponos/Oengus succeeds in forcing Ethal to tell him where she is hidden. On the day of Samon, after having also taken the appearance of such an animal, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus goes to the lake of the mouth of the dragon, recognizes her among 150 other swans, and takes her hand . Their wedding song is so beautiful that he will get to sleep all those who will hear it. This legend has its parallel in the Indian Bhagavad-Gita with the story of Rada and Krishna. Cadra Eburomatia/Caer Ibormaith will be the foster mother of Diarmat, one of the best known Fenians of the time.

-Cainte (Irish documentation). God-or-demon of the song or of the incantations. His three children are Ceno/Cian (the father of Lug) as Cuno/Cu and Ceithenn. In conflict with Taran/Toran/Tuireann (at least in the Irish documentation).

-Cairpre Cuanach (Irish documentation). Name of a prince of the children of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), in the account relating to the death of Curoi.

-Calmos/Calma (Irish documentation). One of three sons of Carman. Also called Dian.

-Camel (Irish documentation). One of the gatekeeper druids of Tara when Lug will come there for the first time.

-Cas Corach, Cascorrach, Cas Corrach (Irish documentation). A harpist of the Tuatha De Danann who would have played for St. Patrick. He would have killed the three daughters of Airitech changed into werewolves. But the werewolves in a strict sense of the word do not form part of Celtic mythology.

-Cathmann (Irish documentation). A son of Tabarn and king of the mysterious island of Fresen. He will capture Tadg, his wife, and his two brothers.

-Catumailos/Casmael/Casmhaol (Irish documentation). One of the satirist druids of the Tuatha De Danann. Slaughtered by Octriallach at the time of the second battle in the Plain of the menhirs or of the burial mounds.

-Ce (Irish documentation). Druid of the king Noadatus/Nuada. Died of his wounds caught during the second battle in the Plain of the standing stones or of the tumulus. He will be buried close to Carn Corrslebe and a lake will cover his grave: the lake Ce.

-Ceno/Cian (Irish documentation). A son of Cainte then husband of Ethniu, daughter of the king of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns (Balor). Murdered by the children of Toran/Taran/Tuireann, at least according to the mythology worked out in Ireland. The earth will refuse to cover his body. The Celtic tribe of the Cenomanni in France (Le Mans) was placed under his protection.

-Cermatos/Cermat/Cermait (Irish documentation). A son of the Dagda. His three sons will reign simultaneously on the Tuatha De Danann and will perish at the time of the battle for the possession of the Talantio, fought against the human invaders. The divine epithet which is usually ascribed to him, “milbel “( “honeyed “mouth ), incites to think that it is in fact the god-or-demon Ogmius/Ogma, but this assumption is far from being approved unanimously.

-Cet (Irish documentation). A son of Scothache.

-Cethe/Ceitheann/Ceithenn (Irish documentation). A son of Cainte, brother of Ceno/Cian and of Cuno/Cu.

-Cigva/Kigva/Cigfa/Kigfa (Welsh documentation). The wife of Pryderi.

-Colum Cuaillemech (Irish documentation). One of the blacksmiths of the Tuatha De Danann.

-Compar (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomore in Ireland. It was a pitiless tax collector or messenger.

-Corann (Irish documentation). The best harpist of the household of the Dagda, and harpist of the healing bonesetter god-or-demon of Diancecht. His music attracted the famous pig called Cailcheir.

-Corb (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomore in Ireland. His name means “stain “.

-Coron (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomore in Ireland. It was a tax collector.

-Correopennos/Corrchend (Irish documentation). One of Tuatha De. Kills Aed, son of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, after having charmed his wife.

-Cosunae (continental documentation). An inscription Found at Roriz in Portugal. Leite de Vasconcelos and Blazques Martinez see in her one or more nymphs.

-Creirwy (Welsh documentation). A daughter of Ceridwen and Tegid Foel.

-Cridionobetlos/Cridenbel/Cridhinbhéal (Irish documentation). “Heart-shaped mouth “. One of the satirist druids of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Danu (bia), who will end up betraying them. He will be the victim of a trick of the Suqellus Dagda from whom he stole a third of his food every day.

-Cron (Irish documentation). Mother of Fianlug. She was with Gobannus/Goibniu the blacksmith when Ruadan tried to murder him.

-Crougin toutadigoe (continental documentation). An inscription found at Santa Maria de Ribera in Spain. Cf.Irish cruach (mountain, hill) and Welsh crug (burial mound, height). Toudadi- is probably to compare to Toutati (Teutates).

-Cuar (Irish documentation). A son of Scothache.

-Cuno/Cu (Irish documentation). A son of Cainte. A brother of Ceno/Cian and of Cethe/Ceitheann/Ceithenn.

-Custennin/Custinhin. Giant son of Dyfnedig and brother of Yspadadden Pencawr. His name means “the worker “. In the Mabinogi of Culhwch and Olwen, is the uncle of Olwen. Although Custennin has been endowed with all the wealth of the ground and of the animals, Yspaddaden his brother has stolen them from him then reduced him to the status of simple shepherd. He will help Culhwch therefore to triumph over him.

-Cymidei Cymeinfoll (Welsh documentation). Spouse of the giant Llassar llaes Gwfnewid. She could have a child every six weeks.

-Daire Donn (Irish documentation). One of the kings of the world (except Ireland of course) comes to fight a battle with the Fenians in Ventry, in order to take again his wife, daughter of the king of France Vulcan (sic).

-Dare or Daire MacDedad (Irish documentation). One of the deities of the pre-Gaelic people of the Erainn (Hibernians) who gave its name to Ireland. Father of Curoi. See also Mor Muman.

-Daireann/Doirend (Irish documentation). A daughter of Bodb Derg. She lover of Vindos/Finn. She will cast a spell on him to be avenged for his refusal.

-Dedad (Irish documentation). A primitive deity of the Hibernians, non Gaelic people who gave its name to Ireland.

-Demetos/Dyfed (Welsh documentation). Mead (med/met/fed) and sacred intoxication god-or-demon. Gave his name to the tribe of the Demetae in Wales. Male equivalent of the goddess-or-demoness, or nasty fairy Medb, in Ireland.

-Deorgreine (Irish documentation). A daughter of Fiachna, from Mag Meld. Spouse of Laegaire.

-Dergroche (Irish documentation). Son of Bodb Derg. One of the two kings of the mysterious island of Inislocha located in the far -west of the world.

-Dianann/Dinann (Irish documentation). One of the she magicians of the Tuatha De, daughter of Flidais, able to change the stones, the clods, and the trees, into a gigantic magic army.

-Dichu (Irish documentation). The steward of the Suqellus Dagda father of Etain/Etanna.

-Doirenn/Doirind (Irish documentation). A daughter of Medros/Midir given in marriage to one of the sons of Lugaid Menn.

-Dolb (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas in Ireland, Fomorians in Gaelic language. He was a blacksmith.

-Donall Donn-Ruadh (Irish documentation). Donall the red-haired . One of the sons of Manannan. Foster brother of Lug.

-Dot (Irish documentation). See Buarainech.

-Druimne (Irish documentation). Son of Luchair. Made in Tara a gigantic cooking oven for the Suqellus Dagda.

-Duach Dall (Irish documentation). One of the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Danu (bia). Father of Eochaid Garbh. See Dui Dall.

-Dubios/Dubh (Irish documentation). One of three sons of Carman.

-Dui Dall . See Duach Dall.

-Dwyn (Welsh documentation). One of the minor god-or-demons in the Welsh folklore. Rather obscure meaning. Deivonos/Deivenos?

-Dyrnwch/Diwrnach, known as Wyddel (the Irishman) or Gawr (the giant). Welsh documentation. A character of the Mabinogi of Culhwch and Olwen. It is the giant having the magic cauldron which Culhwch must get for the celebration of his weddings. He lives in Ireland where he serves the son of the king named Odgar. His name, Dyrnwch or Diwrnach, perhaps comes from the Celtic durno: fist.

-Eab (Irish documentation). Son of Neto/Neith. One of the main gigantic anguipedic wyverns that people call Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Ireland.

-Eathfaigh (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Ireland. He was a tax collector.

-Echdonn Mor (Irish documentation). A son of Manannan.

-Ecne (Irish documentation). The wise . The poet. A grandson of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), of Brigid according to others. Some variants give him as fathers Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba ?

-Edelatio son of Allodios/Edleo mac Allai (Irish documentation). A son of Aldui. Killed during the battle in the Plain of the pillar stones or burial tumulus.

-Eine (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns we call Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Gaelic. He was a tax collector.

-Eithne/Eithniu (Irish documentation). In addition to the mother of Lug, there exists several Eithne. In some variants , the wife of Medros/Midir.She is equivalent to Boann, and has a son (Mabon/Maponos/Oengus), through HER adultery with the Suqellus Dagda.

-Elathan (Irish documentation). A son of Lobos. One of the gigantic anguipedic wyvern leader having taken part in the second battle of the Plain the pillar stones or hillocks.

-Elcmar (Irish documentation). A brother of the Dagda (the jack of all trades god-or-demon) of whom he is the opposite, the negative aspect. The name of Elcmar means “envious, jealous “. The Dagda commits adultery with his wife Boand, at the time of a travel of Elcmar which lasts nine months, but seems in his eyes to last only one day. From this adulterous relationship will be born Mabon/Maponos/Oengus. It is perhaps the avatar or more exactly the nickname of another god-or-demon evoked in the Irish deviation. Some people think that it would be a duplicate of the god-or-demon Ogmios/Ogma. Others a duplicate of the Irish god-or-demon Nechtan. A Gaelic equivalent of the continental god-or-demon Borbo/Bormo.

-Emrys (Welsh documentation). Probably a former deity equated wrongly with a historical character named Ambrosius Aurelianus.

-Eochaid Garbh (Irish documentation). A son of Duach Dall. See the following one.

-Eochu Garb (Irish documentation). A son of Dui Dall. One of the Tuatha De Danann (second husband of Tailtiu).

-Eogabail (Irish documentation). A foster son of Barinthus Mananann Mac Lir and father of Aine.

-Erc (Irish documentation). Son of Ethaman, one of the bards of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Danu (bia).

-Ernomos/Ernmas (Irish documentation). One of Tuatha De Danann. Mother of Eriu, Banba, Fodla, Badb, Macha, Morrigan. Mother also of three sons called Glonn, Gnim, Coscar, as well as two others called Fiacha and Ollom. Killed at the time of the first battle in the Plain of the standing stones or burial hillocks.

-Esarg (Irish documentation). The Tuatha De Danann who introduced or invented the games of chess , of ball, and the horse races.

-Etan/Etain, daughter of Diancecht, was the mother of Tuirill and the wife of Ogmios/Ogma. One of the possible patron saints of craftsmen and workmen. According to some variants would have had as a husband Tuireann Biccreo Delbaeth, grandfather of Cairpre the poet.

-Etarlam (Irish documentation). One of the children of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Danu (bia). A son of Noadatus/Nuada.

-Etiona (continental documentation). Goddess-or-demoness or fairy, known by an inscription found at Etrechy, in the Cher (France), where she appears with the deities Gnatus, Isoa, Carantana, Hidua, and Mercury. From the Celtic ett (n) jo (nut). Nut and hazel nuts being linked with the idea of knowledge, Etiona in fact was perhaps a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of knowledge, consort of Gnatus.

-Evrain (Welsh documentation). King of Brandigan. Uncle and lord of Mabonagrain/Maboagrain. Wealthy, benevolent, generous, honest and loyal. His city is the home to the orchard of the Joy of the Court.

-Excingoregia (continental documentation). Patron saint of emigration.

-Fer Caille (Irish documentation). A monstrous forest man, appearing in the Irish legend entitled Togail Bruidne Da Derga. He has one eye and deals with herds.

-Fer Ferdiad (Irish documentation). One of the children of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia). A druid. Will kill his foster-father Manannan in order to avenge the death of a called Tuag.

-Fergus Fithchiollach (Irish documentation). One of the sons of Bodb Derg, responsible for finding the children of Lero/Lir changed into swans for nine hundred years.

-Fertuinne (Irish documentation). A son of Trogain. Magician given by Bodb Derg to the children of Lugaid Menn.

-Fiachna (Irish documentation). One of the kings of the god-or-demons.A son of Delbaeth and of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, if you prefer, Ernomos/Ernmas. Did not leave a big memory apparently.

-Fianlug (Irish documentation). A son of Cron.

-Findemas (Irish documentation). Father of Findgoll.

-Findgoll (Irish documentation). A druid having advised Nechtan (equivalent of the continental Borbo).

-Fionnuala, Fionnghuala, Finnouala, Finnghooala or Fionnghualagh (Irish documentation). One of the daughters of Lero/Lir, will be changed into a swan by their mother-in-law, and will be sentenced to wander on lakes and rivers with her brothers during nine hundred years. Until the marriage of Lairgren and Deoch puts an end to this curse.

-Gaible (Irish documentation). A son of Noadatus/Nuada.

-Gaidiar (Irish documentation). A son of Manannan. Having committed adultery with Be Chuille/Becuille/Be Chuma.

-Gamal (Irish documentation). A son of Figal. One of the two gatekeeper druids of Tara when Lug will come there for the first time.

-Garbhan (Irish documentation). One of the two architects in the service of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. He will build the fortress around the grave of Aedh called “hill of Aileac “.

-Gilvaethwy/Gilfaethwy (Welsh documentation). Minor character of the fourth branch of the Mabinogi. Gilvaethwy/Gilfaethwy was a son of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer to use this word, Don, and brother of Gwyddion as well as of Arianerodh. Although mentioned in various Welsh genealogies, he is in reality especially known as contrast of his brother Gwyddion , in the Mabinogi of Math son of Matholwch.

-Gebann (Irish documentation). A son of Treon, father of Cliodna. First of the druids in the country of Manannan.

-Gleibal Garb (Irish documentation). A son of Manannan, foster brother of Lug.

-Gnatus (continental documentation). Means quite simply “son “???

-Goitne Gorm-Shuileach (Irish documentation). One of the sons of Manannan. A brother of Donall the red-haired and foster brother of Lug.

-Goll (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns having taken part in the second battle of the Plain of menhirs or burial mounds.

-Goreu (Welsh documentation). One of the sons of Custennin or Custinhin.

-Goronwy/Gronw Pebyr (Welsh documentation). Lord of Penllyn. A lover of Blodeuwedd killed by her husband Lleu Llaw Gyffes.

-Gweir ap Geirioed (Welsh documentation). Known especially as a prisoner, held captive in the small island of Lundy, in the past Ynys Weir.

-Gwern (Welsh documentation). Mabinogi of Branwen. He was born from the union of Matholwch, king of Ireland, and of Branwen, daughter of Llyr as a sister of Bran the Blessed. This marriage was decided, without the agreement of Evnissyen, the half-brother of the young woman, who will never have a rest to be avenged for this insult. The royal couple arrives into Ireland where Branwen gives birth to a boy: Gwern. Then, Matholwch is tired of his wife, strips her of her title of queen and makes her work in the kitchens of the castle. Secretly, she rears a starling and sends it thereafter to her brother, a message attached to its leg. Bran the Blessed then undertakes a military expedition , during which Evnissyen throws the child into fire.

-Gwyddno Garanhir (Welsh documentation). Father of Elffin ap Gwyddno, savior of the Welsh bard Taliesin, and sovereign of the kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod, the “Atlantis of Wales “.

-Gwythur or Gwythyr ap Greidawl (Welsh documentation). Eternal rival of Gwynn ap Nudd for the love of Cordelia (Creiddylad) a daughter of Lludd Llaw Eraint.

-Hafgan (Welsh documentation). A rival of Arawn, god-or-demon of the underground next world. Hafgan has a nearby domain and has the same powers as him.

-Hefaid/Hyveidd (Welsh documentation). There exist several characters of this name in the Welsh heresy. In the Mabinogi of Math, he is known as a son of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Don, but there also exists Hyveidd Unllen or “with one coat “in the Mabinogi of Kulhwch and Olwen, mentioned in the dream of Rhonabwy, and Hefaidd Hen or “the old man “ father of Rhiannon, the Welsh Epona …

-Ilbrech of Ess Ruadh (Irish documentation). One of the men of the goddess-or-demoneSS or fairy Danu (bia), having failed to ascend the throne after their defeat in front of the human beings (battles of Tailtiu and of Druim Lighean).

-Imheall (Irish documentation). One of the two builders in the service of the Suqellus Dagda. He will build the fortress around the grave of Aedh called “Aileac’s hillock “.

-Indicios/Indech (Irish documentation). One of the anguipedic wyverns we call Andernas on the Continent, Fomorian in Ireland. A son of Domnu and the father of Ochtriallach. His name means “revenge “.

-Ingol (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns having taken part in the second battle of the Plain of the stone pillars or tumulus.

-Iweridd (Welsh documentation). Spouse of Llyr, mother of Bran and Branwen/Brangaine. Her name means quite simply “Ireland “. It would be therefore an elemental of the kind Britannia.

-Karnuntina (continental documentation). Known by an inscription found at Bad Deutsch-Altenburg in Austria, where he is equated with the goddess-or-demoness or Roman fairy, Fortuna, by interpretatio romana. From the Celtic cern “horn“. Perhaps therefore, an attribute of the C.G.M.G. Danu .

* Cosmic Great Mother Goddess could we write abbreviated by resorting, shame on us, but it is very practical, in the style of Latin inscriptions.

-Karnuntinus (continental documentation). Known by an inscription found at Bad Deutsch-Altenburg in Austria, where he is equated with Taran/Toran/Tuireann, or more exactly Jupiter by interpretatio romana. From the Celtic cern “horn “.

-Labraid Loingsech (Irish documentation). More or less mythical ancestor of the dynasty of the Laigin. Also known under the name of Labraid Lorc. A legendary high king or emperor of Ireland. Perhaps a euhemerized god-or-demon in the wrong way.

-Laebus (continental documentation). Deity name being reproduced on the inscription in the Celtiberian alphabet of Cabeço-das-Fraguas in Portugal. “A ewe for Trebopala, and a pig for Laebus, offering for Iccona the Luminous one, a one-year-old ewe (sheep) for Trebaruna and a bull for Reva Trebaruna “.-Laegaire (Irish documentation). A Son of Crimthan Cass. King of Mag Meld after having captured the daughter of Fiachna.

-Latis (Brittonic documentation). Name of two deities honored in Great Britain. One as goddess-or-demoness (Dea Latis), the other as a god-or-demon (Deus Latis).

The dedication Die Latis (for the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Latis) was found in the Roman camp of Birdoswald. The dedication Deo Latis Lucius Ursei (to the god-or-demon Latis, from Lucius Urseus) was found in Burgh-by-Sands. It was reproduced on an altar found not far away from the statue of a god-or-demon called “Belatucadros “.

-Leat Glass (Irish documentation). A poet of the prince of the people of the Andernas, Fomorians in Ireland, called Indech. Has taken part in the second battle of the Plain of standing stones and burial hillocks.

-Len Linfiaclach (Irish documentation). A blacksmith at the service of Suqellus Dagda.

-Liath (Irish documentation). Son of Lobais. One of the main leaders of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Ireland.

-Liath Luachra (Irish documentation). The name means, “the gray one of Luachair “. Adoptive mother of Vindos/Finn. It is a great she warrior who will raise him in the forest of Sliabh Bladhma.

-Llassar llaes Gwfnewid or Gyfnewid (Welsh documentation). Giant supposed live under an Irish lake. He held a magic cauldron. Husband of Cymidei Cymeinfoll. The king of Ireland Matholwch will make this cauldron given to himself and will give it thereafter to Bran the blessed. Cf. the second branch of the Mabinogi.

-Llwyd ap Cil Coed (Welsh documentation). Magician appearing in the story of Manawydan ap Llyr (third branch of the Welsh Mabinogi). He casts a spell to Pryderi and Rhiannon.

-Lobais (Irish documentation). One of the leaders of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Ireland. Father of Liath.

-Lodan (Irish documentation). A son of Lero/Lir and brother of Manannan, father of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Sinend, Sionna or Sinnan (Shannon).

-Luachad (Irish documentation). One of the children of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), father of Luchta the carpenter.

-Luath (Irish documentation). Gigantic anguipedic wyvern in the service of Bregsos/Bres for whom Luath will levy an army.

-Maeltine Mor-Brethach (Irish documentation). Maeltine of the great judgment. One of the wise men of the Tuatha De Danann who, after the second battle of the Plain of the stone pillars and tumulus, will advise not to spare the life of Bregsos/Bres.

-Maga (Irish documentation). A daughter of Oengus (Mabon/Maponos/Oengus), wife of the druid Cathbad. Would Also have had a son with Ross the red according to some PEOPLE.

- Mamos (Irish documentation). Father of Figol.

-Manogan/Mynogan (Welsh documentation). Father of the legendary Beli. His name is perhaps due to the misreading of a text by Suetonis. Nihil autem amplius quam Adminio Cynobellini Britannorum regis filio, qui pulsus a patre cum exigua manu transfugerat, in deditionem recepto, quasi uniuersa tradita insula, magnificas Romam literas misit, monitis speculatoribus, ut uehiculo ad forum usque et curiam pertenderent nec nisi in aede Martis ac frequente senatu consulibus traderent.

“Adminio Cynobellini “would have produced “Ad Miniocyno Belli “ from where Miniocyn, Miniocan, etc.

-Math (Irish documentation). A son of Umor. One of the druids of the Tuatha De Danann.

-Mathonwy (Welsh documentation). Father of Don and Math. Perhaps a god-or-demon of the underground next world.

-Matugenos/Mathgen (Irish documentation). One of the magicians of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia). He had the power to make the mountains collapse. A son of Uxomaros/Umor.

-Mechi (Irish documentation). A son of the Morrigu. Killed by Tethor Mac Cecht, son of Cermat, grandson of the Suqellus Dagda.

-Meduio (continental documentation). Deity known by one inscription, found at Noves in France. Perhaps a god-or-demon of intoxication and drunkards equivalent to the Roman Bacchus (cf. old Welsh meddwy, to get drunk).

-Mellt (Welsh documentation). The father of Mabon/Maponos/Oengus in the Welsh tradition.

-Modharn (Irish documentation). Father of Aine.

-Mor Muman (Irish documentation). One of the deities of the pre-Gaelic people of the Erainn (of the Hibernians), the people who gave his name to Ireland.

-Nama (Irish documentation). A son of Eochaid Garbh, son of Duach Dall. A brother of Nechtan, the equivalent of Borvo or continental Borbo.

-Nemanach (Irish documentation). One of the sons of Oengus (Mabon/Maponos/Oengus).

-Nemeturios/Nemthur (Irish documentation). Known as the red. One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns who are called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Ireland.

-Niamh (Irish documentation). A fairy of the next world, daughter of Barinthus Manannan, come on earth in the shape of a magic horse with a golden mane, Enbarr, by love for Ossian/Oisin. See Epona.

-Nindid (Irish documentation). Name of the soothsayer having raised Mabon/Maponos/Oengus in certain variants of the legend.

-Nousantia (continental documentation). a n attribute of the triple goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer to use this word, called Naria, known by an inscription discovered in La Neuveville, Switzerland.

NORIAE NOVSANTIAE, T FRONTIN HIBERNVS.

For the goddess-or-demoness Norias Nousantias, Titus Frontinus Hibernius.

Nousantia was therefore one of the goddess-or-demonesses or fairies of this triad, one of the three aspects of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Naria, and she had perhaps divinatory capacities. From the Celtic *nowio- (new), and *sanesso- (secret piece of advice).

-Octoreuillagos/Ochtriallach (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns that we call Andernas on the Continent, Fomorian in Gaelic language. A son of Indicios/Indech. It is him who, at the time of the second battle of the Plain of the menhirs or burial mounds, will have the idea to fill with stones the healing well (Slane) of the Tuatha De Danann.

-Oilell of Aran (Irish documentation). Father of Aobh, Aoife, Ailbhe.

-Olcos (Irish documentation). One of three sons of Carman. Also called Dother.

-Oonagh (Onaugh, Una, Oona, Oonagy). Queen of the fairies of the Irish folklore, spouse of the king Vindobarros/Finvarra. She is considered as being the most beautiful woman in the world. She is traditionally described as having very long blond hair, touching almost the ground, and wearing silver plated dresses gleaming in the dew. She resided in Knockshegouna, a hill located at the east of the Loch Derg, in the county of Tipperary.

-Penna Arduona/Penarddun (Welsh documentation). A daughters of Beli Mawr, wife of Lero/Lyr and of Euroswydd. Mother of the twins Efnysien and Nisien.

-Rabach Slaitin (Irish documentation). A son of Manannan, foster brother of Lug.

-Reus/Reue. A inscription found in Lugo in Spain. A variant or an avatar of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, linked with the tops or heights according to Juan Carlos and Olivares Pedreño (Los diosesde la Hispania céltica).

-Rigru Rosclethan (Irish documentation). A daughter of Lodan.

-Riocalatis/Ariocalatis (Brittonic documentation). Attribute of Gobannos or of the war god-or-demon, known by an inscription discovered in the Cumberland in 1875 [RIB 1017].

RIOCALAT ET TOVTAT MAR COCIDO VOTO FECIT VITALIS.

For Riocalatis and for Toutatis, Cocidius Mars, ex-voto made by Vitalis.

From the Celtic *arios lord and * latis drink.

-Rocloisia (continental documentation). An epithet reminding of certain fairies in the South of France and meaning something like “commiserating “(Roman interpretation made in Saint-Remy-de-Provence: auribus bonae deae).

-Rothniam (Irish documentation). A daughter of Ume Urscathach, of the sidh called Cliath. Comes regularly on each Samon to visit Fingen son of Luchta.

-Ruadan (Irish documentation). Son of Bregsos/Bres and Brigit. Spies the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia) during the second battle of the Plain with the stone pillars and burial mounds , and tries but in vain to kill Gobannos/Goibniu their blacksmith, after having stolen a weapon, but the latter, although wounded, succeeds in killing his attacker. According to the legend, Brigit, being informed about the death of her son, would have started to cry, her tears would have been even the first of all the history of the island.

-Rudrach (Irish documentation). Son of Bodb Derg, one of the two kings of the mysterious island of Inislocha located in the far west of the world.

-Samthainn (Irish documentation). A brother of Ceno/Cian and Gobannos/Goibniu. Lives with them in Druim Na Teine.

-Scathniamh (Irish documentation). One of the daughters of Bodb Derg, fallen in love with Caletios/Caoilte.

-Sedatus (continental documentation). The one who is sitting. From the Old Celtic *sed-e/o- (to sit, to be sitting). An epithet known by inscriptions discovered at Székesfehérvár in Hungary, Bucharest in Romania, Leskovec in Slovenia, and Saint-Maurice in Switzerland.

-Segomana (continental documentation). An epithet known by an inscription found at Serviers-Labaume in France. From the Celtic *sego (s) - (strength/victory). Consort of Segomo?

-Senchab/Seanchab (Irish documentation). A grandson of Netho/Neith. One of the gigantic anguipde wyvern leaders that people call Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Gaelic language.

-Sengann (Irish documentation). King of the gigantic anguiped wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomoire in Ireland, overcome by the Nemet Hornunnos with his brother Gann. To notice: another Sengann appears in the Gaelic heresy, Sengann son of Dela, king of the mere human beings designated with the name of Fir Bolg. Is this possible? Would it not occur there a confusion on behalf of our friends of Ireland in this field?

-Sgoith Gleigeil (Irish documentation). One of the sons of Manannan. A brother of Donall the red-haired and foster brother of Lug.

-Sine Sindearg (Irish documentation). One of the sons of Manannan. A brother of Donall the red-haired and adoptive brother of Lug.

-Siodhmall (Irish documentation). Son of Cairbre Crom.

-Sital Salmhor (Irish documentation). One of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorian in Gaelic language.

-Solimara (continental documentation). The only great one. An inscription found in Bourges in France, where she is linked with an engraved stone representing a horse topped by a fish or a snake. Also guardian goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, of Soulosse-sous-Saint-Elophe. Perhaps a health goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, also psychopompous.

-Stanna (continental documentation). Warlike and protective goddess-or-demoness. From the Celtic *sta-ne/o- ;*stam- (to stand). Known by an inscription discovered in Perigueux in Dordogne, where she is combined with a god-or-demon named Telo.

-Tabalenos/Taballaenus (continental documentation). From the Celtic *tab (a) l (to throw, to cast). Known at Grases, in Spain under the name of Taballaenus and equated with the local god-or-demon named Dulovius. Also known by an inscription discovered at Tabala, in Turkey. A hunt god or demon perhaps. He is honored there with Artemis.

-Tadg (Irish documentation). One of the Tuatha De Danann. Druid. Son of Noadatus/Nuada. Married with Ethlinn, and father of Mirenn /Muirne/Muirenn/Muireann. Lived under the sidh (hill) of Almu. As Muireann often came to the court of the king of the kings (Conn), in Tara, Camulos and Muireann fell in love one with the other. Tadg wanting not his daughter to marry a mere mortal, he insisted so that she comes back at home, in his underground domain of Almu (Allen). Mirenn married nevertheless Camulos/Cumal. Tadg made him murdered by the king of the kings in Irlande (Conn), but Mirenn, who was pregnant, succeeds in fleeing and hiding her son in the depths of a forest. Tadg will end up yielding his underground residence of Allen or Almu to his grandson (Vindos/Finn).

-Tegid Voel/Hoel (Welsh documentation). Great lord married to Ceridwenn. Lived in the middle of the lake Tegid. His name means besides “the bald man of the Tegid “.

-Teyrnon or Teirnon (Welsh documentation). Adoptive father of Pryderi, the son of Rhiannon. His name comes perhaps from the Old Celtic Tegernionos. The story is told in the tale of the Mabinogion entitled “Pwyll, prince of Dyved “. Teirnon was the lord of Gwent Is Coed and the father-in-law of Pryderi. Teyrnon had a beautiful mare which, every year on May first, whelped a foal which disappeared then mysteriously. One year, Teirnon decided to stay awake in order to see what was going to occur. A gigantic clawed hand passed through the window of the stable and seized the foal. He cut the hand, but heard a cry coming from outside, and he found a three-day-old child lying on the step of the door. Teirnon and his wife raised the child as their own son but, more he grew up, more he resembled Pwyll, what made them understand that he was the missing son of Pwyll and Rhiannon.

-Tongoenabiagus (continental documentation). Deified spring ? In Braga in Portugal, an inscription mentioning him was found. Perhaps he was the god-or-demon on which people took the oath (tongo). In any case he was to be also regarded as a god-or-demon of agricultural prosperity.

-Trebopala (continental documentation). Name of deity being reproduced on the inscription in Celtiberic alphabet of Cabeço-das-Fraguas in Portugal. “A ewe for Trebopala, and a pig for Laebus,

offering to Iccona the Luminous one, a one-year-old ewe (sheep) to Trebaruna and a bull to Reva Trebaruna “.

-Treon (Irish documentation). One of the children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), cf. Gebann.

-Tribans (continental documentation). Deity attested by a single inscription topping a statue discovered in Langensoultzbach (France) in 1844. “INHDDDEOTRIBANTI QVARTVS IVVENIS SOLVIT “. “It is in the honor of the divine house and for the god-or-demon Tribanti, that Quartus Juvenis fulfilled this vow. “ The statue represents the god-or-demon holding a pole (or a scepter?) in his right hand, and wearing a three horned crown. His name seems precisely to be a compound *tri-ban-, meaning literally: three horned. Some people make it an epithet or a figuration of the Celtic war god-or-demon.

Langensoultzbach also had a fanum (Gallo-Roman temple) dedicated to Lug (called MercurY by Romans). Steles and other remains coming from this shrine were found in the choir and the nave of the church in the village. Shortly after its demolition in 1844 was discovered an altar with four god-or-demons at the top of the surrounding wall of the cemetery, and low-reliefs sealed in the wall above the altar.

-Tuirbe (Irish documentation). Father of Gobannos/Goibniu. Have a gigantic and magic ax.

-Tuirill (Irish documentation). A son of Cat. Grandfather of Cairpre the poet.

-Uathach (Irish documentation). A daughter of Scothache. Fallen in love with the hesus Cuchulainn. Whereas Uathach served food to our hero, he forgot his strength and, by taking the dish she handed to him, boke her a finger. Her cries alerted her lover, but the hesus Cuchulainn killed him at the first attempt in the fight which followed, and Uathach transferred her love on the winner.

-Ubelkabae, Ubelkae, Matres Ubelkae, Matres Ubelkabae. From the Old Celtic *ufelo- (evil, demon) and *catu- (fight). Guardian fairies of the family, known by an inscription found in Saint-Zacharie in France, where they are mentioned under the name of Matres Ubelkabus.

-Udravarinehae, Udrovarineae Matronae. From the Old Celtic *udro- (gray) and *waro- (hero). Guardian fairies of the family known by inscriptions found in Germany in Cologne, and dedicated to the Matronis Udravarinehis (CIL XIII 08229).

-Ume Urscathach (Irish documentation). Lord and Master of the sidh called Cliath.

-Uxomaros/Umor (Irish documentation). One of the Tuatha De Danann. Father of Matugenus/Mathgen.

-Vegula/Figol (Irish documentation). A son of Mamos. Druid of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), having the power to make fire downpours fall.

-Vaea/Fea the hateful one (Irish documentation). One of the war goddess-or-demoness, sister of Morrigan, Badb and Nemain.

-Viliaegus (continental documentation). Reminds of an entity named Virrora, honored in Lugo Spain.

-Veco/Fiachna (Irish documentation). A son of Betach and father of Deorgreine. His wife was abducted by Eochaid then given to his nephew Goll . But the latter was killed by Laegaire, and his wife was therefore given back to him.

-Vecorix/Fiachra (Irish documentation). One of the four children of Lero/Lir and Aobh, changed into a swan (for nine hundred years) by the jealousy of his mother-in-law.

-Vena Tigerna Brondae/Gwenn Teir Bronn (Welsh documentation). Her name means something like “full-breasted love “. Patron saint of the nurses or women who suckle. Perhaps a topic of paganism taken over by the first Christians. Cf. the goddess-or-demoness, or good fairy, Aveta.

-Virodactis/Viradecdis (Brittonic documentation). Continental worship, adopted by the Germanic peoples and imported by them in Great Britain. Means “The she guardian “??? The form Viradecdis was found in Vechten in the Netherlands. This goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if using this word is preferred , is known by an inscription found in Birrens [RIB number 2108], which is read as follows: DEAE VIRADECTHI PAGVS CONDRVSTIS MILIT IN COH II TVNGROR SVB SILVIO AVSPICE PRAEF. To the goddess Viradecthis the Condrusian tribe serving in the second cohort of Tungrians, under the prefect Silvius Auspex.

-Vocomarcios/Fochmarc (Irish documentation). One of the wise men of the Tuatha De Danann.

EDITOR’S NOTE .

Let us remind this list or this classification of secondary deities, mainly extracted from the works and from the patient research, so much learned of our fellow member of the old continent Dyfed Lloyd Evans, cornerstone of the association Nemeton (www.celtnet.org.uk) is neither exhaustive neither complete, it is neither a dogma nor an article of faith. It is especially a challenge (for all those for whom nothing of what is human is alien).

As we already have had the opportunity to notice it on several occasions, but it is important to underline it; if somebody is by chance in agreement with everything, including in the least detail, then that means that he is unable of personal reflection. To be aware of the problems raised by this list or this attempt at classification is the only fertile and positive attitude to improve in the case in point. He is truly Celtic minded not the one who agrees with everything which is previous, but the one who is able to see the weak points of it, in order to correct it or to improve it. The goal of these some notes is to bring us to reflect about the divine one and nothing more.

Let us also remind that above all these Celtic god-or-demons, or not, besides (Nerthus is only half Celtic for example) there exist entities higher placed in the scale of the cascading divine emanations.

And let us remind finally that all these divine persons, all these hypostases, however, form one God-or-Devil. The absolute power of God-or-the-Demiuge makes that he can be One in several persons.

For more information on this subject to see the part theology.

THE 1000 AND 1 NAMES OF THE DIVINE (continuation).

Francs les cumandent à Deu et à ses nuns (Song of Roland, line 281).

The Franks recommend them * to God and to his names.

Judeo-Islamic-Christianity, as Islam, always knew therefore this notion of names or attributes of God.

* They are the bodies of Roland, Oliver, Turpin, that Charlemagne brings back.

EPITHETS OR DIVINE HYPOSTASES OF DUBIOUS MEANING AND DIFFICULT TO ATTRIBUTE WELL.

The governing idea which generated the very whole druidic religion, it is that every human being, every group (family, corporation, city), every object, every act, every natural phenomenon, in a word anything, animate or inanimate, has its “god-or-demon “. The primitive druidic religion was summarized in a “demonology “. It was a very simple pantheism in its principle, but very varied in its applications, on the other hand. The number of the god-or-demons, in other words, of the genies who presided over anything, was so to speak infinite; but in a sense , all resembled each other, because all were caused by the same process. It resulted from it that these god-or-demons did not have individual aspect, were not viewed in human features; the druidic religion, in its beginnings, was as little anthropomorphic as possible. In the first times, people could not even say with certainty if such or such deity that man called upon in prayers, was a god-or-demon, or a goddess-or-demoness, or a fairy, if you prefer. Such was, it seems, the primitive content of the druidic religion. Of all these divinities, we hardly know but the names; early, and within the framework of the Empire of Ambicatus, they were almost all equated with panceltic deities; and their primitive attributions were erased, even forgotten. There would have remained no trace of them even, if the obstinately conservative mind of the theology and the worship of our distant ancestors was not somewhere remained obstinately faithful to the memory of their worship. From where all these names with dubious meaning the epigraphy kept to us.

As we have already said it, by difficult to allocate well , we want to say that we do not have sufficient information to determine if it is really an independent divine figure or if it is of an adjective which can call such or such deity , even the local or particular form taken by such or such deity. It belongs to our successors to find the answer to this challenge.

This short inventory of the hypostases or attributes of the druidic deities, or of the higher Being according to druids, was carried out mainly, in major part even, thanks to the true Herculean task performed in this field by Patrick Lajoye, of the National Center of Scientific Research, and on behalf of the S. F.M. by using multiple sources: ancient texts, lives of saints of the Early Middle Ages, and especially ancient inscriptions. These inscriptions are numerous (several tens of thousands), for the majority in Latin language, some others in Greek. To find them, it was therefore necessary to resort to the great epigraphic corpus, like the RIB (Roman inscriptions of Britain) or the CIL (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinorum). From where a list of almost 1800 names, from the Great Britain to Hungary, from Turkey to Portugal. It is not impossible besides that some Iberian, Germanic, or Thracian deities, slipped into it. In the case of the theonyms, the linguistic borders are, alas, often very fuzzy. But it is to better take too much than to forget some…

Abandinus (Godmanchester, Great Britain). Abna (San Martinho do Campo, Portugal). Aciannus (Camaret, Vaucluse, France). Acilus (Trets, Bouche du Rhone, France). Acorus (Lançon-Provence et Cucuron, France). Acpulsoius (Lagunilla, Spain). Adacrius (Vernais, France). Adido (Le Puy, France). Aduana (Tresmina, Portugal). Advernus (Cologne, Germany). Aecorna (Ljubljana, Slovenia). Aecus Rougiauesucus (Minhotaes, Spain). Aegassis (Galie, France). Aegiamunniaegus (Viana del Bollo, Spain). Aereda (Siradan, France). Aernus (Cerezo, Spain). Aesontius (San Pier d' Isonzo, Italy). Aethucolis (Antibes, France). Agramianus (Pesch. Germany). Airo (Ucles. Spain). Aivossivaeius (Plasenzuela-Trujillo, Spain). Alantedoba (Ossima, Italy). Alateivia (Xanten, Germany). Albarinus (Barroux, France). Albiorica (Saint-Saturnin-d' Apt, France). Albius (Aignay-le-Duc, France). Albocelus

(Vilar de Masada, Spain). Albucelaincus (Repeses , Portugal). Alletius (Corbridge, Great Britain). Alma (Barretos, Portugal). Alus (Brescia, Italy). Ambieiceris (Braga, Portugal). Ambiorebis (Braga, Portugal). Ambisagrus (Aquileia, Italy). Ameipicer (Quinta de Orjais, Portugal). Ananca (Duklja, Montenegro). Ancasta (Bitterne, Great Britain). Ande (Caumont, France). Andicrose (Thetford, Great Britain). Andinus (Kacanik, Hungary). Anextiomara (Avenches, Switzerland). Angeficus (Ventas de Caparra, Spain). Ansotica (Nin, Croatia). Antia (Cousance-du-Jura, France). Antiscreus (Castro de Monte Redondo, Portugal). Anvalus (Autun, France). Apecius (Rom, France). Aponianicus Poliscinius (Lisbon, Portugal). Aracus, Aranius, Aracoaranius (Manique de Baixo, Portugal). Aramo (Aramon , France). Arbugio (Biot, France). Arcanua (Born-Buchten, Netherlands). Arciaco (York, Great Britain). Arco (Riba de Saelices, Spain). Argenta (Cologne, Germany). Arnomecta (Brough-one-Noe, Great Britain). Arpaniceus (La Varse, Spain). Arpeninus (Burgalays, France). Arubinus (Graz, Austria). Arus (Castro Daire, Portugal). Asurnia (Chaves, Portugal). Atesmerta (Chaumont, France). Atta (Niv, Montenegro). Ausecus (Thetford, Great Britain). Aveha (Gleuel, Germany). Averanus (Melles, France). Avita (Gresy-sur-Isere, France). Bacurdus (Cologne, Germany). Baginus (Bellecombe, France). Baicorixus (Balesta, France). Baiosis (Gourdan-Polignac, France). Balaesu (Mata de Alcantara, Spain). Baldruus (Utrecht, Netherlands). Bedaius (Chieming, Germany). Beiradiegus (Villa Nova de Famalicao, Portugal). Belestis (Klagenfurt, Austria). Belgo (Gazost, France). Belsourdos (Perinto, Italy). Bemiluciovis (Ampilly-les-Bordes, France). Benacus (Moniga del Garda, Italy). Bergantis (Longwood, Great Britain). Bergimus (Brescia, Italy). Bergonia (Viens, France). Besencla (Senhoram, Portugal). Besua (Beze, France). Blanda (Ambleon, France). Bletis (Barrantes, Portugal). Blotugus (Thetford, Great Britain). Bodus (Villadepalos, Spain). Boutrix (Vaison, France). Brasennus (Noboli, Italy). Bregans (Slack, Great Britain). Briganitius (Rome, Italy). Brigus (Delaes, Portugal). Brixantos (Moulins-Engilbert, France). Broccus (Bonar, Spain). Brogduos (Ptuj, Slovenia). Budenicus (Bezuc, France). Bugius (Haegen, France). Burorina (Domburg, Netherlands). Cabar (Pinho, Portugal). Cabuniaeginus (Aguilar de Campo, Spain). Caeduradius (Braga, Portugal). Caepus (Quinta de Sao Domingos, Portugal). Caielonus (Algodres, Portugal). Caiiarus (Aix-en-Provence, France). Caiva (Budesheim, Germany). Calaedicus (Nieva de Cameros, Spain). Calonna (Chalonnes-sur-Loire, France). Camlorica (Soissons, France). Camulorix (Pont-les-Bonfays, France). Candeberonius (Braga, Portugal). Candua (Gajan, France). Canduedia (San Esteban del Toral, Spain). Cantunaecus (Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain). Caraeciquaelicqus (Raso, Spain). Caraedudis (Astorga, Spain). Carantana (Etrechy, France). Carinus (Bov, Bulgaria). Carius (San Juan of los Banos, Spain). Carneus (Arrayolos, Portugal). Carvonia (Dobrtesa Vas, Slovenia). Casius (Heddernheim, Germany). Castaecae/Castaeci (Santa Eulalia de Barrosas, Portugal). Caulaecisacus (San Cristobal de Castro, Spain). Ceaiius (Wardal, Great Britain). Ceilneus/Celeus (Pourrieres, France). Celeia (Celje, Slovenia). Celiborca (Villasbuenas, Spain). Centondis (Nice, France). Cerunincus (Steinsel-Relent, Luxembourg). Cesandus (Lences, Spain). Cesius (Evora, Portugal). Ciniaemus (Rakos-Palota, Hungary). Cobeia (Mandeure, France). Coius (Brandomil, Spain). Colloveseus (Algodres, Portugal). Coronus (Serzedelo, Portugal). Cosigus (Algodres, Portugal). Cossua (Noceda del Bierzo, Spain). Cosunea (Sanfins de Ferreira, Portugal). Crarus (San Miguel de Laciana, Spain). Creto (Morbach, Germany). Crouga (Viseu, Spain). Cuda (Cirencester, Great Britain). Cusa (the Cousance-du-Jura, France). Cusenemeoecus = Neneoecus (Burgaes, Portugal). Cusus Paetaicus (Ageda, Portugal). Dadruvilus (Vilarelho da Raia, Portugal). Daev (Cabra, Spain). Dafa (Castro de Sao Lourenço, Portugal). Danigus (Marecos, Portugal). Deganta (Cacabelos del Bierzo, Spain). Degovex (Walschied. France). Densus (Cilhades, Spain). Deona (Laudun, France). Dercetius (San Cristobal, Spain). Deviatis (Saint-Didier, France). Devorix (Outeiro Seco, Portugal). Dexteratis (Korny, Hungary). Diaecus (Spain). Diseta (Kelvedon, Great Britain). Divona (Bordeaux, France). Dorminus (Acqui, Italy). Ducavavius (Romeno, Italy). Dulovius (Grases, Spain). Dunisia (Bussy-Albieux, France). Durbedicus (Ronfe, Portugal). Duredius/Dueroeicus (Granginha, Portugal). Durius (Oporto, Portugal). Edelatis (Eoux, France). Elausia (Gresy-sur-Isere, France). Eluontios (Genouilly, France). Eniragillus (Cass de Milan, Spain). Enobolicus (Villavisosa, Portugal). Epointa (Massa, Italy). Erdiste (Toulouse, France). Erge (Montserie, France). Erudinus (Caceres, Spain). Erumus (Brumath, France). Expercennius (Cathervielle, France). Fonio (Aquileia, Italy). Frovida (Braga, Portugal). Gargarix (Spain). Genius Conimbricae (Conimbriga, Portugal). Genius Cor (Soutinho, Portugal). Genius Depenoris (Castro do Mau Vizinho, Portugal). Genius Tiauranceaicus (Ponte de Lima, Portugal). Gesacus (Amiens, France). Grinovantis (Menestrau, France). Hammia (Carvovan, Great Britain). Helioucmounis (Martres-Tolosane, France). Heroto ragus (Rellinars, Spain). Hidua (Etrechy, France). Iboita (Lambesc, France). Ibosus (Neris-les-Bains, France). Iccona (Guarda, Portugal). Icovellauna (Trier, Germany). Idennica (Colias, France). Igaedus/Igaeditanus (Idanha a Velha, Portugal). Ilurbeda (Covas dos Ladroes, Gois, Portugal). Inciona (Mensdorf, Luxembourg). Isosa (Etrechy, France). Issibaeus (Miranda do Corvo, Portugal). Itsacurrina (Izcue, Spain). Ivilia (Forua, Spain). Iuno Meirurnarum (Sao

Veríssimo, Portugal). Iuno Veamuaearum (Freixo de Numao, Meda, Portugal). Iupiter Assaecus (Lisbon, Portugal). Kamoulatis (Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France). Laburus (Kaltenbrunn, Slovenia). Laepus (Sabugal, Portugal). Laesus (Torre, Portugal). Laneana (Aldeia da Ponte, Portugal). Lanovalus (Cadenet, France). Lares Caireieses (Zebreira, Portugal). Lares Cusicelenses (Couta de Algeriz, Portugal). Lares Findenetici (Chaves, Portugal). Lares Erredici (Sao Pedro de Agostem, Portugal). Lares Lubanc (Conimbriga, Portugal). Larocus (Curral de Vacas, Portugal). Laurusinis (Tasque, France). Lavaratus (Carros, France). Leiossa (Cabeza del Griego, Spain). Letinno (Ledenon, France). Leucina (Comunion, Spain). Leucitica (Glovizza, Italy). Lobbonus (Utrecht, Netherlands). Louccianus (Belluno, Italy). Loucis Iuteris (Pozoblanco, Spain). Lualda (Casalo, Italy). Luca (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Portugal). Lucena (Mainz, Germany). Lucubus (Nimes, France). Lucuttectus (Cucuron, France). Ludrianus (Belluno, Italy). Lurunus (Vendas, Portugal). Macarius (Lisouros, Portugal). Magalus (Seraucourt, France). Magla (Sisak, Croatia). Maglomatonius (Agen, France). Magutis (Kovatchovetz, Bulgaria). Maiduna/Meduna (Avila, Spain, and Bertrich, Germany). Maiurrus (Grasse, France). Mandica (Ponferrada, Spain). Mandiceus (Sintra, Portugal). Mantounus (Salins-les-Thermes, France). Maramagius (Sankt Margarethen, Austria). Marcos (Bordeaux, France). Mavida (Bourges, France). Medigenus, Medugenus (Thetford, Great Britain). Medilavinus (Pieve di Ledro, Italy). Medurinis (Rome, Italy). Meldius (Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France). Melosocus (Carnizza, Italy). Mentiviacus (Zamora, Spain). Metunus (London. Great Britain). Minuris (Herapel, France). Mocio (Limia, Portugal). Moelius Mordoniecus (Cornoces, Spain). Mogontia (Metz, France). Moricilus (casas de Milan, Spain). Mountis (Old Penrith, Great Britain). Mounus (Lezoux, France). Munida/Munidia (Chaves, Portugal). Naga (Gievres, France). Nana (Rom, France). Nefa (Monte Louredo, Spain). Netaciveilebrica (Spain). Obana (Celsa, Spain). Obela (Trier, Germany). Obiledus (Murstetten, Austria). Obio (Estollo, Spain). Obuldinus (Voltino, Italy). Ocaera (Sao Joao do Campo, Portugal). Ocririma (Sao El Salvador de Aramenha, Portugal). Onuava (Bordeaux, France). Orcia (Zrnov, Serbia). Orgenus (Lughero di Guardasone, Italy). Paramaecus (Fojos, Portugal). Paronnus (Como, Italy). Pindusa (Cabeza del Griego, Spain). Pipius (Vallauris, France). Pisintus (Trier, Germany). Poecosuosucivus (Ubeda, Spain). Poemana (Lugo, Spain). Ratamatus (Saone-et-Loire, France). Rea (Lugo, Spain). Rego (Lugo, Spain). Reva (Mosteiro da Ribeira, Spain). Reva Langanidaegus (Medelim, Portugal). Revinus (Gargnano, Italy). Ricoria (Beziers, France). Robeo (Demonte, Italy). Ronea (Lioux, France). Roquetius (Cabasse, France). Rotona (Rotavella, Italy).

Rubacascus (Demonte, Italy). Sacanus (Carpentras, France). Saga (Bonar, Spain). Salamas (Spain). Salsocrarus (Fouzilhon, France). Sandravdiga (Groot-Zundert, Netherlands). Santius (Miltenberg, Germany). Sarmandus (Feigendorf, Romania). Saternius (Thetford, Great Britain). Satiada, Saitada, Sattada, Saiiada (Beltingham, Great Britain). Seitundus (Susqueda, Spain). Seixomnia (Glovizza, Italy). Selatsa (Barberin, Spain). Senaicus (Braga, Portugal). Seneucaega (Zennewijnen, Netherlands). Sentona (Labin, Croatia). Serana (Budapest, Hungary). Seranus (Chester, Great Britain). Sibulca (Herne, Germany). Sigerius Stilliferus (Merida, Spain). Sivelia (Le Mans, France). So Meobrigus (Spain). Solimara (Bourges, France). Somastoreicus (Braga, Portugal). Stoiocus (Asque, France). Subremis (Neuvy-sur-Baranjon, France). Sucabus (Newcastle upon Tyne, Great Britain). Sueta (Acqui, Italy). Surburus (Le Donon, France). Tabudicus (Coimbra, Portugal). Tameobrigus (Portugal). Temavus (Aquileia, Italy). Thucolis (Antibes, France). Tiana (Topusko, Croatia). Tincus (Ossola, Italy). Tinus (Voltino, Italy). Titaca (Blankenheim, Germany). Toga (Torre de la Mata , Spain).

Tongo (Freixo, Portugal). Torolus Gombiciegus (Pias, Spain). Trenicus (Ancaster, Great Britain). Tridamos (Michaelchurch, Great Britain). Tristiaecius (Torremanga, Spain). Tritta/Trittia (Pierrefeu and Trets, France). Tueraeus (Concelho de Feira, Portugal). Turculla (Puerto de Santa Cruz, Portugal). Turiacus (Santo Tirso, Portugal). Udunnaeus (Santibanez, Spain). Uncia (Juliers/Julich, Germany). Ussubius (Le Mas-d’Agenais , France). Uvarna (Miranda, Spain). Urobrocis (Carpentras, France). Uxellicus (Buoux, France). Uxellus (Hyeres, France). Uxovinus (Bonnieux, France). Uxsacanus (Bedoin, France). Vabusoa (Utrecht, Netherlands). Vacocaburius (Astorga, Spain). Vaelicus/Velicus (Candeleda, Spain). Vagadavergusta (Brescia, Italy). Vagdaevercustis (Adony, Hungary).

Vagodonnaegus/Vacocaburius (La Milla del Rio, Spain). Valanis (San Pedro de Avioso, Spain). Valmus (San Pedro de Avioso, Spain). Vanauns (Castlesteads, Great Britain). Varneno (Kornelimunster, Germany). Vaxus (Montauban-de-Luchon, France). Vegeta (Lisbon, Portugal). Ventis (Auch, France). Verpantus (Le Langon, France). Vercana (Bertrich, Germany). Veriugodumnus (Saint-Acheul, France). Vestius (Lourizan, Spain). Viama (Sassenage, France). Videtillus (Dijon, France).

Vihansa (Hern-Saint-Hubert, Belgium). Vindedus (Yverdon, Switzerland). Vindoridius (Coblentz, Germany). Vinovia (Binchester, Great Britain). Virlontia (Villars, France). Vironius/Vironus (Atenor, Portugal). Virrora (Lugo, Spain). Vitiocelus (Coudoux. France). Vorio (Trier, Germany). Voroius (Pantenburg, Germany). Vosugonus (Titelberg, Luxembourg). Vracellus (Millau, France). Vurovius (Bureba, Spain).

MYTHOLOGY Of IRELAND.

We preferred to create a particular heading for the names extracted from the Irish documentation, for several reasons.

a) The evolution separated in this island and lasting centuries, cut from every regular contact with the rest of the Celtic world, of the original Celtic Panth- eon or pleroma.

b) The distortions caused by the Christianization and the evolution of the Irish society in the Middle Ages (euhemerism, historicization, false genealogies, or at least genealogies more than doubtful, etc.

c) Like it or not , more we approach that it is in space or time, the original Celtic cradle, i.e., somewhere in Europe, north of the Alps, around the 2nd thousand years before our era, more we have chance to be in the truth of the druidism or of the genuine Celtic spirituality. The genuine Celtic-druidic Panth-eon or pleroma was, of course, less distorted , caricatured, or misunderstood, by the Greek or Roman classical authors, who were themselves also pagan, than it was in the writing of the Judeo-Christians.

See therefore all the unknown names quoted in the Irish texts.

Aed Minbhrec. Allaoi. Alatrom. Brott. Buaid. Cairbre Crom. Ceol. Dil. Dob. Dobur. Doirche. Dubhlongseach. Dubros. Enna. Eolas. Ethal Feisc. Ethaman. Fiachaid. Fis. Flesc. Fochmarc. Glan. Glei. Gleisi. Indolb. Iondaoi. Linad. Lobos. Luam. Mell. Mesca. Midhna. Ollam. Ordan. Rabb. Robb. Rusc. Radarc. Saime. Seith. Seor. Sid. Suba. Tabharn. Tae. Taig. Talc. Talom. Tat. Tetbin. Togad. Tren. Tres. Trog, etc. etc.

WELSH MYTHOLOGY.

Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe, Thiten, U… the text stops here by tear of the paper sheet.

The heirs to Peter DeLaCrau think the three quarters of it are missing

On the other hand, on the following page John-Wolf, the oldest son of Peter DeLacrau ,found the following cross barred notice.

As the poet said it, the god-or-demons in question are only “ the highest, best known, most famous. But there were of them others still who were comparable with them or just about, as for honor, strength, beauty, wealth, power, fame, glory, and whose names were known and venerated by all, throughout the Continent and the islands. Because from the race of the god-or-demons is descended the innumerable generations who populated sky and earth, seas and water, forests and mounts “.

NOTICES ABOUT WELSH HERESY.

(The word used by the Breton researcher C. - J. Guyonvarc'h in his little book devoted to the “Celtic Civilization” is “deviation” (and he reserves it for Irish tradition).

As for us we call heresy here in the broad sense of the word the Welsh documentation, because the medieval literature of this country was too much Christianized, it consequently reflects very badly the primitive druidic mythology. Which, let us not forget it, is that of the peoples having lived north of the Alps, in the area of the springs of the Danube, of the Rhine, and of the Rhone; in other words, South of Germany, East of France, Switzerland and Austria (in the first millennium before our era).

- Amaethon. Son of Don. A brother of Gwydion, Hyveidd, Gobannon, Gilvaethy and Arianerode. Welsh God-or-demon of agriculture. His name means “plowman “. He steals a dog, a plover and a roe deer from Arawn, the Welsh god-or-demon of the underground kingdom of the dead people on standby for reincarnation on the Earth (the anwynn, different therefore from the heavenly other world where the majority of late go). It results from it a war between Amaethon and his parents, the children of Don/Danu, and the god-or-demons of the underground world directed by Arawn. The brother of Amaethon, Gwydion, will change the trees into warriors thanks to whom the forces of the underground world will be defeated (cf Cad Goddeu).

-Branwen. The king of Ireland, Matholwch lands one day at the court of Bran the blessed with the intention to marry her in order to conclude an alliance with his neighbor. The marriage is celebrated promptly, but a half-brother of Branwen, Evnissyen, takes umbrage quickly at that and mutilates the king’s horses. Bran succeeds in easing the tension by giving his magic cauldron to compensate the king. Branwen leaves then to Ireland with her husband and gives birth to a child. Unfortunately, some gossip discloses the affair of the mutilation of the horses and Branwen will be marginalized. She will raise a starling she asks to give a message to her brother Bran. The ultimate effort of conciliation will fail when the half-brother of Branwen throws his son into fire. The massacre will be general: there will be only seven survivors. Branwen will die of a broken heart.

- Cerridunia/Cerridwen, or Kerridwen (many written forms possible). Welsh goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, who seems initially to have been a goddess-or-demoness, or good fairy if you prefer, of cereals, better known for her role in the story of the childhood of the poet Taliesin. Mainly known as a magician was in fact a goddess-or-demoness Welsh of death and fertility. The wife of Tegid Foel, she gives birth to two opposite children: Afagddu who was regarded as the ugliest man on Earth, and a superb girl, Creirwy. As she did not support the handicap of her son Afagddu , Ceridwen made a magic potion boiling in a cauldron in order to enable him to become wise and respected. She entrusted the task to take care of the cauldron to Morda and Gwion Bach, but a drop fell on the finger of the latter, he licked it and received thus the magic gift instead of Afagddu. Furious, Ceridwen pursued Gwion Bach who therefore changed very often to escape her, but in vain. He ends up changing into a corn grain, but Ceridwen benefitted from the opportunity to swallow it. The only result was to fertilize Ceridwen, who, later, gave birth to a completely different (born again) Gwion Bach. She locked up the newborn in a bag out of leather and threw it in a river. The child was saved by a fisherman who, struck by his beauty, named him Taliesin (“radiant brow “). Ceridwen had another son, named Morfran, who was so ugly, on the other hand, that nobody wanted to fight him at the time of the battle in Camlann; all regarded him as a demon, so much his ugliness was big.

- Cordelia/Creiddylad. Her name comes from the old Celtic Cridilatia. A Welsh Goddess or demoness, daughter of Lludd Llaw Ereint (or Nudd) and therefore family member of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, called Don in the story of Culhwch and Olwen. She will appear later in the King Lear by Shakespeare, as Cordelia daughter of the king Lero/Llyr. Originally promised to Gwythr ap Greidawl, she will be abducted by Gwyn ap Nudd (Vindos/Finn ,) what will start a relentless war between the two rivals. The king of Britain Arthur will pacify the situation by authorizing them to only fight for her only each first May, but until the end of times.

- Culhwch/Kulhwch. In Welsh mythology, was the son of Cildydd, one of the knights of the king of Britain Arthur. His mother-in-law hated him so much so that she cast on him a terrible curse according to which he could marry only with Olwen, the daughter of the giant Yspaddaden. This fate, however, was less terrible than it seemed at once: when Culhwch found Olwen, an adventure which took to him more than a year, they fell indeed immediately in love the one with the other. The only problem was to

manage to convince Yspaddaden to agree to their union. Following the example of the king of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Balaros/Balor in Ireland; the eyelids of Yspaddaden were to be raised then held in this position so that he can see. Like Balaros/Balor still, the giant was not favorable so that his daughter married a man. During the talks they had on several occasions, Yspaddaden cast a poisoned javelin Culhwch and his companions, but they succeeded each time in catching it and in returning it to him. After Culhwch had ended up touching an eye of the disarmed giant by thus returning one of his lances, Yspaddaden agreed to the marriage… on condition that he achieves a series of deeds all more impossible the ones than the others. With the assistance of the men of Arthur and of divine allies, Culhwch overcame all these tests then killed Yspaddaden and then married Olwen.

- Dylan Eil Ton. Dylan son of the wave. In Welsh mythology, twin brother of the god-or-demon Llew Llaw Gyffes, he appears in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi (Math son of Mathonwy). It is a son of Arianerode and Gwydion. The birth of Dylan and Llew Llaw Gyffes will be the result of a magic practice (when the king Math wants to be sure of the virginity of their mother Arianrode). Wrathful by the fact to have been uncovered , she pursues Llew with her anger by pronouncing three geisa. A little later Dylan went to the seaside, bathed and swam there “as well as the best fish “; what earned him the nickname “son of the wave “(Eil Ton). He was inopportunely killed by his uncle Gofannon. Dylan Eil Ton is also mentioned in a poem of the “Book of Taliesin “entitled Marwnad Dylan Ail Don, in which he is called a magician.

- Gwalw. Gwawl is, in Welsh Celtic mythology, the killjoy of the wedding of Pwyll/Pelles and Rhiannon. The King Pwyll/Pelles (Pellehan or Pellinor), trapped, cannot refuse. Pwyll/Pelles (Pellehan or Pellinor), decided well to take again his dearest good, ponders his revenge for one year. On the appointed day, fixed for the weddings, he disguises himself into a beggar, provided with a magic double sack. Nobody manages to fill this bag: Gwawl, the new king, must trample what there is in it in order to pack it inside, to succeed in it. But as soon as Gwawl entered the double sack for that, Pwyll tightens the cord and his rival is locked up inside. He will therefore have to give back Rhiannon to Pwyll/Pelles (Pellehan or Pellinor).

- Gwydion/Gwydyon. A warrior god-or-demon, bard and magician, dispenser of benefits, a propagator of arts and great civilizing hero, venerated in two counties of Wales. He was the son of Don and Beli, and with his sister Arianrhode he will be the father of Lleu and Dylan. A brother of Amaethon. Gwydion is a magician who appears mainly in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi and in a poem wrongfully ascribed to Taliesin, the Cad Goddeu (the “Battle of the trees “). In the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, Gwydion helps his brother Gilfaethwy to rape Goewin, the unfortunate “the footrest “ of King Math. For that, he steals the pigs of Pryderi prince of Dyfed, thus forcing Math to go to war and therefore to leave his position. Gwydion and Gilfaethwy enter then discreetly the court of Math where Gilfaethwy sleeps by force with Goewin. When Math, who is also a magician, is informed about the thing, he changes the culprits in couples of various animals. Gwydion becomes a stag during a year, then a sow the following year and lastly a wolf; Gilfaethwy, as for him, is transformed into hind, wild boar, then in she-wolf. From these metamorphoses will be born a fawn (Hyddwn), a young wild boar (Hychtwn) and a wolf cub (Bleiddwn). At the end of these three years, Math will pardon his nephews. The “footrest “of Math imperatively having to be virgin, Goewin will nevertheless have to be replaced. Arianerhod, the sister of Gwydion, will be foreseen for that, but the magic test will show that she is no longer virgin.

- Math son of Mathonwy. King of Gwynedd, famous for his magic. His name is related to that of the bear, which is the animal emblematic of royalty. Deals only with war or prosperity. He can live only with his feet in the lap a virgin, except in time of war precisely. The maiden who fulfills this office is named Goewin, she is promised in marriage to Gilvaethwy/Gilfaethwy. The druid Gwyddyon, a nephew of Math, declares the war on Pryderi to force his uncle to intervene, and thus to allow Gilvaethwy/Gilfaethwy to take again the maiden. Using his magic, the deceived king changes them into animals. Arianerhode will have to replace Goewin, and Math will check her virginity with a magic wand.

- Matholwch. In Welsh mythology, Matholwch is the king of Iwerddon (Ireland), known to be one of the protagonists of the Mabinogi de Branwen.He lands at the court of Bran the Blessed, son of Llyr, to ask him for the hand of his sister Branwen, and to thus conclude a peace treaty with him. Evnissyen, the half-brother of the maiden, furious not to be consulted, cut lips, ears, and tail, of the Irish horses, in the hope to wreck the negotiations. The offense will be compensated by the supply of new mounts as well as of magic cauldron. Matholwch brings back his new wife in his kingdom, where she is initially welcome; from this union will be born a son, Gwern. Then she falls into disgrace, loses her title of queen, and must work in kitchens. This treatment will last for three years, during which the unfortunate one raises a starling. She sends then the bird carrying a message attached to its leg, to her brother,

who undertakes a military expedition immediately. Evnissyen throws the child (Gwern) in a blaze. The battle turns into a general massacre.

- Pritrios/Pryderi. In Welsh Celtic mythology, Pryderi appears in particular in two of the four Welsh Mabinogion: “Manawyddan son of Llyr “and “Math son of Mathonwy “. He is the son of Pwyll or Pelles prince of Dyved and of Rhiannon, the “Great Queen “ his name means “care “. His wife has as for her name: Cigva/Kigva/Cigfa/Kigfa. Kidnapped at his birth, he is abandoned in a stable of the prince of Gwent, Teirnon, who took in the child and raises him. When he finds again his mother Rhiannon, seven years later, she names him Pryderi, because of the anguish caused by his disappearance and the false charge of child murder which had involved for her a humiliating punishment. After the death of his father Pwyll /Pelles, he becomes prince of Dyved, then his mother marries Manawyddan Fab Llyr. In the third branch of the Mabinogi, a magic fog devastates the area, and the family is forced to be exiled in England to work and survive. In the following tale, he is killed by Gwydion, in the war which opposes him to Math.

- Pwyll/Pelles (Pellehan or Pellinor). Pwyll or Pelles is a character of the Welsh mythology who appears in particular in the first tale of the Welsh Mabinogion, which has as a title “Pwyll, prince of Dyved “. His name means “Discretion“. In this legend more than late, are found in a faded way some fundamental topics of druidic mythology: the divine essence of the royalty, the union with the mare who symbolizes the sovereignty as well as the stay in the Next World. At the time of a hunt, Pwyll/Pelles (Pellehan or Pellinor) disputes the skin of a stag with another hunter, who is not other than Arawn, king of Anwyn, i.e., of the hellish Next World intended for the bacuceos. Arawn proposes to him then an agreement: to exchange their identities during a year. Thus Pwyll will become too , king of Anwyn. During this time, he will share the bed of the wife of Arawn and will eliminate his rival, Hafgan. He seizes the magic pigs which gives Immortality, then becomes Pwyll Penn Anwyn. Back in his kingdom of Dyved, his reign will be characterized by equity, justice and generosity, but he will have to find a wife, and it will be thus his meeting with Rhiannon. This one, whose name (resulting from Rigantona) means “Great Queen “ is an avatar of the female Celtic divinity Epona. In order to marry her, Pwyll will have to eliminate all his rivals. They will beget Pryderi. This figure of Welsh mythology survived under the names of Pelles, Pellehan or Pellinor, according to Marx.

- Yspadadden. Chief of the giants, who, in the Welsh heresy, appears in the medieval tale of Kulhwch and Olwen. Equivalent of Balor in the Irish tradition. An ancient prediction has it that he loses his life when his daughter, the beautiful Olwen (“white footprint“), will be married. And of course, a suitor presents himself: Kulhwch. The welcome will be violent. The giant receives the suitor and the people of his suite, while casting to them poisoned stones and lances. The three lances are returned to him, the first wounds his knee , the second one transpierces his chest, and the third one penetrates in his eye to leave by his nape. Finally, he imposes on Kulhwch a series of tests extremely difficult to realize, at the end of which he will have Olwen.

After having promised to the chief of the giants that he will do no harm to him, Kulhwch has to carry out what follows.

- To clear , plow, fertilize, then to sow a ground so that corn can be harvested the following day.

- To convince Amaethon to come in order to plow the ground, because he is the only man being able to do it.

- To convince Gofannon to come to clean the plowshare.

- To get from Gwlwlyd Wineu that he lends his two oxen to him in order to plow the ground.

- To make flax grow in a field unsuitable for every culture in order to make the wedding veil.

- To find a honey extremely rare to prepare the mead of the wedding banquet.

- To bring back the vat of Llwyr to make the mead in question.

- To bring back the dish of Gwyddneu Garabhir so that all and sundry can be satisfied with it.

- To bring back the horn named Gwlgawt Gododdin to serve drink.

- To ask Teirtu his magic harp, that which makes music by itself.

- To catch the birds of Rhiannon.

- To go to seek the cauldron of Diwrnach the Irishman, in order to cook in it the food of the wedding banquet.

- To tear off the tusk from the wild boar Yskithrwynn alive, so that Yspaddaden can shave his beard. The tusk of the wild boar will have to be kept by Caw of Prydein who, in theory, never leaves his kingdom.

- To bring back blood of the witch Gorwen in order to soften the hairs of the beard of Yspadadden; it has to be imperatively preserved in magic vases, belonging to Gwiddolwyn Gorwen.

- To bring back the buckets of Rhiannon, which always keep milk fresh.

- To bring back the scissors and the comb which are between the ears of the pig called trwyth (the twrch trwyth) in order to cap the hair of Yspaddaden. To hunt this fantastic wild boar, it will be necessary to have the hound named Drudwyn, the leash of Cors, the collar of Canhastyr, as well as the chain of Kilydd Canhastyr. The hound could be led only by Mabon/Maponos/Oengus, of whom nobody knows where he is.

- To gather eminent hunters in this intention, of whom the king of Britain Arthur personally.

Unlike the Irish tale which reports us, the tragic search of the children of Taran/Toran/Tuireann (Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba), Kulhwch, himself, will make a success of all these deeds in question with the assistance of Arthur and of his knights. And when he comes back with his companions to the court of the king of the giants, Caw of Prydein cuts out his beard, skin, flesh and ears. The tests having been overcome, Yspaddaden must grant to him the hand of his daughter and prepare to die. Goreu cuts his head which is stuck on a lance. Kulhwch and Olwen spend their first night together.

NOTICE ABOUT THE CELTIBERIAN HERESY .

The Celtic god-or-demons or goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, appear very little in the South/ South-East coast of Spain, where the population was in contact with the Mediterranean world. These worships are, on the other hand, very present in the north of Portugal and in Galicia, where we do not count fewer than 35 deities (Tranoy, 1981). Between the Douro and the Tagus, we count 55 of them; in the south of the Tagus, 87. They could also be established in certain Roman urban centers, such as Bracara Augusta (Braga), where we do not count fewer than six Celtic deities.

Celts and Celtiberians saw the divine one all around them and initially in the elements of the surrounding nature (sacred rivers springs and groves). It is only later that they came to represent their god-or-demons or to build temples for them. The only pre-Roman sanctuaries known are these of Mirobriga and Garvão, but they are Phoenician sanctuaries. This absence of temples or representations of deities could make some people say (see Strabo, Geography III, 4,16) that they were atheistic! This alleged atheism obviously results from the incomprehension of the specific nature of the Pre-Roman Iberian religion.

The specialists classify in general the Celtic deities in the Iberian peninsula in three categories.

- Deities revered on most of the peninsula (Endovellicus, Ategina, Runesocesius, Banda, Nabia).

- Deities circumscribed to a determined area (Quangeius…).

- Deities peculiar to an ethnic group, a tribe (Aernus, Calaicia).

According to the importance of the dedications, most important of the god-or-demons of the Panth-eon or pleroma in the Iberian peninsula was Endovelicus (or Endovellicos); a health or wellbeing deity, whose name from Celtic origin - Andevellicos - meant “the very good one“. A little following the example of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, he is the underground and protective god-or-demon of the life after death. The worship of this guardian god-or-demon could be connected with that of a healing god-or-demon comparable with the Roman Asclepius, but seems to have also taken on an infernal function of god-or-demon of the abodes beyond the graves, sometimes symbolized by a wild boar. His worship was initially spread through the whole Iberian peninsula then, beyond, in all the Empire. A temple was dedicated to him in Sao Miguel da Mota, close to Terana in the Alentejo. Endovelicus could be regarded as the main God-or-demon of a divine trinity also including Ategina and Runesocecius. Many inscriptions with his name were found and he is also identified it with the initials D.E.S (Deo Endovellico Sacrum). He was partly adopted by the Romans, but his worship remained mainly established in Lusitania, and he disappeared only with the appearance of Christianity in the peninsula, in the 5th century.

-Ategina. Her name comes from the Celtic words ate + gena and referred to the notion of rebirth. The worship of the mother-goddess-or-demoness Ategina, was mainly widespread in the valley of the Guadiana in Spain, Lusitania and Betica, where people devoted to her ex-votos representing goats. Her worship is attested in Beja, Serpa and Mertola. Perhaps there also existed shrines dedicated to this goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, at Elvas in Portugal, Cáceres and Mérida in Spain. “O goddess Ataecina Turibrigense Proserpina! I pray ask and beg by your majesty that you avenge..... “(an inscription found in Mérida).

It is in fact a triple deity: of nature, health, death. She was immediately identified by the Romans with Proserpina.

Like the Roman goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, she symbolizes rebirth, fruitfulness, earth and nature or plants, which reappear each spring. Many mentions indicate her through the title of Ataegina Turibrigensis Proserpina. Her main sanctuary was therefore perhaps located in Turobriga. She is also sometimes designated as being the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, of the Moon; what led some people to think that she could be an Iberian transposition of the Phoenician deity Astarte. She is in addition regarded as a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you like , of the hell, which disappears in the depths of the earth to will be born again then. This deity, however, does not seem to come from the same ethnocultural sphere than that of Banda or of Cosus. Her worship was therefore probably introduced into the Portuguese South by the Celts, and her presence in the north of the country has to be explained by an internal migration.

A third deity of martial type came perhaps to supplement this triad. Runesocesius: a warrior god-or-demon of the area of Evora. According to Leite de Vasconcelos, his name would come from the Celtic word runo (= secret, mystery, rune). The word Cesius itself would come from Latinization and would mean javelin. Here the only inscription evoking this deity: SANCTO RUNESO CESIO SACRUM Gaius Licinius Quintinus Balsensis.

NOTICES ABOUT THE VARIOUS FORMS OF WORSHIP

ON THIS LEVEL OF THE DRUIDIC PANTHEON.

Diogenes Laertius. Lives and opinions of eminent philosophers. Book I. Prolog.

“Bidding to reverence the gods, to abstain from wrongdoing, and to be a man, a true one.”

The Greek verb that is usually translated by “ bidding to reverence” is the verb sebein. It means “to revere, to respect.”

Considering that many healing saints are former Celtic gods, it is possible to think that a good equivalent would be the very Catholic “worship of dulia.”

LOCAL OR PARTICULAR WORSHIPS OF DULIA OF SUCH OR SUCH SOCIAL GROUP.

Some god-or-demon-forces are become patron saints of various activities. Lug become god-or-demon of trade and travels, for example.

The link between travel and trade in Antiquity seem obvious, but why the travels?? The reasons are no longer clearly perceived today. Because much ingeniousness is needed to overcome the difficulties of a long travel?? What is sure therefore, it is that the members of the Celtic society had always links closer or more marked with certain god-or-demons than with others. The shoemakers had for example as patron saint (Christians would say) the god-or-demon Lug himself. The inscription discovered at Osma in Spain and which reads as follows shows it.

LVGOVIBUS

SACRVM

VRCI

CO. COLLA

GIO SVTORV

M. D.D.

Lugovibus sacrum L.L. Urico collegio sutorum d [ono] d [edit].

What means: L.L.Urico offered this to the triple Lug from the corporation of the shoemakers (collegio sutorum).

Lug, under the name of Llew, is besides straightforwardly known as also being a shoemaker (Story of Math son of Mathonwy, 4th branch of the Mabinogi), in Wales.

There existed therefore communities devoting itself to the worship of a divine form focusing their whole attention.

- Either locally (case for example of the protective divinities of such or such place, from smallest one to largest one). A goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of forests, a god-or-demon of such or such mountain, genius of a city like Lyon, triad of fairies symbolizing Ireland…

- Or racially even ethnically speaking: the god-or-demon of such or such family, clannish, tribal, group. From the Matres guardian angels of the families to the innumerable teutates of clans or tribes.

And popular piety besides was often mobilized by these particular manifestations of a more general deity.

Same situation in reality with the current Christianity and its innumerable more or less whimsical saints, not to mention the Virgin Mary for Catholics (the Lady of Lourdes, the Lady of Fatima, Loreto, and others).

The high-level druids will always connect nevertheless these particular deities to the major figures of their Panth-eon or Pleroma. And so a particular worship rejects nothing of the Panceltic contribution. All admit, in theory, the whole of the broad outlines of the Panceltic religion. People simply perform a choice among its elements in order to emphasize some of them more than others. There nevertheless the original features of the taken on chosen divine form, which always attract the devotion of the believers, even if, theoretically, they regard it as the simple relative manifestation of a more general pan-Celtic deity.

The Lug of the Arverni - see the gigantic statue that Zenodorus had carved for him - is not the Lug of the village of Canetonnum (canetonnensis) is not the Lug of the Irish legends… and yet, all have in common a certain number of remarkable characteristics.

The druids took care of the unity or harmony of their religion in two different ways.

By holding each year in a devoted place, great national or international councils, intended to settle these questions, but also to resolve by arbitration the various problems agitating the lay society (war between clans, etc.) and by maintaining great international training centers (example that of the island of Mona in Great Britain).

“These assemble at a fixed period of the year in a consecrated place... Hither all who have disputes, assemble from every part, and submit to their decrees and determinations. Now those who desire to gain a more accurate knowledge of that system generally proceed thither [[in Great Britain] for the purpose of studying it “ (Caesar. B.G. VI, 13).

All these god-or-demons are obviously subjects of worship. The Celts also pay a domestic homage or worship of dulia to the guardian of the house deities (the matres nessamae) as to their preferred deities, responsible for ensuring prosperity (mothers-goddess-or-demonesses, Epona… See the domestic altar in Argentomagus).

In the house, in sanctuaries (more or less arranged natural places), or in “permanent “built to last” temples at the official level (former druidism).

[Here a few tens of lines removed by the heirs to the author were since he was not for any theocracy].

This worship of dulia also comprises prayers, sacrifices (animal sacrifices, or offerings, ateberta, and so on).The offerings or the ex-votos which are offered to the health god-or-demons, symbolize, or represent, generally, the sick part of the body (woodcarving, bronze plate representing some eyes, or others). Not forgetting various rituals as well as festivals (for example the Lugnasade) with sporting, equestrian, martial, or artistic ( poetry music)… contests

Places of worship.

The sacred places are often open-air sky: wood, springs, tops, crossing points. Starting from the 1st century, the shrine can be built out of stone, according to the new methods brought by Romans. The shrines comprise a sacred space, closed by an enclosure, they contain one or several temples –fana- sometimes additional buildings: basins, thermal baths, porticos, theater… In Great Britain (and in Gaul) after the Roman conquest, indeed an obvious shift between the official worships and the popular worships settled.

The people, in large majority, continues to honor the druidic deities in sanctuaries where the temple (the fanum) always shows Celtic characteristics. Centered plan (square, circular, polygonal) comprising two encased architectural elements, the cella (room which houses the statue of the god-or-demon and/or the well for the sacrifices) as the gallery sheltering the processions of the believers. Examples of temples which remain faithful to the Celtic tradition: the “tower of Vesone“ in Perigueux, the temple of Janus in Autun (France). Some have particular vocations: health spa sanctuaries to which the patients go and ask for the cure by offering body ex-votos: eye-shaped bronze plates stone representations of various parts of the body 1). Several shrines delivered statuettes representing swaddled children or characters, some sculptures showing parts of the body: heads, chests, breast, hands, genitals. Sometimes, the organs show anomalies matching certain diseases.

The inscription discovered in Vila Real de Tras-os-Montes in Portugal, proves that people sacrificed animals, including to the spring elementals, in the Celtic world. It reads as follows.

DIIS DEABVSQVE AE

TERNVM LACVM OMNI

BVSQVE NVMINIBVS

ET LAPITEARVM CVM

HOC TEMPLO SACRAVIT

G.C. CALP. RVFINVS

IN QVO HOSTIAE VOTO

CREMANTVR

The name LAPITEARVM undoubtedly refers to the elementals of the lake in question.

Another of the inscriptions discovered speaks about the victims that people sacrificed or immolated “inside “ outside the square enclosure; that was to be the religious place itself, perhaps the lake on which blood was spread.

In all the sanctuaries, the believers offer ex-votos: altars, statuettes of the deity, more or less invaluable crockery, cut out but also stamped silver sheets, coins, fibulas, vases, rings…

1. When the use to kill human beings to obtain the cure of a disease, went out of use, former druids got into the habit to offer to the god-or-demons a substitute, and it was the image of the patient or of the affected organ.

NOTICE ABOUT THE TEMPORARY MEMORPHOSES OF CERTAIN GODS.

ABOUT ANGELS OR SHE MESSENGERS FROM THE NEXT WORLD (angelic apparitions)

IN THE CELTIC TRADITION. ETNOSOS (Iarnbelre on an inscription in Bourges).

These god-or-demons-etnosoi correspond to the Victories of the Graeco-Latin paganism. Middle Ages Irishmen compared from the start some their gods to kind of angels, in certain cases. They had indeed recognized in them the same divine and sacred function that which is assumed by the angels in the Judeo-Christian tradition i.e., that to bring messages (in Ireland Li Ban coming on behalf of Wanda/Fand for example). This notion besides is in no way typically Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.

The Bible borrowed this concept from mythologies of Ancient Mesopotamia (Sumer etc.) where they were seen like a kind of court celestial living around the great god-or-demons. The Judeo-Christian Cherubs corresponds for example to the Assyrian kerubim (which were winged bulls). The direct “revelation “(of truth) was apparently insufficient…

There exist, however, three large differences between the notion of etnosos in the Celtic tradition and the notion of angel among Judeo-Islamic-Christians.

- Among Judeo-Islamic-Christians, they are entities created, but immortal, having their own life.

For the Celts, it is only the temporary state of metamorphosis assumed by certain gods or demons to come on earth. As of their return in the Next World (in Sedodumnon), the etnosoi god-or-demons in question take again at once, of course, their anthropomorphic “usual “ superhuman state and give up their bird appearance.

- Among Judeo-Islamic-Christians the elements borrowed from the birds are only the wings (a pair, two pairs or three pairs, etc.). Among Celts that can be much more (complete transformation into a swan for example).

- Among Judeo-Islamic-Christians, the angels are of the male gender (Genesis, 6,4: they make children with the daughters of men). Among Celts, they are generally (but not always) of the female gender.

The concept of etnosos (of angel) in neo-druidism therefore designates the appearance, and not the underlying nature, of the entity in question. The appearance, let us remind it, is that of a bird (of a swan for example), but the nature remains that of a divine spirit.

As purely spiritual beings or almost, having only appearances of an animal body, these metamorphoses of entities from the Nex World, always have their intelligence and their will of a god-or-demon (or of a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy). They are always immortal personal beings.

Their wings or their total change into a bird symbolize the speed of their movement but these god-or-demons or goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, are also generally the sign of the proximity of the Other World.

The majority of the angelic apparitions is of the female gender. Only a minority as of these entities momentarily metamorphosed in winged creatures are of the male gender, we have said. See for example the etnosos of the lay by Marie de France entitled Milun. To see also the lay of Yonec.

An old man gets married to have children. Being wary, he sequesters his pretty wife, without great effects. She is afflicted and calls for the hero who will liberate her. Lo and behold he appears, in the shape of a bird, who changes into a handsome young man. Very correct, he offers to take communion in order to prove that he is well a man and remains with the lady: nothing happens. Having taken the communion, he takes again place in her arms. They love each other , but he must set out again. He will come back as soon as she calls out to him, but he will have to never be seen.

Tries of classification.

1) The birds from the Next World, visible by human beings in waking state, and not in dream, or normal or caused sleep.

See the very short Welsh passage relating to the birds of Rhiannon; a rather confused recollection of the primitive Celtic topic.

“Then they went on to Harlech, and there stopped to rest, and they provided meat and liquor, and sat down to eat and to drink. And there came three birds, and began singing unto them a certain song, and all the songs they had ever heard were unpleasant compared thereto and the birds seemed to

them to be at a great distance from them over the sea, yet they appeared as distinct as if they were close by, and at this repast they continued seven years” (Mabinogi of Branwen).

Even in the degraded mythology of the Welsh text, you will notice that these birds of the Next World have as a function first to sing a soft music which gets to sleep, makes every suffering disappeared and destroys every time perception.

2) The Birds of the Next World, visible by human beings in a dream at the time of a normal or caused sleep.

The women from the next World are the messengers of the god-or-demons we have said. But they don’t always appear, first of all, in a human appearance: they very often arrive in the aspect of birds (of swans in fact).

It is during a day of hunting for the birds for example that two beautiful young girls come to make contact with Cuchulainn so that he goes to the Next World.

Another World where Wanda/Fand, the wife of the god-or-demon Belenos Barinthus Manannan, waits for him. These birds, whatever they are, when they emerge, come from north [or from east, in every case from the Next World] and they are swans who sing a marvelous music. Even when the topic of the messenger of the sidh (of the sedodumnon) is distorted in that of a woman in love with the king of the warriors in Ireland, the swan remains an image. Derba Vergilia (in Gaelic language Derb Forgaill), a daughter of the king of Loccolandon (Norway), loved Cuchulainn because of the stories that people told about him. She (and a she follower) therefore came from east in the shape of two swans, and arrived at Loch Cuan, linked between them by a gold chain.

The most mysterious topic of the insular mythological literature is indeed that of the goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, or more simply of the women, who are sent or who come to seek then to take off in their eternal happiness, the mortals to which they gave their love.

The messengers of the Next World of the god-or-demons (when they are not god-or-demons themselves coming on earth) are called in Celtic language Benai Sedi. A word having produced Bean Sidhe then Banshees in Irish language. They are also called Leanan or Liannan Sidhe in Gaelic language. These goddess-or-demonesses or fairies, if this term is preferred, exceed in perfection all the known winged animals. The glare of their glory shows it (they are bellissima).

3) Medieval survivals. These messengers of the next world fairies produced the character of the fairy or saint partially ornithomorph. The Church indeed did not succeed in completely ousting them; it had to tolerate their survival by relegating them in a parallel and lower world. Without always cursing them, it made with them an imaginary small world, at most suitable for entertaining children and naive persons.

With what was often an attribute characterizing formerly their functions, it made a distinctive and defamatory sign and it is thus that some ones are known as being goose-footed. They were never entirely forgotten for as much: they are the white Ladies, it is also Melusina.

John-Baptist Bullet,a theologist and author in 1754 of a clever report intended to prove that Breton language was the primitive language of mankind; as in 1773, of an “Answer to the difficulties of non-believers, “ which followed his work on “the existence of God proven by wonders of nature “(1768); showed how Robert I had married in 996 Bertha of Burgundy, whose he was fourth cousin. At once excommunicated by the pope Gregory V for this union contrary with the canons of the Church; nothing less than the interdiction cast over his kingdom, and the abandonment where all his servants left him, was needed, so that he agrees to repudiate Bertha; whom he cherished tenderly.

The cardinal Peter Damien, who wrote sixty years after this event, and probably echoed the popular tradition, says that Bertha was delivered during this period. And, by “effect of divine anger,gave birth to a son whose head and neck were these of a goose and not of a man “. It is therefore very probable that people wanted to perpetuate the memory of this alleged celestial revenge in order to terrify, by the perpetual sight of this punishment, those who would dare to face the ecclesiastical bans. And Bertha, bearing on her the condemnation sign with which God had struck her through the person of his son, thus became a threatening symbol for all the adversaries of the temporal power of the Church. If it is observed, in addition, that Robert was the benefactor of the abbey of Saint-Benigne, in Dijon; and that his statue and that of the goose-footed queen are there placed one facing the other; everything seems obvious.

But a Bertha can hide another one. Certain scholars also believed for a long time that this famous goose footed queen was BerthaBroadfoot wife of Pepin the Short and mother of Charlemagne. It was there to seek quite far and to have fun to lose oneself.

We don’t know too much in reality, who hides behind the strange denomination of “goose footed queen “. Considering perpetual confusion between goose and swan of which classical Antiquity shows already many examples, it is probably a swan woman.

In many accounts spread in Europe, the hero wins the favors of a fabulous animal, in the shape of a she-duck, of a she-swan, but generally of she-goose. In the appearance of a bird, a fairy is hiding who will be changed into a pretty lady the hero will marry. Goose footed women are images of the maiden, we see represented with the feet of a goose on some monuments of the Middle Ages, and particularly on the portals of certain churches. Example the portal of Sainte-Marie in Nesle- La-Reposte in the diocese of Troyes, the portal of Saint-Pierre in Nevers, the portal of Saint-Benigne church in Dijon.

It is a queen of whom her feet are webbed like these of geese (Languedocian ped' auco, Italian pede d’occa). Or a small she saint, afflicted with the same and strange handicap. Neomadie, Neomoise, Neomoye, Neomaye, Neomaie, Neomee, Nemoise, or Ennemoye, in the West of France. Patron saint of shepherdesses.In Languedoc , the Encantadas are goose footed fairies who hold treasures; during the night, they spread out them over white cloths.

There exists a strange association of ideas we in various stories of the Upper-Poitou. There we could collect narratives which are organized around a well, a goose, an underground way and some fairies. The association fairy goose is also suggested by Norman accounts. Don't these underground worlds, convey old myths which were partly Christianized? The goose foot is a sign of the ambivalence, of the being whose humanity is not primary. Worse, at a given time of their life, they are bird women. These fairies left on the ground footprints of goose legs, of webbed feet. The designation “Mother Goose “would be related to the memory of these medieval fairies, who left goose prints just after their passing.

As for us, whose maternal grandmother formerly herded geese around Pont-Varin before becoming the appointed cooker of the castle of Cirey-sur-Blaise, we still prefer the answer of the immortal academician author of the gods are athirst. “What my mother goose, if not our grandmother to everybody, and the grandmothers of our grandmothers; women with simple heart and gnarled arms who achieved their daily task with a humble greatness and who, emaciated by age, span while conversing fireside, under the blackened beam and with all the kids of the household had these long speeches which made them see thousand things? …. The castle and its big towers, the cottage, the mysterious forest, and the smart ladies, the fairies… ”.

DIVINE FIGURES ENJOYED

OF A WORSHIP OF HYPERDULIA NOW.

REMINDER FOR THE VELEDAE (the teachers).

It is by following the walking one that you find your path (druidic proverb).

Attempt at synthesis.

11. [What are the Semones ?] They wished those gods to be called Semones whom they considered unworthy of heaven on account of the meagerness of their deserts, such as Priapus, Epona and Vertumnus, yet they were unwilling to class them as earthbound gods because of the high veneration surrounding them.

SHORT REMINDER ABOUT THE VIRGINAL OR DIVINE CONCEPTIONS

AMONG CELTS.

Let us note to begin that the topic of virginal birth is universal. One of my Parisian pen friends indeed has sent me the following extract from Marthe de Chambrun-Ruspoli's book entitled Return of the Phoenix.

"Having gathered himself according to his great power to materialize the immaterial, Tum in his capacity as Creator, sent through the abyss the soul of his son, the Word, which he had engendered in himself from his own substance and he pronounced the words "be made flesh.” And the spirit (Toth) crossing the abyss down to the earth, stopped before the sycamore tree at the foot of which Nut the Virgin stood. He made the divine germ enter her bosom "????????????

All what the Celtic neo-pagan I am may confirm it is that in the ancient Egyptian religion the sun as creative principle was called well Tem, Tum, Temu, Atem, Atum or Atmu. And that the primary characteristics of Atum was due to the fact that he was self-created.

He existed when there was no sky, no water, no man; Gods had not been born, and there was not death, the texts of Pepi I tell us. It is therefore from the archetypal world, of the primordial night or of the pre-ocean, that Atum emerges to give birth to Shu and Tefnut who procreate themselves Nut and Geb, the fathers of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys.

Thot is the translator of the thought of Atum, he changes it into words.

And Nut is the primordial Light before the differentiation of colors, she is represented as a woman whose body bends down above the earth and whose hanging arms constitute the pillars of the world.

But let us get back to the topic in hand. The topic of the fecundation by mouth is attested on several occasions in the Celtic world: it is that of the conception of Conchobar, that also of the birth of Conall Cernach, and it has in the insular context nothing extraordinary. With a light variant (the queen consumes the flesh of a salmon), it is also the topic of the ultimate conception of Tunos Carilligenos/Tuan Mac Cairill.

Druids therefore conceded very well mere mortal women can be fertilized by “non-human, extra-human, superhuman” entities. Piece of evidence of that, what St. Augustine says to us about the duses (to disparage them of course). “And quosdam daemones, quos Dusios Galli nuncupant, hanc asside immunditiam, et tentare, et efficere: plures, talesque asseuerant, ut hoc negare, impudentiae videatur” (De Civitate Dei, ad Marcellinum XV, 23). As the Celts about whom St. Augustine spoke in the beginning of the fifth century, the Irishmen of the seventh century believed that there could be god-or-demons in love of women or seducers of women. And in the legend of Mongan, as we already have had the opportunity to see it, the main event it is not the 603 battle of Degsastan against the Saxon people, or the battle against the warriors of the king of Scandinavia, it is the conception and the birth of Mongan himself. The birth of Mongan belongs indeed to the traditional and almost worn out topic of the loves of a god-or-demon and of a mortal woman. In the case of Mongan, the union of the queen and of the god-or-demon, is the price or the condition of a warlike help. Transaction, deal or agreement, which, if it is well in the pragmatic mind of Ireland, is incompatible with the Christian morals about marriage. And the incompatibility is still worsened by the attitude of the husband who, not only does not feel insulted, but agrees with the intervention without seeing something reprehensible in the conduct of his wife. The matter of the account being to affirm clearly, without ambiguity nor uncertainty , the divine filiation of the child; the divine origin of Mongan, future king of Ulster, is underlined by the decision of Belenos Barinthus Manannan to take him along, as of the third day of his life, in the Next World, to perfect his education there. Fiachna is only a putative father and the case is similar to that of Cuchulainn who, putative son of Sualtam, if it is not of King Conchobar, is, in fact, a son of the god-or-demon Lug.

We also have a little the same thing with the birth of Pryderi son of Pwyll or Pelles , chief of Annwn, and of Rhiannon, in Wales (see the Mabinogi of Pwyll).

The meaning of all these exceptional births is at bottom very understandable: human Sovereignty is a reflection of divine Sovereignty, and it is ultimately the sovereign of the god-or-demon, who conceives the sovereigns of men. What first Christians did not understand really when they made of their Nazarene Jesus a son of god or of the demiurge ; conceived thanks to the workings of the Holy

Spirit and of the archangel Gabriel (Belenos Barinthus Manannan Mac Lir or Lug among the Gaels). While copying this topic from the pagan ones to construct their Christology or their Marian worship , THEY DISTORTED IT.

!---------------- ------------------------ --------------------------!

The Christian Taliban or Parabolan polemicist called in Latin language Lucius Cæcilius Firmianus, known as Lactantius, in his devilishly anti-ecologist lampoon entitled “Divine Institutes “ is right, of course, to write that we could not compare to the Upper Being One … rivers and mountains, flowers and animals; but they too form part of the divine work, they are also endowed with a certain form of life, sometimes quite mysterious it is true. They also take part of the divinity or of the beauty of our common spaceship which is this planet. It is besides better, for the good health of the Earth, and therefore ours ultimately, to respect them as such, and to inculcate or at least hand down, this respect, to new generations, in our children. And what is there best still for that, that to publicly show the respect that we dedicate to them? It does not matter that people call worship of dulia or idolatry such a demonstration; what is important it is the ecological concern, the effectiveness from the point of view of ecology. Below for memory, the text of Lactantius.

“The land on which we tread, and which we subdue and cultivate for food, is not a god, then the plains and mountains will not be gods; and if these are not so, it follows that the whole of the earth cannot appear to be God. In like manner, if the water, which is adapted to the wants of living creatures for the purpose of drinking and bathing, is not a god, neither are the fountains gods from which the water flows. And if the fountains are not gods, neither are the rivers, which are collected from the fountains. And if the rivers also are not gods, it follows that the sea, which is made up of rivers, cannot be considered as God. But if neither the heaven, nor the earth, nor the sea, which are the parts of the world, can be gods, it follows that the world altogether is not God; whereas the same Stoics contend that it is both living and wise, and therefore God. But in this they are so inconsistent that nothing is said by them which they do not also overthrow. For they argue thus: It is impossible that that which produces from itself sensible objects should itself be insensible. But the world produces man, who is endowed with sensibility; therefore it must also itself be sensible. Also they argue: that cannot be without sensibility, a part of which is sensible; therefore, because man is sensible, the world, of which man is a part, also possesses sensibility. The propositions themselves are true that that which produces a being endowed with sense is itself sensible; and that that possesses sense, a part of which is endowed with sense. But the assumptions by which they draw their conclusions are false; for the world does not produce man, nor is man a part of the world. … “

Such is at least the opinion of the Christian lampoonist named Lactantius, in his work entitled Divine Institutes. Book II. Chapter VI.

Let it be allowed to us in this modest essay, to say that we hardly adhere to his reasoning, because Science, from astrophysics to paleontology, implies exactly the opposite: the World produced well Man (through several million years of evolution), and Man is well an integral part of this physical universe. He is also an animal, even if he is not only that!

As regards worship indeed it is therefore necessary always to distinguish well three levels.

The basic level consists of the multiple entities working permanently within this world. They are indirect auxiliaries of the Divine Providence, of the Fate or Tokade in a way. A simple worship of dulia may be associated with them.

But among these almost innumerable divine beings, and that we thus have reviewed, some seem to have acquired early a particular importance. It is therefore important here to say in turn a few words about them as well as about the worship of hyperdulia which is often associated with them.

THE TRIAD HORNUNNOS, EPONA, HESUS.

HORNUNNOS.

Cernenus, Karnonos: Amitâbha/Amitayus of the Pure Land of former druids.

Shamanic God of nature, and of the rebirth into the next world. Represented with horns or stag antlers, and sitting in lotus position.

The Pawnee Indians sang (during the hako ceremony) the deer heralding the light that guides to daylight. The animals are awake. They come out of the lodges where they slept. The deer leads them. He comes from the undergrowth where he dwells, leading his young to the Light of Day.

Lo, the deer! Lo, the deer, the deerComes from her covert of the night!

Day is here! Day is here, is here!Lo, the deer! Lo, the deer, the deer!All creatures wake and see the light.

And there obviously we can only think of the Jungian archetype of the old wise man represented by a male figure, old, good and full of wisdom, who, thanks to his knowledge and experience, can help and guide others.

The opinions diverge nevertheless in connection with this mysterious Hornunnos.

Some people make him a kind of Buddha or great initiate, ruling over a blessed another world, a world of the spiritual richnesses.

Others make him a kind of Buddha or great initiate ruling over a little less blessed world resembling more the anteroom of the Heaven than the Heaven itself.

Others lastly make him a god of the dead and of the material richnesses.

Perhaps he was a little all that at the same time.

A thesis which besides does not exclude other “functions“ for Hornunnos, as we already saw it (a primordial shaman, first of the men, a deity of animal life, etc.). Perhaps Hornunnos was therefore viewed, in Celtic mythology, as a hypostasis or an avatar on the level of the surface of the ground, of the deity of disembodiment/reincarnation of the individuals, called Dis pater by Caesar. Also an origin of the human beings as a deity of animal nature to which Mankind belongs genetically speaking; but also a deity of the decomposition of the bodies in this world in the twilight of their life. At all events, what is certain, it is that Hornunnos is, for the druids, a “god “of animal nature (including of Man), but also a chthonian deity watching over the entrance of the kingdom of the dead , even a great initiate.

In the beginning Hornunnos is as the creator of Mankind or his guard. People venerate him as “a Master of herds “ who protects not only the cattle; what connects him with a hunter god-or-demon; but also the human soul/minds (same thing in Hinduism where the human soul/minds are explicitly designated by the word pasu).

This kind of god-or-demons with animal characteristics does not look exactly Indo-European. We may therefore ascribe them to a primitive population, whose religious ideas seem to be shown more openly starting from the end of the empire of Ambicatus. The semi-human, semi-animal, Neolithic character , appearing in some caves, is a forceful argument pleading for this assumption. Some specialists spoke about magic hunting, but these caves were perhaps also some places of worship, where the lord of the wild beasts was worshipped.

The most astonishing paintings not represent animals, but human beings [and as we saw it already] one of them, the dancing Magician (cave of the Three Brothers, in the Pyrenees) shows a deer headed vaguely human shape. With antlers, the face of an owl, some wolf ears, and the tail of a horse. Only the legs are those of a human being.

Is it the high wizard, the lord of animals, the god-or-demon of hunters, the chief who presides over the magic rites which will make it possible to dominate animals? As many questions which did not find an answer yet.

HORNUNNOS AND HIS FAMILY: THE PRIMORDIAL MAN ?

According to the iconography, Hornunnos was considered by the druids as the spiritual father (Dis Pater ?) of all the Celts. A spiritual filiation that the people were to take, of course, literally (Galli se omnes ab Dite Patre prognatos. B.G. VI, 18,1) as we will see it.

Iconography. On a truncated pillar , found in Metz, and still little known, a young god-or-demon, beardless and horned - and besides the horns placed on a “ skullcap helmet“ which makes us much think of the English legend of Herne the hunter -; holds by the waist two children who pass an arm behind the neck of the god-or-demon, whereas with their other hand, they hold up a horn of plenty.

The god-or-demon of Vendœuvres is represented with particularly young features, his face is beardless, and the stems of his antlers have only starters of bisections.

Moreover, sitting legs crossed in the center of a relief - as in Rheims - he is surrounded, no longer by Roman deities, but by two completely naked young children; and who are perched, the one on a base, the other on a snake, to reach with a hand the antlers of the god-or-demon. In a familiar pose, and by contact of the sacred antlers, they establish, of course, a favored link with the young deity, as friendly and impressed with intimacy. Nothing solemn in any case.

The god-or-demon of Rheims. Stele of the 2nd century of our era. Hornunnos is surrounded here by Apollo and Mercury.

What is remarkable, it should be repeated, in the case of this votive stele, it is the precedence of the god-or-demon who, such a venerable father, is surrounded by these two young people and like greeted by them. Can we go as far as to venture the idea of a biological filiation?

The difference is therefore so enormous between the old body of the Hornunnos in Rheims, and the almost childish look of that of Vendœuvres, himself framed by more younger children ; that we could suspect a divine filiation, more especially, as we know, two goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, endowed with antlers. That which were found in Broye-les-Pesmes (Haute-Saone) and which are currently preserved in the British Museum, and that of the Museum of Clermont-Ferrand in France.

Hornunnos being therefore apparently surrounded by a whole clan, like in the case of the Irish Nemed, a more attentive examination of all that is essential.

The representations of this deity range from North Italy to Denmark (cauldron of Gundestrup). The man with stag antlers is generally represented in the shape of a god-or-demon sitting in the very Buddhist lotus position, with a broad face, a head bearing stag horns and a torc around his neck. The link established between these various iconographic representations of a god-or-demon of human appearance, but with the horns of a stag; whose oldest known specimen is an engraved image of the 4th century before our era, discovered in Val Camonica North of Italy; comes to us from a monument set up by the boatmen of the tribe of Parisii in the 1st century of our era (and found in the cathedral Our Lady in Paris). Unfortunately, the first letter of the name is missing but what is remaining reads . ernunnos. A later discovery in Polenza in Italy enabled us to have the complete name.

The variant Cernenus was discovered on an inscription in Verespatak in Romania (where he was compared with Jupiter by Romans). Another inscription was discovered in Seinsel-Rëlent in Germany (Deo Cernunico) and another in Greek letters in Montagnac in France (Alleteinos Karnonou Alisonteas).

Some people associated him with the symbolism of death, which, in the druidic thought, preceded life like night preceded day. This character “with stag horns “is named Hornunnos in the west and Cernenos more in the east. Known in Rome then under the name of Jupiter Cernenus.

There seems to be also a close connection between this sacred figure, highlighted by the statuary, and the famous Donn of the Irish texts.

The Gaelic name Donn indeed dates back to a form * dhus-no, related with Latin fuscus, and means “black “or at the very least “dark “(traditional color for the kingdom of the dead). Some Irish texts say

him able to change himself into a stag (Sherman Loomis) what would therefore bring him closer to Hornunnos.

Irish texts also seem to refer his rather complex relations (human sacrifice?) with the deities of Mother-Earth (the matres Banva, Eriu and Votala in Ireland). He dies drowned just after being arrived to Ireland and his grave (Tech Duinn or House of Donn in Gaelic language) localized in a small island in the south-west of Ireland, will be regarded as one of the gates of the kingdom of the dead.

Cu cum dom thig tissaid uili iar bir n-écail.

See the poem by Mael Muru, of Othan (died in 887), the metrical dindsenchas and the text entitled in Gaelic language Bruiden da Derga.

The reading of the Irish epic informs us about the eminent place the heroic stories had in the mythology of the Celtic people. These heroes [like Nemed in the Gaelic texts. Editor’s note] are ancestors, chiefs of clans or tribes, who distinguished themselves by warlike deeds OR THEIR WISDOM [case of the Gael Nemed precisely. Editor’s note.].

Having entered the legend during their lifetime, these heroes were deified after their death. Then the difference which separates in the beginning the hero from the god-or-demon blurs with time.

Hornunnos is the very type of the High Wizard or Primordial Hero of this kind precisely (a shaman chief of a clan or of a tribe, having become a legend in his own lifetime because of his Wisdom, etc.) in other words of a Spiritual father according to Celts; because his image will last and will be reincarnated in all the generations, to be used as a guide and leading light to Mankind.

At the same time animal and man, spiritual father of all the human beings, of the living as of the dead , his spirit will survive through times and will be, in a form or another, still current; in order to repeat his message from a time when division between the good and the evil was unknown; at least according to our friend Margaret Murray as well as her “god of the witches “(yes, it is thus this author sees Hornunnos!)

The Wizard Hornunnos not being of the Tribe of the God-or-demons of Dana, not being one of the Irish Tuatha, but a being made of flesh and blood, like us; he will not withdraw in the Sedodumnon (in the Sidh) under the direction of Belenos Barinthus Manannan, after the battle for the possession of the Talantio. He will remain nevertheless fixed in the heart of men. It is himself the Christians will unceasingly see during centuries under the name of Evil or of Great Horned (god), by confusing him besides somewhat with Lug in fact.

The horned “god “in this case, it is the generating principle of all the human evolution, the very symbol of any spiritual or social revival. Whatever the time when he appears, this great horned one will always symbolize this vital tension which goes from the animal to the man-god-or-demon through Man, the true one, the one who has a superior or superhuman ethics (kission).

In Ireland, this primordial man is called Nemed, what means “noble or privileged“. The Irish name coming from the common Celtic Nemetos, which means “sacred“ the translation of Nemed by “noble or privileged person“ has to be taken in the strong sense in his case.

Irishmen expected from the primordial man a major service: the handing down of the traditional knowledge justifying their existence throughout History, until and including through their change of religion. It is therefore for this reason that the day of his festival, for Samon, laws and customs were decided, as all that touched upon peace or social order.

Let us remind nevertheless that all this part of Gaelic mythology (myth in the bad sense of the word ) was manufactured by the medieval Irish bards ; and that only isolated fragments of this story can be considered, here and there, as authentic; i.e., to go back to original pan-Celtic myths.

Much later, Welsh mythology itself, for its part, had indeed a god-or-demon Hyddwn < Sidodunios = stag-man or man-stag, placed, of course, very low in the genealogy of the deities worked out by the bards of the time, but which seems to be a recollection of this Hornunnos.

In the Mabinogi of Math mab Mathonwy, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy are punished by their uncle for the rape of the virgin named Goewin, by being changed in turn into wild boars, stags, and wolves. Hyddwn will be the first of the children brought into the world by the cursed couple. He and his brothers Hychddwn Hir and Bleiddwn, will become the high champions of the court of King Math.

MEDIEVAL SURVIVALS.

Hornunnos appears in several plays by Shakespeare (who else could speak about him?) under the name of Herne and particularly for example in 1597, in his play having as subject the merry wives of Windsor. It is a character known in the East of Berkshire, the South of Buckinghamshire, the North-East of Hampshire, and the North-West of Surrey. The stem Herne or Cerne, comes from the Brittonic corn, and means “horn “. Hornunnos is therefore literally “the Horned one “.

HERNE THE CURSED HUNTER.

In Great Britain Herne is a phantom rider hunter, linked with the forest of Windsor. The mixing up with the myth of the wild hunting is obvious. The legend makes him a forester of the king Richard II (1377-1399). He would have saved the life of the king, from the charges of a mysterious white stag, but as a result would have been mortally wounded by this latter. A wizard of the country would then have succeeded in bringing him back to life by fixing to on his head the antlers of the animal. The other guards would have then accused him of being a robber, and he would have been found the next day, hanging from an oak. Since, his phantom would haunt the forest. The localization of the oak was the object as many pointless controversies than in the case of the site of Alesia in France. Perhaps it grew in the north of Frogmore House in the park adjoining the great park of Windsor.

THE IRISH NEMET HORNUNNOS.

THE STORY OF TUNOS CARILLIGENOS FOR FINEN OF MAG BILE THUSTOLD

in Gaelic language

SCEL TUAIN MAIC CAIRILL DO FHINNEN MAIGE BILE INSO SIS.

(Tunos Carilligenos/Tuan Mac Cairill was a supernatural being, a kind of half-god-or-demon which, having been reincarnated several occasions, had known the various settlements of the country; however it is interesting to note that the high wizard and chief of clan called Nemet Hornunnos, was of the same tribe as him).

“Nemed, son of Agnoman, my father’s brother, invaded Ireland,

and I saw them from the cliffs and kept avoiding them,

and I hairy, clawed, withered, gray, naked, wretched, miserable.

Then, as I was asleep one night, I saw myself passing into the shape of a fawn.

In that shape I was, and I young and glad of heart.

They came then towards me, O gentle Lord,

The offspring of Nemed, Agnoman’s son,

Stoutly they are lying in wait for my blood,

To compass my first wounding.

Then there grew upon my head

Two antlers with three score points,

So that I am rough and gray in shape

After my age has changed from feebleness.

After this, I was the leader of the herds of Ireland,

Since I was in the shape of a stag

and wherever I went

there was a large herd of stags about me.

In that way I spent my life

during the time of Nemed and his offspring [.....]

However, these all died.

Then at last old age came upon me,

and I fled from men and wolves “.

Of which wolves was it a question? That, nobody knows, but what is obvious in this text, it is the association Nemed-stag-men. Nemed is the chief of a population of stags or of men having stag as a

totem, and it is for this reason that Tunos Carilligenos (Tuan Mac Cairill) too, changes himself , in this way , in order to be able to live with them.

The only mistake of the Irish tradition linked with the name of Tuan Mac Cairill is to have made this first true settlement of the country perish; because it is known in addition (including by the Book of Conquests) that the clan chief at the same time king and saman called Nemet Hornunnos, “did not die “ without descent.

His sons will disperse on the contrary a little everywhere. Beitacos and Bivanos (Bethach and Beoan) in Scotland, Semiviso (Semeon) and his descendants towards the south, Vergustios (Fergus) and his son Britanos Magilos (Britain Mael) in the east, but they will return thereafter under the name of Viroi (Fir) Bolg, and others. This primordial high shaman leader of tribes, Nemet Hornunnos, is perhaps even also the distant ancestor of the Tuatha De (i.e., of certain god-or-demons, thus literally brothers of men). That made much for somebody depicted as died without descent.

The myth of Hornunnos and its adventures was, of course, related to the ceremonies which took place each year, but which was prohibited many times by the councils of the Early Middle Ages or by preachers. Men and women disguised themselves in stags and hinds and danced at the time of the calends of February.

The legend of the town of Ys is particularly instructive in this respect. When the Judeo-Christians religions replaced the former worships, the people of the land kept a secret attachment for the primitive deities. For often political reasons, the noble ones [Gradlon for example] and the inhabitants of the cities, adopted the new beliefs, and the inhabitants spread them. Little by little, the rites of the past mixed with the new worships (we think of the first centuries of Christianity, when crosses were carved on standing stones). The legends will end up saying that during the summer solstice the horned god appears in the forest, ready to confer the phallic initiation on the maidens he will meet and fascinate.

The snake of our horned god also represents the sexual power the Hindus locate along the spinal column (the kundalini). But, like the great French historian of occultism, a competitor of Margaret Murray , J.P. Bourre, says it so well in connection with Hornunnos and of horned god, “renamed “ Devil by the Christians; “from the bottom of abysses, the forces of darkness spring in the conquest of the world. They are not the blacks and monstrous demons of the medieval theologists, but the legitimate aspirations and natural desires, too a long time driven back within the deepest of the human being. Once again “Satan “[i.e., the high shaman chief of tribe called Hornunnos] gets to his feet, and announces to the man his freedom, his right to the happiness as of here below! “

SAINT CORNELLY.

The legend of saint Cornelly (sant Korneli), pope in Rome from 251 to 253 (in Great Britain, there exists a parish named Saint-Cornelly. It is located in Cornwall). In France saint Cornely is particularly known in Carnac in Brittany.

It goes without saying that no pope of this name (Cornelly) never came in these places that still form one of the innumerable untruths to which Christianity, alas, has accustomed us, but the legend does not remain less very interesting!

Whereas saint Cornelly, pope in Rome in the 3rd century, fled persecutions (on the reality of the aforementioned persecutions see our essay about, or more exactly against, Christianity), his steps led him in Armorica. Accompanied by two oxen which transported his luggage, he was one day ahead compared to the legionaries who pursued him.

Thus he arrived in a village where he wanted to stop, but he heard a maiden who insulted her mother and…on his route continued. On the way he saw farmers who sowed oats.

- What do you sow there? He asked them.

- Some oat, answered the plowmen.

- So then you will be able to harvest this oat tomorrow, answered Saint Cornelly.

And very surprisingly for the farmers , the oat was indeed ripe the following day; they hastened therefore to mow it.

The same day, the Romans came.

- Did you see a man with two oxen?

- Yes, when we were sowing the oat.

- So then, he is too ahead for us and we will never catch up with him.

The Romans [not being able to imagine only one moment that grain sown the day before could be ripe as of the following day] thought indeed that, on these conditions, the man whom they pursued had had to go through there many months before. And they decided therefore to stop to camp.

But not far away, withdrawn behind a bend, close to the locality called “Moustoir “, saint Cornelly thought nevertheless he was in great danger and therefore hid out in the ear of one of his oxen. When he saw three of the soldiers coming in his direction, he made a terrible decision and, using of a “great curse“ he changed all the Romans around into stone.

It is there the origin of the alignments, called since then “soudardet san Cornily “or “soldiers of saint Cornelly” and for this reason consequently we can see these alignments of standing stones in the north of the borough of Carnac… saint Cornelly , become later Patron saint of the cattle, is celebrated each year in September. This tradition goes back to the medieval time when, to Christianize a pagan festival - a cattle fair in fact, certain people combined it with Pardons, an annual Christian procession at the end of which sinners confessed their faults. People could see them parading with their cattle they were going to make them blessed to Saint-Cornelly’s fountain before leading them to the fair to be sold there. The advantage was double since beyond the forgiveness of the committed sins, a blessed animal was sold more expensive than another.

THE TRUTH ABOUT POPE CORNELIUS.

About the middle of the third century, Christianity hid no longer. With the money and the property law, the Roman style, had come respectability. In Nicomedia, the capital of the oriental part of the Empire, “The church, situated on rising ground, was within view of the Palace“(Lactantius. On the death of the persecutors 12).

For a proven (or alleged such) martyr, like, for example, the pope Fabian , executed in Rome in beginning of the year 250, how much Christians, even among most eminent ones, escape every pursuit with a confusing facility! Whereas the edict envisaged, it is said, the death for all the irreducible ones, the great saint Cyprian of Carthage withdraws simply in his country house and, from there, continues to direct his community!

His colleague in Alexandria experiments, roughly speaking, the same fate.

As for the great theologist Origen, his case is even odder. He is arrested, awfully tortured, it appears… and then he is released, as if nothing had occurred! Other Christians are sentenced to penal colony…

Others are released after “having testified to their belief,“ in front of the Roman judge: the lapsi.

And all that, however, whereas the (lost) edict by Decius prescribed, it is said, only one punishment – the death - for those who refused to sacrifice to the god-or-demons of the Empire. Finally, for the State, the result was not besides that which he hoped for, because the rallying of all these “lapsi “ was only surface and of short length.

Cornelius or Cornelly is the twenty-first pope and succeeds Fabian on March 251, 16 months in fact after the death of the latter, on January 10th, 250. The election is a surprise since it is the priest Cornelius who is finally chosen.The reason for that is simple. Many Christians, at the time of the persecution by Decius, recanted their faith through fear (we can understand them) or opportunism. They are therefore numerous, now that the situation is relaxed, to want to return in the Church again. Two attitudes are opposed then: the intransigent ones around Novatian, and those supporting the forgiveness who succeed in making Cornelius elected. A new schism appears consequently at once, because three Italian bishops agree to crown Novatian whereas the near total of the other Churches recognizes Cornelius. A synod, got together in autumn 251, with the bishop Dionysius of Alexandria and Cyprian of Carthage, approves the leniency of Cornelius and even excommunicates Novatian for his excess of hardness towards the repented lapsi. The patriarch Fabian of Antioch, partisan, like many other Eastern bishops, of more severity towards those who temporarily failed at the time of the persecutions, will be the recipient of a letter sent by Cornelius, where this one argues his point of view. The fragments of it we still have reveals that Rome, at that time (middle of the 3rd century) has approximately 150 Christian ecclesiastics, including 7 deacons, 46 priests and… 52 exorcists. All fed by the divine kindness and the charity of their brethren. The persecution, in the reign of Septimius Severus and his successors, had not been therefore, in conclusion, very rigorous; in many places, Christians had enjoyed thirty years an uninterrupted peace even more.

But the problem of the lapsi will start the Novatian crisis after the pope Cornelius had decided to reinstate them within the Church; and consequently, the most serious of the first schisms in the Church, the Donatist schism.

Cornelius will be exiled on order from the emperor Trebonianus Gallus into Centumcellae Civitavecchia, around the end of the year 252, where he dies in a natural way probably it seems during the year 253. His body therefore will be brought back to Rome and will be deposited in the catacomb of Saint-Calixtus [End of our reminder of the truth about Pope Cornelius].

OUR LADY AND THE UNICORN: THE EPONAS.

Or more exactly the triple Epona , who is at the same time fairy of the family, of the prosperity, but also of good death. A sublimation of the chthonic and watery forces, similar to Our Lady of the Life in Savoy, but… MORE RECENT.

Goddess-or-demoness or good fairy, European by definition , since we find her figurations to Rome (a mural of the Circus Maximus) even Budapest (a small marble). 150 inscriptions mention her, including in Bulgaria and Romania.

There exist three assumptions in connection with this mysterious goddess.

- She is a goddess of mares.

- She is a mare goddess i.e., a deified mare.

- She is a goddess being able incidentally to take the form of a mare which would be then only her symbol.

It belongs to each one to solve t, or not, the question.

Epona in the strict sense of the term is attested only on the Continent (Gaul and Danubian Celtica). Her Britonnic islander counterpart was formerly named Rigantona “High queen,” become Rhiannon. In Welsh language. Her iconography is divided into three big families of representations.

First family of representations: the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, on a horse, accompanied, or not, by a puppy. The presence of this dog makes a problem besides, because he can simply symbolize something or somebody, absent.

Second family of representations: the goddess-or-demoness or the fairy sitting surrounded by horses.

Third family of representations: the goddess-or-demoness or fairy if you prefer, driving a chariot. Like on the bronze plate discovered in the village of Alise-Sainte-Reine, in Cote-d’Or (France).

Her worship was as well public and solemn, like in the temple which was dedicated to her at Entrains in the Nievre, in France, that domestic and family (some small figurines).

Her iconography makes her a goddess-or-demoness or good fairy of fertility (fruits, horns of plenty, foals), but with chthonian or psychopompous aspects (presence of dogs, even of ravens).

When the Indo-Europeans spread themselves in Europe, they found here populations practicing a religion in which the Mother was the central figure. Their religion to them, riders of the steppes, gave primacy to male deities, and taught survival in the hereafter rather than reincarnation. As it is the policy in similar circumstances , their beliefs were therefore superimposed on these of the inhabitants living on the spot, without making them disappear. The Mother-Goddess-or-Demoness therefore became a “mare-goddess-or-demoness “ let understand by the way a she-guide of the soul/minds, since horse is symbolically the mount which transports the late towards the Next-World.

Some documents clearly make us have a presentiment of a plurality of Eponas. Never mind a dedication found in Romania (Sarmizegetusa/Varhely) which is addressed “to the Eponas “ we can see, on the stele of Hagondange in France, two she riders represented on the right and on the left of a central goddess-or-demoness or fairy, sitting in an armchair. A block in Strasbourg shows Mercury framed by two Eponas who move in the contrary direction.

The linguists agree to make the name of Epona deriving from Epo-, from where come, on the one hand, the adjective eponos/- a/-on = equine, and, on the other hand, the theonym Epona; thus relative of epos = horse, epa = mare, epalos = foal, epala = filly, etc.

This “et cœtera “ covers many made-up words (nouns and adjectives), as well as proper nouns more numerous still with the continental and Britonnic, but not Goidelic, p- Celtic , which was the heir to the q-Celtic, former to the p-Celtic.

That indicates perhaps a theonym not going back beyond the beginning of the Latenian time. Indeed, we have no Confirmation of a Eqona, q-Celtic form - , former by definition to that of Epona… But our

lack of confirmation does not mean that Equona did not exist as a theonym, therefore prudence as for the seniority of this identification. An in q-Celtic then Goidelic Eqona would have led to Eachna in Gaelic language. We did not locate it as a theonym in the Gaelic Celtic literature, but perhaps it has simply escaped to us.

On the other hand, there exists UNDER OTHER NAMES some Irish deities of this type, as we will see it a little further.

But why therefore did the Celts feel the need to design a horse goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, and what means the horse of Epona?

Let us come now to the theological and mythological contents of these Eponas. These two facets of the riding deity had had extremely probably an upper position in the belief of former druids. Some people locate even Epona in the oldest series of major Celtic deities. This is why the druids of today at least locate Rigantona-Epona at a high-ranked place among hypostases or “aspects “of the Watery Great Mother Goddess (W.G.M.G.). So eminently beneficial that she becomes the very symbol of personified Kindness.

Maternal solicitude towards children (isn't she comparable with the “mopates “?) as towards pets. She dispenser of agricultural abundance. A guide of the soul/minds towards the Next World, then accompanied by a dog: therefore a “psychopomp “ to use this erudite word.

Roles and function indeed of Epona among continental Celts (insular druids having used in this intention other legendary allegories, like that of the fairy Niamh for example): to take along in the heaven on her back the soul/minds of the warriors died in the fight (or in their bed). In other words, almost everyone at the time. What characterizes her indeed, in this case, it is the swelling of her cloak above her head, under the action of the wind, and in contradiction with the walk gait, of her mount; a convention of sculptors we find on certain steles of the Thracian horseman: the soul/mind of the late is transported by Epona in the folds of her coat.

Altogether, these Eponas are one of the symbols of the exchanges between our earthly world (mediomagos) and the other worlds: (Vindomagos, Sedodumnon), Rigantona being especially her aspect “Next World “.

A adoptive mother also of secondary deities or of reincarnations of major deities, as we evoke it elsewhere.

The triple Epona is consequently polymorphic or composite, syncretic, and multifunctional, but this multifunctional commitment is nevertheless reduced or limited to some great fields, considering her archaism. Epona is in no way a warrior for example, nor a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of erotic love.

Editor’s note.This assessment is based on a critical synthesis of the different Eponas that the cross-checking of the as well scriptural as archeological sources, show.

The representations of Epona constitute the most charming scene ewer drawn from Celtic mythology. What could be more gracious indeed than a young she rider sidesaddle sitting, holding the horn of plenty or cherishing with a light hand the neck of her mount, while the foal frolicking the mare? In Luxembourg, the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this term is preferred, is often astride. Exceptionally, she stands upright close to the mare. From where the topic of the Lady and the Unicorn in the Middle Ages.

In any case, what is sure, it is that people for a long time underlined how the attitude, the costume, and the attributes, of Epona, reminded the figurations of the Mothers.

The horn of plenty, the offering bowl, the basket of fruits, differ in nothing. It is therefore not without reason that some people see in her an “equestrian Mother “.

A she guardian of mares and foals, Epona guarantees generally agricultural prosperity: this is why we often see between her arms a horn of plenty, an offering bowl or a fruit basket. She resembles the mothers-goddess-or-demonesses then so much so that some people could regard her as one of them (because on certain low-reliefs, she holds one or two children); but she is distinguished from them by her loneliness and her determined celibacy, rare thing in the divine society of the Celts.

Here, however, some less general observations.

On about thirty reliefs, almost all located in Burgundy, a foal is added to the group of Epona and the mare.

The foal is sometimes lying between the legs of her mother, sometimes he stands and tries to suck with greed; or he smells the offering bowl offered by Epona, like if the goddess-or-demoness, or the fairy if it is preferred, were his genuine feeder, or, in a familiar attitude, he presents his back to be used as a support for the feet of the powerful she guardian. These groups form an obvious symbol of fruitfulness or of eternal renewal.

Epona is also called upon in favor of the late ones. Several statuettes were found in burials, particularly in Bagacon (Bavay, French department of North). The image of Epona is reproduced on funerary steles in the shape of a house. A she-guardian of homes, of rural estates, she-guarantor of fruitfulness, helpful, here is an assessment which resembles the aptitudes of the Good-Mother strangely. Her common presence in the necropolises indeed expresses well the double role ascribed to the matra or mother: she introduced the late ones into a second life, she extended her protection to the hereafter.

There is therefore a perfect agreement between all the data. Dispenser of the fruits of the earth, nurse of the children of the men, guardian of the graves, the Mother is the one who causes the vegetable as well as the animal life; she presides over all the generating forces of Nature. She invigorates and maintains health during the earthly life. What we call “death “ is only the passage from a form of life to another form of life, that of the hereafter, where the Mother continues her beneficial action.

The dog is also a frequent companion of the mother-goddess-or-demoness. Sometimes the small quadruped appears on the ground in front of the goddess-or-demoness or of the fairy if you prefer (cf. the statue of Naix), sometimes the Mother familiarly holds him in her lap. He is agreed, even liked, it seems. A manner of touching or thanking the Mother is precisely to offer a dog to her. Several monuments combine in fact Epona and the Mothers. The least we may conclude, following these voluntarily limited remarks, it is that Epona presents with the fairies of the matres type significant family ties.

Her protection was then counted on up to the life of the hereafter: the deities to whom you asked for the cure of the aches throughout this life are also responsible for guaranteeing the eternal perenniality in the hereafter; into the graves, people slip the image of the mother-goddess-or-demoness.

This is why Epona therefore had such a success, in particular in the army, which spread her worship far on the Danube and as far as Italy. It is one of the two druidic deities who saw themselves venerated in the capital even of the Roman empire. What also saw very well the great French Celticist, Pierre Lance, when he notes: « Non seulement elle ne perdit aucun de ses adorateurs nationaux, mais la nature même de ses fonctions la fit connaître à d’autres . « It is a goddess-or-demoness, Epona, who provided more the beautiful example of vitality in the divine world of the West. Under this Celtic name, in the strange one and gracious attitude the images ascribe to her, sitting on a horse, a foal and a dog running by her side , she continued during all the empire to control stables and circuses. In short, not only she did not lose any of her national admirers, but the very nature of her functions made her known by others.

But this worship was rejected by certain Romans. We have the proof of that in two ancient authors: Plutarch, Greek but Romanolatrous (50 - 125 approximately) and later Prudentius, Latin and Christian author (348 - 410 approximately).

Here first the quotation of the pagan one.

“Fuluios Stellos misôn gunaikas hippôi sunémigéto. E die kata khronon étéké korèn eumorphon kai onomasén Eponan; ésti die théos pronoian poiouménè hippôn bone Agèsilaos E tritôi Italikôn “.

“Fulvius Stellus had an aversion to women and entertained himself to his satisfaction with a mare, by which he had a very handsome daughter, that he called Epona or Hippona; and this is the goddess that has the care of the breed of horses according to Agesilaus, Third Book of his Italian History “. (Plutarch. Morals. Greek and Roman parallel stories).

A good example of denigration of a Celtic belief: to make the Lady with Unicorn (O.L. of Life of druids) come from the coupling against nature of a Roman pervert.

It is easily understood that such a Celtic deity was irreducible to the “interpretationes“ of Romans. “They wished those gods to be called Semones whom they considered unworthy of heaven on account of the meagerness of their deserts, such as Priapus, Epona and Vertumnus, yet they were unwilling to class them as earthbound gods because of the high veneration surrounding them “ (Fulgentius. Explanations of obsolete words 11).

She had, however, entered their syncretisms, as we can note it through an abundant collection of inscriptions, in the company of deities of the Graeco-Latin Pantheon. Her feast, mentioned on a Roman calendar, a unique case, took place on December 18th of a given year. This dating in the Julian calendar therefore enables us to place it during the full moon of the Riuros month in the lunisolar calendar of the druids.

Let us pass to the quotation of the Christian polemicist Prudentius (Apotheosis 197): “Nemo Cloacinae aut super Eponae super astra deabus dat solium, quamvis olidam persoluat acerram sacrilegisque molam manibus rimetur et exta “.

“Nobody gives a throne to the goddesses Cloacina or Epona above the stars, even though he opens an oiled incense box and investigates grains of spelt and entrails with sacrilegious hands “.

Coming from a Christian follower of the God of Love, it is not necessary to be astonished by a Celtophobic racism. But it is interesting to note here the eccentricity consisting in equating , Cloacina, word for word “she sewage worker “ ex Sabine Venus become the owner of whorehouses in Rome and Our Lady and the unicorn.

Lastly, Epona is also quoted by Fulgentius (467--532) as we already on the occasion to underline it. A very interesting thought about Epona besides which could just as easily is applied to Hornunnos even to our lord of Muirthemne : “They wished those gods to be called Semones whom they considered unworthy of heaven on account of the meagerness of their deserts, such as Priapus, Epona and Vertumnus, yet they were unwilling to class them as earthbound gods because of the high veneration surrounding them. “

All that shows well how the concept “Epona “ remained incomprehensible for the Romans, and particularly the incredible jealousy of the Christians about her. See the reactions of Gerald of Wales in the 12th century in connection with an Irish ritual of royal enthronement.

“There is, then, in the northern and most remote part of Ulster, namely, at Kenel Cunil a nation which practices a most barbarous and abominable rite in creating their king. The whole people of that country being gathered in one place, a white mare is led into the midst of them and he who is to be inaugurated, not as a prince but as a brute, not as a king but as an outlaw, comes before the people on all fours, confessing himself a beast with no less impudence than imprudence. The mare being immediately killed, and cut in pieces and boiled, a bath is prepared for him from the broth. Sitting in this, he eats of the flesh which is brought to him, the people standing round and partaking of it also. He is also required to drink of the broth in which he is bathed, not drawing it in any vessel, nor even in his hand, but lapping it with his mouth. These unrighteous rites being duly accomplished, his royal authority and dominion are ratified.”

In the very degraded mythology of the manuscripts transcribed by the Christianized bards, Epona the psychopomp also appears as the goddess guardian of the horses of the king Conchobar mac Nessa: Duxtir/Dechtire.

A daughter of the druid Catubatuos/Cathbad. The sister and charioteer of King Conchobar. Mother of the Hesus Cuchulainn, but the identity of the father remains a mystery. Some Irish apocryphal texts imply that it is the god-or-demon Lug. The “seducer” would have benefitted from the sleep and from the way of the dreams of Duxtir/Dechtire, asleep during a hunt organized by King Conchobar. But three successive childbirth and an emergency wedding will be needed to officialize all that and to clear up the suspicion of incest. If you understand nothing there, it is not serious: the medieval Irishmen themselves understood already nothing any more at the time, and asked themselves many questions about this subject, but that did not prevent them from having a good night. TO SEE EPONA, her continental equivalent

In the Gaelic mythology , Epona the psychopomp also appears in the shape of gracious rider called Niamh. The best-known legend relating to her is that which describes us her meeting with the famous Ossian of the Fenians.

Ossian meets Niamh whereas he hunts close to the banks of a lake. She appears to him abruptly riding a silver hoofed and gold maned horse, called Enbarr (the name of which means in Irish language “imagination “. A very full agenda!) Niamh explains to him why she comes from far especially for him, in order to invite him to come in the kingdom of her father, in the next world, the Land of eternal youth. He mounts with no hesitation the steed and his father saw him never again. After various adventures in the next world (he fights against an underwater giant), Ossian started to feel nostalgia for his native land. Niamh therefore entrusted to him her magic horse so that he can visit his country, but also warned him never to dismount under penalty of being no longer able to come back. Back into Ireland the country seemed to him a foreign country, because all those he had known had died for a long time. People seemed to him much poorer, miserable or smaller, than the heroes with whom at one time still he had grown. Having met by chance ragged men who tried to push a rock, he raised it with one hand, but his saddle slipped and he fell on the ground. Then his beautiful magic horse disappears at once and the valiant and young warrior he was, changed into a blind and frail old man. A Christian copyist monk introduced saint Patrick into this myth. As everyone seems to take him for a madman, some people bring Ossian to the holy man who listens to his history and explains to him all the changes which have occurred in Ireland since the advent of Christianity and endeavors to convert him. But Ossian answered him that he did not imagine a Heaven which would not honor the Fenians eager to enter it, nor a God who would not be proud to have Vindos/Finn among his friends. What would resemble an eternal life where people could neither hunt nor to court beautiful ladies? He therefore preferred this Hell of which his companions the Fenians, according to saint Patrick, underwent the torments, and to die as he had always lived in order to join them.

As we saw it a little higher, we know the day of the main feast of Epona, since the calendar of Guidizzolo mentions in this connection XV Kalendas Januarias, that is to say approximately on December 18th in the Roman calendar; what places it around the winter solstice (the full moon of Riuros in the Coligny calendar).

This memory of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy was preserved in the form of an annual ceremony, still used in Rhineland and England during the Early Middle Ages. The night of the Mothers, or Modranecht, Mutternacht, which took place in the night from 24th to 25th December. See on this subject the account of the venerable Bede.

A table was laid, people left there three empty places for the mothers, and feasted all night. What was thus celebrated, it was the passage of the mothers from this world in the other, and people thought to welcome them by the way , to offer them something to drink and to eat in order to comfort them. It is besides here the origin of our Midnight Supper.

Another testimony of this belief is consisted of the small pagan oratories of Gallo-Roman time, out of stone, called aedicula in Latin. Common enough because Apuleius informs us that people always envisaged in the stables a aedicula in which stood up the crowned with flowers statue of Epona [Editor’s note: a creche?]

Epona is found on the cross of Hilton of Cadboll in Scotland, as on two capitals, at Saint-Bertrand-in-Comminges and at Saint-Benoit-upon-Loire, in France. This type of goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, sitting full face on a horse passing, influenced that of Mary carried by the ass in her escape to Egypt, just like that of the mothers influenced the iconography of the three Bethen in Germany, and particularly in Worms. In any case, on the column in Mainz, Epona is accompanied by an ass. And her worship is perhaps also at the origin of the symbolism of the Lady and the Unicorn.

AND NOW WHY TO PRAY OUR LADY AND THE UNICORN ?

To require her assistance and her support, to call upon her so that she intercedes for us to the god-or-demons and the Tocade (isn’t she Mopatis? Anextlomara? )

HOW TO PRAY OUR LADY AND THE UNICORN?

What is to pray first of all?

To pray is to emit or concentrate positive waves or thoughts; resulting first in reinforcing the mindset of the one who prays and having then with respect to the cosmos a butterfly effect, or crowd effect would say Gustave Le Bon , the production of an egregore would say Eliphas Levi. What others would call the chance or a coincidence.

We saw with Diogenes Laertius that Greeks translated this druidic concept by the word “sebein” and that according to Fulgentius in his Expositio Sermonorum Antiquorum the Romans did not know too much where to place our Lady and the Unicorn, on earth or in heaven.

Let us leave this difficulty by considering that it must be in her case the worship of hyperdulia, with this difference that if the Catholics associate their Blessed Virgin with a serpent she tramples ; we uns Celts combine her with a mare.

FOR WANT OF PRAYING HER AT LEAST LET US HONOR HER IN OUR HISTORICAL STUDIES.

The triple Epona can be the inspiration source par excellence of all the artists in our touta, because she is the sublimation of the chthonian or watery forces reviewed above. To love Our Lady and the unicorn is to open oneself like her to the radiance of the divinity and of the next world.

And to honor the Eponas in the families, it is simply to enter the ancient movement of the clans (the Epidii, a tribe of the Kintyre peninsula, formed perhaps a people dedicated to her worship) who always admitted her as mopatis or theoktos (mother of god-or-demons through fosterage). To respect and to praise the Eponas is not,of course, to worship this triple goddess-or-demoness or this triple fairy, like a higher god, this worship is due only to the supreme Fate or the great pan-Celtic god-or-demons. It is simply to enter the worship of the people of the god-or-demons for the Virgin without consort.

NOTE ABOUT THE TOPIC OF THE VIRGINITY OF EPONA.

The nearly constant celibacy of Epona in the Gallo-Roman statuary made a lot of ink flow since some people made it the origin of the medieval topic of the Lady and the Unicorn. Why is Epona therefore thus without actual consort ? Why is she without durable husband? This concept of virginity (in the state of unmarried women) always renewed is only the symbol of the eternal restarting and of the eternal youth of a primordial deity. It is not, of course, to take literally.

The virginity coming from the fact that Epona is without an obvious consort is the symbol of the total dedication of the Mother to the last-born children of the clan, the sign of the total availability of Epona in the education of man’s cubs.

The Christians “borrowed “this idea from pagan for their Marian worship, and on the matter it is therefore themselves who copied, not the contrary!

NOTE ABOUT THE DORMITION OR APOTHEOSIS OF EPONA THE MOPATIS ( THE THEOTOKTOS ?)

As everybody knows, Arthur does not die really. He is carried in the isle of Avalon by his sister Morgan Le Fay. The legend adds that the Breton ones believe that he will come back one day. Arthur having only entered dormition.

Well, for certain authors, who refuse the very notion of apotheosis about her, there was the same thing for this Epona, so justly named mopatis (the theoktos). She did not really die in spite of her burial and her burying, like Arthur she only entered dormition, but did not finish playing a role in our imagination and in our unicorn dreams. N.B. Epona does not form part of the Tuatha De Danan, of the children of the goddess Danu (bia). It is not therefore advisable in her case to speak about occultation as for the other gods of druidism, but about dormition.

However, according to the French archeologist J. - J. Hatt, Epona is also herself in a sense a “Regina coeli “. And it is difficult not to allude to the current after having been medieval, Christian ideas,which result from this, because they are foreign to the Scriptures. J. - J. Hatt who wrote;about it is true another goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, according to him; “the assumption of the goddess towards Taran/Toran/Tuireann is shown by the pediment of a shelter [of a shelter similar to the creche of Epona in the stables?] decorated with S-hooks or double spirals, and located in the agglomeration of Alesia. It was leant against the basilica, just opposite the Jupiter temple. On this pediment the bust of a female deity, carried in the airs by two winged Eros, was represented “ : some Etnosoi in berla fene or iarnbelre language (cf the theonym Etnosos meaning “winged “ and found in Bourges).

NOTE ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF APOTHEOSIS.

We have had the opportunity to see that the Ancient ones hesitated over the place to recognize to Epona: only earthly or on the contrary worthy of heaven? “They wished those gods to be called Semones whom they considered unworthy of heaven on account of the meagerness of their deserts, such as Priapus, Epona and Vertumnus, yet they were unwilling to class them as earthbound gods because of the high veneration surrounding them “ (Fulgentius. Explanations of obsolete words 11).

Taken in a general sense, the idea of apotheosis was expressed through various manners; we find many specimens of them on the painted vases, the bronze mirrors, the cameos, the low-reliefs and the murals. In Greek and Roman art, we see apotheosis appearing either by means of a character (man or woman), carried towards the sky on a quadriga, and accompanied by the eagle or the victory, a little like Cuchulainn in Ireland therefore, or under the features of a woman crowned with a diadem and abducted in the airs by an eagle or a swan. Sometimes also (it is the case for the paintings in Pompeii) the apotheosis is represented by a winged genie, carrying a woman who then holds in a hand a veil rolled out above her head, in the other a lit torch, symbol of immortality.

In Greek antiquity, Heracles is the character of whom the fabulous deeds were most frequently glorified by artists. There exists a vase painting where the apotheosis of this great hero is treated in a very expressive way: on the pyre of the Oeta mount the trunk of Heracles lies. On the right, Philoctetes who has just lighted it, goes away while carrying the arrows and the quiver; while on the left, a nymph endeavors to extinguish the flames with the water from a hydria. Above, Heracles, come back to life, is carried in a quadriga the winged Victory drives. Hermes introduces the chariot into the Olympus, on the threshold of which Apollo welcomes the hero, who will take a seat among the immortal ones.

In ancient Rome, the apotheosis was the most honorary funerary rite existing: it raised the late one into the gods rank. Apotheosis was marked by the releasing it of an eagle from the funeral pyre: it was supposed to accompany the soul/mind of the late towards the celestial abode of the gods. The late one received then the qualifying term of divinus (divine). Julius Caesar was the first to profit of such an apotheosis, on decision of the Roman Senate, strongly solicited by Augustus.

Augustus borrowed perhaps his idea of the deification of emperors from Egypt, where Caesar and him went to seek the model of almost all the institutions of the Roman monarchy. We saw, indeed, that the apotheosis of the sovereigns existed at the time of the Pharaohs, and we know in addition that this use was preserved by their successors on the throne in Egypt, the Greek kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty: all the heirs to Alexander who followed one another in the court of Alexandria were adored as some gods after their death. Here the Romans did nothing but imitate Egypt.

Christianity did not remove immediately this use. Constantine, Constantius, Jovian, Valentinian I, Gratian, Theodosius, Honorius, were proclaimed divine after their death. A strange thing, on the other hand, we do not find, in the list of these “divine ones “ the emperor Julian, last defender of the former ideas and of the paganism. After Honorius, we will meet no longer some divus. There will have been on the whole seventy-one of them.

In short, the druidicists therefore believe in an Assumption/final Apotheosis of the soul/mind Epona just like that of her son the dog of Culann, on a glorious chariot (see the Irish manuscript entitled “Siaburcharpat Conculainn “).

MEDIEVAL SURVIVALS.

In Ireland Epona as we have had already the opportunity to say it, matches, on the one hand, Duxtir/Dechtire, daughter of the druid Cathbad druid and of Maga, herself daughter of the love god-or-demon Mabon/Maponos/Oengus and sister of Conchobar mac Nessa. But also in addition the fairy Niamh, in love with Ossian. Gaelic people therefore apparently duplicated her function.

Epona is known in Wales under the name of Rigantona the great Queen (Rhiannon) heroine of the first and third branch of the Mabinogi: Pwyll, prince of Dyved and Manawydan son of Llyr. But unlike the Irish situation several centuries of Christianization passed through there and it is from now on more literature than a nugget of pure mythology. None of the storytellers or of the members of the audience sees that differently than as a fairy tale or a legend.

In the first tale, she becomes the wife of Pwyll/Pelles (Pellehan, even Pellinor). From this union will be born Pryderi, a boy who will be kidnapped just after his birth, what earns his mother to be accused of child murder. As a punishment, she will be condemned to remain sitting before the gates of the town, to tell her story to the visitors, and to introduce them in the city by carrying them on her back.

In the second tale, after the death of Pwyll/Pelles, she marries Manawyddan Fab Llyr. During a walk, a magic fog falls down on the area and devastates it. With her husband, his son Pryderi and Kigva, the wife of the latter, they are forced to leave for England, where they will practice various trades, to survive.

Lady Godiva, also called Godgifu, is a Saxon lady who, according to the legend, would have crossed completely naked and on a horse, the streets of Coventry, in England, about the year 1000 ; in order to convince her husband to decrease the taxes, he levied to finance his military campaigns.

Having founded a monastery on the advice of his wife, the noble countess Godiva; the earl Leofric installed monks there. And enriches them by so many lands, wood and sacred ornaments, that nobody would have found in the whole England a monastery with such an abundance of gold, silver, precious stones and expensive clothing. The countess Godiva, who had a great devotion for the mother of God, was dying to free the city of Coventry from the oppression of an unbearable toll. And often, in an insistent way, she beseeched her husband that, by regard for Jesus Christ and his mother, he released the town from this burden and from all the others which weighed so much over it. But the earl reprimanded her maliciously each time while asking her with a teasing manner

in what that did himself wrong, and each time forbade her from speaking again to him about this business. But as, with the obstinacy of a wife, she never ceased disturbing her husband on this question, he ends up making to her the following answer. “Mount your horse and go in front of all the population, through the market of the city, completely naked traverse it from one end to another, and when you are back , you will have what you ask. “ Whereupon Godiva answered: “But will you give me the permission if I am willing to do it? - “Of course! “he answered. After which the countess, beloved by God, untied her hair and made her curls falling so that they covered her entire body like a veil; then she mounted her horse and, protected by two knights, she went through the place of the market, without people see something of her, if not her superb legs. Then, having achieved this travel, she came back with joy towards her very surprised husband and got from him what she had asked. The earl Leofric freed the town of Coventry and his inhabitants from the burden about which we spoke higher, and he confirmed with a charter what he had decided “.

The oldest form of the legend tells the crossing of the market in Coventry by Godiva only dressed up with her hair, whereas the people were gathered, only escorted by two horsewomen (normally clothed , as for them, on the other hand). This version is told in the Flores Historiarum of Roger of Wendover (died in 1236), a rather credulous collector of anecdotes, who quoted himself besides another older author.

One of the variants of the legend has it that the inhabitants of Coventry, to show their gratitude towards their Lady, were locked up all in their homes during her passage. Only a curious person, named Tom, would have dared to break this informal instruction and would have looked at the beautiful horsewoman but he would have become blind at once.

N.B. In spite of the strangeness of the thing, it happens that clothing shops take the name of “ Lady Godiva “.

Notice on loose sheets found by the children of Peter DeLaCrau.

THE IRISH DEVIATION DUE TO OUR FRIENDS BARDS: MAGOSIA / MACHA.

Her link with the horse appears not only in the story of her race, but also in the name of the mount of Cúchulainn, the Grey of Macha. It is a complex figure: a prophetess, warrior, queen and goddess-or-demoness or fairy, of sovereignty or fecundity, very closely linked to the fate of the country itself.

The first one of the three Macha is supposed, according to the Irish legend, to be the wife of Nemed Cernunnos, the man having led one of the very first invasion of the country. She is a prophetess who sees in a dream the destruction that the conflict caused by the driving off of the cattle of Cooley (Tain Bo Cualnge) will cause.

The second Macha, Macha Mongruad (Macha of the red mane ) is a she warrior sovereign of Ireland. It is a personality rather difficult to grasp. It is either a euhemerization or a historicization. Anyway a peculiar mixture of strictly human data and of mythical or divine data. The Gaelic heresy sees the things as it follows. Three kings share the sovereignty of Ireland and each one of them rules three times seven years. It is Dithorba, Aed the Red and Cimbaeth. Aed The Red dies the first but he had only a daughter as an heiress, "Macha of the red mane.” Dithorba and Cimbaeth do not intend to share power with a woman, while Macha wants, herself, to exercise also kingship. It follows a war,

from which Macha goes out victorious. Then Dithorba dies, leaving five sons who complain, in turn, the first place. Macha still does not yield , because she feels to have acquired through her victory the right to be sovereign. New war, new massacre. Once again, Macha prevails. She exiles the five sons of Dithorba and marries Cimbaeth. She can then reign as an undisputed master. With her brooch, she draws the surrounding wall of her future capital and they are the losers who construct it: it will be Emain Macha.

The third Macha is a fairy married with a human being, Cruinniuc, a rich widower belonging to the working class. As she is fast in race , during the annual assembly of the Ulaid (of the inhabitants of Ulster), her husband bets she is capable of outdistancing the horses of the king; Conchobar takes umbrage at it and wants to kill the farmer. Macha sacrifices herself for him and agrees to run, although she is about to give birth. She outstrips the horses of the king, but dies on the finish line, while giving birth to twins, a boy and a girl. Before expiring, she casts an incredible curse against the men: at a time of crisis, they will be victims of a weakness which will inflict on them suffering similar to these a woman in childbirth endures, and that for five days and four nights. All the men in the country will have to suffer labor pains, the "nine days fever" and that until the ninth generation. We find here linked the topics of the fairy who visits the man, of the fairy who runs more quickly than everybody, of the man deprived of his virile value. The force of Macha is female and beneficent first; it becomes evil, and turns against the man, only then, because of the latter: the secrets were betrayed; she was forced to run pregnant . Let us remind of the mother of the king Conchobar: she was first called Assa "gentle "; she became after "ungentle,” Niassa (Ness), a formidable warrior, to avenge the assassination of her guardians.

A LITTLE TERMINOLOGY NOW BEFORE CONTINUING.

We also will use much in this opuscule devoted to the druidic Pleroma, the word “Hesus” (old Celtic “vesus”).

Its best translation in Greek is the word “theios aner” but with this remark that it would be a martial……theios aner. A chivalrous and specialist of martial arts theios aner.

Perhaps - what our rapid panorama will not deny – that the theios aner is, in part, and in what regards the Greek world, a kind of abstracted construction, worked out by the modern ones starting from texts composed mainly between the 2nd and the 5th century of our era, which, however, are attached to a very old tradition.

It will not be denied either that a certain number of biographical accounts, implementing many processes present in the literature of late Antiquity, depict divine men. The divine man therefore does not seem to us to be a modern “invention.” If it is not abusive to also see it working in the Christian tradition, nothing prohibits to wonder if he does not play a part in the Lives of philosophers, works resulting from intellectual circles nourished by prevailing Hellenistic spiritualism.

The Life of Apollonius offers a beautiful illustration of one of these colorful characters. Didn't Philostratus indeed take as a starting point these emblematic figures of the wisdom to paint the portrait of his hero as a divine man, thus keeping him safe from the ambiguities of magic?

In spite of many difficulties related to the terseness of our sources - voluntary terseness on behalf of the authors who often take the ways of the esotericism in order to surround their hero of a veil of mystery -, falling under a more or less mythical literary tradition, it is possible for us to identify some of these representatives of the supernatural (for example Abaris, Olenus), to determine their personality, to paint a portrait of the philosopher as a magus, because from one figure to another their features are covered or are complementary.

The characteristics common to these individuals, picked out by exegetes, allow us to gather them in an intermediate category between men and gods, a kind of brotherhood of chosen people that J. - P. Vernant describes in the following way: “They are divine men, theioi andres who during their live are promoted from the mortal condition up to the status of imperishable beings.”

The expression theios aner is commonly used by the authors of Antiquity, relayed then by the researchers (philologists and historians who try to reconstitute the profile of these divine men starting from a material mainly bookish), to designate a type of character, having lived in different places and times, to whom would be ascribed the identities of magi, philosophers , prophets, inspired men, individuals endowed with some charisma, soothsayers purifiers … Theios is used here in the sense where the man has supernatural capacities and is not subjected to death.

Shamanistic substrate on which the model of the divine man is based.

Every society includes some of these men, or of these women, become masters in the knowledge of the material or immaterial things and venerated for their great wisdom. They are called clairvoyants, shamans, magicians, wizards, or saints. They make a difference, control the elements, recite the forgotten past, speak of trace the travel of the souls after death, describe the future, modify the shape of the objects thanks to the universal sympathy which links the things. Their mind is therefore rich of a complex “science” which makes doubting their status of man.

Pythagoras, glorified by the legend, is regarded as the leader of these exceptional individuals who make them recognize by two essential elements: a practice of asceticism and the topic of the itinerant soul ( ecstatic travels and reincarnation cycle). To be able to profit from this title, another quality is also necessary: the perfect kindness.

The ancient authors being singularly wordy about the subject, we managed to highlight a certain number of descriptive features making us able to release a standard profile of the divine man according to the Greeks, i.e., the “Muhammad” streaks in less.

Divine choice: extraordinary birth (epiphany); physical grace; intellectual precocity.

Asceticism: adoption of the law of a philosophical school; strict hygiene of life; sanctifying timetable: to pray, fast, to stay awake; refusal of the constraints of the social life.

Bodily aspect: long little looked after hair and beard; clothing poverty: flax tunic (refusal of animal wool); bare feet or sandals.

Wanderings, travels: long tour of the initiatory type (search of the original Orient) in India or Egypt; underground travel or catabasis; bilocation; teaching dispensed from city to city , in the Mediterranean world.

Vision of the universe: knowledge of the secrets of the universe; cosmology; experiments of the survival of soul.

Gifts, charisma: thaumaturgy; exorcism; divination; omnipresence; practice of theurgy; gift of tongues.

Moral virtues : humanism; compassion; perfect kindness; good listening skills.

Piety: participation in rituals and festivals of the official religion; criticism of the drifts of these same ritual (refusal of the bloody sacrifices); practice of spiritual exercises; escape in the inner experiment (way of the mystic one); travel of ecstatic type.

Master of dialectics : brilliant speaker; skillful rhetorician who allures the crowd (picturesque language: parables, metaphors).

Formation of a Wisdom school, of a sect: leader of a school of thought, a new school, a rule of life; has many disciples.

Participation in a form of action in politics: adviser of princes; successor of the great legislators; purifier of the public forum.

Adulation by men: fascination of the general public; deification when he was alive.

AN INCONTESTABLY HISTORICAL EXAMPLE OF CELTIC THEIOS ANER.

MARICCUS THE PROPHET AND DEMIGOD HERO (+ 69).

As we have had the opportunity to say in our previous booklet but did not say Napoleon that repetition is the strongest of rhetorical figures; druid Mariccus was the last reincarnation (or avatar or envoy) known, of a Celtic god-or-demon.

With him we deal with a personality of Muhammad type, i.e., an extraordinary combination of spirituality allied to a powerful effort of national liberation (Ambicatusian ver sacrum). Mariccus also was and just like Muhammad surrounded during his life by a whole isma almost bordering idolatry. But look out, in his case this ver sacrum in the way of Ambicatus (who fights on the two sides) is to be compared to the small jihad of Muslims and not to their great jihad (the struggle...against oneself) . And the isma which must be dedicated to Mariccus must to be an isma of dulia type even of hyperdulia type but, of course, not a worship of latria.

Lecture notes on the life and the death of the great prophet, that new generations sold to occupiers (without this treason, they could not have captured him). Some authors went as far as thinking that they are the Christians who gave him up to Romans. According to Christians themselves, Christianity had indeed been able to reach these regions as of the 1st century, with various missionaries sent by the apostles themselves, and particularly St. Peter.

“The Apostles would have sent seven of their disciples, or even a much greater number, to found the Churches of Gaul and of the Rhine. Valerius in Trier, Martial in Limoges, Austremoine (Stremonius) in Clermont, Gatian or Gratian in Tours. People mention in the same way for the Rhenish lands, in Trier, Eucharius, of whom Valerius seems to have been only the successor, Crescens in Mainz (or in Vienne in France), Maternus in Cologne, Clement in Metz. People also do dating back to the apostolic age the Church of Auxerre, like that of Perigueux, with the bishop Saint Front.

On the apostolate of Saint Lazarus [in Marseilles and Autun. Editor’s note] of Saint Magdalene , and Saint Martha in Provence [in Tarascon more precisely for Saint Martha. Editor’s note]. Lehrbuch der

Kirchengeschichte fur Studierende. Franz - Xaver Kraus. Volume I. (Translation without prejudice, my 4 years of German are far away.)

Duchesne, in his Christian Origins, chap. XXVI notes besides quite judiciously: “Saint Pothinus is the first Gallo-Roman bishop whose name was preserved. That does not mean in so far as he is the most former bishop or this country did not receive the light of the Gospel as of the time of the apostles. Known facts are a thing, real facts another one. Christianity has to be as old in this country as in the countries of similar geographical location, Africa for example “.

If we understand well the various traditions on this subject (particularly the treatise on the Trinity, De mysterio sanctae trinitatis, ascribed today to Saint Caesarius of Arles), there would have been Christians on the spot therefore as of the end of the 1st century of our era. “ Civitas Arelatensis discipulum apostolorum sanctum Trophimum habuit fundatorem, Narbonensis sanctum Paulum, Tolosana sanctum Saturninum, Vasensis sanctum Daphnum. Per istos enim quatuor apostolorum discipulos, in universa Gallia ita sunt ecclesiae constitutae, ut eas per tot annorum spatia numquam permiserit Christus ab adversari occupari. The city of Arles had Saint Trophimus, a disciple of the apostles, for its founder, that of Narbonne Saint Paul, that of Tolosa Saint Saturnin, that of Vaison Saint Daphnus. These four disciples of the apostles founded Churches in all the country, so that their see was never occupied by heretics “.

But as usual with Christians, the truth is out there! Through the deficiency of the texts, it is more probable to suppose than Christianity was introduced into the country by Eastern ones and Greeks. It entered the area by going up the Rhone. But the completely foreign nature of these first proselytes, and particularly the fact that they spoke rather Greek language, slowed down its spreading. The latter accelerated really only at the beginning of the 4th century, with the support of the emperor Constantine…

It seems therefore not very probable that the Christians of Autun could play an active role in the final arrest of Mariccus, even with the assistance of those from Lyon.

What is likely, on the other hand, it is that first Christians did nothing to oppose it, did nothing to denounce this scandal, even among them. They were from the start in the Roman camp, instead of being on the side of this unfortunate bagauda.

Emperor Claudius had wanted “ to Romanize “ the Celtic aristocracy of the territory. He tried to do it by prohibiting the exercise of druidic worship. Resistances appeared, uprisings occurred, while in Rome itself, after the assassination of Nero, the generals competed for the power.

Here how the French historian Maurice Bouvier (yes, yes, as Jacqueline Kennedy) presents the things in his book especially devoted to the emperors.

Druidism was in full revival at the time when Roman Capitol flamed, disastrous omen for the Empire.

Druids and bards who had survived persecutions, started to call for resistance, in exalting Mariccus, the predestined man chosen by the god-or-demons, descended from the heaven to liberate the country from the foreign yoke. Rome was taken by the Celts, but, the temple of Jupiter being remained intact, the Roman Empire survived. The fire - which devastates it now - is the sign of the heavenly anger. The Empire of the earthly things will now pass to transalpine peoples. There what the druids - and therefore Mariccus - sang (sic) at the time.

In short, the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), being based on various popular beliefs, prepare the uprising of their people around + 69; gathering from eight to ten thousand men around Mariccus who, to ensure his recruitment, promised the freeing of the slaves and the right to live shielded from the abuses of the Roman exactions.

Soon he controlled part of the land and especially the forests, occupying half of the current French department of Allier. [It was therefore about one of the very first the bagaudae. Editor’s note].

So that the rebellion extends and becomes irrevocably effective, it had been necessary the Aedui join Mariccus, but in one century, the Roman influence had already deeply modified the behavior of their youth, especially considering previous suppressions. Moreover, interests attached them to Rome. Also, either during a fight, or through treachery, Mariccus fell into their hands. They delivered him to the emperor Vitellius who sentenced him at once to be fed to the wild animals. In the middle of the arena, Mariccus, the Boian, looked at the starving wild animals pouncing on him, then to stop, to look up, to smell the air, and finally to move back then to come to lie down at his feet. Was this man with an

attractive glance, a natural tame? On the steps the people prepared to applaud him, astonished or happy to see Mariccus showing that his invulnerability was not a legend.

Such a new development evoked indeed, for the crowd present on the spot, the old druidic myth of the deity taming the animals. It is it him we see, on the cauldron of Gundestrup, to hold at bay the elephants and to reduce to impotence the devourer carnivore.

But the emperor Vitellius understood the danger at once and ordered to his soldiers to cut the throat of Mariccus who, struck to death, collapsed in the arena where his blood was spread. This execution was more than the death of a man: the end of an ideal [that of the Bagaudae of this time. Editor’s note].

The Aedui and the troops of Vitellius dispersed the Boians and removed from History their city, the Gergovia “Boïorum “ the Gergovia of Boians, of which the site still today comes under the field of the conjecture.

Below the exact text of Tacitus (Hist. II, LXI).

“ Amid the adventures of these illustrious men, one is ashamed to relate how a certain Mariccus, a Boian of the lowest origin, pretending to divine inspiration, ventured to thrust himself into fortune's game, and to challenge the arms of Rome. Calling himself the champion of Celtica, and a god (for he had assumed this title), he had now collected eight thousand men, and was taking possession of the neighboring villages of the Aedui, when that most formidable tribe-state attacked him with a picked force of its native youth, to which Vitellius attached some cohorts, and dispersed the crowd of fanatics. Mariccus was captured in the engagement, and was soon after exposed to wild beasts, but not having been torn by them, was believed by the senseless multitude to be invulnerable, till he was put to death in the presence of Vitellius“.

Conclusion: Mariccus was a kind of Celtic Orpheus and he fascinated because it was seen well that a god-or-demon lived him. He was the author of sacred anthems or magic incantations. The entire nature seemed to react to his voice, he always had a good explanation to give to the quivering of the trees and by hearing him even wild animals lay down at his feet.

NOTICES AND VARIOUS REMARKS.

Coincidences are part of the life. The human beings have a comprehension and knowledge generally limited enough of probabilities, we do not understand the laws relating to the large numbers, and we succumb easily to the selective memory and to the subjective validation: this tendency to remember the positive correlations and to forget the greatest number of cases where nothing meaningful happens. The only common point in reality of all these coincidences is our desire to explain them. However coincidences, as remarkable as they can sometimes appear, are not at all surprising. In fact, most are only events with no meaning . Unusual events become highly probable when enough individuals are involved. This lifts the cover of mystery surrounding certain phenomena and leads quite simply towards the scientific reflection.

The real meaning of odd coincidences can be understood and explained by what is called the law of the very large numbers. This statistical law establishes that with a sufficiently large sample, even most improbable becomes probable, and therefore becomes “supernatural.”

1. Mariccus druid and even “high druid “?

As we have already had the opportunity to say in our previous booklet, but repetere = ars docendi; nothing proves it and nothing contradicts it. The only historian who mentions him says him being “a Boian of the lowest origin “ therefore of the 3rd function, but he could have been very well a clandestine druid. In any event, considering the tone of the text of Tacitus (systematic racist denigration) everything is possible.

2. Did the Christians influence Aedui who sold him to the Romans? The sending of missionaries in Gaul by the Apostles is hardly probable. The first Christian missionaries undoubtedly arrived fifty years later, around the end of the first century. The Christian community of Autun is not known before the 2nd century (mission of Andochius or Thyrsus among the Aedui).

3. Memory of Mariccus in Bourbonnais, because native from Neris? Neris belonged to the city of the Bituriges, far enough from the Boian settlement area. Neriomagos was the chief town of a “pagus minor “of the Bituriges Cubi, whose name was preserved as Narzenne < Nericiana, covering roughly speaking the southern point of the current department of Cher and the western and southern zones of the district of Montlucon; therefore far from the Boian area in the circle of Aeduan influence (between the Loire and the Allier River in Nievre, and between the Allier and the Aubois River in Cher). Guerche upon Aubois is probably not the Gergobia of Boians : its name comes from the Germanic wirkia > guircia. Saint Parize is more probable, but not certain either.

4. Mariccus “man of the inextricable Pontiniacensis Sylva “(sic)? Forgery, it is too far from the Boian area!

5. True reasons of the non-support of the Aedui for the cause of Mariccus. They are, basically, easy to guess given History. The Aedui since nearly one century had boasted about being “friends of the Roman People “ even to the detriment of the interests of their fellow citizens. We find the same cosmopolitan and mercantile, anti-national, mentality, today, in this unfortunate country, because if the French are known for their left in policy, they are also known for having two types of right wing: the national right wing and the businesses right wing, both doing not have much to do together. Their national right-wing jumps on the bandwagon of the victory of Vercingetorix at Gergovia in - 51 (before our era) and supported the revolt of Sacrovir in 21. What brought to them besides a wild suppression in the second case.

Forty-eight years after they were hardly in a hurry to start again, the more so as the popular movement of Mariccos prefigured the Bagaudae: at the same time hideouts of resistance fighters and country revolts. This second aspect was not cut out for rallying the possessing class whose kids like Saint Symphorian forme the elite teens of Augustodunum (Autun) become capital of the Aedui instead of Bibracte.

6. The witnessed deity of the Between-Loire and Allier river, country of the Ambivaritoi where the Boians had found refuge, was Sinquatis, eponym of the current town of Saincaize.

The reading of the booklet by Auguste Dupont on the subject, published under the title “Essay on the religious Revolution tried by the Boian Mariccus in the country between the Loire and the Allier River evangelized by Saint Patrick “ (in 1870) left us thoughtful…

It is true that some people made this hero of the Celtic independence a kind of saint; because men call sanctity (sanctitas) in the Romano-British and Gallo-Roman world, in Narbonnese particularly, the charismatic relation (divine patronage) being able to exist between the sovereign god-or-demon (Taran/Toran/Tuireann = Jupiter) and kings or chiefs. This notion of divine patronage expressed by the Latin term of sanctitas, is a at the same time Latin and Celtic religious concept.

The Celts indeed experimented a particular form of relationship between their god-or-demons and their leaders, conveyed well by the fact that they thought to be of divine origin (descendants of Ogmius, or Herakles for the Greeks, even descendants of Belin/Belen/Belenos, said Apollo in interpretatio graeca). It was therefore relatively easy to them to interpret in their way the “sanctitas “: the divine force going down from the god-or-demons to the great political leaders or warriors, as being applicable to the case of Mariccus.

The panegyric of Maximian by Mamertinus, a particularly important text because expressing the ideas of the Celtic rhetoricians of the time, begins with the following expression, “ille siquidem Diocletiani auctor deus… “ What means: “ The god-or-demon founder, or father, of the race of Diocletian… “ We therefore deal in this precise case with an example of Romano-Celtic syncretism. The Latin noun of sanctitas being used to express a druidic idea: a certain form of mythical ancestry , or of divine patronage, of the great Celtic god-or-demons, and mainly of Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

The same process took place with saint Ceneri and Saint-Leonard-des-Bois, some chiefs of bagaudae reigning on the borders of the future French Sarthe and Orne departments, in the 3rd century, according to Maurice Bouvier (the emperors…)

N.B. The thesis of this French historian is acceptable on the condition of specifying well that there would have been then merging or mix-up of these legends with later historical characters having similar names in the 6th and 7th centuries.

The believers in the unfortunate Mariccus having survived have handed down to the following generations, either what they learned from his mouth, by living with him, and by seeing him acting, or what they then understood in light of his unfortunate example. Because the unhappy example of Mariccuos shows us how the divinized man can make peace with animals and nature, by the emission of positive vibrations. But also that policy is a thing (which can be commendable) and spirituality another (his kingdom was not intended to be of this world). It is therefore necessary there too to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s (life in society, social conformism, everyday life) and reserve to gods what belongs to gods (spirituality, private life, freedom of thought).

HESUS = SETANTA (CUCHULAINN in Ireland).

The Hesus known as Cuchulainn will be classified here in the category of the animal deities like Epona and the great Hornunnos because of his extraordinary capacity to take monstrous and strictly speaking INHUMAN shapes at the time of his fits of warlike fury (riastrade and en blaith, lon gaile, lon laith, luan laith etc….)

Regarding the life and death of our gentle lord (of Muirthemne according to Lady Gregory), we highly recommend the masterful thesis of Lisa Gibney entitled "The heroic biography of Cu Chulainn) defended in 2004 (National University of Ireland Maynooth ) and which has only one defect, it does not emphasize enough that it is only a question of the historization in Ireland of a pan Celtic not to say universal myth (that of the hero demi-god who sacrifices himself for his people) appeared somewhere in central Europe 4000 years ago (supposed period of the formation of the Proto-Celtic in the urnfield culture) or more (6000 before our era for Peter Forster and Alfred Toth 2003) .

But the word history has two meanings.

On the one hand, it refers to facts or events which occurred and had an impact inside the life of Mankind. Appearance and development of the myth of the successful exit from the ice of the antechamber of Paradise by the hesus Cuchulainn and his apotheosis constitute well in this perspective a real event for the believers, to start with the former druids having approached Setanta known as the hound of the smith somewhere in Central Europe 2000 years before the common era; and of which historical impact is obvious, since million Irishmen during the ages placed their hope in his example, one of the latest to date being besides Patrick Pearse and his Courage School (St Enda 1908).

The word History also indicates, quite simply, the historical science. This one tries to establish the proof of the reality of the facts at the origin of the various beliefs, not without interpreting them also, by the way. The neutrality of the historical science is itself a myth. We see that very well in the France of today.

It is very important the historian does his job scrupulously and reports with rigor what the documents make him perceive of the Celtic civilization, of the account of former druids; including in what it had strange, of amazing, or irreducible, for those which hear it for the first time.

These Irish legends are indeed the remote recollection or the ultimate echo of a big pan-Celtic myth about on the god-man (the preternatural or paranormal powers of the superheroes) worked out somewhere in Central Europe 2000 years before our era (the common era) by the first druids or the primordial druids.

Among the oldest mentions concerning the Celts there is a whole series of texts is; in which the classical authors make fun abundantly with them; and of which we find the echo in the Nicomachean or Eudemian Ethics by Aristotle. “A man is not brave if he endures formidable things through unknowing (for instance, if owing to madness he were to endure a flight of thunderbolts), nor if he does so owing to passion when knowing the greatness of the danger, as the Celts take arms and march against the waves; and in general, the courage of barbarians has an element of passion.”

“Of those who go to excess he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (we have said previously that many states of character have no names), but he would be a sort of madman or insensible person if he feared nothing, neither earthquakes nor the waves, as they say the Celts do not; while the man who exceeds in confidence about what really is terrible is rash.”

It is an allusion to a feature of Celtic manners which, probably observed by the first travelers from Greece , was used as an example to characterize the madness, the excess, in the Greek world at the end of the 5th century.

We encounter here a certain point nevertheless, the limits of every method, which makes it possible to see only what it aims.

The fact that the apotheosis/assumption of the Hesus embodied in Cuchulainn is single in its kind; and that it is badly locked up within the limits of space and time. We saw at what point it was difficult to circumscribe it in space and time (Central Europe in the – 5th century? Ireland around the year zero of our era?) ; perhaps because it pertains more to Metahistory than to History simply.

Historian is not for all that reduced to silence on this subject.

He can analyze rigorously the accounts and conclude legitimately that it is certain that the druids of the time recognized in Setanta more than a mere mortal (inevitably since he was a semi-god-or-demon); and that in Irish documentation the princesses of Emain witnessed they have seen Cuchulainn ascending into heaven.

It is not possible nevertheless to affirm the reality of the divinity of Hesus Setanta Cuchulainn in his whole magnificence WITHOUT HAVING ALREADY THE FAITH AND A CELTIC FAITH TO MOVE PILLAR STONES.

Editor’s note. Tigernach, an annalist of the 11th century, placed the death of the Hesus embodied in the form “Cuchulainn” in the year 2 of our era. It actually seems that it is somewhat former (around year zero?) what would then make it coincide roughly with the birth of the great Nazarene rabbi , born, himself, around - 6 or - 7.

Other experts in religions or comparative mythologies place the appearance of the great Hesus embodied in Cuchulainn in Irish documentation, in the – 7th century before J.C. (in the - 7th century before Julius Caesar). The dating of the mythical or pertaining metahistory accounts is always a perilous exercise! The mythological cycle goes back to the origins of Celtic civilization and seems in Ireland to have received adjustments until the Christian era.

Historians in the scientific sense of the word should not ignore or to occult these texts, they must even look at them. But sincerely led by the desire to understand our predecessors, and not that to condemn them on the face of things. In other words, the historians in the scientific sense of the word, must apply to all these religious facts which disturb their generally accepted ideas on the matter, or the dominant ideology with which they agree (because the dominant ideology that exists, especially at those who profess to tell us what we must think); in short, the philosophy summarized one day in this expression by Terence: “I am a human being and nothing that is human alien to me.”

THE DIVINE ORIGINS OF CUCHULAINN.

The conception of Cuchulainn (compert Conculainn)

Theoretically his father was the god Lug , but you may nevertheless have doubts, it would not be the first time the Irish tradition would muddle filiations. And why not a rebellious son of Taran/Toran/Tuireann?

It is not possible?

In any case it does not matter because even Sualtam, the adoptive father of our hero , had to himself also supernatural or divine ascents.

Sualtam son of Beccaltach son of Moraltach son of Umendruad. However this Beccaltach was also the father of two supernatural beings called Dolb and Indolb.

But the register used here in these legendary (from Latin legenda , “things to be read”) narrative in connection with the childhood - maponiaca – and the death of Hesus as Setanta Cuchulainn, is anthropomorphic.

In the beginning Cuchulainn was nevertheless only humanly aware of his divinity, as of what it implied for his mission. He was informed of his divine nature ('Cía tai-siu eter?' 'or Cú Chulaind.' 'Iss messe do athair a s- sídib .i. Lug mac Ethlend.') but late (he was 17 years old at the time) and what complicated things is that this whole part of Setanta Cuchulainn's biography was sabotaged by Christians in its transmission (Iss ed atberat araili ro fich Lug mac Eithlend la Culaind Coin Sesrig m-Breslige).... Son of Lug, grandson of the Fate and therefore a demigod-or-demon. But in his short life, for the man that he was, experience nevertheless had to play its rightful role in the teaching of things that are justly matter of experience.

Let us note indeed that he had according to the legend an extraordinarily fast growth not only as regards his size but also various other qualities.

What therefore made that our hero had many charisma: búaid crotha, búaid delba, búaid ndénma, búaid snáma, búaid marcachais, búaid fidchilli & branduib, búaid catha, búaid comraic, búaid comluind, búaid farcsena, búaid n-urlabra, búaid comairle, búaid foraim, búaid mbánaig, búaid crichi a crích comaithig.

The gift of beauty, the gift of form, the gift of ? The gift of swimming, the gift of horsemanship, the gift of playing tablut and chess, the gift of the battle, the gift of fighting, the gift of conflict, the gift of sight, the gift of speech, the gift of counsel…..? The gift of plundering in a strange border.

But he was not less a man as we have had already the opportunity to say it.

"We make not much import of him," said Medb. "It is but a single body he has; he shuns being wounded; he avoids being taken.”

In the Lebor na hUidre, p. 59, col. 1, l. 1 : he can be wounded, he can’t escape capture; Fodaim guin. ni mou gabail. Cf. O'Keeffe, p. 15, Winifred Faraday, p. 17, line 14.

Hesus is therefore at the same time true man, but also true god-or-demon in his incarnations, because as a god-or-demon in fact, we could not find more serious (more semnotheos).

When, whereas he was only five years old; he had heard the druid Catubatuos announce that whoever would take the weapons on this day would have a glorious, but short life.

Setanta had gone at once to ask weapons and a chariot from the king Cunocavaros (Conchobar), and Catubatuos had predicted to him almost with regret:

“Noble and famous indeed thou shalt be, but transitory, soon gone.”

Little care I, said the little Hesus Cuchulainn, nor though I were but one day or one night in being, so long as after me the history of myself and doings may endure.’

Then said Cathbad again, “Well then”, get into a chariot, boy, and proceed to test in your own person whether mine utterance be truth”.

Commentaries: Hesus was therefore already fully aware, when he was five years old, that his life was to form an example to be studied or restudied, unceasingly, by future generations.

But how under these conditions are divided his divinity as his humanity?

In order to avoid rather scorning criticisms from the (Greek or Jewish besides) reason on this subject facing the living paradox of the embodiments of the avatars of the Tokad, many celticists or certain scholars tended to exaggerate to overestimate or to increase, the distance which can exist between the divinity of Hesus and his humanity. The divine one would live the man Setanta/Cuchulainn a little like the Grail living its castle or its shrine.

However it is well the same being, great-grandson of the Fate, who is also at the same time a true god-or-demon and a true man. Two natures, human nature and divine nature, meet in the person of Hesus Cuchulainn. The expression can appear abstract, but its real sense is fundamental. It comes to specify how this Hesus embodied in Setanta known as Cuchulainn is at the same time really a god-or-demon and really a man. The legends having to be read in connection with the life of Cuchulainn let no doubt linger about the awareness that Cuchulainn quickly had to be the last grandson born from the Fate, to be at one with It; and, consequently, therefore, in a sense, to be himself a little in a way the “Fate made man.”

While dealing with the identity of Hesus true god-or-demon and true man at the time of his incarnations (Morfessa, Setanta), while remembering his life and his work, while looking into the testimony of the medieval druids in connection with his death and his apotheosis; we speak, of course, about a certain idea of the Fate, interdependent of men by definition since they are the only ones to sense its coincidences, and which is developed in a multitude of individual destinies (the gaefa of Vikings, i.e., the share of luck capital that the fairies who were present at your birth grant you as of the beginning), and not about a law of worlds , abstract,like in Buddhism.

Before this cycle, strictly speaking metahistorical, living in the islands north of the world (Hyperborea) with more divinity than humanity (we find him in the book of conquests and with the name of Marovesos as king of a mysterious island, Thule: Morfessa master of Falias in the Irish apocryphal deviation); then born in this cycle to help us through his example to make our salvation.This embodied example neither is shared nor divided into two persons, he is one last-born child of the supreme Fate, a god made man on this occasion.

THE NICKNAMES OR CLAIMS TO FAME OF OUR LORD OF MURTHEMNE (to take over a name dear to Lady Gregory).

The main titles of this “demigod-or-demon” are these of Marovesos master of Thule, Setanta, Hound of Culann, Roviros (true man) Semnotheos (serious as god), contortionist (cf riastrade), king of the warriors; etc.

THE GREAT HESUS (if this name derives well from vesus).

It is the Celtic translation of an Indo-European word meaning something of the kind “who knows, who can, who excels in, who is good in ,” as in the expressions bellovesus (who knows how to fight) sigovesus (who knows how to overcome), or other.

With the epithet Setanta, it is now the one who can make good progress, the one who knows how to go ahead. By fall of the “v” the word vesus would have been then reduced to esus only. Sentovesus would be therefore the one who can make the way, the way to be followed. It was the case of the kings (rix, riges), but also of the druids and of the satirists. It was to be also therefore the case of the Hesus the Fate would send to free then to save its people through an example: he would be a king or more exactly worthy to be a king without becoming it himself (it will be his adoptive son), but also druid and poet, unlike an ordinary king on the Earth.

Note found on a loose leaf by the heirs to Peter deLaCrau.

MAROVESUS MASTER OF THULE (Morfessa master of Falias in Irish language).

This island [Thule], endowed with an unspecified position because rather legendary, constituted, for the Ancients the northernmost boundary of the known world, and the epithet ultimate was always attached to it. It would have been discovered by Pytheas in the area of Iceland or Shetland Islands. (Even of the Faroe islands. In short somewhere in the north of Scotland. Editor’s note). It could be possible to compare its symbolism to that of hyperborean areas, so often evoked by the Greeks. Thule became indeed in poetry and legends a fabulous country, with endless days around the summer solstice, endless nights around the winter solstice. Thule thus symbolizes the boundary of the known world. Perhaps is it the meaning of the ballad by Goethe.

Es war ein König in Thüle… There was a king in Thule, etc.

This ballad strangely points out the Celtic topic of the Sovereignty which, in the appearance of a beautiful maiden, being readily let married, gives to the designated sovereign the symbolic cup filled with intoxicating drink. See the stories of the Phantom's Ecstatic Vision and of the Cup of Cormac.

On the other hand, Goethe made this cup, at least partly, a romantic memory, completely in the mood of the Lied in the 18th century. Nevertheless he kept the main thing , since the cup cannot pass to the heirs after the death of the king.

“And when his time to die came he counted all his wealth, and everything gave to his heirs, but only kept that cup.”

The topic of the ballad points out nothing known in Germanic mythology or folklore and Goethe seem to us to be the only one to deal with the topic in the German literature. What was therefore his source? The poem dates back the full Ossianic time (Mac Pherson was very read in Germany).

What is certain it is that environment tallies exactly with that which is released from the legend of Hesus embodied later in Cuchulainn (his kingdom will not be in this world since he will fail in front of the stone of Destiny which makes the kings, etc.)

SETANTA.

The true name of the second avatar of our Hesus was Setanta, what means as we saw it in Celtic language “the one who walks, the one who makes his way.” Because it is by following the walking one that man finds his way, once again let us repeat it!

In Irish Celtic mythology, Séadanda (or Setanta in English) is the first name of Cúchulainn until he reached the age of five years old; it has the meaning of "path," "guide."

It is obviously Gallic, since the Irish cannot keep the n immediately followed by an unvoiced. Setanta = Setantios is a singular nominative whose plural Setantii is the name of a Gallic people of Great Britain. The epic account of the exploits of this demigod, located in Ireland, dates back to early antiquity, and it has been preserved by the bards thanks to the alliance of their corporation with the Christian priests.

When this epic was first written down in the 7th century of our era, the Irish were Christians.

From were a number of expressions that attest to the Christianity of the scribes.

The word cetain "first fast" was used to refer to Wednesday, thus recalling the ancient Christian custom of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays of each week.

One can also mention demna "demons”.

The personal influence of St. Patrick is visible. The Celtic doctrine of the other life did not include judgment after death. In his preaching, St. Patrick seems to have insisted above all on the Last Judgment; hence his familiar swearword; among the Irish, he pronounced in Old Welsh, i.e. in his native language: mo dé broth "judgment of my God". Hence the expression debrad, Irish pronunciation of the dé broth of St. Patrick, put in the mouth of Cùchulainn, a kind of swearword that Mr. Windisch translated by bei Gott.

CU-CULANTI or HOUND OF THE SMITH NAMED CULANN.

Unlike what occurs among Greco-Romans, the dog is indeed, among Celtic people, subject of flattering comparison or metaphors. To compare a hero with a dog was to honor him by paying homage to his warlike value. Any pejorative idea was absent. The envoy of Dante, the veltro, is for example a greyhound of vertragus type > old French veautre, an animal we also find in Durer. The baleful dog of the kind hound of the Baskervilles exists only in the folklore, probably under the influence of Christianity.

The Celts, as well islander as continental, had dogs trained for fight and hunting (vertragoi, segusioi, agassaioi, and so on).

Culann’s hound is therefore the nickname attributed to the hesus Setanta in his youth (Cu Chulainn is the translation of it in Gaelic language), because he committed one day to replace the hound of the blacksmith Culann, in order to defend his goods and his cattle.

KING OF THE WARRIORS.

We convey thus for want of something better, the Gaelic word vlad: sovereignty, kingship, which is often associated with him, would be only through that of his ADOPTIVE people: the Ulaid. This sovereignty must nevertheless in no way being mixed up with the clear and simple sovereignty of a monarch over his people. Nor even with a sovereignty of the type “Christ-the-king” because the kingdom of the Hesus Cuchulainn has only the value of an example for youth.

The sovereignty of the Hesus Cuchulainn indeed does not affect the whole of the society, of the people, but only its youth as Patrick Pearse (in Saint Enda) saw it very well.

Hesus Cuchulainn was therefore recognized in his time sovereign of young people in Ulidia. But he will not become therefore king of the country, for various reasons related to his personal destiny (gaefa/gaesa).

To simplify let us say that his sovereignty or his chiefdom is not actually in this world, unlike what the Christians in connection with their master the great Nazarene rabbi, claim hypocritically. His kingdom

is not of this world, his kingdom is not of this world….yes but they expect nevertheless impatiently his will is done…. on Earth! And they work fort that actively like Muslims!

What is not the case of the admirers or believers in Cuchulainn. The life and the work of the young lord of Muirthemne, as Lady Gregory calls him, are indeed for us only examples, sources of inspiration, even of meditation as regards his weak points. Setanta Cuchulain is, of course, the son of a god (Lug, Taran./Toran/Tuireann???) but he is also only a man, like everybody, as his great adversary queen Medb will point out it (he can be wounded or captured).

No person claiming to be based on this leadership or sovereignty of the Hesus Cuchulainn, to found an unspecified law, to control our lives, to say to us how it would be necessary to eat, sleep, study, work, drink or love, in short how it would be necessary to live (according to a kind of druidic sharia)… could not have our agreement nor our support. De minimis not curat druis. God could not deal with our way of drinking, sleeping, washing us, brushing our teeth, defecating , like in Islamic land (Dar Al Islam).

The kingdom of the Hesus Cuchulainn is actually not, as for it, and unlike the others some people rather hypocritically therefore, put forward, OF THIS WORLD. We must keep an absolute distinction between the role of the king and the role of the druid, between the spirituality and the vocation of the powers that be (to protect and support their people).

“The nation of all the Celts is extremely devoted to religious rites; and on that account they who are troubled with unusually severe diseases, and they who are engaged in battles and dangers, either sacrifice men as victims, or vow that they will sacrifice them, and employ the druids as the performers of those sacrifices; because they think that unless the life of a man be offered for the life of a man, the mind of the immortal gods cannot be rendered propitious, and they have sacrifices of that kind ordained for national purposes” (Caesar, Book VI, chapter XVI).

The druidic approach of the sacrifice of the Hesus Setanta/Cuchulainn is based, of course, on a certain belief in the redeeming value of the suffering or of the VOLUNTARILY AGREED sacrifice. The sacrifice of the Hesus is primarily an existential sacrifice, i.e., a gift of his own life to be used as an example to men. In order to show them that it is possible to be released from the congenital disease of the master race (ces noinden Ulad), which affects actually each and every one of us, since if it is able to affect the master race (the Ulaid) it is also a fortiori able to affect us mere mortals. This mysterious curse, cast by another horsewoman, or a double of Epona (who would be then ambivalent?) is an image of our original weakness as being made out flesh and bones and not out of pure mind.

In this meaning, this sacrifice radically differs from the Jewish human or animal sacrifices (holocausts, scapegoats, etc.) in which the external gesture is enough; without there is need for the conversion of the very whole soul/mind of the one who wants to redeem himself from his deontological faults(the true knight for example, like Cuchulainn, should never slew neither drivers neither messengers nor folk without arms).

What our idea of the divinity suggests, it is not holocausts or scapegoats, but firstly the recovery of the soul/mind having fallen short of their duty (of their ethical gessa).

The death of Cuchulainn is wholly in keeping with the VOLUNTARY AND FREELY AGREED sacrifices of the former druidism, while presenting a radical singularity.

The singularity of the sacrifice of Cuchulainn comes from what the contents of his example, it was his own life, as of his younger age, until his death on the standing stone in Moritamna , Murthemne under the hand of Lady Gregory. The life of Hesus as Cuchulainn became since the example even of the Celtic sacrificial way. Patrick Pearse had understood it very well.The Celtic sacrifice is firstly a spiritual sacrifice, that of the soul/mind who agrees; and then only a bodily sacrifice.

On the Continent, there is another example of a devotio of this type, it is that of Vercingetorix after the defeat of Alesia. As in the case of the hesus Cuchulainn, the event made an impression, not only in the druids present (there are to be well some of them in the hill fort or in the relief army) but also in the Romans, during several generations. It is rare that an historical event at this period is reported by four authors being based each one on different sources. It is, however, the case in the example of

sacrifice which occupies us here: Caesar, of course, Florus taking over a lost book by Livy, Plutarch and Cassius Dio.

Caesar who improves, like a painter would do it by softening the most contrasted features, the scene of the surrender itself, is the only one to describe the moment of this devotio. “Having convened a council the following day, Vercingetorix declares that he had undertaken that war, not on account of his own exigences, but on account of the general freedom; and since he must yield to the goddess-or-demoness Fortune, he offered himself to them for either purpose, whether they should wish to atone to the Romans by his death, or surrender him alive.”

Caesar was, of course, informed of these details, afterwards, by spies or allies who could attend the scene directly. He takes on only what is useful to the structure of his account, the reasons pled by Vercingetorix, and he omits, voluntarily or not, the ritual of a religious ceremony of which the “ armed council” constituted the ideal framework. Caesar could not reproduce a scene which revealed too much the religious nature of what he wanted to report only as a simple surrender, but the surrender itself, such as it appears in the text by Plutarch, proves nevertheless that Vercingetorix staged an authentic religious ritual. That Caesar himself will prolong, six years later, by concluding it with the true human sacrifice, without ceremony , of the unfortunate one. But under conditions very different from the apotheosis of Cuchulainn in his celestial chariot.

Here the account of Plutarch: “ The leader of the whole war, Vergentorix, after putting on his most beautiful armor and decorating his horse, rode out through the gate. He made a circuit around Caesar, who remained seated, and then leaped down from his horse, stripped off his suit of armor, and seating himself at Caesar's feet remained motionless .”

We could be tempted to see in this dramatic scene the effect of a literary embellishment. One would be wrong. Several details are a sure sign on this subject. Vercingetorix attires himself with his more beautiful weapons, these which are usually intended for the god-or-demons. He achieves this warlike ritual with his horse, this same horse which is as the prolongation of the knight in war, another body which transports him, which carries his weapons and his trophies. But especially, by turning around Caesar, Vercingetorix performs a true religious rite, that of the walking around . In the defeat and his devotio, Vercingetorix therefore showed himself greater than the one he made publicly being recognized as his master.

Achieved by Vercingetorix who wanted to restore the royalty and who preached the former values, this gift of oneself appears, obviously, as an old religious practice that the young aristocrat gives to the last style; by forgetting no detail, and by adding again to the etiquette perhaps. The example he gives us remains single but perfectly revealing , of the abnegation of the warrior, of the gift he makes of his person in favor to the god-or-demons and, beyond, for the benefit of the people in the name of which the ritual is accomplished. The devotio of Vercingetorix was effective: Caesar put aside the Eduan and Arverne war prisoners, he gave back to their peoples, the others were allotted to the Roman soldiers as spoils, at a rate of one per capita.

What seems to be presented initially in the form of a gift of the men to the god-or-demons is actually a gift of the Supreme Fate to Mankind, considering the redeeming value of every freely agreed suffering. Today still is it not pardoned the criminal who achieved a heroic act and who thus redeems himself ? Contrary to the Jewish human or animal sacrifices, the druidic sacrifice is thus not firstly what makes the others suffering: it is what can put us again in communion with the next world.

Is also “true sacrifice” besides every work taken back to this upper value that is the redeeming value of the effort or of the work, thanks to which we can exist truly (Celtic existentialism).

It was thus necessary that it is a god-or-demon-man who gives the first an example, and a serious god-or-demon-man (semnotheos therefore). That was the work of Hesus as Setanta/Cuchulainn. By compensating with the weight of the example of his life and death thrown in the balance, the congenital weakness of the Ulaid (that we are all somewhere); the hesus Setanta/Cuchulainn provided to Mankind the unsurpassed salutary example. Because if the master race that are the Ulaid is floored by this quite mysterious disease (ces noinden), then what to say about us who are only ordinary men. He cleared for us the way we must follow and had given to us, at the same time, the strength to pass there after him.

ROVIROS (ROFIR in Gaelic language): SUPER MAN.

As an incarnation of Hesus, Cuchulainn is consubstantial with the god-or-demons, demigod-or-demon born of a true god-or-demon (Lug). After his apotheosis/assumption in a glorious chariot, the divine filiation of Hesus will appear, in all its splendor, and his rise on a magic chariot like these of the graves in Champagne will confirm this very particular relation with the world of the god-or-demons. Hesus as a demigod-or-demon even embodied god-or-demon, prefigures and symbolizes the destiny of the vanguard the whole Mankind. Hesus is its future, is its superhuman model to come.

For the druids of the time, we saw it, the humanity of the great Hesus embodied in Setanta Cuchulainn was also obviousness.

It was not the same thing thereafter. Some intellectuals, being subject to philosophical influences developing a certain contempt of the bodies (like Christianity for example) felt some difficulties to admit that the divinity could be united with a body. These tendencies exist still today besides, including in certain forms of hyper-spiritualization of druidism, due to the influence of Christianity precisely, and which do not recognize to the body, and therefore to the incarnation of the avatars, their whole place and their whole importance.

N.D.A. But if Hesus were not a true man like each one among us, then it is not us whom he can save by setting an example. It is not our suffering he can overcome by setting an example, it is not from our Ultonian disease (cf. the Ces noinden Ulad) or from our possible reincarnation in bacuceos, that he can release us. How the one who in no way would have assumed a really human nature, could he indeed release our Mankind?

THE MARTYRDOM OF THE HERO.

Foreword. We will use here the word martyrdom in its genuine meaning; i.e., to say imposed terrifying ordeal and which we could easily avoid but that one seeks nevertheless in order to be logical with oneself; and also in its current Muslim senses. Muslims calling “martyr” every man killed in action, even if he fell with weapons in his hand at the time of a great offensive or of a suicide bombing (shahid). In short, our lord (let us specify “of Muirthemné” Gregory Lady cares a lot about it) to us, it is at the same time Jesus (Cuchulainn slew never drivers nor messengers nor folk without arms) and Muhammad.

You fear to die, but you didn’t shy away from it ...... It was often said that our hero could be in no case an example of true courage because he never feared nothing, because he was in fact unaware of the danger, in general, what made him in reality an inhuman, nonhuman, being. This passage of the myth relating to him proves to us exactly the opposite! The Hesus Cuchulainn seems there fearing death to the extent of almost fainting because of that, but he will face it nevertheless until the end, in order to keep his word.

Although the son of a god (Lug or Taran/Toran/Tuireann, it doesn’t matter), our young lord of Muirthemne indeed was therefore a man, a true one, he fully lived the human condition which is ours, he was afraid, he was terrorized, he almost fainted because of that. Our lord of Muirthemne is not only a god, the Lugian divinity which was in him did not place him apart from the human condition, and it is therefore why we can take him as a good model, finally let us say as a pole star being able to guide our advance in the life, our quest for the grail on this Earth. It is by following the walking one that the path is found, that the way is found.

With the great difference compared to Christianity, despite all the value of the sacrifice in the philosophy of the ancient druidism, despite all the value of the sacrifice in the spirituality of the former druidism (to calm divine anger); that what saves us with the Hesus Mars known Culann’s hound, for the neo-druidism we represent, it is less his sacrifice in itself (let us not be as stupid as the Christians) as his example: the beautiful example he gives to us.

And besides just like the example of Joan of Arc (almost a “fellow villager ” to me my mother being born in Echenay) the example of Cuchulainn still played a great role in the fight against the English for

the independence of our dear Ireland (Erin go Bragh in the beginning of the 20th century: many works of art represent him, and particularly a statue by Oliver Sheppard in front of the General post office in Dublin).

Then Catubatuos/Cathbad and the veledae attending him, the Hesus Cuchulainn went to Duxtir/Dechtire's castle, in order to say goodbye to his mother the charioteer of King Conchobar.

Duxtir/Dechtire when he came upon the green stepped forth to meet him, while knowing well that what he was eager to do was laying into the Irishmen.Then she offered him that cup (ballan) from which to take a draft before undertaking a journey or an expedition was a certitude of victory for him; but this time what was in was only crimson blood.

Duxtir, alas ! he said, that all else forsake me surely is no wonder, when in this state [ full of blood] you offer me the cup.

A second time she took and filled the cup, then gave it to him ; and a second time it was full of blood.

Thrice she filled up the vat, and that time again it was full of blood.

Anger against the cup seized on the Hesus Cuchulainn now, whereby he hurling it against a rock shattered it ; hence to this day the name of the place, Hill of the Cup (Tulach an bhallain).

Mother it is true, you are not in fault ; since it is my prohibitions (gessa) that are all destroyed, and that my life's end is near: from my fight with the Irishmen this time I shall not return alive.

Then he said this lay:

O Dechtire, your cup is empty….

The Gaelic word ballan means “container to give beverages” but bol bail boil etc. also means chance prosperity effectiveness, from where a pun perhaps. One loses oneself in conjecture about the exact meaning of such transubstantiation. Ale or wine changed literally into blood (symbolically it is to be the blood of our hero). John Tillotson (archbishop of Canterbury in the 16th century) denounced in his time the “barbarian” nature of such an idea, and regarded as irreligious to think that the believers who take part in communion “eat and drink really flesh and blood.” From the man Jesus in this case.

We do not dare to think of a Christian influence, that would have constituted an unthinkable blasphemy at the time! Our tales and legends are chock-full of examples of magic drinks and containers (cauldron, etc.) but there it is a completely different thing, a transformation of ale or wine into blood from a demigod. All the question is therefore to know if it is really his blood or a poetic symbol.

The idea of the symbol is obviously the first which comes to mind but it should not be forgotten that these texts were composed in a time when everyone believed in wonders in supernatural in preternatural in magic, etc. and this image was perhaps not regarded as a simple metaphor at the time but as a wonder.

Transubstantiation is, literally, the conversion of a substance into another. The word indicates, for certain Christians (particularly Catholics), the conversion of the bread and of the wine into body and blood of Christ during Eucharist.

When Jesus says during the last Supper : “This is my body,” what he holds in his hands has the appearance of a bread but, according to Catholic Roman doctrines, the substance of this bread was converted into flesh of Christ. It is therefore really his body, even if the appearances accessible to senses or scientific studies remain these of bread. Same conversion occurs at the time of each celebration of the Eucharist.

Consubstantiation is the Lutheran Reformed doctrines through which, at the time of Last Supper, the bread and the wine preserve their own substances with which the substances of the body and of the blood of Christ coexist. This concept, defined by William of Ockham or Duns Scotus, was taken over by Luther.

The members of the druidic Ollotouta who have recourse to this ritual of the cup are more pragmatic. They also admit the opinion that the Hesus Mars of Antiquity or the Setanta Cuchulainn of the Middle Ages is not corporally present in the drink of this protection cup at the time of the communion, but present in the heart, the spirit and the life of those who take part in this ritual.

“To you alone it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know” (Lucan, the Pharsalia book I).

Finally, everything is a question of faith, the placebo effect shows it.

THE DEATH OF THE HERO.

Eternal history of the death of the hero. We may summarize so the drama which was played over there this day. Somewhere in the remote times of meta-history. In Ireland or in Central Europe. Fadó, fadó, fadó.

To save his people the hero had to face all that there was as human stupidity and ill-will on earth. Including that of our distant ancestors. Including that of the ancestors of French men, the Gailioin. That is said without any anti-French racism, of course, because in fact the Gailioin are only a metaphor of Mankind, but if that could contribute to a little less hubris and a little more modesty….it would be something anyway (our epoch doesn’t move in this direction). Let us say that the hesus Cuchulainn in this eternal history of the death of the hero, plays a little the role that Saoshyant plays in Persian mythology. But in a remote past, in illo tempore, and not in an eschatological distant future.

N.B. Saoshyant is the name of the supreme savior in Iranian mythology. His advent will mark the coming of the last days and of the Frashokereti, the ultimate revival. According to our Parsee brethren indeed, the duration of the world is divided into four ages lasting each one 3000 years ((the former druids had much longer cycles and juggled with figures which could seem astronomic for the epoch).

The beginning of the fourth and last age, which includes the current time, knew the appearance of the religious reformer Zoroaster and will see the advent of the savior Shaoshyant, who will come to renew the world and bring the dead back to life. A torrent of molten metal will submerge the planet to purify it, and Angra Mainyu will be definitively overcome. Mankind will be subjected to a burning torrent, which will clean it from all its stains and will make it able to live in the company of Ahura Mazda. To those who will have lived out an irreproachable life, this burning torrent will not make more effect than some “warm milk.” The Shaoshyant will sacrifice a bull and will mix his grease with the magic elixir called haoma, to create an immortality beverage he will then give to each member of the human race….

Now, all that according to our Parsee brothers.

But repeat it once again what is important it is the frame off mind presiding over these accounts: there exists a world parallel to ours peopled with beings living a hundred cuts above us. There does not exist tight barrier between the two worlds and it is in a (blessed and heavenly) part of this world that the sou/minds of late go after death (except for a few who remain blocked some time in its anteroom).

Inhabitants off the next-world can appear in ours and reciprocally the human beings can be found in the other.

The magic moment for the demonstrations of this phenomenon turn around the festival of Samon (November 1st).

There also exist places more favorable than others to these contacts.

It goes without saying that what we uns poor human beings call parallel world perhaps has to be quite logically put in the plural, the best of the images in this case being that of the mille-feuilles (the existing being-universe is as a massive tome of which we would occupy only a little part). And one day in our world only fire and water will prevail (according to Strabo). Second to that we are quite unable to say something more. It belongs to each one to see!

There exist two main versions of the death of our hero.

Oldest one, the version A, is the one appearing in the collection of manuscripts known under the name of Book of Leinster.

Brislech Mór Maige Murthemne 7 Derg-Ruathar Conaill Chernaig.

Pokorny makes the initial core going back to the middle of the 8th century. This recension has two major defects.

The first of the two is that the beginning of the story is missing.

The second one is that its comprehension is difficult.

100

Most recent one, the version B, dates back to the 15th century at soonest. There exists of it several manuscripts, of which that of the Egerton collection preserved in the British Library in London and known under number 132.

Since the beginning of the story is missing the reader will forgive us to compensate somewhat for it.

Our hero having made many enemies during his short career, he will succumb in fact to their coalition led by Queen Maeve (or Medb). Maeve, eager to be avenged for the humiliation that he had made her undergo during her expedition intended to capture the brown bull of Cualnge, therefore will hatch against him a sinister plot, by using particularly the three daughters and the three sons of one of his victims in former times, however killed in an honest way at the time of one of the innumerable duels having marked out the withdrawal of Medb’s host out of the kingdom of Ulidia: Calatin.

The problem is that it would be then to our knowledge the only example of such a battle in the Irish literature, the battles in Mag Tured being not eschatological battles but founding events.

An innumerable army of enemies? From a strictly military point of view and as regards the strategy, it is completely bad! It has to be an eschatological battle with the Hesus Cuchulainn in the role of the Shaoshyant of the Zoroastrian spirituality, as we have said it above.

To go on with this final battle fought by our hero, let us not be stupid for as much. Exactly like in the case of the Gailioin ancestors of the Frenchmen, it would be ridiculous to bear a grudge against the Irishmen of current Connaught (or Munster or Leinster or Meath) for four reasons.

First reason is that, supposing that the facts proceeded well in Ireland, the current inhabitants of Connaught (or Munster or Leinster or Meath) have no longer something to do with those who were responsible for the death of our hero at the time. A long time has been spent since, and there was even many interbreeding (with the French of the Humbert army remained on the spot, there was of them, after the battle of Castlebar on August 27, 1798).

And if the facts occurred somewhere in Central Europe several centuries earlier, same thing. Current Germans of the South Austrians or Czech, etc. have no longer something to do with the perpetrators of this quite cowardly action it is true. Moreover there was since many interbreeding. Some French people from Lorraine or Alsace settled in the 18th century (from 1716 to 1788) in Hungary or Romania, for example. The majority one of these emigrants (several thousands of people) remained fixed on the lands of the Banat. There, where Prince Eugene of Savoy, and later Maria-Theresa and the emperor Joseph II, had invited them to settle. Yes, contrary to the generally accepted ideas repeated to nausea by those who think to be intelligent and/or educated, and altruistic, of course, *, France was not always an immigration land.

Second reason is that it is obvious the authors of this saga made a point for obvious reasons of endlessly increasing the number of the enemies of the Hesus Cuchulainn determined to cause his ruin and to be avenged for him.

Characters who perhaps had nothing to do with that initially were therefore enlisted by them in their ranks just like for example Cu-Roi who had nothing to do initially with the legend of the Hesus Cuchulainn. In short, considering the well-known inclination of Celts for hyperbole, the Hesus Cuchulainn victim of an ambush set by some of his enemies quickly became in the bardic stories the Hesus Cuchulainn against multitudes, alone against all, or almost, alone against the whole world or almost. Maeve and people of Connaught are the prototype of the men and of the women made wild with power revenge and jealousy. In short some human beings !

Third reason is that the adventures of the action of then brought our hero to infringe all his interdicts (gessa) one by one, therefore to do himself his misfortune.

Last reason finally is that this tragic death (aided) is perhaps an effect of the poetic justice, the Hesus Cuchulainn having before killed himself his own son, the only son of Aife. The child had cursed him before dying and the Hesus Cuchulainn had agreed besides in advance to undergo the right punishment of this crime .

For what regards us, we prefer to read this account in a doubly symbolic way .

101

The Hesus Cuchulainn died because of the faults of this multitude of our human fellow creatures jealous of his exceptional (boudisms) charisma. Búaid crotha, búaid delba, búaid ndénma, búaid snáma, búaid marcachais, búaid fidchilli & branduib, búaid catha, búaid comraic, búaid comluind, búaid farcsena, búaid n-urlabra, búaid comairle, búaid foraim, búaid mbánaig, búaid crichi a crích comaithig.

Died because of us and of our daily cowardice even of our crimes. Died to give us the example of the sacrifice and of the abnegation. Because only sacrifice and abnegation of some ones can save the multitude. In fact, the kingdom of Ulidia and even the people of Conaught (who have, I am sure, to reflect much after that).

And it is also a spectacular illustration of the omnipotence of this set of secondary causations called Fate , supreme suzerain of the universe, including gods (Christians call that divine providence, Buddhists dharma, we, we call that Tocad. Tocade if it is put in the feminine in order not to shock anybody).

THE RESURRECTION OF THE HERO.

The transcriber of the Irish legend noted that, a few days afterwards, Cuchulainn was seen by a hundred and fifty queens who had in vain tried to retain him the day of his fatal going to war.

They saw something: Cuchulainn in his chariot in the air above Emain Macha.

Cuchulainn sang or spoke to them…..

In this legend the transcriber himself undoubtedly received from a former tradition, going back to the 1st millennium before our era somewhere on the Continent since it is written down oral literature, is therefore this statement of the former druidism about the apotheosis or ascension into heaven , of the Hesus Setanta Cuchulainn. But of course, it is more an act of faith or a legend, a belief therefore, than a well documented historical report.

As Setanta, Hesus really died in Moritamna (Murthemne). His death was noted by thousands of warriors. Nobody, on the other hand, had had the opportunity, of course, to attend the beginnings of the apotheosis of Hesus as Cuchulainn; in spite of the Christian nonsenses narrated about this subject by saint Benen (St. Patrick converting our hero); but if nobody could attend the beginnings of this apotheosis, Hesus, himself, as Cuchulainn, showed himself after his death to witnesses. The “hundred and fifty queens” who had not wanted to let him leave. It is therefore from the mouth of these hundred and fifty princesses that the druids of the time were informed : the Hesus Cuchulainn ascended into the heaven in his Siaburcharpat (in his belissamos chariot).

Such is the way in which this experiment, with its spectacular dimension, is generally conveyed through the Irish mythological traditions.

Christians Jews and Muslims can, of course, question the word of these hundred and fifty women. It is nevertheless necessary to take care not to reduce this “vision” to an ordinary apparition.At the same time or almost, on the Continent, people still buried Celtic kings and knights with their chariot.

This allegory has for aim to signify that the body of Hesus (that of Cuchulainn) was no longer locked up within the limits of the physical world we know and in which nevertheless, very really, he lived. It was bellissime. It was no longer stopped by the obstacles of the syllogism of Queen Medb.

"We make not much import of him," said Medb. "It is but a single body he has; he shuns being wounded; he avoids being taken.”

In the Lebor na hUidre, p. 59, col. 1, l. 1 : he can be wounded, he can’t escape capture; Fodaim guin. ni mou gabail. Cf. O'Keeffe, p. 15, Winifred Faraday, p. 17, line 14.

The ascension into heaven of the Hesus in a glorious body and in a glorious siaburcharpat, in accordance with the tradition of the Champagne chariot graves (what a strange method) , is a rumor which had to mark its time. Ireland of this time if the facts proceeded well in this island. The great free and independent Celtica, if the facts actually occurred on the Continent, before being associated with their island by Irish bards.

102

This ascension into heaven or apotheosis is the reward of the Fate (Tokade) granted to the heroism of the Hesus embodied in Cuchulainn’s form. His courage was profitable, the Law of Worlds recognized his action of assistant or of secondary causation or of fate’s agent (what a paradox) by crowning him with the light of the great heroes (en blaith, lon gaile, lon laith, luan laith). By making the embodiment of Hesus ascend into heaven in his chariot of glory, the Tokad therefore validated, of course, his example (he is a good model just like Muhammad) as well the acts and the words of the hound of Culann but also his acts and his words , during the time of his passage on this earth.

COMMENTARIES.

The good new in all this story (Suscetlon) it is that by going down so in the ice of the antechamber of heaven to come out again from it in a glorious but undamaged body; the hesus Cuchulainn thus proved that it was possible to triumph over death and over endless reincarnation in bacuceos.

After the death of Cuchulainn, Hesus resumed his true life, that over which death can no longer have power. By finding again his visible body entirety (his head, his hand, etc.) Hesus also showed the importance of such a bodily entirety in Celtic metaphysics (see the case of the fishing men king Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons, etc.).

Our legends always saw in his adventure, with its double face of suffering and glory, the top of teaching through example.

As said it one day a poet speaking about Hesus (no, no, it is not Patrick Pearse):

The Gaelic narrative entitled Siabur Charpat Con Culaind, explains to us by definition and in spite of the Christian manipulations of the text, that our hero started by remaining a certain time in the frozen depths of the heaven antechamber after his death and before his apotheosis.

Triple or quadruple descent in the hell of the frozen non-world (andumnon) or in the anterooms of the heaven like Donnotegia?

As we could see it, the great Hesus is initially known as, in the Irish apocryphal tradition (under the name of Marovesos or Morfessa): master of Falias. However this Gaelic word comes from a form “Vo-Alas” “Fo-Al” meaning “under the rocks.”

Marovesos or Morfhessa is therefore a god-or-demon of the underground world and the island of Thule, called Falias by the Gaels, is only one of the entrances of this underground world. But we are here reduced there to simple assumptions.

The question which arises then is therefore the following one: following what process the Hesus could acquire this power, following what “descent in the ice of the hell?” A symbolic descent, of course , or IN SPIRIT more exactly, his body, itself, remaining on the spot.

As Henry Lizeray established it well while speaking about a completely different character, it is true: “Ulysses remains at the edge of the pit in a state of sleepwalking” (page 85 of the D.S.D.) It is therefore an “astral” travel of the soul/mind in the non-world, a well-known shamanic process (the going of the soul/mind out of the body).

Most probable assumption we saw it is that of a descent in the ice of heaven’s anteroom just after his decapitation against the pillar stone in Murthemne. A short stay besides and not as the Christians affirm it until the time of St. Patrick. What a crap. And after this short stay needing in no way the assistance from St. Patrick; our hero would ascend into the heaven according to the “Champagne” method of the chariot graves . The Christians would have only staged this apotheosis.

Some mythologists claim nevertheless that there exists in the life of our hero other moments likely to have made possible such an experiment.

- During the battle of the mound in Lerga? When Lug replaces him during three nights and three days? For the French archeologist J. - J. Hatt, the llech of Kernuz (in France) precisely represents Mercury (Lug) protecting the Hesus.

Driving off of the cattle from Cooley.

103

As Loeg was there, he saw something: a single man coming straight towards him from the northeast across the camp of the four great provinces.

A single man approaches now, little Hound of Culann, said Loeg.

What manner of man is there? said the Hesus Cuchulainn.

Ní handsa ! It is not difficult. A man fair and tall, with his hair cut broad, curly, yellow hair. He has a green mantle wrapped about him with a brooch of white silver in the mantle above his breast. He wears a tunic of royal satin with red insertion of red gold next to his white skin and reaching to his knees. He carries a black shield with a hard boss of white bronze. In his hand a five-pointed spear and beside it a forked javelin. Wonderful is the play and sport he makes with these weapons. But none accosts him and he accosts none, as if no one in the camp of the four great provinces of Ireland saw him.

You fought with courage until the end, Setanta, the unknown warrior said to him, but it's about time now that I intervened to help you.

Who are you? asked the Hesus Cuchulainn to the phantom warrior.

Is messe do athair a ssidib, Lug mac Ethlend

I am your father, Lug son of Ethliu, from the sidh.

Sleep now for a little while, little Hound of Culann, said the radiant warrior, and I will deal with your enemies during this time.

Lug examined each wound of the Hesus, then he sang the virodordo (“the melody of basses,” ferdord in Gaelic language), and Setanta fell asleep at once.

Cotail-siu ém bic, a Chú Chulaind,’ or in t-ócláech, do thromthoirthim chotulta.Then the Hesus Cuchulainn slept his deep slumber at the Burial Mound in Lerga till the end of three days and three nights. It was right that the length of the sleep should correspond to the greatness of his weariness, for [on lúan re samain sainriuth cossin cétaín iar n-imbulc] from the first moon day after Samon (ios) exactly until the Wednesday after Ambolc, the Hesus Cuchulainn had not slept in that time, except when he dozed for a little while leaning against his spear after midday, a chend ar a dorn, a dorn imm a gai, a gai ar a glùn, with his head on his clenched fist and his clenched fist about his spear and his spear resting on his knee, but he was striking, killing,cutting down, and slaying the four great provinces of Ireland during that time. Then the warrior put plants from the sídh, healing herbs (lubi ícci & slánsén i cnedaib), into the wounds and cuts and gashes and many injuries of the Hesus Cuchulainn so that he recovered in his sleep without his perceiving it at all.

And then he replaced him during his sleep by fighting in his place the children of Calatin as well as the Gallioin [oh yes, the ancestors of the Frenchmen, according to the ancestors of the Irishmen , always fought …our hero].

The mystery of this apparition of Lug to Hesus still occupies an important place in certain authors. As John Sharkey says it very rightly while commenting on this passage in his work entitled “Celtic Mysteries,” in the epic of Cuchulainn, the sun god-or-demon materializes to take over the functions of the warrior who, by dying for three days, can remain mortal. In this state, he can ascend the three mystical worlds of the Celtic afterlife: from earth body to the physical spirit, and finally into the radiant soul light in which the sun itself manifests. When Cuchulainn sleeps he becomes one with his own embodied radiance, inhabiting the three worlds at once.

One of these three worlds being the non-world and its ice (its waste land: the andumnon) that means that Hesus also went to proclaim his message of justice (his suscetla) in the hellish non-world, to all those who were enchained there through their bran (their karma).

- But let us repeat it, most logical time would be after his death and before his ascension into Vindobitus (into heaven) in a glorious chariot (Siaburcharpat in Gaelic language)?

That would have at least the virtue of being in conformity with the ancient pagan notion of apotheosis. Here what the dictionary of the Greek and Roman antiquities by Daremberg and Saglio (1877) teaches us on this subject.

“Naturalism was the principle of the majority of the ancient religions; but as the former peoples imagined their god-or-demons under the features of men, they easily managed to believe that men

104

could become gods. This belief had penetrated to various degrees in a great part of the nations in the Old World.

In Egypt, the Pharaohs gave themselves each other the title of “ son of the Sun,” the monuments show them to us worshipping their predecessors. They join together so well in them the divine nature and the human nature sometimes that we see them honoring themselves and worshipping their own image. The Ptolemaic dynasty collected with great care this share of their heritage. They solemnly organized in their capital the worship of all the princes who had ruled over Egypt since Alexander. Rosetta’s famous inscription shows us that the reigning king, adult or minor, was considered as a god-or-demon just as the others and was associated with the homages his predecessors received.

The Greeks like the Jews conceded the existence of great heroes or demigod-or-demons, i.e., of beings resulting from a god-or-demon and from a she mortal, therefore participating of the two natures: the divine one and the human one. Among these heroes, were usually ranked the founders of cities and the eponyms of nations who had become famous (epônumoi, ktistai, archêgetai), and they were worshipped: people equated to them thereafter, and they admitted to the same honors men remarkable through extraordinary merits. Hercules was placed in Olympus, though he had begun, according to the generally accepted legend, by being a man, and put on the same rank as the immortal ones. This example changed the bottom line later…

It is in Rome that apotheosis/assumption took its most regular and most strange shape; it produced here extremely important religious and political consequences: it is there too that it is especially advisable to study it. Romans, however, seemed by themselves not to be too disposed to raise men into heaven. Their primitive mythology contains little heroes. It is said that their first king, Romulus, was deified after his death and was identified with the Sabine god-or-demon Quirinus; but after him, no other character of their legendary history obtained the same honor. The only precedent which could authorize the apotheosis/assumption among them was this extremely widespread belief that after his death the father of the family become a god-or-demon under the name of Lar, protects his owns [Lares]. As the State is made up on the model of the family, it is natural that the king as well as the father is deified in this way and becomes Lar of the State. The first prince to whom apotheosis/assumption was officially awarded in Rome after Romulus was Julius Caesar…

The example was set. The successor of Caesar, Augustus had to defend himself against the eagerness of the nations who wanted at all costs to deify him. The conduct he adopted on this occasion was very careful…

After his apotheosis/assumption, Augustus was designated only by the name he had given himself to Caesar: he was called divus Augustus. Originally, the word divus was not different from deus. Varro even rather tended to believe that it was applied to the god-or-demons who had always been so, while deus was appropriate better for those who had started by being men (dii manes), and [the grandson of a druid] Virgil used once these two words in the meaning indicated by Varro, but the use decided differently. The word divus was so well reserved to the princes who had been therefore deified after their death that people considered as an ill omen for Nero that a consul had called him divus in the Senate. Sometimes, but seldom, people gave to the deified princes the name of a god-or-demon. We find, in inscriptions, Livia called Ceres, and Hadrian called Jupiter; this kind of homage was very used among Greeks; Romans always appear to have felt reluctant to do the same. However, we have many images of princes and princesses represented with the attributes of god-or-demons and of goddess-or-demonesses, even of fairies.

The apotheosis/assumption was usually designated by certain symbols we meet on the monuments and especially on the coins of the deified emperors. It is particularly the image of an eagle or a peacock, either placed on an altar or a celestial sphere, or carrying the emperor and the empress who go up into the heaven. These princes are represented themselves, with the attributes of the god-or-demons, sitting on a throne, holding in their hand the scepter, the thunder bolt or the hasta pura, bearing on the head the radiating crown, sometimes topped with a nimbus. On a beautiful medal of Augustus (restitution issue under Titus), we also see in front of the emperor a lit altar. Starting from Nero, the radiating crown is found even on the coins of the alive emperors… We will not follow nevertheless from beginning to end the whole history of the imperial apotheosis/assumption. That it is enough for us to say that it was often awarded to princes and princesses who hardly deserved such an honor, like Claudius and the two Faustina…

Apotheosis/assumption had in the Roman empire very serious political consequences of which it is necessary to say a few words while finishing. It was seen that Augustus had allowed provinces to build temples to him in the company of the goddess-or-demoness Rome. Around these temples of

105

Roma and Augustus met everywhere the deputies who formed the council of the province (Latin concilium, Greek koinon). These meetings took place initially only to celebrate the imperial festivals; but soon these councils assumed important prerogatives. They sent legati to the sovereign and allowed them to praise or blame the administrators of the province. It is through them that a kind of awakening provincial spirit took place in the whole empire. The deputies, gathered in the temple of Roma and Augustus, appointed a president who was called in the East high priest (archiereus), and in the West priest or flamen of the province. These high priests and these flamines ended up , when the hierarchy of pagan clergy was organized, during the reign of Maximin and Julian, in obtaining a right of supremacy and monitoring on the other priests and were approximately what the metropolitan primates of the Christianity, who replaced them, were later. The worship of Caesars was also celebrated in each municipium, and it had about the same characteristics as in the chief town of the province. The flamen of the emperor was also the most important priest of the town and sometimes took the title of flamen of the municipium. Finally, if it is true, as it is generally believed, that the corporation of Augustales, which was made up of freed slaves and of small traders, had been formed to pay divine honors to the emperors, it was to be like the last level of imperial worship in provinces. Thus the worship of Caesars extended to the whole empire and, through a series of diverse institutions which were intended to the various classes of the society, included it completely” . G. Boissier.

Reflection on the development of the burial rite of the chariot graves in the Celtic world.

This belief brings us back even further the Roman or Celtic time, in the prehistoric epoch when the sun, which disappears every evening on the horizon, and comes back to life every morning in the daybreak glory.

But unlike the shamans the druids saw in the daily return of the great light, the promise of a resurrection of the human being among stars. Inside the ancient shamanic Order, which has run its course from now on, the picture or the allegory of the soul / mind of this embodiment of Hesus, ascending into heaven in his siaburcharpat (Irish documentation), will like provoke therefore a colossal draft in the rising Celtic civilization. See the chariot graves in the Champagne region. If a chariot with the deceased inside was buried, it was well so that his soul / mind could use it to ascend into heaven, no?

"As a lamp when it is being lighted has no terrors, but when it goes out is distressing to many, so the great souls/minds have a kindling into life that is gentle and inoffensive, but their passing and dissolution often [….] fosters tempests and storms» (Plutarch. De Defectu oraculorum).

A certain neo-druidism affirms sometimes more simply that the Hesus is still alive in our hearts (see the case of Patrick Pearse), because he is the archetypal revolutionary like Crixus and Spartacus therefore undying.

N.B. The affirmation of Patrick Pearse that Hesus Cuchulainn is still alive in our hearts refers rather to the notion of Unconscious collective, but it is the same thing.

In reality it is difficult to determine in which time precisely this new design of the passage of the soul / mind into hereafter began to spread. What is sure, it is that the ascension into heaven of the Hesus also marks the advent of a new spirituality therefore of a new civilization.

The ascension into vindobitu (into heaven) of the Hesus embodied in Setanta.

In the Celtic tradition, Manicheism being nonexistent, what makes die is also what makes live and what is capable of reviving the dead.

Hesus who had died as incarnated being is from now on living, but as a god gone to heaven.

Taken up in the light of the en laith or lon laith by the power of Fate. He even predicted what had to occur shortly after his departure (the momentary triumph of Judeo-Christianity).

The today's druidicist, following the former druids of this time, has therefore the heavy task to repeat tirelessly this good new (suscetlon). It is possible to triumph over the death, and over the hellish cycle of the endless reincarnation in bacuceos; since Hesus, as Setanta, dit it in front of us.

106

For more details on the life of Hesus, embodied in Setanta known as Cuchulainn, see Irish legends, but with the biggest cautions. After the bringing in Ireland of the original pan-Celtic myth, additions and important changes were initiated by local bards (oh these bards!); conveying speculations or imagination sometimes very distant from the restraint of the continental mythology which favored the spirit in comparison with the letter, the oral examination in comparison with the picture.

“ Accordingly some remain in the course of training twenty years. Nor do they regard it lawful to commit these to writing…. That practice they seem to me to have adopted for two reasons….because they desire those who learn among them, to devote themselves the less to the efforts of memory, relying on writing; since it generally occurs to most men, that, in their dependence on writing, they relax their diligence in learning thoroughly, and their employment of the memory” (Caesar, Book VI, Chapter XIV).

The original pan-Celtic myth was also disfigured by the apocryphal manipulations of Christianity and its hilarious need to distort facts. And the true fragments of mythology respond to a very different thing than to the mere “supernatural in the Christian way."

The head of Hesus represented in Cuchulainn left to Gallioin that is to say to Gauls, means the totality of his strength and of his mind given to their race. But this gift of his life (of the light of heroes or luan laith) that Setanta our model for everybody accomplished at the foot of the pillar stone in Muirthemne ; is also conveyed to us each time we experiment again his passion, once a long time ago, in the plain of Moritamna (Murthemne). It is by following the walking one that we find our path.

What is very clear indeed in the story of the martyrdom of Hesus, it is that the Hound of Culann experimented his death as a sacrifice. Hesus embodied in Setanta dies for his, but also, rather paradoxically, also, for his enemies, who are going to be able to benefit from his force by beheading him. This sacrifice, it is therefore the gift of oneself to the men and women of one's people, but also to the very whole Mankind , in the accomplishment to the end of the divine command which sums everything up: " To revere the gods, to abstain from wrongdoing and to be a man, a true one.”

N.B. The head and the right hand of Hesus embodied in Setanta were taken into Temra (into Tara). It is there that was located for a long time their shrine sealed with the covering plate of his shield. At least according to legends, because in reality nobody knows anymore in what place were hidden the relics of the body of Cuchulainn.

But once again, let us repeat it, the contrast is big between the simplicity of the true central European, traditional, mythological stories; and the supernatural or fantastic nature of some passages of the Irish legends, that John Toland himself never wanted to take as a starting point of his reflection.

As a result be careful with the Irish texts, they contain a lot of mistakes, less than Welsh texts,it is true!

These texts form, however, an inevitable source, for lack of more ancient written transcription about Hesus.

We saw it, it is quite difficult to say how this descent and this return from the hellish kingdom of the dead or from the frozen anteroom of the Heaven did happen. Let us venture another assumption: that perhaps occurred like in what d’Arbois de Jubainville says to us about the return on earth of Caletios/Cailte (cf the legend of Mongan).

But such a description arouses more problems than it solves any. It is not explained to us firstly indeed how, having on his death left his body in the grave, Caletios/Cailte returns from the country of the dead with a physical shape that nothing distinguishes from that of the rest of human beings. He returned visible from there, and speaking a language that all understood.

N.B. This legend does not have as a base a belief specific to Irishmen, since in England, and especially in Scotland, still today, in the people, the fear of the ghosts persists (D’Arbois de Jubainville. The mythological cycle).

The moral of this story, it is that, through this almost death then descent in the non-world, the hesus Cuchulainn has shown the hell was not returnless (thus did not exist as an eternal punishment). Such a descent in the hellish ice of the non-world therefore forms a phase perhaps very condensed in time (two days and three nights are only a symbolic duration of course), but with an immense impact.

107

“Noble and famous indeed you will be, but transitory, soon gone.”

Little care I, nor though I were hut one day or one night in being, so long as after me the history of myself and doings may endure.’

As for the rest, as regards the scenario,an attentive study of the texts lets to us foresee that our Hesus will be finally the victim of revenge fomented by the three daughters of the named Calatin, killed in single combat at war with his 27 sons (in a completely honest and legitimate duel however). They are these three bloodthirsty girls, who will wreak revenge by making him fall into a whole series of traps which will lead him to an unjust death, in the prime of life; in accordance with the prophecies (of the druid Catubatuos).

Our Hesus will be therefore victim of a double coincidence; the first one in fact, is the fact that these children of Calatin were trained and taught “in Babylon” by the Greek god-or-demon “Vulcan,” what means , in the language of these Irish apocryphal texts of then: “in the East.” Through counter-initiatory dismemberments from the queen Medva, they became one-eyed, one-armed and one-legged. But they are also crazy of wars and crazy of massacres, since the daughters of Calatin are also called the three crows (Bodb) in some other apocryphal texts, by allusion to the Irish design of the goddess-or-demoness of fights, Catubodua > Bodb Catha in Irish.

After their initiation by this “Babylonian” Vulcan, the three witches in question, a little as in Shakespeare, use with virtuosity illusions and hypnosis.

And their tricks will have a devastating effect on our Hesus, an effect besides paralyzing more the thought and the will that the action capacity itself, which is the exact definition of the mysterious disease of Ulaid. A prisoner of his gessa, the Hesus, as Setanta, will be in fact already virtually overcome when these three witches succeed in making him eat a piece of dog meat.

Brought gradually to the maximum point of madness, he will sink definitively into a nightmare worthy of Walpurgisnacht; and the entreaties of the druids Cathbad (Catubatuos) or Genann Gruadhsolus, will not be able to do something against these nightmare visions , even if the warriors in question are made only out of dry grass.

The triggering factor of the drama will be the raid tried by the Gallioin against the plain of Moritamna. And the treason of certain local druids (the satirists of the Irish legend).

See also the more as ambiguous role of Fergus and his. The truth remains that Fergus betrayed his country and therefore the Hesus Cuchulainn, for a murky story of virago (our hero is only 17-year-old) Queen Medva, here all! Oldest manuscripts are besides very clear on this subject. The poem entitled Conailla Medb Michuru, the dialog entitled Corugud Aile of the Tain Bo Cuailnge Recension I by C.O'Rahilly, the text entitled Aided Etarcomail and that which is entitled Cormac Fergusa Fri Coin Culaind.

It is only well later that certain Irish apocryphal texts made him a hero, unfortunate candidate for the throne, seriously offended by King Conchobar, and forced to exile himself with his men. In short, let us come to other things!

What is obvious in all this, it is that by this means the authors of the account of the passion of our lord Hesus/Setanta/Cuchulainn, the Great walking hound who knows, showed that his death of the kind “alone against the world “ was the tragic consequence of an almost universal plot; hatched by Irishmen reinforced by Gallic mercenaries. Who will have in a way joined their forces in the same guilty complicity to lead him to death, his having left him alone faced with his destiny. Oh yes, it is like that! Our ancestors (Irish or French) took part all in the crucifixion of our hero against the standing stone in Murthemne.

His passion and his death in Moritamna (Murthemne) precisely, and signs or prophecies having preceded it.

“When they asked him what special virtue lay in this day, he told them that the name of whatsoever youth should therein for the first time take arms, would top the fame of all other Green Erin's men, nor thereby should he suffer resulting disadvantage, save that his life must be fleeting, short.”

“And it is true for me,” said Catubatuos/Cathbad; “noble and famous indeed you will be, but transitory, soon gone.”

108

The crucial text describing to us the beginning of this anguish unfortunately disappeared. What remains about it in the Irish versions and in the apocryphal texts begins abruptly with the following words written in Gaelic language: nad fordamarsa gol ban … etc.

It is during his goodbye to the women in Emmi Magosias (of Emain Macha) that Hesus (at least according to these apocryphal texts) revealed the direction of any human life, according to him.

Geib leic Loíg.

La araid airitiud.

La errid imdegail.

La cunnid comairle.

La firu ferdacht.

La mná mifre.

Tair rium don chath.

Na frithail in n-airchisecht

Nachit chobradar.

Take leave Loeg .

It belongs to the charioteer to drive the steeds,

To the (chariot) warrior to protect,

To the officers?? to give advice,

To the men to be virile,

To the women to cry (?)

Leave to face the enemy,

Do not bask in moanings,

Which will be used for nothing to you.

The chariot turned towards left. While seeing this sign the women let out great clamor made of tears of moanings and beating of hands. They had understood the Hesus Cuchulainn would never again come back in Emain Macha.

Each one is free to think what he wants of such a philosophy, which is besides perhaps only that of the last writers of the legend.

What is certain in any case it is that Hesus, as Setanta, consequently will enter anguish mentally. Because anguish is well the word which indicates the mental or bodily sufferings which will be previous the final death of Hesus as Setanta; the inner fight between his legitimate desire to escape the looming bloody and dismembering (head,hand) death , and that to achieve until the end his destiny.

The death of Cuchulainn is undoubtedly one of the most pathetic scenes of his legend. Now that he had a presentiment it is most atrocious of deaths (disembowelment and beheading), which probably awaits him at the foot of the pillar stone in Moritamna (Murthemne); Hesus as Cuchulainn hopelessly tries to delay his departure for the kingdom come as that had been done the day before precisely. But in vain!

While coming back to Murthemne (to Moritamna) on the spot of his childhood, where he was happy with his adoptive parents, Cuchulainn knows that he goes in fact towards his death. But this death, he will not undergo it as a fatality, he will accept it with complete freedom (he had accepted it in advance besides) and he will give him a sense. Because follow one’s destiny it is to free oneself from one’s destiny.

Duxtir/Dechtire and Catubatuos/Cathbad now besought him that he would refrain and await Conall ; but he said, by no means will I wait, for my span and my triumphs are determined ; yet will I not for the world's lying vanities forsake my fame and battle virtues, seeing that from the day when first I took warriors weapons in my hand I have never shirked fight or fray. Now therefore still less will I do so, for fame will outlive life.

And again he was on Emain's green….

109

Cuchulainn will try once again to delay his lot by trying to avoid the meal that has to sign the end of his existence on the earth, but always in vain, as we will see it.

The road of Mediolucarion (Midluachair) will be the revealing one at the same time of the power of Fate of human stupidity. Because the greatest of the lessons from Cuchulainn is perhaps given to us by his last meal, he will share paradoxically with his more mortal enemies, some true Judas, on the road of Mediolucarion (Midluachair).

He followed the road of Midluachar, and he had gone past the field of Mogna, when he saw something, it was three hags, blind of the left eye, before him on the road. They had cooked on spits of rowan tree a dog with poisons and spells. And one of the things that Cuchulainn was bound not to do was going past a cooking hearth without consuming the food. And another of the things that he must not do was eating his namesake’s flesh. He sped on, and was about to pass them, for he knew that they were not there for his good.

Then said a hag to him: “Visit us, O Hesus Cuchulainn.”

I will not visit you in sooth, said the Hesus Cuchulainn.

The food is only a hound, said she. Were this a great cooking you would have visited us. But because what is here is a very humble cooking hearth, you come not. Ni tualaiṅg mór nad ḟulaiṅg no nad geib in ṁbec . They who cannot endure or accept a little are not capable of much.

Then he drew nigh to her, and the hag gave him half of the hound out of her left hand.

By accepting the invitation, the Hesus embodied in Setanta gives us also an example. Those who want to go on his way are called to the courtesy and the simplicity of the fine gentlemen (of the noble-hearted people), including towards their worst enemies.

The final scene with the Leitos Magosias (the Grey of Macha ) or the Dubis Carnocrula (the Black Shoe), his two foals become adult, and with the birds, the ravens or the crows; releases well the sense that the Hesus as Setanta, or at least the poet author of his legend, wanted to give to his death: a conquest during his life of the world of the gods.

One of our Parisian pen friends asks us nevertheless once again to underline well what follows.

The anthropomorphic and naive language at times , of the Irish apocryphal texts, does not have for all that as result to let us believe that the Gauls (the Gallioin) are no longer one of the peoples chosen by gods and reciprocally having given to themselves all these gods,OF WHOM WE FIIND THE NAMES ON BOTH SIDES OF THE CHANNEL. Even if some of the Gallioin leaders with their partisans and their satirists urged to kill the Hesus embodied in Setanta Cuchulainn (it is undeniable); what was done in Moritamna (Murthemne), what was perpetrated during the martyrdom of our Great Hesus, cannot be imputed indistinctly to all the Gallioin living then in the world, nor to their today descendants. The Gauls should not be presented as damned following this amazing assassination. Duly noted! But this is valid also besides for our Irish cousins!

And besides, as our Hesus himself said it, those to whom this crime will really profit, it will be the Christians of St. Patrick and not the genuine Irish or the genuine Gallioin. See his final forecast: Emania-Rigia, Emania-Rigia (Emain, Emain), Powerful realm !

Tan ré Talcind trebfait iathu Emna. Ticfat de Eoraip Elpae. Di usciu ethar domuin dobním co sluagaib Succet etc. etc. etc.

A time will come when shaven headed men [some Christian priests] will come to live on the lands of Emain. They will come from the European Alps on board ships between the earth and the skies Patrick and his many companions, etc. etc.etc.

110

CONTINENTAL DOCUMENTATION.

Our ancestors already knew they were “spiritual heirs to the god-or-demon of death and night” (Dispater in Caesar). Setanta the walking one went further: he died while setting to us a salutary example (it is therefore by following this walking one that we can find the path).

His ascension into heaven through apotheosis or assumption reveals the possibility for us of escaping the vicious circle of the endless reincarnations , the possibility of our salvation, at the same time as it provides an example of it.

Such is the symbolic system of the anuanacton besides (of the name ceremony).

With this ritual we are symbolically beheaded , but through it also we come back to life , because we believe in the force of the golden bough (of the mistletoe) which was able to bring back Setanta from the soul/minds of the dead in a fairy chariot. Because the rituals regenerate us by making us united with the life of Hesus.

Therefore by conveying to us his force (sunartio). As if by (sympathetic) magic.

Hesus is the typical example of the development of a mythology with strong amount of individual and/or collective euhemerization. This complex religious phenomenon therefore causes firstly from our behalf the following remarks.

We find the word Hesus in the name Aisunertos/Esunertos (The one who has the strength of Esus) in Pfalsburg, where he is compared to Mercury by the Romans (unless these the last two names are only names of hypostases). Esumagius (powerful like Esus), Esugenus (son of Esus). Let us also signal the inscription discovered on a bust in Evreux 1830: ESUMOPAS CNUSTICUS USLM, where the expression ESUMOPAS CNUSTICUS probably designates a child or a believer of Esus collecting … some mistletoe. The name “Esugenos “is found in Welsh language in the form “Owain “and in Irish language in “Eogain “. It is also present in the name of several people: Esubii or Esuvii, Esubiani. The tribe of the Esuvii (in Normandy) therefore was perhaps devoted to him.

Hesus is a deity also known by inscriptions found in North Africa (in Cherchel/Cherchell in Algeria). Aesus in an inscription found in Florence in Italy.

The French archeologist J. - J. Hatt, sees the great Hesus, in the Celtic art, scanned by him , represented in youthful or childish features.At least if we understood well this author, who also evokes a possible symbolic connection between this Hesus and the teutates.

Hesus a death god-or-demon giving to the teutates the underground wealth. Hesus Hell and Dead god-or-demon , a dispenser of richnesses, influenced by the indigenous Mars and a previous stag god-or-demon. Only the reconstitution of the Celtic myth, according to the cauldron from Gundestrup and the Gallo-Roman reliefs, makes it possible to see the unity of the divine character Esus, through the multiplicity of his metamorphoses.

Such is what this archeologist thinks. Who adds in connection with the various forms taken by Hesus too, also polymorphic if we understand well: “Asimile depuis le Ve siecle avant notre ere à Dionysos, il est tantot jeune enfant, tantot adolescent, homme mur et vieillard. Il a ete identifie à Orphee, parce qu’en certaines circonstances du mythe, sa tete separee de son corps continuait a vivre par elle-mime ."

J. - J. Hatt is therefore on this point of an opinion different from that of Henry Lizeray who himself compared with Orpheus, not Hesus, but Ogmius.

The oldest figuration of the great Hesus is the stele of Holtzgerlingen representing the god-or-demon in the form of Janus, from which the two heads were separated by appendices in the shape of

111

mistletoe leaves. The Janus and the mistletoe leaf, simple, double or triple, are indeed the usual symbols of Hesus, according to this author.

In any case, it is Hesus who is reproduced on the cauldron of Gundestrup, and it is quite difficult to deny the importance of the tree in his myth. As in the case of Llew Llaw Gyffes in Wales. As in the case of Odin suspended nine days and nine nights in the World Tree. Lucan, who is alone to mention it by name, says bloodthirsty this god-or-demon. A scholium specifies that the victim was suspended at a trunk and bled to death.

His name (the “god?” The “good master?” “The one who knows” - vesus -?) tops his portrait on one of the Parisian low-reliefs of the time of Tiberius, and a similar image, but anonymous, is in Trier, in Germany. However the god-or-demon is presented in a not very frightening and very particular aspect. Clothed as a worker, with a short tunic discovering the right-sided of his, he cuts down a tree. In Paris therefore, he cuts the branches with a broad bill hook (a voulge: he prepares a tree for a ritual sacrifice); in Trier in Germany, he attacks the trunk with a lengthened blade ax.

In Trier, the foliage of the tree lets the head of a bull being seen, and three big birds perched on the branches; in Paris, the low-relief shows a bull among the trees and, on his head like on his rump, three big birds the inscription in Celtic language makes it possible to identify: Tarvus Trigaranus, in other words, the Termagant: “the Bull with three Cranes.”

Esus is therefore mixed up, in a legendary action known by these only low-reliefs, with the destiny of a divine bull which three cranes accompany; he appears to cut down the tree, to destroy the forest where these animals hide, to pursue the bull.

Undoubtedly we have there one episode of his legend of which the ultimate echo is found in the adventures of the Welshman Llew Llaw Gyffes. Also let us recall that for the Germanic Odin, some victims, as for Esus, were hung from a tree.

The bull, the forest which protects it from its pursuer, as well as the three birds which inform him successively of the danger, would belong to the old collection of the Celtic mythology; because the Irish hero Cuchulainn, in search of the cows of Cooley, pursues himself , a divine bull. But why Esus?

He would play the role of Cuchulainn here. The myth takes shape thanks to parallel elements, provided by the insular literature: pursuit of an enormous legendary bull which friendly birds guide in guardian woods.

From the point of view of the iconography, on the pillar of the Parisian boatmen discovered under the cathedral Notre Dame de Paris in 1711; he appears as a bearded and muscular man, dressed with a simple tunic, cutting down what is perhaps a willow. On a relief of Trier (Germany), he is represented with a bull and three cranes.

In Armorica, coin types evoke certain episodes of the Irish legend of our hero. The ray (luan laith) which leaves the top of his head like a mast, the small cut heads comparable with the “skulls of Bodb,” perhaps the distortions of his body and especially of his face which push particularly his eye in the middle of his cheek. The consistency is so precise that Marie-Louise Sjoestedt admitted formerly as possible, the continental origin of the topic.

This god-or-demon is indeed also mentioned by Lucan in his Pharsalia (where he is compared with Mars by this author).

It is perhaps a god-or-demon of destruction and violent death. But the hesus Cuchulainn, god-or-demon of the young warriors, god-or-demon of the super-warriors called Gaesatae, god-or-demon of the warlike fury and of sacrifice, is also the god-or-demon of the shamanic trance because of his famous riastrade.

According to the German historian Gehrard Herm, we can make a parallel between the Scythian shamans and the druids, and to have therefore an idea of the supreme initiation of Hesus.

The Scythian shamans seem to have also had an idea of the death very near to that of druids and, like among druids, trees played a great role in initiations. Mythology abounds in magic trees: the gold tree planted in front of the fortress of Lug, the thousand candles tree of the “Quest,” the thousand birds pine tree in “Yvain,” the worship tree of Manching in Germany…

It is a trunk covered with a gold sheet , bearing a branch with bronze ivy leaves, to which were added gilded buds and acorns. It was preserved in a wooden box out also covered with a gold sheet.

112

The tree is in a way a quintessence of divinity. It was particularly true in what regarded the worship of Tan/Toran/Tuireann (hence the gathering of mistletoe). Concretely it was the trees which prevented the sky from falling, they constituted for initiations a scale making it possible to reach the world of the celestial god-or-demons. Felice Romani was not completely wrong finally while placing the Irminsul of Saxon (a oak) in the druidic clearing of his Norma.

Trees take part in the rites. The victims of Esus, the trophies, the offerings, are hung there. The world tree is planted in the middle of the tribal territory, the sacred trees close to the springs. A tree of life, very leafy, is represented on the coins. The bearer of mistletoe tree is chosen by the god-or-demons. So people at its feet conduct feasts and sacrifices. What is certain; and that, it is always one of the undeniable strengths of the analysis of Henry Lizeray in this field; it is that the cut tree of the Gallo-Roman statuary evoking this myth, means that Aesus develops his power on the invisible and underground world; while the higher half of the Universe remains the field of Cronos (sic) father of the manifested god-or-demons.

Our favorite authors hesitate about the period to be taken on for the initiation of our hero.

Some people think of his stay at Scotaca in Scotland, what would go very well therefore with her name, which means " the shadowy one .”

It is suitable nevertheless for this subject to differentiate two things well.

The shamanic initiation and the human sacrifice in the honor of Esus.

The human sacrifice in favor of Hesus Cuchulainn.

According to the Bernese Scholia of the text by Lucan indeed, the victims of sacrifices in the honor of Hesus (Esus Mars) were hung by one’s feet from a tree until their limbs are detached.

“Hesus Mars sic placatur: homo in arbore suspenditur usque donec per cruorem membre digesserit. Hesus is calmed as follows: a man is suspended from a tree, until his limbs are detached after being themselves emptied of their whole blood.”

What makes somewhat thinking of Lleu Llaw Gyffes in Wales.

The text of the Mabinogi relating to Lleu Llaw Gyffes gives the reason for the sacrifice described by the scholium of the text by Lucan: it is a royal sacrifice, with initiatory value. The sacrificed man represents the future king (Frazer).

We may think indeed that the man sacrificed in this way and left to be rotten thus was, in fact, a substitute for the king, as there were some of them in various Indo-European cultures.

In any case, here what is told to us on the Continent.

“Adsuetum olim humanis placari capitibus, nunc vero gaudere pecorum. Having been formerly accustomed to being calmed with human heads, he is currently satisfied with cattle heads.” (Lucani Commenta Bernensia. Bernese glosses of the text by Lucan, in spite of a quite different presentation from the behalf of the original text. Editor’s note.)

As Mircea Eliade (one of the greatest European historians as regards religion) noted it, you became shaman either by vocation or by appointment. In both cases, you needed training based on dreams, visions, ecstasies and other trance states of this type, intended to make them in a way experiment their own death before returning to life.

At least always according to Gehrard Herm of course.

Thus let us specify that in the case of initiation hung by one’s feet from a tree, it was necessary absolutely;

- either to take down oneself

- or to be taken down by somebody

JUST BEFORE THE LETHAL MOMENT.

If not here what that produced as we could see it.

113

Assumption on the initiates of the Esus type (borrowed from Eliade).

Inner, voices, had perhaps urged the first Esus to go in the Hercynian Forest . Arrived over there he had visions bordering madness or almost. He attended in a dream or in vision his own dismemberment and in particular his beheading, one of his eyes was torn off …

The cutting-up and the devouring of the body (information borrowed from Eliade and Hamayon).

In the majority of the accounts of dismemberment, shamans report having been attacked and having seen their body destroyed to bones. These spectacular experiments concern especially the peoples in Siberia, but the phenomenon is also very widespread among the Inuit, the Aborigines in Australia and other shaman peoples.

The academics and the anthropologists did not find an explanation to the experiments of this kind. Some of them have ventured the idea that shamans were either some liars or psychotics.

At the end nevertheless this first Hesus, at least, according to him, reached the sky by climbing a giant post or a tree (bilios). It is after that only that he could go down again on the ground.

This first Esus returned then from the Hercynian forest with his clothes completely torn, his face bloodstained, and his hair disheveled. And it is only at the end of 9 days that he started again to mumble some coherent words.

Conclusion.

There was therefore a dissolution of the ordinary personality of this first Esus in a true psychic chaos, in a true mental disturbance, then birth of a new individuality, that of a man having gone through the two crucial mystical phases: death and rebirth.

Counter-lay No. 1.

The tree which hides the forest. Among Celts it was perhaps also simply an allegory meaning that initiation can be found only at the end of a more or less long stay in the forest, what is besides perhaps the exact definition of the original shamanic rite.

Counter-lay No. 2.

In reality the parceling out of the body, or cutting-up, or devouring, is a ritual death which is followed by a resurrection. It marks the passage from the lay one to the sacred one, the initiation by the spirits, and lies within the framework of the initiatory disease. Such experiments are at the base of every human religiosity, because they have the aim of triumphing over death. The one who, like the shaman too, lived such an experiment, succeeded in entering the kingdom of beyond the graves and coming back from there, can only be stronger as the others to be able to direct them, and even to sacrifice them if need be.

Counter-lay No. 3.

The tarot card called “the hanged man” is, of course, a distant memory, one more, of this initiation of Esus in the forest. It is the symbol of a passive, mystical, initiation. The body is inactive, powerless, because the released soul flees the reality of the matter consequently. His tunic, where white and red alternate with red and yellow, reminds of innocence and t purity but also of the resistance facing harmful influences. Very big is his force, developed no longer by his muscles but by the occult power of his soul which went past the initiatory phase.

The hanged man symbolizes the abnegation, the disinterest for the things of this world , the altruism, the sacrifice, the inversion of the current situation thanks to a personal decision, some ideals reached, the release through the sacrifice.

Counter-lay No. 4.

What is certain in any case it is that in the sacred forest of Uppsala, according to Adam of Bremen, the Germanic Gothii also sacrificed men, by hanging them in trees like Hesus.The word “hanged” is frequently used besides to speak about crucified people in this area of the world.

Here what this initiation in the forest gave in the Havamal that the French Jean Renaud (in his book about the Vikings and the Celts) affirms to us being, at least partly, of Celtic origin.

THE SAYINGS OF THE HIGH ONE.

I know that I hung

114

On the windy tree,

Hung there for nights full nine;

With the spear I was wounded,

And offered I was to Odin,

In other words, myself to myself,

On the tree a)

That none may ever know

What root beneath it runs.

None made me happy

With loaf or horn,

And there below I looked (hung by one’s feet?)

I took up the runes, b)

Shrieking I took them,

And forthwith back I fell.

Nine mighty songs I got

From the famous son Of Bolthorn, Bestla's father; c)

And a drink I got

Of the goodly mead

Poured out from Othrörir.

Then began I to thrive,

And wisdom to get,

I grew and well I was;

Each word led me on

To another word,

Each deed to another deed.

Runes shalt thou find, d)

And fateful signs,

Full strong the signs,

Full mighty the signs

That the king of the high-knower men colored,

And the mighty gods have made;

That the ruler of gods does write. e)

Do you know how you will write,

Do you know how you will read?

Do you know how you will tint (with blood),

Do you know how you will make trial?

Do you know how you will ask,

Do you know how you will offer?

Do you know how you will send,

Do you know how you will sacrifice?

Better no prayer

Than too big an offering,

By thy getting measure thy gift;

Better is none

Than too big a sacrifice,

Thund f) of old wrote

Before man's race began,

Where he rose on high

When home he came.

a) See the role of the tree in the myth of Hesus.

b) Irishman run, Welsh rhin = mystery.

c) From Dragenicos Bessula’s father ? See Mac Draigin in Ireland.

d) The Lepontic alphabet ?

e) Callirios? See the name of the herald in Irish language: Callaire.

f) What wrote Taran/Toran/Tuireann?

115

In reality we finally know only little things of the initiation of the young Marovesus reincarnated in Cuchulainn.

These data of the apocryphal legends to read in connection with Hesus as Setanta, are explained by a representation of the world largely marked by its time. Hesus went down into the “Aryan” anteroom, with all that this hellish non-world comprises cold, dark, or opaque. He descended into the middle of our bran (our karma) and broke the bonds of it. Suscetlon: finally everybody will ascend into heaven.

“Happy therefore the peoples beneath the Great Bear

Because they do not know

This supreme fear which frightens all others:

Hence the spirit [in Latin mens] inclined to throw itself on iron

The strength of character [Latin anima] able to face death “ (Lucan).

This strength of character is similar only to that of the believer in the existence of the Pure Land where, according to Shinran (1173-1263), Nebuchadnezzar, Hitler and Stalin will be reincarnated by virtue of the Buddhist principle of tariki. Amida saves the humble or the wicked who have neither the time to know the truth through study or asceticism nor the means to redeem their faults. Salvation is for everyone, even the deaf and dumb who cannot recite the nembutsu. This is very druidic indeed.

HEADLESS HESUS OR HESUS HEAD-GOD: NOTE ABOUT THE BEHEADING.

Terminology Jean-Jacques Hatt, French archeologist, a specialist in religions, myths and gods.

According to the large French archeologist J. - J. Hatt, Hesus was identified with Orpheus, by interpretatio celtica because according to his myth, his separate from his body head continued to live by itself. The descent of Hesus as Orpheus in the frozen hell of the Aryan non-world symbolizes his victory over this Indo-European ategeneto; and on the gray areas regions which, since the origins of human civilization, since Nemet Hornunnos, remained present in the collective unconscious of Mankind . He had overcome in a way the hell of Aryan type (the anderodomnon) in the head of each one of our fellow creatures.

A legend of this kind is brought to our attention in connection with the divine hero Bran. It is besides a general belief among Celts. The head seems to be designed as existing by itself, independently of the body. In the Celtic world, the head was the object of practices and of various beliefs but as generally very homogeneous, we find in the myths concerning Saint Denis or the other cephalophorous saints of the same type.

The Celts, as well in Ireland as on the Continent, cut the head of their enemy overcome in singular combat. This habit had not only a religious base, because according to their druids , resurrection and cure were impossible if the essential bodies (brain, spinal cord, membrane of the brain) had been damaged.

The heads cut thus were preserved as relics, and underwent a particular treatment intended for this purpose. The head of the Welsh king Bran, brought back by his companions, for example was buried in the white hill of London (Gwynrryn) and protected the island from every invasion during centuries.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

The part of the Welsh elegy speaking about the head of the unfortunate king Llywelyn the great (dead in 1282), being obviously inspired from Irish poems devoted to the head of Cuchulainn - considering its antiquated vocabulary bordering the comprehensible one -; it is not without interest to remind here some stanzas of it in order to better render comprehensible to our readers the WORSHIP OF SACRED HEAD OF HESUS.

Marwnad Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.

Pony welwch chwi r syr wedyr syrthiaw?

Bychan lles oed ym am vyn twyllaw,

Gadel penn arnaf heb penn araw.

116

Penn pan las ny oed lessach peidyaw;

Penn pas las oedd lessach peidyaw;

Penn milwr, penn molyant rac llaw,

Penn dragon, penn dreic oed arnaw;

Penn Llywelyn dec dygyn a vraw byt

Bot pawl heaarn trwydaw;

Penn varglwyd, poen dygyngwyd am daw,

Pan veneit heb vanac aranw;

Penn a vu berchen a barch naw canwlat

A naw canwled idaw;

Penn teyrn, heyrn heeit oe law,

Penn teyrn, walch balch bwlch y geifnaw;

Penn teyrneid vleid vlaengar ganthaw,

Penn teyrnef, nef y nawd arnaw!

Marwnad for Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.

Little good it did me to dupe me,

Leaving me a head, with him headless.

Head that slain made fear unhateful,

Head that slain made surrender best,

Head of a soldier, head of praise,

Head of a duke, a dragon's head,

Head of fair LLywelyn, sharp the world's fear,

An iron spike through it,

Head of my lord, harsh pain is mine,

Head of my spirit left speechless,

Head that had honor in nine hundred lands,

Nine hundred feasts for him,

Head of a king, his hand hurled iron,

Head of a proud hawk, he forced a breach,

Head of a kingly wolf thrust foremost,

Head of kings, heaven be his haven!

If it remained still to do the funeral elegy of the hesus Cuchulainn, we could remind this in it. The whole life of Hesus as Setanta will have been ultimately an existence devoted to the service of his people. To the service of the three functions of the society , according to what had been decided at the time of the famous argument of the Ulaid in connection with the education to give him; i.e., for all, i.e., therefore also, and beyond the centuries, FOR US ALSO Ultimately. Ce “for we uns” is placed in the project of Patrick Pearse in St Enda. It will become the basis of the reflection of every self-respecting celticist in connection with the means of releasing oneself from our Ultonian disease to us, the new treason of the intellectuals and the weakness of the intellectual level of our media-political elites (no Mr. President, pure and hardline Islam is not compatible with democracy since it is by definition a submission (to God). No Mr Prime Minister, nor than Catholicism is luck for our sweet country, Muslim fanatics are luck for our country, and the false Islam, that of the 5 false pillars (Quran + hadiths + Sira of Muhammad + Fiqh and Sharia) is a religion of tolerance, respect and dialogue WITH EVERYBODY (atheists, pantheists, agnostic people, nature lovers and other apostates, people of thousand books and not of one). You mix up with the philosophical and thoughtful paganism of the druidism from our ancestors.

That being said, what is sure, alas, it is the Hesus Cuchulainn was sentenced to death by the druids of Medva and the children of Calatin (the satirists of the time), sentenced to suffer the most dreadful of suffering (the entrails spread then in general the first ones and even before death occurs).

Hesus as Setanta and to fulfill the prophecies (by Catubatuos) has to perish in the prime of life.

Before having a rest one instant in the water of the lake in Lamiorate (Lamraïth), our lord had some words of which it is necessary to remember.

“I will bid you come for me, said the embodied (in Setanta) Hesus , if I cannot come myself.” Because such was his last message.

117

These words are, of course, to be understood in a metaphoric sense.

Not only Setanta was sentenced in a way by the children of Calatin, themselves in the pay of the Irishmen or of the Gallioin, in short urged by everyone, but he was also tortured by Lugidios (Lugaid) and beheaded by him.

His last breath on the places even of his childhood in his fief of Moritamna (Murthemne) will be accompanied by a last miracle. The ancestors of Frenchmen and the Irishmen came all around him, but did not dare to approach him: it indeed seemed to them that he was still alive [of course, the light of the hero haloed him with glory], anyway even greater dead than alive.

The Gray of Macha, his loyal charger, came back then towards Cuchulainn to keep watch over him as long as his soul / mind would be in him and as the light of the hero would emanate from his forehead. He gave three bloody attacks around him and fifty Gauls or Irishmen perished under each of his hooves*.

Then came three birds and they sat on the shoulder of the Hound.

"This pillar is not wont to be under birds,” said Ercos Carprigenos (Erc Mac Cairpre).

Then the son of Curix (Curoi) arranged Cuchulainn’s hair and cut off his head.

Superb colors, marvelous colors, came into sight then from his face.

One of his cheeks caught fire and became so red as the sun; the other one became white, as the snow during a very cold night. His sword slipped from Cuchulainn’s hand, and smote off the right hand of the son of Curix (Curoi) , which fell on the ground.

Cuchulainn’s right hand was cut off in revenge for this. Then the ancestors of Frenchmen and Irishmen went away while taking the head and the hand.

But Cunovallos Cernacos (Conall Cernach) found nevertheless then the head of our hero and brought it back immediately to his wife, the beautiful and faithful Aemer, who died from it of a broken heart.

* Let us remind that the horses of Setanta Cuchulainn had an almost human intelligence, and that horse in those days enjoyed a great prestige in the eye of men.

The Gray of Magosia (of Macha), which was the king of horses in Ireland, will guide Cunovallos Cernacos (Conall Cernach), the foster brother of Cuchulainn, towards the body of his master, before disappearing definitely and the Black Hoof will go to drown through despair.

118

FIRST REMINDER FOR VELEDAE (teachers).

It is while following the walking one that we find the path (druidic proverb).

Trial of synthesis.

119

MAIN STAGES OF THE LIFE

OF THE GREAT HESUS.

Let us remind to begin that Hesus is mentioned in the Book of Conquests with the name of Marovesos (Great Hesus), as a ruler of the mysterious hyperborean island of Thule, called Falias by the Irishmen.

Therefore quite before his coming into our world as a man, because at the very beginning of the hyperborean cycle.

And that then in the second part of his life, Hesus will come into the world in a kitchen close to a stable housing two foals.

Thus let us point out here the outstanding features of the true story of this Celtic god-or-demon named Setanta (the path) then Cu Culanti (“the dog of Culann”), in Ireland.

Some great characters of the mythological and epic cycles have a double birth , human and divine, which involves this time, not a metamorphosis, but a change of state, slightly modified with some anxiety , at least in the Christian transcriber of the account concerning the hesus Cuchulainn.

In the myths of the great free and independent Celtia, Epona was described as Duxtir in order to underline her celibacy and her virginity. But in the Irish myth that produces what follows, the sister of the king Cunocavaros (Conchobar), Duxtir (Dechtire, in fact, therefore, Epona, since Duxtir/Dechtire was a she specialist in horses. Editor’s note ) flees one day from Emain Macha followed by fifty she-companions.

Three years later, a troop of birds falls down over the plain in Emain, leaving no root, neither grass, nor plant, on the ground. The Ulaid therefore harnessed nine chariots to drive out these birds far from their homes. The night occurred and snow began to fall, forcing them to stop their race.

In order to find a shelter for the night to them, Cunocavaros (Conchobar) sent some of his men in the surroundings. They then discovered in the plain an unknown house. The Ulaid took refuge there with their horses. The couple who lived this castle made serve food and drink in abundance to them.

The host then informed the Ulaid that his wife was in the labor pains and the latter gave birth to a son.

The mare which was at the door between the stable and the palace whelped two foals at the same time (the link with the myth of Epona is specified.Editor’s note). The Ulaid took the newborn with them and the man gave the foals for the child. These two foals will become the two horses of Cuchulainn, the Grey of Macha and the Black Shoe - Dub Sainglen in Gaelic language - who, when our hero is dead will come back in the hereafter.

When it was the morning, the Ulaid were without a house, without a bird, and only with their horses, and the child with the foals. The child was educated by them until his early childhood. Then he fell sick and died. His lamentation was sung. Duxtir/Dechtire (in other words Epona. Editor's note) felt a great sorrow because of that.

While returning from the funeral lamentation, she asked something to drink. People brought to her a cup with drink, but in some way she carried it to her lips, a small animal jumped from the liquid towards her mouth. When, on the other hand, she moved away the cup from her lips, it disappeared.

This night, she saw in dream a man who came to her. He spoke with her and he informed her she was pregnant by him . It was him who had made her come to the house with the foals. It was in his home they had slept.

120

Commentaries: the text is obviously rather muddled. It is not known very well, considering the very degraded state of the legend in Ireland, if it is the great Hesus master of Thule (Morfessa) who spoke to Duxtir-Dechtire-Epona in her dream, or someone else (Taran/Toran/Tuireann, even Lug?) and that lets the suspicion of incest with the “gigantic hound” (since such is the meaning of the name of Conchobar - Cunocavaros -) linger.

At all events, people raised the foals for the child and for the third once Duxtir/Dechtire [Epona] was pregnant. It was a big problem for the Ulaid : people did not know to her a usual partner. People estimated and feared that it was Cunocavaros (Conchobar) in a state of intoxication, because it was with him that his sister had slept. Cunocavaros/Conchobar married therefore hastily his sister with Vergustios (Fergus), son of Roecos (Roech). Her shame was big to be joined thus in wedlock with a man while being again pregnant. Before going to bed, she therefore rejected second once what was in her womb and was consequently again virgin. [Let us underline the word, because it is not lacking in importance . Is it here the origin of the symbol or of the picture of the ever-virgin Epona?] Then Duxtir/Dechtire/Epona could be joined with her husband and she was pregnant third once quickly. She gave birth to a child who was called Setanta.

We find in one of the most interesting versions of this myth, perhaps of the 16th century, which is in the Egerton 1782 manuscript, the version E, what follows.

Aitherruc ellum, ocus bert mac,ocus ba he dono mac na teoru m-bliadan in sin, ocus ba Setanta a ainm iarum, gommo marb laiss iarum cu Caulaind cerddo. Is osin ille ro hainmnigter do Cu Chuluinn.

"Big was her shame, to go towards her husband, being pregnant. She went then to the linen (?) tree, she regurgitated and lost the germ she bore in her womb; and so, became again virgin.

She went then towards her husband, and became once again pregnant. She brought a son into the world and the son was the child of the three years. He was named Setanta until he should have killed the dog of Culann the blacksmith: because it is only while he was called "Culann’s hound.”

The only thing clear in all this, it is this name of Cuchulainn young or child….. is not Gaelic language . Perhaps it was borrowed from one of the non-Gaelic tribes in Ireland, Erainn or others of the same family, for example. What would explain well enough that he is not considered as being "Irish.”

The moral of all this story here is.

NON GAEL ancient druids, of the former druidism, worked this myth out to translate in simple terms for the use of their flock of the warlike class, AND OF THE TWO OTHER INDO-EUROPEAN FUNCTIONS, the idea that the superhuman model they offered to their emulation, unlike the Muhammad of the Islam to come, was really exceptional.

The first Christians in Ireland who understood nothing in the notion of god-men, intellectually unable through their hubris of Romans, just like the Jews and the Muslims besides, to conceive that God or the divine one is powerful enough to appear and to take flesh as he wants when he wants and where he wants; understood no longer something in this myth intended to keep the warrior class in the right way of what the society was entitled to expect from it and they made it fit to every opportunity.

It will not be useless for the teaching of veledae to remind that the heading of most interesting version of the legend, Feis Tige Becfoltaig, can be literally translated by "the feast in the poor house.” And that it is therefore literally in one of the poorest stables that was born the greatest heroes that our legends ever sung. From where perhaps his symbolic link with Epona.

Because of this miraculous birth, Hesus thus embodied (in Setanta Cuchulaïnn), on the other hand, will escape the hereditary sickness which affects his tribe periodically; this strange disease of the Ulaid symbolizing the congenital weakness inherent in each man, because of his origin animal, and due to Epona named Magosia – Macha in Gaelic language - precisely. The birth of Setanta, of course, will also be surrounded by a whole series of predictions.

SECOND REMINDER FOR THE VELEDAE ( THE TEACHERS).

121

The great rabbi Jesus (from Nazareth?) was not born in Bethlehem but… within an average Jewish family for the time: a father carpenter, several brothers (or sisters).

The entire episode of the birth in Bethlehem, in a cattle shed, between an ass and an ox, etc., etc. is a story added 80 or 90 years after the events; and drawn from pagan legends in the Middle East (or elsewhere as we will see it) concerning Mithra (born in a cave he also), even Tammuz-Adonis.

As such (as a Hellenistic myth, one more, on the topic of the miraculous births) it interests therefore the druids open-minded enough to also look at brother paganisms.

Come to this point of our talk, it is important to once again reaffirm, and in the most energetic way, that the generally made by the Christian interpretation of the episode of the Magi, is wrong and dead wrong.

In these Magi, representative of the surrounding pagan religions, Christians see the symbol of the various nations in the world. And the coming of the magi in Jerusalem to pay homage to the king of the Jews, would show that they seek in Israel, with the Messianic light of David's stat, the one who will be the king of the world (biturix). Their arrival, according to them, means that the pagans can discover the truth then to adore it only by opting for Jews, and by receiving from them the Messianic promise, such as it is contained in the Old Testament. The Epiphany would express that the whole of the pagans enters the family of the patriarchs and thus acquires the ISRAELITICA DIGNITAS (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church).

This fierceness of the worst of self-suggestion methods in wanting at all costs to be admitted as the legitimate and direct heir to the Jewish religion and to Abraham; while it is obvious that only certain details of the varnish are, and that the background is pagan (the notion of a god-man, the food, etc., etc.) IS PATHETIC. It is at the same time the manifestation out of time of an incredible racism towards the other religions coupled with a JUST as incredible inferiority complex, that of the illegitimate child. Not to mention the gross ignorance of historical science and of the discoveries in archeology (the beginning of the Bible until the episode of the Tower of Babel is borrowed from Sumerian myths, Abraham is a legend, Moses did not exist, slavery in Egypt neither, etc.).

In spite of the incredible ethnocentrism or superiority complex bordering on the racism of such idea, certain druids of the XXe century wanted besides to make the famous Melchior a magus of Celtic origin. This is wrong and dead wrong and shows well how the neo-druidism of the French Paul Bouchet, lacked in intelligence or in profundity; and formed a underculture, quite representative of the intellectual and moral mediocrity of today neo-druids.

With due respect to Paul Bouchet as to the French neo-druids of his intellectual derivation, the israelitica dignitas never made up the goal sought after by these Magi. The episode of the Magi proves in no way the submission of the pagan followers of the god of the philosophers to this “israelitica dignitas,” proves in any way which it is into the Jews that we have to go to get salvation. Nobody has to be spiritually a Semite (Pius XI 1938) to be "DIGNIFIED.”

The topic of the Magi is well nevertheless a topic of pagan origin, inserted a posteriori in the Gospels as we have just seen it. It is for example obvious that the Twelfth-Night pancake is a symbol of solar origin.

The paganism of this topic of the Magi being thus definitively established, what about its celticity, on the other hand?

We saw what relationship with the Celts had established formerly one time the late neo-druid Paul Bouchet.

In spite of the deeply erroneous nature of this etymology based on the circumstances, it is nevertheless possible that there was, however, something analog with some Celtic topics, in this episode. The stable of Epona and its “aedicula” (Latin creche) are for example, known facts of Celtic civilization.

The Magi would then symbolize the various nations and tribes coming to honor a new divine incarnation.

As in the case of the veneration of the three Bethen, the druidicists therefore are morally allowed to refer to this topic, under these conditions, if it is well in this perspective, and not in that of the Christians.

122

But once again, let us repeat it, all these accounts being largely apocryphal texts and known especially since Middle Ages, more the greatest caution is necessary about them.

This legendary worship of the Magi coming to pay homage poses many problems.

The topic has been taken over by the neo-druidic literature for more than two centuries. We find it for example in the book of the French Rene Bouchet (son of the previous one) entitled “Druidism and Christianity.” According to this French neo-druid, they would be astrologers come from a little everywhere and in particular from the Aryan Iran, attracted by the unknown star having announced the birth of the god child on the straw of a stable. Their number in reality was never specified. The figure of three was adopted towards 450 at the time of the westernization of the myth.

The title of “king” (“Magi kings”) was then given to them by allusion to the psalms concerning the kings of Tarsis (“The kings of Tarshish will offer the incense”); Tarshish being the Tartessus of the Celts in the South-west of Spain. Cf. its famous king named Arganthonius.

The names given to them at the time of the westernization of the myth are Melchior, Balthasar and Gaspar. Two Semitic names, Melchior and Balthazar, and a Germanic name, Gaspar (finally perhaps).

In the 16th century, people thought that each one of them was to represent a different race. Melchior representing the Whites, we could think in this case that it was he the king of Tarshish/Tartessus in question come to offer incense.

But considering the birth date generally ascribed to Hesus, that could not be the Celtic king Arganthonius. Rene Bouchet, following his father Paul Bouchet, made Melchior a Celtic name meaning “prince of the goblins.” This is completely wrong since the name is perhaps Semitic. If, however, this name were well of Celtic origin, it could come only from a form Magalocorreos become Maelcorr in Breton language and meaning something like “kingly heron.” Still these famous birds in the life of Hesus…

Balthasar himself would have come from Iran, and his name would have meant “ Baals protect the life of the king” since Balthasar is the (distorted) name of the king of Babylon called Belsarusur, a Semitic (Akkadian) and not Avestan Iranian name, by definition.

The only thing sure it is that the festival of the (round and golden) Twelfth-Night pancake which people make the portions allocated by a child hidden under the table (the small king or the sun child ) is related to one of our older sun worships.

La Rochelle 02 12 1990.

NEW ANALYSIS OF THE IRISH APOCRYPHAL TEXTS RELATING TO THE COMING INTO THE WORLD OF THE GREAT HESUS (MAROVESOS/MORFESSA) UNDER THE NAME OF SETANTA KNOWN AS “THE DOG OF CULANN.”

That this Hesus, worshipped or not by the Magi come from Tartessos/Tarshish or Iran, is at the same time true god-or-demon and true man, come to bring us the maps of the islands of the bridges or the fords to take in order to save our soul/minds; is a major and essential topic of the neo-druidism. And the legend of the Magi has no importance for that. The coming of these enigmatic visitors who are the magi, in the version of the Bouchet family, can nevertheless suggest BY ANALOGY that the child in question was the light that rises in the West , coming from the kingdom of the dead (what a symbol) a kind of north star leading the nations as a lighthouse. He would be then in this case the true king of the world (biturix), the one to whom the Celtic minded pagan ones must come to pay homage from everywhere.

The feast of the Epiphany is consequently, on this assumption, a pagan festival reminding the example shown by Hesus is intended to everybody.

But in order to believe in Hesus as a supreme teacher of our basic teaching, it is initially, of course, necessary to have learned how to know his life, his work his death and his ascension to heaven. Because his words and his actions of man proved that there was in him… more than a man.

1. The character of Dechtire. Dechtire is a Gaelic name matching the Celtic substantive duxtir, usual attribute of Epona meaning “a daughter” and therefore “virgin.” As we could see, Dechtire is the one who deals with the horses of Conchobar. The myth is therefore still clear in spite of the disorganization caused by Christianization. Duxtir/Dechtire must nevertheless be compared with the great queen of

123

the Welsh Mabinogi of Pwyll, Rhiannon, and in this sense the parallel Epona-Rhiannon-Macha-Dechtire is therefore possible. At least according to certain authors to whom we bow.

Francoise Le Roux thinks rather than Dechtire symbolizes, in fact, the eternal character of the adoptive mother; mother of the god-or-demons, personification of the country as conquered land. But this is precisely also one of the symbolisms of Epona, from where the identification.

Unlike Francoise Le Roux on the other hand, J. Gricourt, in his essay about Epona, Macha and Rhiannon, underlined the horse-shaped nature of the aforesaid Rhiannon and Macha, who would be therefore respectively, according to him, some Welsh and Irish Epona.

Version 2 is very different from version 1. “Dechtire, sister of Conchobar, flees with fifty maidens from the land of the Ulaid and of Conchobar’s house. People sought them for three years. They came back in the shape of birds in the plain of Emain, etc.”

The birds have therefore as a role to attract the Ulaid in the Grail castle where must be born (beside the stable) Cuchulainn.

2. The characteristics of this Grail castle are clear.

It is without human dimensions it seems small to the scouts sent by Conchobar (Bricriu), but all the Ulaid enter it nevertheless with their chariot and find to be placed there without difficulty with their horses.

It is deprived of precise localization in time and space. The ceremonial merry drinking sessions and feasts once finished, the castle disappears like a dream, leaving the Ulaid alone in the plain. Lastly, the detail of the door (linking the stable where the Ulaid found refuge, with the palace itself) exploited better in manuscript D. 4,2; informs us about the identity of the host.

“The master of the house, a handsome noble-looking warrior, invited Bricriu to approach, addressing him by name. And the man’s wife also welcomed Bricriu.

Bricriu asked why the woman had also welcomed him.

It is on her account that I welcome you, said the man. Is there anyone missing from Emain??

Yes there are, replied Bricriu. Fifty maidens have been missing for three years.

Would you recognize them if you saw them? Asked the man.

I might not, said Bricriu. The passing of three years may make my memory unreliable.

The man told him that those fifty maidens were in his house, and that the chief of them, Duxtir Duxtir/Dechtire (Epona) was the woman at his side as his wife. It was they who went to Emain Macha in the form of birds, in an effort to lead the Ulaid warriors there.”

3. All that perhaps was to occur around Samon.

The coming of the birds is one of the favorite topics of Irish legendary. The version 1 of the birth of Cuchulainn gives us a very precise description of the birds in question.

The paragraph 2 of this version informs us about their number (180) their song (which was splendid) their equipment (a yoke for each couple and a silver yoke to the leading couple of each group), their route. These birds in fact will have the role of attracting voluntarily the Ulaid in the Grail castle where Cuchulainn will come into the world with the assistance of Lug as we saw it.

4. The argument of the Ulaid in connection with the education to provide to Cuchulaïnn. Sencha the druid and Amorgen the velede represent the priestly class, under his two aspects, speculative and committed.

Fergus, champion and ambassador, represents the military class. Blai Briuga, “hosteler,” represents the producing class.

In other words, it is all the society who will contribute to the education of the gifted child , and it is well what paragraph 12 summarizes.

“In this way, everyone will have a hand in forming him, chariot chief, kings and sage…”

124

Cuchulainn is not an incestuous child but a hero intended to save the world. And to generate such a semi-god-or-demon, the effective participation of the king of Ulster and of a feeder father, as well as the cooperation of the three classes of the Society were well needed.

We will come back about the subject.

A childhood (Maponiaca, Mabinogi in Welsh language ) really not very ordinary.

(Individual opinion of Druid Leonorios.)

What is sure, it is that since the beginning of his action on the earth , the Hesus embodied in Setanta disturbed everybody. It is his own uncle Cunocavaros (Conchobar according to the Irishmen) or other kings higher ranking than him: Alpillis and Medua (Ailill and Medb). Or even some wizards trained “in Babylon” like the children of Calatin.

But the force of an observation having value of prediction is such as, after having done it, a druid is unable to change the fate it marks. It is undoubtedly what the little Hesus still named Setanta had already understood very well when, whereas he was only five years old; he had heard the druid Catubatuos announce that whoever would take the weapons on this day would have a glorious, but short life.

Setanta had gone at once to ask weapons and a chariot from the king Cunocavaros (Conchobar), and Catubatuos had predicted to him almost with regret:

“Noble and famous indeed thou shalt be, but transitory, soon gone.”

Little care I, said the little Hesus Cuchulainn, nor though I were but one day or one night in being, so long as after me the history of myself and doings may endure.’

Then said Cathbad again, “Well then”, get into a chariot, boy, and proceed to test in your own person whether mine utterance be truth”.

Commentaries: Hesus was therefore already fully aware, when he was five years old, that his life was to form an example to be studied or restudied, unceasingly, by future generations.

But far too many people will not be able to accept or tolerate his sense of justice and of duty. Rediscovered by Patrick Pearse who will make him the very archetype of the revolutionary. Throughout his short existence on the earth, they will be therefore increasingly numerous (Bricriu, Medb, Calatin, and so on) to want his death: he disturbed.

When it is said the great Hesus has, as Setanta, lived l as a man, that does not mean that he was “a mere mortal” among others. His behavior, his relationship, and the radiance of his personality, expressed as of his earliest childhood that he was a man in a unique way, as we have just seen it.

The appearance of Cuchulainn according to the account of the Cattle raid of Cooley.

“A beautiful boy indeed was who went out from their expert hands : seven toes to each foot he had, and to either hand as many fingers; his eyes were bright with seven pupils apiece, each one of which glittered with seven gem-like sparkles. On either cheek he had four tibri (some moles? Some patches ?): a blue, a crimson, a green, and a yellow one. Between one ear and the other, he had fifty clear-yellow long tresses ( that were like the yellow wax of bees? Or like a brooch of white gold as it glints in the sun unobscured ?) He wore a green mantle silver-clasped upon his breast, a gold-thread shirt. The little Hesus Cuchulainn took his place between Cunocavaros/Conchobar’s knees, and the king began to stroke his hair .”

All these , somewhat worrying besides,details had to have a sense , but which one?

Another fragment of text well showing the perplexity in which the contemporaries of the hesus Cuchulainn were plunged before his prowess.

Driving off of the cows of Cooley.

125

Ailill asked Fergus a question: “I marvel and wonder as to who would come to us on the marches and slay so swiftly the four who went in advance. Is it likely that Cunocavaros/Conchobar son of Fachtna Fáthaig the high king of Ulaid would come to us? “

It is not likely indeed, said Fergus, for it is lamentable to revile him in his absence.

There is nothing that he would not pledge for his honor's sake. For if it were he who had come, armies and hosts and the pick of the men of Green Erin who are with him would have come too ; and even though the Irishmen the men of Scotland, the Britons and the Saxons were opposed to him in one place and one meeting and one muster, in one camp and on one hill, he would give them all battle, it is he who would win victory, it is not he who would be routed.

Tell me, then, who would be likely to have come to us?

Nay who but the little lad, my foster son and the foster son of Cunocavaros/Conchobar.Hound of Culann the Smith he is called.

Yes indeed, said Ailill. I have heard you speak of that little lad once upon a time in Cruachan. What is the age of that boy now?

It is not his age that is most troublesome indeed, said Fergus, for the deeds of that boy were those of a man when he was younger than he is now.

How so? said Maeve.

Is there among the now his equal in age who is more redoubtable than he?

We do not find there a wolf more bloodthirsty nor a hero fiercer nor any of his contemporaries who could equal the third or the fourth part of Hesus Cuchulainn warlike deeds. You do not find there’ said Fergus, ‘a hero his equal nor a sledgehammer of smiting nor doom of hosts nor a champion of valor who would be of more worth than the Hesus Cuchulainn. You do not find there one that could equal a áes & a ás & a forbairt & a ánius & a urfúath & a urlabra, a chrúas & a chless & a gasced, a forom & a ammus & a ammsigi, a brath & a búadri & a búadirsi, & a déini & a dechrad & a tharpige & a díanchoscur co cliss nónbair ar cach find úasu mar Choin Culaind his age and his growth, his size and his splendor, his fearsomeness and his eloquence, his bravery, his mastery of martial arts, his weapons and his attacks or his assaults, his aggressiveness and his work of executioner, his frenzy, his excitement, his speed, his fury, his violence, his mastery of the feat of the nine men pointing their weapon above him.

We make but little account of him said Maeve. I n-óenchurp atá. Imgeib guin immoamgeib gabáil. He has only one body, he is wound prone and can be made a prisoner.

His age is reckoned as but that of a young girl nor will that youthful beardless sprite ye speak of hold out against resolute men.

I do not say so, said Fergus, for the deeds of that little boy were those of a man when he was younger than he now is.

An outstanding trifunctional education we have said above.

“The Ulaid began to argue over which of them should foster the boy. They asked Cunocavaros/Conchobar to make a decision. He began while suggesting his sister Finnchoem should bring him up.

But Sencha protested: ‘I, not Finnchoem, should bring him up. I am strong and skillful; noble and nimble in combat; wise, learned and prudent. I have precedence over all others in speaking to the king; I advise him before he speaks. I judge all disputes that come before him with absolute even-handedness. No-one but Cunocavaros/Conchobar himself would make a better foster father than me for this child.’

‘No,’ said Blai Briugu. ‘Let me foster him. He’ll come to no harm or neglect with me. My household can feed all of the men of the green Erin for a week or ten days, and I deal with them all fairly in disputes. But let my just claim be settled as Cunocavaros/Conchobar desires.’

‘Have you no respect?’ said Fergus. ‘His wellbeing is my personal concern. I will foster him. No-one can match me in rank or riches, nor in courage or skill in arms. My honor makes me the ideal foster father. I am the scourge of the strong, and the defender of the weak.’

Amergin said, ‘Listen to me, and don’t turn away. I am worthy to bring up a king! I am renowned for my deeds, my wisdom and my wealth, for my eloquence and open-mindedness, and for the courage and status of my family. If I weren’t already a prince of royal blood, my rank of a poet would entitle me already nearly to royal status. I can overcome any chariot chief. I look up to no-one but the king himself, and owe my allegiance to none but him.’

‘There’s no point arguing,’ said Cunocavaros/Conchobar. ‘Finnchoem will look after the boy until we reach Emain Macha, and then Morann the judge will decide.’

126

When they returned, Morann delivered his judgment.

‘He should be given to Cunocavaros/Conchobar, because he is related to Finnchoem. Sencha shall teach him eloquence and oratory; Blai Briugu shall provide for him; Fergus shall take him on his knee; Amergin shall be his teacher; Conall Cernach shall be his foster brother and Finnchoem shall nurse him. In this way, everyone will have a hand in forming him, chariot chiefs, prince and sage. This boy will be cherished by many. He will settle your trials of honor and win your battles and ford fights.’

And so the little Hesus Setanta Cuchulainn was given to Amergin and Finnchoem, and brought up at Dun Imrith on Muirthemne Plain.”

Commentaries: our text is generally rather muddled , what is hardly astonishing, because it is only a deteriorated enough apocryphal text , but it is nevertheless clear on a point. The education of Hesus embodied as Setanta/Cuchulainn is outstanding, exceptional (trifunctional more exactly), so that he is the friend of the whole society.

127

NEW CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE SACRIFICE

OF THE GREAT HESUS EMBODIED IN CUCHULAINN.

(Individual opinion of Dr. Leonorios.)

Through his final prediction the Hesus known as Hound of Culann (Cu-Culanti) our young and ever-young lord, ascended into heaven, prepared his friends and his to the terrible concealment (to the terrible confrontation of values) which was going to follow some generations later. The total invasion by Judeo-Christianity and the anti-pagan persecutions. Because the hesus Setanta known as Cuchulainn, remained more than ever present among us. In a new form, it is true: like a germ acting in the bottom of our consciences.

It is besides to Pearse that the honor to proclaim the Republic on the steps of the General Post office of Dublin, in 1916, was down, and to take the direction of the provisional government. He was, of course, executed by the Englishmen . Here below (from memory) a poem by Pearse the Frenchmen would do well to meditate.

Mise Éire:

Sine mé ná an Chailleach Bhéarra

Mór mo ghlóir:

Mé a rug Cú Chulainn cróga.

Mór mo náir:

Mo chlann féin a dhíol a máthair.

Mór mo phian:

Bithnaimhde do mo shíorchiapadh.

Mór mo bhrón:

D'éag an dream inar chuireas dóchas.

Mise Éire:

Uaigní mé ná an Chailleach* Bhéarra.

I am Ireland:

I am older than the old woman of Beare.

Great my glory:

I who bore Cuchulainn, the brave.

Great my shame:

My own children who sold their mother.

I am Ireland:

I am lonelier than the old woman of Beare.

128

PLEA FOR A RECONCILIATION

WITH OUR BROTHERS THE GODS.

(The gods, or demons according to mass religions, are indeed also our brothers since resulting too from the Nemet Hornunnos.)

Individual opinion of the druid Jean-Pierre MARTIN.

Sinn Fein! Our pride as men, it is to be the people of Fate, the people of gods, the people of god-men. The hesus Cuchulainn offered himself to his destiny and the gold of his ericfine (of his wergeld) to him, it was his blood. The adjective "Intarabus "("mediator") which is also awarded to him by some people is only a specification of this role. Intarabos is the one who, through his solidarity with both parties under suspicion , is capable of making them able "to make peace" or to be reconciled, to live in harmony.

Was Hesus really a historical warrior? The only thing certain in reality it is that it is there a mythological topic originating in the Continent and imported into Ireland by immigrants coming with their oral literature. The embodiment on earth and under the appearance of a warrior hero,a god-or-demon ruler of Falias/Thule (the great Hesus).

The researchers in Celtic Tradition noticed that Hesus was attested only on the Continent. They wondered, within the framework of the ancient pan-Celtic beliefs if there were islander equivalents. Two mythical tracks were then considered.

1. The mention of Morfhessa, grand master of the hyperborean island of Falias in Gaelic mythology. A serious comparison because linked to the so much developed cycle of the Gaelic Tuatha De. Etymologically Marovesus “Grand Knower,” Master of “Thule.” Deity equated through confusion due to the disorganization following Christianization, with a primordial druid. In reality therefore, a “god-or-demon” neither more nor less than the other non-subordinate members of the Tribe of the Goddess-or-Demoness, or fairy. Called Danu (bia).

2. The so important legendary cycle of Setanta known as Cu Chulainn = “Culann’s hound.”

According to d’Arbois de Jubainville , this central figure of the (late) epic of the Tain Bo Cualnge ( the rustling of the cows of Cooley) would have been a warrior originating in the Continent, come with one of the waves of conquering immigrants landing in the island of Eriu. His non-Gaelic name of Setanta would be explained by a * previous Sentons = “walking one word for word: “the itinerant,” therefore Sentons or Sentontios at the beginning. The loss in Gaelic of the n of its first syllable will produce thereafter a play on words with the ethnic name of the Bretons Setantioi (current Lancashire); from where through a phenomenon of coalescence, his late Gaelic name of Setanta.

Hesus was not a king (of warriors) like the others. He was the completion of the very concept of divine royalty. As a king (of warriors), he was the living link between the earthly kingdoms and these of the Next World. Our neo-druidism therefore readily takes over the symbol represented by Hesus as that of an exemplary hypostasis of the mysteries of the Tocad (of the Fate : Irish Toicthech).

For the record here what said in his time the late Henry Lizeray in his book: “Aesus or the secret doctrines of druids.”

Under the sign of Aesus, was taught a doctrine expounding the formation of the world.

129

Aesus, removed from its Latin ending, it is the Ace, the Unity, the Being in itself (with the analogy of esse, being) which, by appearing, produces the essences and the species. Aesus, in its secondary meaning, also indicates the central fire: Greek Hades (Irish stem: aod, fire). People offered to Aesus sacrifices of human blood as being most suitable to his nature of living fluid, but it was the blood of criminals which reddened the sacred wood , since their name of nemeth brings that of Nemesis logically.

Henry Lizeray adds finally that (according to him in any case) Our Lady was the wife of Aesus (page 139 of the S.D.D.)

Progress of the historical research forced us to revise basically all the designs of this great celtologist of the 19th century. Therefore let us re-examine together the problem.

One of the main deities of the Celtic Pantheon or pleroma, Hesus, is therefore to the highest degree an “aisuvios,” in other words, a positive, active and dynamic deity. His representations, studied magnificently by archeologists, made it possible to reconstruct the mythology relating to him.

We see him on some opportunities combined with the Termagant or Tarvos Trigaranos (three horned and/or accompanied by three cranes bull) often represented in clearer cutting trees in a wood populated with animals. Was he “avid of human blood” as one of the anonymous commentators of Lucan affirms it? We could note, among other mythological adventures, and as we have already seen it, the episode of the hanging of “shaman” type under a tree, of the victims who were devoted to him.

In any event, the character even of Hesus as an archetype of the ideal revolutionary was a long time difficult to grasp, for lack of genuine written details, and because of some obscurity of images due to Christianization.

It is that the ancient druidic mythology, from which many details still escape to us, was rich in symbols.

The ancient druids found here their topics of parables; they illustrated through this means the messages they made conveyed to the people in order to improve its religion, and to inculcate to it a high-level ethic.

Hesus was therefore one of the figures of this mythology, considered for a major deity by continental Celts, for a legend character by Irish Celts. His name is attested in the nominative (Esus) and in the dative (Esu) in Celtic and Roman inscriptions.

For some people , this name, pertaining to the old Indo-European core, is a variant of Aisus, a Celtic form parallel to the elsewhere known generic names : ace (plural asar) of the Germanic ones and Asa deva of the Vedic Aryans.

For others, considering their propensity to the play on words aiming at a plurality of meanings , the Celts were to also understand it as “the best” (vesus). This substantive had a paronym adjective, derived from vidtu = to know and meaning “knowing,” “who knows,” from where Vesus in Goidelic language, then old Irish Fessa.

It is by following the walking one we find the path ( druidic proverb).

Before being embodied on earth, Hesus having been, under the name of Marovesus, from where Morfessa, mentioned as a ruler of Falias by the Book of Conquests, let us examine a little the issues that it arouses.

This mysterious Hyperborean island of Falias indeed can be only that of Thule. The explanation or the etymology by the Germanic one is hardly possible. The name of Thule appears in no German or Scandinavian source. It is not mentioned for example in the Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte by Jan De Vries. And it is characteristic that we find it only in English texts: old English Thyle, Thyla, Middle English Tile.

If we correctly interpret the geographical data provided by Pliny, who seems to be most clear author about the subject, the toponym is used for the extreme , northern, limit of the world; beyond which is another World, where the human beings do not have access normally. The explanation by the Celtic one, so delicate it is, therefore is necessary , more especially as the oldest Greco-Latin forms are in u and that most recent pass to I (y); what matches the evolution of the Indo-European u in Common Celtic , then in Goidelic and Brittonic languages.

130

It is besides rational to think that the Greco-Latin forms are borrowed from Brittonic intermediary forms.

But the geographical location of Thule, in the far north of Scotland, forces to suppose at the beginning a Goidelic or Pictish form (the differentiation of the Goidelic and of the Brittonic language was completed for a long time at the epoch of Pytheas).

Without prejudice , we will compare the middle Irish tola (or tolae in a gloss from Milan), a verbal noun of * to-uss-lin or * to-for-lin, flood, deluge, or abundance, large quantity, army. That joined all that we know of the druidic designs about the Next World and the northern origin of traditions.

Thule is not Iceland. However, the descriptions embraces, including the north of Great Britain, all the hyperborean areas, without the least sketch of ethnic distinction between Celts and Germanic ones, the majority of the islands attended by the Greeks being, moreover, inhabited by Celts . The Hyperboreans of the Greek literary tradition can have been only Celtic people and the sea of Pytheas, if it is not an image or a symbol of the passage in the next world, seems at least as mythical as the islands of Plutarch.

Consequently, Thule would symbolize the far limit where this world ends, and where the other begins. On this limit is the upper knowledge, or primordial revelation, that the cup symbolizes, of Goethe’s ballad.

But this sacred knowledge, unlike the kingdoms which can be handed down through heritage, is not conveyed by an authoritative decision: it can be only the object of a personal experiment, of an intuition: it is necessary t to drink personally the cup.

As for the Falias of the Irish legends, that is equated with Thule, its most probable etymology is Fo-Alias < Vo-Alias < Vo-Ales = under the rocks. By semantic coalescence (about which, like the Vedic Aryas, the ancient Celts were crazy), bringing together or evolutionary convergence caused the amalgamation with the other etymological way proposed. From where Foula in the Shetlands, for example. But is it indeed the island in question?

So surprising that can appear, Hesus and Setanta, known as Cuchulainn in Irish language, are undoubtedly the same character, and this is admitted by the specialists themselves on the matter. There is no doubt , since the demonstrations of R. Mac Allister, that works thus preserved, so piously, were brought from Continent into this island; sometimes by immigrants, sometimes in consequence of the circulation of the ideas on the Celtic area; and that they were the subject of adaptation to the ground as well to the history of the country. To notice it removes nothing from their merit, nor from that the Irishmen had to keep them, to embellish them, as well to hand down them. Themselves believed a long time and very sincerely it was their own history that they sang in this way, and there are a few tens of years still, very serious authors sought to date the waves described by the Book of conquests. A properly titanic work since this theomachy is ageless.

The adaptations went very far: each place name, each old ruin, received its historical origin, the royal dynasties were linked to the mythical dynasties, the Panceltic god-or-demons became great heroes. However, the truth always showed its face , we only have to open a book to collect the pieces of evidence of it. The three “races” which are used as support to the myth, the Tuatha (and their doubles), the Ulaid, the Laigin, are all three of foreign origin, and recently landed in Ireland; the authors themselves say it with reason. The great Irish “god-or-demons” are known or at the very least attested Pan-Celtic god-or-demons.

All the question now is to know who is the druidic god-or-demon druidic who can have given birth, in Ireland, to the characters of Morfessa and Cuchulainn, by historicization of the myths relating to him.

There exist on the Continent, as we saw it, only one god-or-demon as closely combined with the bull and the birds as was Cuchulainn; it is the one who is designed in the inscriptions as Esus or Esu. See the altar of the Parisian boatmen and that of Trier in Germany, on which we also find birds, as at the time of the death of Cuchulainn precisely. The conclusion is therefore clear. Hesus is the continental Celtic nickname, and Cuchulainn the Gaelic nickname, of the same “god-or-demon.”

N.B. There exists besides a similar case with Hornunnos, who is called Nemet in Ireland (the grand wizard leader of the first really human settlement).

Mythology relating to Hesus Setanta then passed into Ireland, where it was distorted considerably.

131

In spite of this Irish apocryphal deviation , which was considerable (the Gaelic bards made him either a primordial druid ruling over a mysterious hyperborean island in the north of the World or a simple semi-god-or-demon, model of all the human great heroes); the typically pan-Celtic nature of our hero remained.

The seriousness of the equation Hesus = Cuchulainn having been shown thus (it is possible, plausible, and even probable) let us try now to theorize a little more this notion illustrated by the semi-god-or-demon in question.

The great French archeologist J. - J. Hatt thinks that there is a close connection between Hornunos and Hesus, one having to be the avatar of the other.

“ The Celts appointed those whom they call druids, these also being devoted to the prophetic art and to wisdom in general. In all these cases, the kings were not permitted to do or plan anything without the assistance of these wise men, so that in truth it was they who ruled, while the kings became are servants and the ministers of their will, though they sat on golden thrones, dwelt in great houses, and feasted sumptuously” (Dio Chrysostome, Discourse 49, 8).

Two men, in a way, would therefore have marked the collective memory of the Celtic people. The first, our primordial clan chief, still animal in some ways, but nevertheless having become aware of the difference between the two worlds, is the Nemet Hornunnos. This grand wizard chief of the clan is, moreover, the first who had the sense of the sacredness (from where his name, Nemetus. In that he is incontestably our Spiritual father to everybody). The second, the great Hesus mentioned initially in Northern Islands (the Shetlands or the Faroe) by the name of Marovesus (Morfessa in Gaelic language); would have been embodied later (generated by Lug and conceived by an Epona named Duxtir/Dechtire) on the European continent (although his mythology was especially preserved in the Islands). Born a man, he will very quickly again win the rank of true god-or-demon in the Celtic Panth-eon.

Hesus, the new nemet Hornunnos, the new (through avatar????) shaman king, by his triple birth launched a new stage of Mankind (N. B. the difference between the followers of the worship of Lug-ifer and those of the worship of Hesus is a little the difference which exists between Jews and Christians).

Suffering has, of course, among Celts, a redeeming value, but initially for the one who suffers. The sense of the suffering of the hero among Celts is therefore radically different from that of Christianity. Among Christians the sufferings of Christ redeem, not Christ himself (which does not need that), but the whole Mankind. However, once again let us repeat it, if the heroic suffering can redeem somebody, it is the one who freely accepted it, for a noble cause, but nobody other.

Somebody who badly acted can redeem himself by risking or by sacrificing his life for others: never he will be able to redeem his neighbor or his she janitor. If druidic mythology insists so much on the freely agreed sufferings of the Hesus Cuchulainn, it is therefore with one aim: to show each and everyone that we can possibly redeem ourselves from our faults by accepting supreme sacrifice. Who dies courageously ascends into heaven (into Vindomagos. Irish Findmag, Welsh Gwynfa, Breton Gwenva) and is no longer reincarnated on this earth in bacuceus.

N.B. The deeds of the great Hesus Setanta abroad.

In the Aided Guill Meic Carbada, of the 12th century, 1) Cu Chulainn kills the giant Goll Mac Carbada, who is described to us as a king of Scandinavia come to seize Ireland. In the Siaburcharpat Con Culainn 2) it is a question of an Irish raid in Lochlann i.e., in Norway. Another account, among the last which fall within the cycle of Ulster, has as a hero Aemer and Tuir Glesta. The latter, son of the king of Lochlann (of the king of Norway therefore. Editor’s note) abducted Aemer which falls in love with him, in the absence of Cu Chulainn, who pursues him to the Isle of Man, the Hebrides and to Argyll where he kills him and takes again Aemer. One of the last Islendingasögur, the Kjalnesinga saga, which dates back to the beginning of the 14th century, reminds some deeds of the young Cu Chulainn.

132

Besides the saga mentions the Irish king Konofogur who is not another, in the Ulster’s Cycle, than King Conchobar, Cu Chulainn’s uncle. It is also noticed that the hero of the saga, Bui, is armed with a sling - which never was the favorite weapon of the great Scandinavian heroes - and that he is described as “hound.” However the story of the Cu Chulainn’s “childhoods” precisely explains so the origin of his name, “the hound of Culann.”

As the saga comes from a land where it is known that there were Celts, it is probable that it is the echo of the Irish stories about Cu Chulainn brought by the settlers in Kjalarnes.

However, it is especially in the fornaldasögur and the lygisögur that we meet the most obvious Celtic topics. In the Ala flekks saga, which dates back to the 14th century, we find for example an episode similar to that of the disease of Cu Chulainn (Serglige Conculainn) where our hero, under the influence of a magic charm, falls asleep. During his sleep, two women, one dressed in green, the other in red, appear to him and strike him so violently that when he is awake , he will be more dead than alive, and will remain prostrate during a year. For more details, to see “the sickbed of Cu Chulainn and the only jealousy of Aemer.”

1. Execution of Colnos Mapos Carbanti.

2. The magic chariot of Cuchulainn.

133

THE TRUE UXEDIOI AND THE WORSHIPS OF LATRIA.

As we have had the opportunity to see it, as regards worship indeed it is necessary always to distinguish well three levels.

The basic level: the multiple entities at work permanently within the world. They are indirect assistants of the Divine Providence, of the fate Tokad in a way. A simple worship of dulia may be associated with them.

The intermediate level and which relates to some divine entities appearing to have acquired early a particular importance. It is necessary to dedicate to them more than a simple worship of dulia. We speak therefore about hyperdulia with regard to the rituals in their honor.

The highest level (worship of latria since idolatry is the term used by the Taliban of Christianity --the parabolani-- to name this type of spirituality so different of their). They are the direct assistants of the Divine Providence, some angels of the Fate or Tokade in a way. They are fewer. They are almost present as of the birth of the world (Taran/Toran/Tuireann, the W.G.M.G. Watery Grand Mother Goddess but also Lug, Ogmius, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus…) Varro distinguished 20 from them. They are, of course, the “dii certi “ who luckier or more long-lived than the others, survived while absorbing the powers of their fellow gods and were the object of a worship of “latria“ level. In practice, these god-or-demons were especially called upon by the aristocrats. From where besides their Latin name by Varro: dii praecipui atque selecti.

The tendency to monism (to the philosophical and considered monotheism) of primordial druids had indeed very important consequences on the mythology and the primitive Indo-European Panth-eon or Pleroma, which they had formerly inherited. The hard-line Aryan trifunctionality of origins was changed by them and the god-or-demon therefore, in Celtic mythology, lost mainly their narrow specializations of the beginning. They became more or less general-purpose, and even sometimes interchangeable. That is particularly clear with regard to the medical or healing function, and with regard to the warlike and protective function; that the druids always saw more split up, or scattered, in many divine figurations, than the Aryan priests think it at the beginning. It is in all likelihood a series of contamination and interbreeding between Indo-European god-or-demons and pre-Celtic, specific to former populations, god-or-demons. The druids very quickly ended up therefore in understanding that these many divine, Aryan or not besides, entities, specialized narrowly, referred all ultimately to one Higher Being, whatever its name (Tokad, Tokade, Fate, or other). What follows is therefore only a rather theoretical and abstract regrouping, intended to facilitate the detailed presentation of this spirituality.

The druidic religion can be regarded as an aggregate of various beliefs and rituals; of which some of them go back to the Paleolithic and the Mesolithic era (various disguises in stags and cattle), others to the Neolithic era (worship of a mother-goddess-or-demoness combined with a warrior god-or-demon), others to the old and middle Bronze Age (astral signs, worships of springs), others to the final Bronze (general-purpose tribal god-or-demons). Although it was, of course, not formed as such before the end of the first Iron Age, between 650 and 450 before our era approximately, this religion appears well to have preserved survivals of almost all the former times. We may compare it with these cave stratigraphies , in which superimpose themselves, in successive layers, the remains of twenty to thirty thousand years of History. In the fifth and last level, develops, starting from these heterogeneous elements, a religion of national and unifying nature, that of LaTene. Appeared in the beginning of the great displacements of the Celtic tribes towards Italy and the Danubian areas; this religion was quickly and widely spread by the means of a code of symbols and signs, constituting the basic repertory of the art of La Tene. This religious Latenian “koinè “ includes the great god-or-demons of Indo-European nature, Tara/Toran/Tuireann, the god-or-demon of the sky and of the sovereignty, Mor-

134

rigani Danu (bia) , goddess-or-demoness or fairy if you prefer, multifunctional sovereign , at the same time heavenly , social and warlike. We attend then with the appearance of a schematic religious art, which appears to match simultaneously the expression of a religion former to the Celts, and an interbreeding, between Celtic and pre-Celtic worships; leading to the creation of a mixed Panth-eon or Pleroma. It is impossible to explain; as well the appearance, between the end of the 6th century and the beginning of the 5th century, of a Panth-eon or condensed Pleroma, for all the Celts; as the later evolution of the beliefs during the 4th , 3rd and 2nd centuries before our era; without supposing that there was an intellectual elite able to channel, to direct even to systematize the ideas as well as the religious tendencies of the continental Celtic community. That elite existed. The Ancients witness about it : they were the druids.

The uxedioi god-or-demons are only the links of immense chains as old as mankind. Perhaps they will die a day (with our universe or bitus), but to reappear at once in another shape and with another name (justice, eloquence, war…?)

These god-or-demons are only emanations of the two primordial eons which are the universal spirit (the cosmic menman represented by Taran/Toran/Tuireann) and the matter (the Watery Mother Great Goddess Danu out W.M.G.D.). They are neither omniscient nor omnipotent (they can be misled, they have a personality, they can be killed, they do not see all everywhere). They are therefore subjected like everyone to a destiny (at least the obligation and to be born and to die).

Their main sanctuary is located in a sacred island. Originally it had to be an island in the Danube a little similar to these of Lobau, Schutt, or to that of Peuke, farther, later, last refuge of the Triballi of the Getae and the Thracians of Syrmus facing the advance of the troops of Alexander the Great in – 335. Islands on the blue Danube become later symbolically speaking islands north of the world, when the Celts reached the shores of the Ocean and of the North Sea.

Because according to the Irish legends, these god-or-demons would have begun by evolving in an obscure and unknown way in islands the north of the world, with four more or less magic objects.

The Stone of destiny or stone of Fal (Lia Fail) known as also Stone Scone. According to our Scot friends ( when the independence on this subject??), this stone of destiny would still exist. It would have been given back by the Englishmen in 1996 and installed in the castle of Edinburgh. To see…

The lance of Lug (Gae Assail, the lance of Assal) of which people could control the warlike power only by soaking its head in a cauldron filled with human blood.

The cauldron or olla of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt.

The sword of Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada. In the Welsh tradition, the sword is named Caledfwlch, which means “hard cutting edge “because it had the reputation to be unbreakable (just like the Durandal of the nephew of Charlemagne) or to cut every matter. Its name would come from Caladbolg: “hard lightning “ from where the name of Caliborn, then Escalibor, Excalibur.

The first king of these god-or-demons would have been Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada, but the doubt remains *indeed , because we do not many things of this meta-history before their landing, let us say in our universe. An island north of the world is always a land, but in the mind of the Irish druids, such islands belonged much more to the heavenly world than to the merely earthly world. These remote and mysterious islands were gates or contact points with the next world. What is certain indeed it is that when they landed on the dry land, it was after centuries of evolution without our knowledge in unknown worlds of hyperborean nature.

These remote and insular god-or-demons come from another world would have been a time stopped by the immense army of the underground or chthonian deities, but would nevertheless have succeeded in landing; before having, several centuries later, to give up the surface of the land to the human beings we are (battle of Tailtiu and battle of Druim Lighean in Gaelic mythology).

Following these two defeats, they would have taken refuge under ground, in the hillocks and the tumulus [in the islands west of the world or elsewhere in the skies, other traditions pay…] and would consequently have become invisible for our eyes. Said differently: they are from now on in parallel dimensions, but remain nevertheless connected with the world of the mere mortals like your servant, through the rituals of their faithful , and their sacred places (the Lugdunums for example, or the sidhs

135

in Ireland); which are as many communication gates between their world and ours, as the expression even of “deuogdonion “ shows it well.

The sidhs (old Celtic "Sedos") are front doors or exit doors of the next world. Every god or demon has one or some of these doors and lives there (dwells behind). But it is not in Ireland only that there are sidhs, there is some of them worldwide. In Germany and Czechia in Great Britain, etc. and even in Delphi in a way , which is a sidh belonging to Belenos / Abellio called Apollo by Greeks. And even in Lourdes for Catholics. Lourdes is the sidh of a goddess or of a super-heroine called virgin Mary.

And all these sidhs adjoin themselves. Finally, in spite of the mention of a king of the sidhs different according to epochs or texts, it would be more right in this respect to consider that it is a kind of Republic, the United Sidhs , directed by a president elected and endowed with strong powers.

On the Continent these Gods have besides Taran / Toran / Tuireann as a king or as a vergobret (president) endowed with a strong executive power: he makes the Law of worlds, or the decrees of Fate,enforced.

By doing so the god-or-demons of former druidism, however, remained so close to men that they also have certain weaknesses of them. These higher god-or-demons of druidism are not less because of that, some personifications of infinite and immortal concepts. Ogmius represents for example the power of eloquence (cf the works by Gustave Le Bon about the psychology of the crowd) , noiba Brigitte wisdom, and so on. Guards of property, contracts, justice, guardians of agriculture, dispensers of all the earthly goods, presiding over the actions of men ; these god-or-demons are useful god-or-demons, to whom, during centuries, the interested believers will dare to send only right prayers. These deities, altogether modest could not show the frightening requirements we find in the Eastern theogonies. They seldom asked human blood on their altars (less than Moloch in any case); but accepted voluntary sacrifices, the redeeming of the people by the devotion (Latin devotio) of a victim, or the (delayed) executions of criminals.

The Celtic populations imagined demons who could never be completely bad, because their simple and hard life forced them to seek particularly god-or-demons who protect property or agreements. The tablet from Botorrita 1 is the piece of evidence of it. One of the features which distinguish these worships of the free and independent great Celtica of the time of Ambicatus (Letavia), is therefore the moral superiority of their demons , who were virotoutis, iovantucarus, anextiomarus, dunatis, toutatis, mopatis etc.

The worship of these pan-Celtic deities was often the only bond which linked the tribes. It was true amphictyonies the druids chaired. Some god-or-demons had more worshippers indeed than others, for example Lug, the god-or-demon of arts, and of travelers according to Caesar, or noiba Brigit, who was much more than the humble Roman Minerva, together with some others.

In religion as in policy, the druids were distinguished from the rest of the peoples, from whom, they took or to whom they gave god-or-demons. Their religious doctrines accepted the existence of a higher being, the spirit of the world, generated by the reciprocal interpenetration of the purest cosmic soul and of the universal matter (water according to them), which had as assistants or secondary causations the god-or-demons, personifications of the forces of present nature, and intended to perish with it; because the belief in a periodical destruction and renewal of the world was also found in their metaphysics: “One day only fire and water will prevail “(Strabo IV, 4).

These superman or angelic entities can therefore take part in the life of men, but can influence it only locally and temporarily. Higher, much upstream, indeed, a mysterious force (Tocad) remains to which even these god-or-demons are subjected and which was used by the former druids to explain the unfathomable mystery of life. What Vikings called gaefa (gaefa and not gaesa).

The role of Taran / Toran / Tuireann is incomprehensible in Ireland (all that is foreseen it is there is an ancestral rivalry between his family and that of Lug) but on the Continent Taran/Toran/Tuireann represents the part mind or menman of the Celtic gdonios (of the human being). It is therefore located at the junction or at the meeting between the (pure) soul and the inanimate matter. Pure soul and matter being generally but although paradoxically, associated with the female gender, the spirit could therefore only be male for the druids. Female + female when it is interpenetrated that produces masculine among Celts. The divine entity Taran/Toran/Tuireann was therefore regarded as male or masculine in the druidic Panth-eon.

136

Below the gods, much lower, hidden in the unfathomable depths of the land, there also existed mysterious deities of whom people do not know really their names, and symbolized by gigantic anguipedic wyverns , called andernas on the Continent, fomorians in Ireland. They played a great part, and, with the fate, were also used by druids to give an account of the unexplainable one.

Whether it is individually or collectively, religion was an agreement concluded with the god-or-demons much more than a prayer or an act of gratitude. The famous Sanskrit “dadami dehi me “Sanskrit, expression coarsely translated by the Latin people with their “do ut des “.

“The victorious Brennus, meeting with no opposition, ravaged the lands throughout the whole of Macedonia. Soon after, as if the spoils of mortals were too mean for him, he turned his thoughts to the temples of the immortal gods, saying, with a profane jest, that “the gods, being rich, ought to be liberal to men." He suddenly, therefore, directed his march towards Delphi, regarding plunder more than religion, and caring for gold more than for the wrath of the deities, " who," he said, " stood in no need of riches, as being accustomed rather , to bestow them on mortals."(Pompeius Trogus, Philippic history , XXIV, 4,6, according to Justin, Epitoma historiarum philippicarum).

Between the god-or-demons and man, there is nevertheless a relation of interest. The god-or-demons want to be honored; like an owner proud of the great number of persons in his debt or of his vassals, they care for the crowd surrounding their altars . They ask victims and libations, songs, and sacred dances, crowns of flowers and foliage around their sanctuaries and their altars, with a numerous attendance so that their dignity is raised by it in the world of the god-or-demons, or their credit among men. In exchange, they promise their protection and, as they are also nevertheless feared, people seek to calm them; as it is believed they can give health, fortune, victory, people perform all the acts which can force them to concede these goods. The Celt relies nevertheless on his god-or-demons, who are protective (virotoutis) who love youth (iovantucarus), who are helpful (anextiomarus)... and who are listeners (rocloisia,rocloisiabus).

In a ritual the god-or-demon must be clearly identified by his name, generally specified by a functional epithet. It will be perhaps reproached this work for frequently using multiple (triple) names in order to designate the same divine entity, but it is that in reality, it is often a question of speaking to a deity of whom we are unaware of the exact name. People also tended very early to pile up or to accumulate up names to increase the powers. Besides it was also what Romans did by replacing the absent name with some circumlocutions, as “si deus, si dea es, sive mas, sive femina “, or others of the same kind. They added even to the known name, by addition of cautions: “sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare “, or “sine quo alio nomine te appellari volueris “.

* What is certain indeed it is that the position of Taran / Toran / Tuireann and of his children with respect to the family of Lug in the Irish panth-eon ...... may cause a lot of questions.

137

THE SACRED DODECAHEDRON ACCORDING TO JULIUS CAESAR AND FLORUS

( 5+ 1+ 1).

Here what the “Divine Julius “ wrote on this subject (they are the multipurpose, god-or-demons or goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, whose Caesar, generally at the time of his campaigns, between two massacres, had heard something, considering their not narrowly specialized nature).

“They worship as their deity, Mercury in particular, and have many simulacrums [simulacra] of him, and regard him as the inventor of all arts, they consider him the guide of their journeys and marches, and believe him to have great influence over the acquisition of gain and mercantile transactions. Next to him they worship Apollo, and Mars, and Jupiter, and Minerva; respecting these deities, they have for the most part the same belief as other nations: that Apollo averts diseases, that Minerva imparts the invention of work and art, that Jupiter possesses the sovereignty of the heavenly powers; that Mars presides over wars [….] They assert that they are descended from Dis Pater, and say that this tradition has been handed down by the druids “(B.G. Book VI).

The majority of the commentators are focused on this text by Caesar dealing briefly, too much briefly, with the Celtic god-or-demons, and conclude from it that there are only 5 of them: 4 god-or-demons and one goddess-or-demoness, or fairy. It is to forget that Caesar also mentions a god-or-demon he equates to the Roman Dis Pater as we saw it; and that the existence of a god-or-demon of the foundry is witnessed by a text of Florus (Epitome, Book I,20, 4): “When Viridomarus was their king, they vowed the arms of the Romans to Vulcan.”

It therefore seemed to us much more judicious to consider that, like among the Greeks besides in fact, there were twelve main god-or-demons, from where the symbol of the dodecahedron.

To note. As we said it, the great Celtic god-or-demons are all more or less multipurpose. The same god-or-demon may have several functions, and it is rather rare besides, on this level of the druidic Panth-eon or Pleroma, that a god-or-demon or a goddess-or-demoness, or a fairy, is confined to one function; like the majority of the lower god-or-demons or andedioi (Ucuetis boss of bronze smelters for example).

Some of them practice rather logically dependent functions. Mabon/Maponos/Oengus is at the same time a god-or-demon of hunting, war, young people… and love.

War and hunting were very dependent at that time, and it is obvious that in fact there are here activities which can hardly be practiced by the elderly. There is no seventy-year-old sporting champion nor elite soldier.

Ogmius is the god-or-demon of eloquence, but also the god-or-demon of the writing (in Ireland particularly) what is rather logical.

As for the primacy of Lug in the sacred dodecahedron according to Caesar, it is undoubtedly due to the fact that Caesar was especially dealing with Roman bazaar merchants during his peregrinations in the country.

We are, on the other hand, a little more astonished to see Lug, god-or-demon of the lightning and of the war, also patron saint of the shoemakers, but if that can seem strange, it is witnessed. For a simple reason. It is that in reality, as we have already said it and also repeated, all druidic great god-or-demon druidic is more or less the hypostasis of a kind of saint poly-unity; a little in the way of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in Christian Trinity.

In short, therefore are also part of the sons or children of the Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia) in Ireland, the 12 god-or-demons following who, joined together, form the druidic dodecahedron.

Let us remind nevertheless once again that most of our analyzes comes from what it is called the interpretatio celtica or more exactly druidica in fact. After the Roman conquest, in parallel to the

138

Roman interpretation of the Celtic deities by the winners, it also occurred on the contrary, in the indigenous mind, a druidic interpretation (interpretatio celtica) of the Greco-Roman god-or-demons. The possible comparison between the two religions was therefore done in the two directions, but in an approximate way, with differences according to places or times. The Latin language and the Greco-Roman art brought to the natives, names and images of deities, they used them, at the whim of their preferences, randomly of the resemblance… and such great Roman god-or-demon was here equated with such druidic god-or-demon, elsewhere with such other. But let us not mislead us there, when a Romano-British or a Gallo-Roman refers to the god-or-demon Mercury, it is not the Roman Mercury but a Celtic deity nominally compared with Mercury. On the few 500 known deities, the 3/4 appear only once. Under these conditions of diversity, it is therefore very difficult to break even: it is rare that two Celtic and Roman deities superimpose themselves completely. Everything occurred like if the Celts had kept their own god-or-demons, but while giving them names of Roman god-or-demons. We note indeed that certain god-or-demons bear a Roman name, but are represented in the indigenous costume, that others bear at the same time the Celtic and Roman name coupled or the Roman name to which is added a Celtic epithet, that others now have their consort (female equivalent) in the other Panth-eon (a Celtic god-or-demon for example is combined with a Roman goddess-or-demoness or fairy and vice versa). The art translates this ambivalence, either the works which represent the god-or-demons are completely classical (Greco-Romans), or they remain of indigenous craftmanship , or then they are composite.

139

THE SACRED DODECAHEDRON ACCORDING TO DRUIDS

( EMPYREAN AMONG GREEKS).

Druidic polytheism is not a Greek-style hierarchical polytheism but a polytheism of values. Jungian we would say today. For no one is chained to a single archetype. One can be a warrior in the work and a poet in love. You can be a queen in the theater and a true magician in the kitchen.

Even if each one of us carries in him all the archetypes of Jung, there are some to which we return more often, they are our archetypes of predilection.

The archetypes are not "boxes" but "zones". Every man is a point which is located somewhere in the zone, perhaps closer to a neighboring archetype than perfectly in the center. It may even be exactly between two archetypes. Moreover we are never one category at a time, but a little all of us depending on the moment.

At the opposite of the warriors are the poets. They are in reflection rather than action, just as kings/queens are more turned towards everything that is artistic, poetic, human. While kings/queens excel in IQ, poets have a much higher EQ (emotional quotient). Their ability to understand the other makes them the best confidants who are.

The poet is the one who will see in the blink of an eye who is doing well, who is not doing well, which motivates each person in the depths of his/her being. As his symbol represents, the poet has an artistic talent. Music, writing, painting, drawing, photography etc…

The poet understands art, and never judges others. He/she is open-minded, which further strengthens his/her confident and warm side. They are also willingly spontaneous, which accentuates their creativity and adaptability to events.

If the warrior is a leader, the poet is rather a follower. He/she is the one who inspires and would not let anyone do harm.

By spending time in emotion and reflection, the poet can develop the same cowardice as kings and queens. They find it very difficult to get angry, to say NO and can become real sponges of sadness.

Poets who are not afraid to go to the end of their emotions can become masochistic and get stuck in intense patterns of mental suffering.

LETTERS TO THE EDTOR.

There are behavioral inductions by repetition of the same patterns: the child acts like his mother, whether he is aware of it or not, the employee acts like his boss or the boss like his employee, etc. The child's behavior is not the same as his mother's.

What is an archetype if not a sociological or even physical determinant (we all see with our eyes...) of individuals?

When he sees the Sun rising, an Aztec thinks of not forgetting to sacrifice some prisoners so that it continues, a physicist thinks of gravitation etc. and in these communities there will be convergences of thought and action simply because people belong to the same milieu.

140

From time to time there are coincidences, all the more frequently as the psychological similarity is great.

Is there a need to look for expressions as complicated as "collective unconscious shadow archetypes" to say that there is a conditioning of phenomena not only according to simple causal chains but also according to a causal environment that is difficult to analyze, sometimes unanalyzable?

RETURN TO DRUIDIC POLYTHEISM.

“Medros/Midir takes his weapons in his left hand, and the woman he took under his right arm, then bore her away through the skylight of the house.”

It is fashionable today, after two thousand years of conquering Judeo-Christianity, to make fun with all these ideas the druids had about the visible or invisible world.

Let us say to simplify that the druidic gods or demons have a little the same powers as the fallen or not angels besides of the Judeo-Islamic-Christianity but that, instead of obeying God, they are subordinated to the fate called Tocad (or Tocade if you want to feminize the word).

As we already have had the opportunity to see it, for the electronic dictionary of the Irish language, the powers of the gods (cumachta) are simply preternatural powers, i.e., the powers the Man had before his fall and his expulsion of the Garden of Eden. What, of course, could not be, since mankind was not created by God unlikely what the monolatries that are Judaism Christianity and Islam, repeat to us.

But in connection with these powers we therefore find here two others of them: the power to fly in the airs and the capacity to changes oneself in a bird. Let us add there for Medros/Midir, of course, a not very ordinary strength and for Etanna a gift to serve drinks (this gift which rather makes us think of a heroine of the television series hero corp… is undoubtedly a former metaphor of which meaning was lost).

No detailed study of what the Gaelic word cumachta covers having been tried until today; nevertheless let us try to have a word of it.

In “polytheistic” religions, gods or demons have communal features which make them at the same time very close but also very above men.

The body of the gods has qualities definitely higher than that of the men: radiance, youth, perfect outline and so on. In short it is bellissamos for men and bellissama for women. What ancient Iranians called xvarnah, former Irishmen En laith or Luan laith, and Christians “glory.”

The powers ascribed to the gods, who are not more omniscient nor omnipotent than angels, are simply superhuman (speed, strength, invisibility, capacity to fly), as their size and their radiance are when they appear physically.

They created neither the universe (they only contributed to organizing or making leave chaos) nor the men , we have said, but like the latter, they are born, they have a birth, a beginning , at least according to myths *. They have a proper noun, own attributes, a characteristic bodily appearance and attitudes, a personal history with a civil status and adventures. They received, moreover, a multitude of pertaining to worship epithets which are called epiclesis in Greek language, varying according to the place of the worship and the particular aspect of the god who is called upon.

These epicleses therefore inform about the very diverse functions a deity can assume (iovantucarus = who likes the youth for example, virotutis = who protects the men, anextlomarus = protector, dunatis = guardian of the fortress, etc.).

But this multiplicity of aspects does not exclude a principle of unity; each god has indeed, his mode of specific action, his type of power , his reserved domains, in the large spheres of activity where men request their assistance; if various gods take part in the same sphere of activity, their actions then are not mixed but are complementary.

Concurrently to these common features, the gods have each one distinctive and individualized feature which makes it possible their recognition.

141

This variety is found in the way in which former druids represented their gods. They knew all the forms of figuration: rough stones, stone pillars or wood totems, masks, animal figures, human representations, and this, in extremely various materials: wood, stone, terra cotta, bronze… These forms are not the mark of a chronological evolution but coexisted and are treated with the same regards.

Let us mention by the way the big pertaining to worship statue representing Lug (Mercury in Roman interpretation) whose resemblance to a man was corrected by its dimension quite higher than the human size. It was erected by a Greek sculptor named Zenodorus who lived in the time of Nero (ten years of work, price 4 million sestertia).

* On the other hand, they do not die (except in the documents influenced by Christianity) if it is not for coming back and live at once. Their true disappearance will be done only at the time of the general aredengto of the universe (its end and its regeneration at the end of a cosmic cycle of an immense length….The estimate of which made at the time by the druids seemed ridiculous in the eyes of Greeks Romans and Jews.

In the Book of Lismore (fo.151, b 2) we indeed find the following passage.

“Three years for the field (three-field system ?)

Three lifetimes of the field for the hound.

Three lifetimes of the hound for the horse.

Three lifetimes of the horse for the human being.

Three lifetimes of the human being for the stag.

Three lifetimes of the stag for the blackbird

Three lifetimes of the blackbird for the eagle.

Three lifetimes of the eagle for the salmon.

Three lifetimes of the salmon for the yew.

Three lifetimes of the yew for the world from its beginning to its end.”

That our favorite author [[Eleanor Hull, “The Hawk of Achill or the legend of the oldest animals in the world,” Folklore, Vol. 43, No. 4 (1932): pp. 376–409] comments in this way.

“We arrive thus at 59,050 years,i.e., two multiples of three more than the Westminster calculation, which made 6561 years ; i.e., down to the salmon in the Irish list.”

!--------------- ------------------------ ------------- !

The preternatural powers of angels and of men….. It is fashionable today, after two thousand years of conquering Judeo-Christianity, to make fun of all these ideas that the druids had about the visible or invisible world we have said.

But the powers of the superheroes of our very modern comic books are the evidence that such dreams of supermankind have still a great power of seduction on the minds…. even at our time and they form an excellent point of comparison.

In the works of science fiction, a superpower is an extraordinary superhuman capacity.

The superpowers can be bodily or mental. They can be gotten by heroes in an innate way or be acquired in a fortuitous way even at the end of a long quest. We find heroes having a single power, others having a multitude of them.

The types of most recurrent powers are, control of the elements, of the magnetic fields, telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis… and some others of the same kind.

The diversity of the powers is therefore large and also depends on the kinds as on the civilizations to which the heroes who are endowed with them belong. That can be, for example, a phenomenal luck, a superhuman strength, a high speed, a gift of teleportation, a gift of telepathy, the capacity to see during the night, to control various elements (water, earth, fire, wind, lightning…), to fly, to become a

142

phantom. We can also quote a huge intelligence, an “animal” instinct, the power to multiply oneself, that to be able to send back the blows, to travel in time, the power to regenerate or to take another shape.

Certain powers got by the superheroes can sometimes be apparently ridiculous: the fact of releasing a repelling odor, of being endowed with a very small size or of being able to swallow anything.

The disproportionate physical strength compared to an ordinary human being is a superpower frequently met.

It is not rare to see, in cartoons, some heroes carrying important loads (cars, standing stones, etc.) or breaking particularly resistant objects (armor-plated doors, strong-boxes , walls, etc.). This capacity is often accompanied by a great resistance to bare-handed, even with firearms, body attacks. It is to be noticed that certain heroes have a superhuman resistance without that is extended to their clothing, which sometimes leads Colossus to finish a fight victorious and unscathed but almost naked.

Certain fictional characters can move very quickly. Flash is able to move at a speed out of the common run; Steve Austin, the six-million-dollar man , has also this faculty thanks to electronic prostheses.

There exists heroes able to cross objects; Cyclops and Superman can as for them cast an energy ray through their eyes.

The gift of teleportation including through walls is sometimes bestowed upon certain heroes. A character who has this gift generally can teleport himself from a place to another, but it is not the only form of this power we meet. The teleportation in question can apply to someone else.

A power often combined with the “villains” is the power to regenerate oneself quickly.

Another recurrent gift is that of metamorphosis, namely that to change one’s aspect, that is to take one or more different appearances.

The Animorphs can acquire the DNA of a living being by physical contact, what then enables them to take the shape of this living being for a two-hour length. Stanley Ipkiss/The Mask can at will change his clothing and his outline while keeping his green face.

There exist more complicated powers: Magneto can control the electromagnetic fields (what enables him as well to deviate the bullets as to threaten to remove the magnetosphere). Sebastian Shaw, always in X-Men, absorbs the energy of the blows that people deal to him in order to become stronger. Doomsday, if he is killed, comes back to life while being impossible to kill in the same way. Will Stanton, the hero of The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising , can move in time. William Dunbar (Code Lyoko) can change temporarily into clouds of flying and very rapid black smoke.

The mental powers too are generally allocated to characters having no extraordinary build.

Wonder Woman has various magic objects, of which a gold lasso forcing all those it locks to tell the truth and indestructible bracelets, just like the shield of Captain America.

Stanley Ipkiss/The mask draws all his powers from a magic mask of Viking origin which, when he wears it, changes him into a green and burlesque character having almost limitless powers, whereas it is only an ordinary human being under normal circumstances.

Weaknesses and limitations.

To balance the characters, the heroes often have a weak point. The kryptonite and the prolonged exposure to red light make Superman vulnerable; Cyclops cannot do without his special glasses in ruby quartz; Benoit Brisefer loses his powers when he has a cold; the Martian Manhunter and Miss

143

Martian are pyrophobic, and lose their power if they are exposed to fire; Iron Man is forced to permanently have an electromagnet to survive because of pieces of shrapnel wedged in his chest.

In a more general way, the weaknesses of a superhero can lie in his character, his personality. A weakness of Wolverine is to want to act alone, to refuse the external assistance. Storm is as for her claustrophobic.

Length and accessibility of the powers.

The super capacities of our heroes are not inevitably always the same ones. They can evolve in time, and sometimes according to other factors.

Thus, Bruce Banner is transformed into Hulk, an animal endowed with a great physical strength, under the effect of anger or stress. The stress increases his capacities besides.

* FOREWORD: WE DO NOT SPEAK HERE ABOUT THE METAMORPHOSES OF A HUMAN BEING, FOR EXAMPLE INTO A WEREWOLF, BUT WELL ABOUT THE SHAPES THAT CAN TAKE IN THE EYES OF MEN, ENTITIES COME FROM ANOTHER WORLD THAT THEIRS IN ORDER TO COMMUNICATE WITH THEM.

144

THE TWELVE ALVEOLI OF THE DIVINE BEEHIVE.

Let us come from it now to the study as such of the 12 divine tetrarchs.

It is therefore possible, as in the case of Hindu Aditya, to differentiate various cosmic or human forces which support the existence of the world and harmonize it.

There are the forces at work on the human level, personifications of the moral and intellectual principles governing Mankind.

There are the forces working on the cosmic level.

Twelve of these gods of the druidic pleroma, forming its upper part, have functions on the human level. In conjunction with the twelve months of the solar calendar, they structure the Time and its proceeding.

As we have had the opportunity to see it, Irish legends make the children of the druidic goddess or demoness called Danu (bia) the watery or river deity of origins, of the pure and free energy but these data seem very arguable.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious” (Carl Jung. Alchemical Studies. Paragraph 335).

“Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes” (Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, page 33).

He is not the first to mention the possibility of the existence of "primordial images" conditioning the imagination and representation; indeed, before him, many philosophers have postulated their influence on human nature.

Archetypes appear in myths but also in dreams; they form symbolic categories structuring cultures and mentalities and orienting the subject towards his inner evolution, called individuation in Jung's psychology.

Jung identifies 12 innate tendencies to generate images with an intense emotional charge that express the relational supremacy of human life. They are a kind of digital trace of humanity that remain immersed in the unconscious of everyone. And they end up defining the particular traits of each one of us.

Of the twelve archetypes thus defined by him, only that of the wise man can at the very least be found in the Celtic world.

The wise man represents the free thinker who makes intellect and knowledge his main reason for being and his foundation. Intelligence and capacity of analysis are for him the best way to understand himself and the world. He corresponds to the one who always has a data, a quotation or a logical argument in mind.

Perhaps the definition should be broadened while staying within the framework of Jungian thought.

The archetype is a psychic process founding human cultures expressing elementary models of behaviors and representations stemming from human experience in connection with another Jungian

145

concept, that of collective unconscious. In doing so, they are "potential of psychic energy" constituent of all human activity and orienting the libido.

NB. It is easy to talk quietly about the archetypes, but to be really confronted with them is a completely different matter. The difference is the same as between talking about a lion and having to face it. Confronting a lion is an intense and frightening experience that can leave a lasting impression on your personality.

Jung is obviously right, but it must be acknowledged that the Celtic pantheon is difficult to fit into the mold of its twelve primordial archetypes.

We have, moreover, a little the same phenomenon with the Dumezilian tripartition.

The classical model of Indo-European trifunctionality is the Vedic panth-eon. This structure is found in other Indo-European peoples, more or less well preserved: the Iranians, the Germans, the Greeks. The needs of the metrics urging, notably in the Irish heresy (ah these bards!) the deity who was celebrated, at a given moment, was endowed with all or only part of the functions pertaining to the other gods or demons.

So that druidic mythology quickly became a rather complex thing (in Ireland in particular, once again: oh these bards!)

Among Celts, there never was a fixed hierarchy, as in Roman mythology. A god-or-demon can besides be older than his grandfather, and even can be born before his mother.

Then, there are no specific tasks allocated to each divinity. All are uncategorized , exceptional, even if there exist some kinship. Therefore no single war or love god-or-demon, but some war god-or-demons (dii casses) some love god-or-demons (Mabon/Maponos/Oengus, Brangaine, Wanda/Fand....) etc.

The main Celtic god-or-demons are multipurpose, the same god-or-demon can have several functions; and it is rather rare indeed in the druidic Panth-eon or pleroma, that a god-or-demon or a goddess-or demoness, higher ranked, is restricted to one function, like Ucuetis owner of the continental blacksmiths, for example.

Some of them practice rather logically dependent functions. Mabon/Maponos/Oengus for example, who is at the same time a god-or-demon of hunting, war, young people… and love.

War and hunting were very dependent in this time and it is therefore obvious that they are activities which can hardly be practiced by elderly persons. There is no seventy-year-old sporting champion nor elite soldier.

Ogmius is the god-or-demon of eloquence, but also the god-or-demon of writing (in Ireland in particular) what is rather logical.

We are, on the other hand, a little more astonished to see Lug, lightning and war god-or-demon, also patron saint of the shoemakers, but that is demonstrated. Many god-or-demons of the druidic panth-eon or pleroma (for example Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Ogmius, Lug) have therefore in reality multiple functions overflowing of the framework fixed a little wrongly by the great French mythographer.

Analytical psychology applied to Celtic peoples also gives us less clear-cut archetypes.

Perhaps the collective unconscious of Celts could not give us a dodecahedron similar to the one released by Jung.

Let us remind nevertheless that in most of his works Carl Gustav Jung asserts that men and women only become fully-fledged "individuals," accomplished beings, at the end of a long work of introspection, which he calls "process of individuation," during which their preoccupations evolve from the purely instinctive stage to a certain level of spirituality.

This work is peppered with trials, insofar as it is based on a differentiation between the realities of existence and the contents (or "complexes" or "archetypes") coming from the unconscious and which one tends to project onto them. In the first row of these contents appear the anima, "the feminine part of the man," and the animus, "the masculine part of the woman."

The (personified) principles that govern the society of men are therefore these who follow. But all these gods are only the imperfect reflections of the immortal principles or electreons which will be later examined.

146

BELIN/BELEN/BARINTHUS/MANANNAN

AND THE DEITIES OF THE TYPE BELIN (US).

(Belinus, Belenos, Belennos Belen, Beli, Bel.)

Other nicknames of Belin / Belen.

Atepomarus (the great horseman).

Cermillenus (?)

Mogounus (great) [in the inscription APOLLINI GRANNO MOGOUNO].

Cosumis (?)

Siannus (?)

Nerius (strong).

Etc.

His name in Gaelic is Manannan, what means literally Mannish (from the Isle of Man) . It was therefore at the origin a god or demon having a large shrine on the island of Man, and as a result of a deity belonging to the Britonnic druidic Panth-eon . He occupies besides a separate place in the Irish pantheon, and does not appear in it as being really part of the main branch of the Tuatha De Danann, that of the family of Lug. Same case as that of Taran / Toran / Tuireann therefore.

In Ireland rather strangely , the only allusion to this god or demon UNDER HIS ORIGINAL NAME is in a text ascribed to the hesus Cuchulainn: « To Beltine, viz., a favoring fire. For the druids used to make two fires with great incantations, and to drive the cattle between them against the plagues, every year. Or to Bel-dine, viz., Bel the name of an idol. At that time the young of every neat were placed in the possession of Bel. Cuchulaind went driving «(version III of the Tochmarc Emire – the wooing of Aemer–).

The term is therefore related to Irish Beltene, name of the holy day of May 1st, the beginning of the clear season, which is found on the continent linked to Belenos and to Belisama (" the very Bright "), his consort. Well, perhaps.

Below what Henry Lizeray, following John Toland, had seen fit to notice regarding Bel.

The second holiday took place on the first of May, a day still named Beltene: Bel’s fires. On the night of the first of May,

all fires in every land were put out , and prohibition was made by the king, on pain of death, to start any fire in Ireland, before that of Tara.

The round towers named Tuir aghas, Tuir ain, that is to say fire towers , were used to see the new fire kindled in Tara, to announce the news about that by means of the fire which gave the signal of the celebrations *.

The solar fecundity, in the past expressed by phallic emblems, gave us the explanation of the shape given to the fire towers . Similar monuments are still found in India and in Persian. They are always annexed to buildings dedicated to worship. Their smallness and the absence of every trace of struggles do not make possible to consider them as being fortresses….

The solemnities of May and of November are initial institutions. In spring, first fruits and first-born of animals, according to the Dinnsenchus, quoted in the tripartite Life of Saint Patrick, were given in sacrifices to the god, that is to say to his priests.

147

As religions are only symbols, people sacrificed victims to Crom by analogy with the Time which consumes everything, edax rerum. The same dispositions were admitted for Bel, the spring sun , because the word bel means mouth [mistake of Henry Lizeray]. The sun, indeed, is the yawning mouth to which , afterwards more or less of duration, all animate beings rush, to be renovated and made again under a purer form **.

* Or then they played a little the role of lanterns of the dead.

** Perhaps a wrong reading by Henry Lizeray of Lucan’s scholiast.

Belin / Belen was worshipped in Stonehenge. Under the name of Apollo according to Diodorus of Sicily.

“Now for our part, since we have seen fit to make mention of the regions of Asia which lie to the north, we feel that it will not be foreign to our purpose to discuss the legendary accounts of the Hyperboreans. Of those who have written about the ancient myths, Hecataeus and certain others say that in the regions beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily. This island, the account continues, is situated in the north and is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, who are called by that name because their home is beyond the point whence the north wind (Boreas) blows; and the island is both fertile and productive of every crop, and since it has an unusually temperate climate it produces two harvests each year. Moreover, the following legend is told concerning it: Leto was born on this island, and for that reason Apollo is honored among them above all other gods; and the inhabitants are looked upon as priests of Apollo, after a manner, since daily they praise this god continuously in song and honor him exceedingly. And there is also on the island both a magnificent sacred precinct of Apollo and a notable temple [Stonehenge?] which is adorned with many votive offerings and is spherical. Furthermore, a city is there which is sacred to this god, the majority of its inhabitants are players on the cithara; these continually play on this instrument in the temple and sing hymns of praise to the god, glorifying his deeds “(Diodorus of Sicily. The Library of History XLVII).

According to other legends, Apollo's temple in Delos had its origin in the Hyperboreans just as the oracle of Apollo in Delphi.

XXXII. About a Hyperborean people the Scythians report nothing, nor do any of those who dwell in this region, unless it be the Issedonians. Hesiod, however, has spoken of Hyperboreans, and so also has Homer in the poem of the "Epigonoi," at least if Homer was really the composer of that epic.

XXXIII. But much more about them is reported by the people of Delos than by any others. For these say that sacred offerings bound up in wheat straw are carried from the land of the Hyperboreans and come to the Scythians, and then from the Scythians the neighboring nations in succession receive them and convey them. westwards, finally as far as the Adriatic: thence they are sent forward towards the South, and the people of Dodona receive them, first of all, the Hellenes. From these they come down to the Malian Gulf and are passed over to Euboea, where city sends them on to city, till they come to Carystos. After this Andros is left out, for the Carystians are those who bring them to Tenos, and the Tenians to Delos. Thus they say that these sacred offerings come to Delos; but at first, they say, the Hyperboreans sent two maidens bearing the sacred offerings, whose names, say the Delians, were Hyperoche and Laodike. And with them for their protection the Hyperboreans sent five men of their nation to attend them, those namely who are now called Perphereës and have great honors paid to them in Delos. Since, however, the Hyperboreans found that those who were sent away did not return, they were troubled to think that it would always befall them to send out and not to receive back; so they bore the offerings to the borders of their land bound up in wheat straw, and laid a charge upon their neighbors, bidding them send these forward from themselves to another nation. These things then, they say, come to Delos being thus sent forward; and I know of my own knowledge that a thing is done which has resemblance to these offerings, namely that the women of Thrace and Paionia, when they sacrifice to Artemis "the Queen," do not make their offerings without wheat straw.

Chapter XXXIV.These I know do as I have said; for those maidens from the Hyperboreans, who died in Delos: both the girls and the boys of the Delians cut off their hair. The former before marriage cut off a lock and having wound it round a spindle lay it upon the tomb (now the tomb is on the left hand as one goes into the temple of Artemis, and over it grows an olive tree), and all the boys of the Delians wind some of their hair about a green shoot of some tree, and they also place it upon the tomb.

148

Chapter XXXV. The maidens, I say, have this honor paid them by the dwellers in Delos: and the same people say that Arge and Opis also, being maidens, came to Delos, passing from the Hyperboreans by the same nations which have been mentioned, even before Hyperoche and Laodike. These last, they say, came bearing for Eileithuia the tribute which they had laid upon themselves for the speedy birth; but Arge and Opis came with the deities themselves, and other honors have been assigned to them by the people of Delos: for the women, they say, collect for them, naming them by their names in the hymn which Olen, a man of Lykia, composed in their honor; and both the natives of the other islands and the Ionians have learned from them to sing hymns naming Opis and Arge and collecting. Now this Olen came from Lukia and also composed the other ancient hymns which are sung in Delos. And, moreover, they say that when the thighs of the victim are consumed upon the altar, the ashes of them are used to cast upon the grave of Opis and Arge. Now their grave is behind the temple of Artemis, turned towards the East, close to the banqueting hall of the Keïeans.

XXXVI. Let this suffice which has been said of the Hyperboreans; for the tale of Abaris, who is reported to have been a Hyperborean, I do not tell, namely how he carried the arrow about all over the earth, eating no food. If, however, there are any Hyperboreans, it follows that there are also Hypernotians. And I laugh when I see that, though many before this have drawn maps of the Earth, yet no one has set the matter forth in an intelligent way; seeing that they draw Ocean flowing round the Earth, which is circular… (Herodotus. Histories. Book fourth).

Most famous high priest of this temple devoted to the Hyperborean Apollo would therefore have been called Abarix. He would have come in the past in Greece to renew the former alliance of the Hyperboreans with the Delians. People said that he had accepted from Apollo an arrow with which he flew in the air, as well as the gift of prophesying; and a very large knowledge in medicine was also ascribed to him. Plato considers him as a grand master in the art of conjurations. It is a representative of the wisdom of Barbarians, of which the contemporaries of Herodotus began to be fond already, and of the mystical purification, dear to the followers of Orphism or to the Pythagoreans. Many apocryphal works, among others some Katharmoi or purification rites, some Scythian Oracles, a prose theogony…. circulated under his name.

Pausanias Book X [History of Delphi]

Boeo, a native woman who composed hymns for the Delphians, said that the oracle was established for the god by comers from the Hyperboreans, Olen and others; and that he was the first to prophesy and the first to chant the hexameter oracles.

The verses of Boeo are:

“Here in truth a mindful oracle was built

By the sons of the Hyperboreans, Pagasus and divine Agyieus.

After enumerating others also of the Hyperboreans, at the end of the hymn she names Olen:

“And Olen, who became the first prophet of Phoebus,

And first fashioned a song of ancient verses.”

People think therefore generally that it is a by-the-name Olen, former poet and pontiff, previous to Orpheus, who would have started in Delphi the oracle of Apollo and who would then have instituted the worship of this god-or-demon in Delos. Olen was, according to the legend, Lycian or Hyperborean, that is to say born in a country where Apollo liked to stay. He was considered as being the author of the hymn in the honor of the virgins Opis and Arge, she companions of Apollo and of Diana. It is him who would have composed most of the ancient hymns which were sung on this island. They also ascribed him kinds of very simple stanzas, combined with some fixed tunes, and liable to be sung in the round dances of a choir. Lastly, it is to Olen that some people apparently ascribe the invention of

149

the epic verse or dactylic hexameter. If this opinion has some foundation, Olen would be therefore previous including to the Thracian bards , because all the poems which were spread under their name are precisely hexameters, and prove, genuine or not, that it was a meter they had had to use.

But let us return to Belin / Belen / Barinthus / Manannan. He brought heat and consolation, fertility, wealth. From where his feast , Beltene, on May 1st, which memorializes the return of the luminous period. He is, at least for some authors, the son of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, he is therefore the young representation of the Light, a god-or-demon young and handsome like the brightness of the sun. He is harmony or beauty in all its shapes. He warms up soul mind and body. He causes the spiritual enlightenment. He can cure all troubles. He is a doctor. He is notably invoked for eye problems and he is besides linked to dreams, notably to the premonitory dreams. At Beltene (the fires of Belenos: May 1st), big fires in his honor are kindled, and the stock is purified by making it cross through the smoke or between them, before being driven outside on pasture.

Consort of Belin/Belen/Barinthus/Manannan : Belisama therefore noiba Brigit, since Belisama, the very Bright, is one of her nicknames.

On the continent Tertullian evokes his worship in the Noric Alps (Apologeticus 24,7).

“Every province and city has its proper gods, as Syria the god Astartes, Arabia has Dusares, Norica Belinus, Africa the Celestis Virgin, and Mauritania its little kings. Now these provinces (if I mistake not) are under the Roman jurisdiction, and yet I do not find any of the Roman gods in worship among them ; because at Rome…..”

It is a very important god-or-demon of course, so important that he was often called, with respect, "Prince or Lord Belin.’ While speaking about him, Caesar wrote, "Apollinem morbos depellere.” This a little quick interpretatio romana by Caesar (he makes him an Apollo) does not make understanding easier. It remains to solve the following questions: what is the basic nature of this deity, from where from it draws its essential virtues, through what means occurs its beneficent action?

Regarding our lord Belin, one of our pen friends brings to us the following specification.

We also found again our lord Belin on a dedication discovered in the castle of Belac, in Beaulard, on the Italian mountainside of the Alps .

" Deo Apollini Beleno Lucius Erax bardus ex responso antistis, aedem cum ornamentis de suo dedit."

" To the god Apollo Belenus, Lucius Erax, bard, on the answer of the priest, devoted a temple with its ornaments at his expense."

This inscription is therefore one of the most interesting, because it shows the existence, in full Roman epoch, of a bard, believer of Belenus, having made an important offering to the deity.

Belenus is a written form witnessed in North Italy, precisely in the Friuli, in Belluno and on the territory of Aquileia , in the 3rd century. The druids of his temple prophesied (perhaps on the basis of the analysis of some dreams) the defeat of Maximin. Diocletian and Maximian will prefer honoring him, in a satisfactory way to avoid a "misdemeanor" of the god-or-demon more exactly of his priests.

Here is what it is possible to read about this subject in the book VII of the History of the Roman emperors from Marcus-Aurelius to Gordian III ( by Herodian). Chapter VIII.

“Crispinus is said to have persevered in his prosecution of the war because the many men in the city who were skilled at auguries and the taking of auspices reported that the omens favored the townspeople. The Italians place particular reliance upon the taking of auguries. Oracles, too, revealed to them that their native god promised them victory. They call this god Belen [Bélen in Greek], and worship him with special devotion, identifying him with Apollo; whose image, some of Maximinus' soldiers said, often appeared in the sky over the city, fighting for the Aquileians. Whether the god actually appeared to some of the besiegers, or whether they simply said that he did because they were ashamed that so large an army was unable to overcome a mob of civilians, and it would thus seem that they had been beaten by gods, not by men, I am unable to say.”

150

People found in Greasque in France a Gallo-Roman inscription devoted to Belin. "BELINO PRO SE ET SVOS," which means "TO BELIN FOR HIMSELF AND HIS"; and the name of many springs also comes from this theonym: for example the Belenin fountain in the region of Beaune. As for the village of Bellenot in Cote-d’Or , specialists think the name of this village dates back to Bellin-avus, that is to say to a stem Bellin-; which matches one of the shapes of the divine name followed by the suffix -avus, frequent in the names of watercourse.

People had unearthed, around 1954, in a site close to the Ettang de Berre (still in France) a stone basin neighboring an ancient well, and which bore on the external edge a dedication to Beleinos. The archaic form Beleinos, with a diphthong ei, as well as the name and the filiation of the offering person, are indications of early antiquity.

The different known inscriptions give us therefore the Celtic forms Beleinos, then, with influence of the Latin language, Bellinus, Belinus, Belenus, Bellenus, matched by variants of accentuation! The constant element is the stem Bel [Belos is besides also witnessed as theonym. Editor’s Note] that it is not possible to help compare to Bel - tene, name of the feast of the first of May in Ireland.

On a dozen monuments spread from the Mediterranean Sea to the Rhine River, the god-or-demon wears a radiating crown , or from the top of his head the rays of the luminous star spring . Such features invite us to think that the great healing god-or-demon was therefore designed as a sun deity. What is sure, it is that Caesar considered him well as being a god or demon of healing and salvation.

toto

Belin/Belen/Barinthus/Manannan , it is a healthy mind in a healthy body. Belin/Belen/Barinthus/Manannan, it is the human being in full bloom and liberated in its entirety, that it is in its physical dimension or in its psychic dimension. From where from the task, the ancient druids attached to his worship had given themselves: treat bodies, but also soul / minds.

The potion of oblivion of the druids combined with true sleep therapies treats psychic disturbances. Hypnosis and hallucinations, autosuggestion, all medical-magical techniques linked with drugs, can also be healing, or at least act as anesthetics. Their most famous patients? The future Roman emperor Constantine in Grand around 309, but also Caracalla (without result it seems in his case according to Cassius Dio), as well as Diocletian and Maximian (sanctuary in Aquileia).

The Judeo-Christian and the atheists rambled on a lot about the deeply indecent or immoral nature of druidic paganism. The specialists of the study of religions like Judaism Hinduism Christianity Zoroastrianism or Islam…….deduced from that these gods or goddesses were ambivalent, at the same time angels and demons. Anyway beyond the simplistic and childish Manicheism bringing into opposition good and evil .

Nonetheless we have at least in this domain an example of druidic god more sensitive to thoughts as well as to actions than to the market value of their sacrifices or of their offering, of the believers of his worship, it is Belin / Belen / Belenos UNDER HIS FORM VARIANT OR AVATAR GRANNOS (Temple of Grand , upper Germania, or Belgium, for Romans).

According to Cassius Dio indeed (book LXXVIII chapter XV) speaking about the Roman emperor Caracalla

“This showed most clearly that they regarded, not his votive offerings or his sacrifices, but only his purposes and his deeds. He received no help from Apollo Grannus, nor yet from Aesculapius or Serapis, in spite of his many supplications and his unwearying persistence. For even while abroad he sent to them prayers, sacrifices and votive offerings, and many couriers ran hither and thither every day carrying something of this kind; he also went to them himself, hoping to prevail by appearing in person, and did all that devotees are wont to do but he obtained nothing that contributed to health.”

Belin / Belen / Belenos, at least in the shape Grannus, was therefore the moral or ethical god (let us say the god of moral fair play, of beauty of gesture) par excellence because according to Cassius Dio,

151

he took into account more the thoughts or the (positive) actions than the market value of the offerings people gave to him.

Under the name of Grannus our lord Belin was honored in other different sites, notably in Rome, in Erp in Germania, in Aachen (Aquae Granni), in Scotland; and perhaps even in Sweden where people a vase bearing the following inscription.

APOLLONI GRANNO DONUM AMMILIUS CONSTANS, PRAEF. TEMPLI. IPSIUS V.S.L.L.M.

The name of Grannos refers in fact to that of the sun (cf. Irish Grian).

The banner taken by Constantine in 309 in the temple of Grand in the east of France (“the world's most beautiful one”) in order to be his flag was the banner of war of the great Celtic god-or-demon venerated in this place . It is this "Labarum" which, in his war against Maxentius, will lead Constantine's armies to victory. Other Christian recovery: the cross of St. Andrew or of St. Patrick in Scotland and in Ireland.

What is anyway sure, it is that this city, known then under the name of Andesina, and dedicated entirely to our lord Belin, was then one of the most important metropolises of the Roman Empire, a true pagan Lourdes.

A touching legend is attached to the worship of the prince Belin in Grand. This Celtic Apollo was still admitted as a savior god-or-demon in the middle of the 5th century, since the reputation of this divine entity was still alive a century after Constantine's vision. This extract of a Christian poem by Claudius Marius Victor, proves it. Alethia III, 204 : " Later the false (god) Apollo imposed himself to the people. But constrained to change residence he was made a medical doctor of the Leuci and now, exceeding the Celtic campaigns and widespread in the Germanic nations, he requests them by his harmful frauds and misleads these barbarian (spirits)".

The expression "misleads these spirits," prove that the paganism of Abellinian type was even more than perennial in the 5th century.

The dream is one of the levels of awareness located between sleep and waking state. Once moved aside the digestion dreams (like after a banquet) or of compensation (see psychoanalysis), the dream can be indeed also a form of vision inspired by the god-or-demons (premonitory dreams). It can therefore form a precious help, on the condition of being able to understand its meaning, what is not always obvious.

Some druids tried hard to study the symbolism of it.

The possibility of putting oneself in a state of "dream" in spite of the place (or of the hour) is an always actual faculty, which, hand in hand with imagining or meditation, is at the root of every magic or of every contact with the divine one; as in the case of the consecrated virgins in the island of Sein.

Belin / Belen / Belenos was therefore become, from a date included between the beginning of the 1st century and the end of the 2nd century, the mediator between the god-or-demons from the bottom and the god-or-demons from above, as well as the one who restores the harmony of the physical World. This function of mediator is besides proven by the epithet of narius intarabus which is awarded to him. It means " the discreet intermediary .” Belin always had, more or less, indeed, a mediator's role. With besides a pun between narios and nerios. And an intercessor, he was so historically speaking, as the quotations of Ausonius about the professors in Bordeaux prove to us, between the last descendants of the druids remained faithful to Celtic traditions, and the Romans respectful of his prophetic power or of his therapeutic capacities.

The harmony of the World and also that of the good functioning of human organs because, as Ausonius very well saw it (in his eclogue on the use of the word libra: "divinis Humana licet componere… We may compare things human with divine.” A maxim of Abellinian type which should not surprise us overly, having seen his school course in Bordeaux. And if this Abellinian concept was inserted into the druidic panth-eon or pleroma only lately; he played fastly a prevailing role, at the same time in mythology by his functions of mediation and of intercession, and in the shrines by prophecy or prophesying and medicine. Belin used dreams to help men and the will was that the druids his servants use it to cure bodies AND SOULS OR MINDS.

152

The intelligence of the imagination is not a mere affair of imagination. The dream is a personal mythology. The dream of man is a cosmic manifestation , and sometimes a theophany [like in the case of Belin appearing to Constantine transiting through Grand. Editor’s note] just like a dream of nature in him and a dream from him regarding nature. In other words, a sign of the Divinity in him and a sign of him to the Divinity (represented by Belin).

There was an uninterrupted exchange always among men between dream and myth, because the door is always ajar between both halves of the life of the human being (sleep and waking state). Manifesting a subjacent psychic current and the necessities of a vital program fallen within the depths of the being, the dream expresses the deep aspirations of an individual and, starting from that, will be for us an infinitely precious source of information of all kinds. Each dream has a meaning. Since Freud the West searches it behind and in the supposed causes. An etiological and retrospective method in short. The druids of Grand devoted to Belin, themselves, searched it forward, in the unconscious intentions of the subject coming to consult their god or demon (teological and prospective methods).

Jung besides showed well since that dreams are often only anticipations ( some anticipations having hardly some meaning precisely if they are examined only from a simple causative point of view). If the druids of the Belin nicknamed Grannus, in Grand, believed they made the will of their god-or-demon by giving themselves the task to help men, by making them dream then by studying their dreams; it is because the dream speeds up the processes of individuation which determine the upward and integrating evolution of mankind.

The analysis, as we will see it, makes it possible to come into an almost regular communication with the awareness and to play then on all the levels a role of a factor in integration.

Not only will the dream express the totality of oneself, but it contributes to forming it. The priests of the Celtic Apollo had very well understood it. The druids of Belin/Belen had realized for a long time indeed that the psychological balancing of the human being is done, between his conscious levels, and his unconscious levels, in the verticality dimension , such a sailboat between its sail and its keel.

Interpretation of the dream and deciphering of the symbol do not respond only indeed a simple curiosity. They raise on a higher level the relations between the conscious and the unconscious, and improve their communications networks. A more enlightened but also better balanced man, tends to take the place of the man torn apart between his desires, his aspirations, and his doubts. Belin is therefore the god-or-demon representing the complete integration of the personality, since such was the therapeutic and saving purpose searched by the druids attached to his worship.

Can the priests devoted to a god-or-demon besides do anything else than fulfill his wills? If Belin had not been for (for this harmonious integration of the personality, body and soul or mind) the druids in Grand and elsewhere would have never given themselves such purpose. The harmonious integration of personality, body, soul, and mind, here is the Abellinian ideal.

The priestesses or the maidens devoted to the Belin de Sena on the contrary had understood well, themselves, that there is also another category of dream. The dream of type Sena transports us in an imaginal world and presupposes in the human being, at a certain level of awareness , powers that our Western civilization undoubtedly atrophied or paralyzed. It is there, not harbinger, nor trip, but vision. The psychoanalysis of the druidic School of Sena (of Sein) is therefore appreciably different from that of the druidic School of Andesina (of Grand).

In the case of the priestesses or of the consecrated maidens in Sena, it is prophecy or prophesying; in the case of the druids in Grand (it was seen well with the Constantinian episode), there is prediction or anticipation of the general movement.

Every dream is an unreal and only virtual, realization, but which yearns for a concrete actualization. That is why social utopias prefigure future societies, alchemy prefigures chemistry and the wings of the etnosos god-or-demon in Bourges prefigure the wings of planes. Each dream tends to create the most favorable atmosphere for a distant purpose. We find only what we seek. This aim of the dream of Andesina’s type distinguishes itself therefore from the simple premonitory dream of Sena’s type .

It does not announce a future event, it reveals and releases an energy which tends to create the event. As we saw it in the case of the predictions of the druids in Aquileia against Maximin.

Let us return on this tragic episode of the Roman civil wars because some atheists saw in it an obvious case of intervention of the religious one in politics (or then the druids in Aquileia were

153

obviously for various reasons resolutely against Maximin). Indeed, Belin is supposed to have intervened in that case personally by the side of the soldiers defending the city.

At least according to this quotation: " When Maximin found he was besieging Aquileia in vain, he sent envoys to the city. And the people had almost yielded to them, had not Menophilus and his colleague opposed it, saying that the god Belenus had declared through the soothsayers that Maximinus would be conquered. Whence afterwards the soldiers of Maximinus boasted, it is said that Apollo [ i.e., Belin/Belen/Belenus. Editor’s note] must have fought against them, and that really victory belonged not to the Senate and Maximus but to the gods. But, on the other hand, it is said that they advanced this theory because they blushed, armed men as they were, to have been defeated by civilians practically unarmed” (Julius Capitolinus. Augustan History).

It is the whole difference between the prophetic and the projected one, the divinatory and the operational. The dream is a preparation to life; the future is conquered by dreams before be conquered by experiments. The dream is a prelude of active life. Instead of being dependent on a conscious which is previous it, as the compensatory function, the prospective function of the dream appears on the contrary, in the form of an anticipation, coming into the unconscious, of the future aware activity; it evokes a preparative draft, a rough sketch ,the enforceable project of a plan.

Belin / Belen, it is also the symbolization or representation of the amazing psychosomatic faculty that man had always had , to cure by himself (thanks to placebo effect or to autosuggestion) what is in play in that case, it is the healing power of nature, interpreted in various ways according to conditions and local traditions that water represents, or even really accomplishes, in most cases. Faith can also save, because the power of mind over the body is indisputable. And our lord Belin, it is also the power of the mind over its body!

The notion of Belin or of Celtic Apollo enlightens the idea of Mankind that druids make to themselves.

For some druidic schools indeed, like for that of Grand for example, a man has to be in the image of this Celtic Apollo called Belin. As an image of Belin, the Man, the Gdonios, must therefore to be a creator of beauty. As a creator of beauty, he must make freedoms emerge all around him. Neither dominating nor dominated, he must be free, through this extraordinary freedom which is always recognized as being a gift of the god-or-demons.

If our lord Belin had then in the epoch asked his servants to analyze with so much care the dreams of his patients, it was not for nothing, of course. Those who came to consult them indeed drew out from them, of course, predictions for their future, BUT ESPECIALLY INSTRUCTIONS ON THE BEHAVIOR THEY WERE TO HAVE.

The dream gave, in this epoch a code of behavior to live in harmony with one’s destiny, what Vikings called gaefa, gaefa and not gaesa). The contact with the invisible world and with the god-or-demons is always easier to establish during sleep than during waking state. In the course of their sleep – and those who could not sleep were put to sleep by specialized druids – the god-or-demon appeared in his dream to the consultant and pointed out to him remedies capable of curing him. Such is the legend encircling the worship of Belin. But what does it mean in reality, how did healing really take place? Man cannot be cured alone, he needs a faith vortex created by a crowd of believers to succeed in it. The dream is the spontaneous just as much as symbolic, self-representation of the current situation of the unconscious. (cf Jung.)

The dream interpretation is therefore the best way of the knowledge of the soul / mind and that's why Belin wanted his priests to dedicate themselves to it.

Ancient druids had therefore a positive idea of dream and they also tried to fathom the mystery of dreams. Sleep indeed has something magical. It plunges the sleeper temporarily into another world. The dream, communication with divine spirits, makes it possible to meet the man or the woman of one’s destiny (Maxen, Oengus), the men of the past (Ronabwy), the god-or-demons themselves. In order to decipher this “message” of the god-or-demons, the ancient druids worked out therefore a whole technology: they use the sleep therapy with a variety of their elixir "the oblivion potion.” The hesus Cuchulainn will take some of it to find consolation of his loss of Fand (Wanda). It is also used with the severely wounded men, with the initiates who are exhausted by ordeals. Sleep can also be caused by special songs, accompanied on the harp. Some food, meats, acorns or broth, give knowledge to the sleeper. These druidic practices remind a little the Pythagorean School, it too very versed in oneiromancy.

154

Some examples gleaned haphazardly in Irish literature. A man had to stuff himself with meat and with broth then fell asleep, and four druids chanted on him a word of truth. He saw then in a dream the man who had to be elevated to the kingship.

"There was then prepared a bull feast by them there, in order that they should discover out of it to whom they would give the sovereignty over the country.

Thus was that bull feast prepared, namely a white bull was killed, and one man eat enough of his flesh, and of his broth and he slept under that meal . A prayer was chanted on him by four druids and he saw in a dream the shape of the man who should be made king there, and his form, and his description, and the sort of work that he was engaged in. The man screamed out of his sleep and described what he saw to the kings, namely, a young, noble, using good force (sonairt) with two red stripes (chris) around him, and he was sitting over the pillow of a man in a decline in Emain Macha.

A message was then sent with this description to Emania.

The Ultonians at the time were assembled around Cunocavaros/Conchobar in Emain, and the Hesus Cuchulainn in his decline there. The courier related his message to Cunocavaros/Conchobar, and to the nobles of Ulidia also.

There is with us a free and nobly descended youth of that description, said Cunocavaros/Conchobar, namely, Lugaid with red stripes, the son of the three fair (find ?) of Emain ; the pupil of the Hesus Cuchulainn ; over whose pillow he sits in his bed within by himself solacing his tutor ; that is the Hesus Cuchulainn, who is in his bed of decline.”

Still stronger is the dream of the Irish king Muirchertach, in which a druid detects the announcement of an ineluctable death.

"The king awoke and ordered his vision to be taken to his foster-brother Dub da Rinn, the son of the druid Saignen, and Dub da Rinn gave the advice thereof.This is the ship wherein you have been, said he, to wit, the ship of your princedom; and this is the ship that foundered, you to be offered and your life to come to an end. This is the taloned griffin that has carried you into her nest, the woman that is in your company, to make you intoxicated, and to bring you in the house of Clettech so that it will be burnt upon you. Now the griffin that fell with you is the woman who will die by reason of you. This then is the counsel of that vision.”

But let us return to our sheep that is to say to our mysterious prince Belin, because the psychoanalysis of the dreams on the Continent was often of a very different type. Less predictive and less completely improbable, but more therapeutic. The sick men or the pilgrims of every kind coming in one of the countless sanctuaries of this indigenous Apollo, consulted the god-or-demon in incubation porticos, where they spend the night and receive in dreams (somno jussu) a piece of advice or a vision; that the doctors, among whom druids, surgeons and some ophthalmologists attached to the spa, deciphered then.

The thesis of the French historian Jean-Jacques Hatt is that the druids doctors attached to the worship of our lord Belin; under the Roman rule, after the persecutions of Claudius, took refuge in the spring shrines; where divinatory rituals and an incubation medicine were practiced, notably in the temples known as of Apollo; which seem become for them asylums where they often practiced subordinate functions.

From the end of the 3rd century, under the rule of the Tetrarchy and in the reign of Constantine, the druids indeed reappeared in full light, thanks to circumstances. They were included into the universities of Bordeaux and Autun, where they contributed, with other professors coming from civil aristocracy, to the training of the top executives, whom the imperial administration needed very much.

We have the evidence of that in the two extracts from Ausonius.

Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium, IV, 7.

“If report does not lie, you were Baiocassis sprung from a stock of druids, and traced your hallowed line from the temple of Belenus; hence the names borne by your family: you are called Patera; so the mystic votaries call the servants of Apollo.”

Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium, X, 22

155

“Nor must I leave unmentioned the old man Phoebicius, who, though the keeper of Belenus' temple, got no profit thereby. Yet he, sprung, as rumor goes, from the stock of Armorican druids, obtained a chair at Bordeaux by his son's help”.

And the inscription of Avenches in Switzerland shows us that there were in some large regional shrines a community of priests, doctors and professors, forming a draft of department hospital. The narrow relations between medicine surgery and religion are confirmed by the inscription of Riez, which shows us in action the process of the prophetic sleep leading to surgical operation.“ Deo Aesculapio Val(erii) Symphorus et Protis signum Somni aereum, torquem aureum ex dracunculis duobus p(ondo) enchiridium argenti p(ondo) anabolium ob insignem circa se numinis eius effectum v(otum) s(olverunt) I(ibentes) m[erito)” .

“To the god Asclepius, Valerius Symphorus and Protis gave a bronze statue of the sleep god (Somnus), a gold torc made up of two snakes, of such weight, a silver enchiridium of such weight and a silver anabolium , in reward of the remarkable effectiveness of his divine power, have fulfilled their vow freely and deservedly .

This distinguished service is, according to the offered surgical instruments (an enchiridium and an anabolium), probably an operation of the cataract. The association between medicine and religion indeed appears to have been particularly frequent in the case of illness of the view and of ophthalmic disorders.

In Great Britain, the name of Bellinus appears in any case in Binchester (Vinovia), in the County of Durham. Some researchers also think that the fish market called Billingsgate in London, at the edge of the Thames, was a shrine dedicated to Belin / Belen (well-known druidic principle of the fire in water). It was perhaps also a sanctuary where they kept the spoils of the warriors fallen on the battlefield. Hundreds of skeletons dating back this period were indeed discovered in this place. What makes it an equivalent of the wellspring of health the Irish tradition links to the bonesetter Diancecht. Or an equivalent of the "Belgian" sanctuaries on the Continent like Gournay-sur-Aronde or Ribemont.

Excavations accomplished in the two wings of a Roman house located in this place made it possible to unearth a building initially constructed at the end of the 2nd century, and adjacent to the Roman wharf located on the north bank of the Thames. A small separated building including thermal baths was added to it during the 3rd century. These different buildings continued being used till the beginning of the 5th century, an epoch in which a large part of the city was deserted by his inhabitants. They form therefore an ultimate evidence of the end of the Roman epoch in London.

N.B. But since in the case of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, of Bath, Sulis; this Belin / Belen is more combined with the notion of heat and of energy or with the purificatory power of the fire than with the solar star which lights our Earth. Belinus represents order, symmetry, beauty or harmony of the material world. It is the source from where our world holds its appearance of unity.

MEDIEVAL SURVIVALS.

WALES.

Beli Mawr (Beli the Great) is a major god-or-demon of the hypothetical Welsh panth-eon or pleroma.

In the Welsh medieval tradition, Beli Mawr is often nicknamed "ap Manogan" as we have just seen it , and his father Manogan druid Eneid; but the name of Manogan comes from the bad reading of a Latin text dealing with the historical character of Adminius, son of Cunobelinus.

Nihil autem amplius quam Adminio Cynobellini Britannorum regis filio, qui pulsus a patre cum exigua manu transfugerat, in deditionem recepto, quasi uniuersa tradita insula, magnificas Romam litteras

156

misit, monitis speculatoribus, ut uehiculo ad forum usque et curiam pertenderent nec nisi in aede Martis ac frequente senatu consulibus traderent.

After handing down by Suetonis (life of Caligula) and especially from Orosius, the expression became "Bellinus filius Minocanni" in the Historia Brittonum.

So, although Belin is become a different character in the legend of Cunobelinus (Cymbeline), he is generally presented as a king having reigned just before the Roman occupation. Beli also appears in the Historia regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth, as king of the isle of Britain, under the name of Heli, son of Cligueillus (XXXV) - XXXVIII. The author evokes in it a long conflict having divided two brothers named Belinus and Brennius.

According to the Welsh chronicler, Heli reigns during forty years, he has three sons: Lud, Cassibellan, and Nennius.

The existence of his son Caswallawn, it, was mixed up with that of the historical character of Cassivellaunos.

According to our Welsh friends, he would have been the spouse of Don and the father of Caswallawn, Arianrhod, Lludd and Llefelys. Several royal lineages of the Welsh Middle Ages make him their ancestor. This Beli is indeed supposed to be the founder at the same time of the royal lineage of Rheged and of Gwynnedd; and to have had as a wife a named Anna, cousin of the virgin Mary (mater eius, quam dicunt esse consobrina Mariae uirginis, matris Domini nostri Iesu Christi). For others he would have been the spouse of Don, daughter of Mathonwy, and therefore through her mother of Arianrodh, Gwydion, Gilfaethwy, Gobannon and Amaethon. He also appears in the Welsh Triads. Ifor Williams was of the opinion this Beli was a distant echo of the god-or-demon Belenos, or at least that a historical character having the same name, or even a close name, had been mixed up with him. John Koch nevertheless pointed out that, in that case, the name of Belenos should have produced Belyn in Welsh language, and not Beli. In short a nice hotchpotch!

Manawyddan is another of his names in Wales. But he is no longer here a sea god-or-demon : very humanized, the story of his adventures contains all kinds of Christian elements. Everything makes one think besides that the Welsh tradition just as the Irish tradition strongly moved away from its origins. A good farmer and clever shoemaker, he built with human remains the fortress of Annotion (Annoeth). An allusion to the druidic practice to keep the bodies of the dead warriors in sanctuaries as in Ribemont-sur-Ancre in France??

IRELAND: MANANNAN.

(Other names: Orbasio and Cadros, Orbsiu and Gaer in Irish.)

Manannan or Mannish (from the Isle of Man). Because it is very exactly what the Gaelic word Manannan means. He was one of the powerful rulers of the parallel other world of the gods, particularly venerated in the island of Man. Perhaps an avatar

- either of Taran / Toran / Tuireann

- or of Lug

- Or just lastly, what matches the best his personality, of Belin / Belen called later Barinthus or saint Barrind /Barri in Christian material (the voyage of saint Brendan). The mention « son of Lir» is perhaps in this case only used for underlining the closely insular nature of this avatar of the great deity in question. A kind of equivalent of our modern "Saint-Michael at the peril of the sea.”

Author’s note. We hesitated a lot to create a separated notice for what is following, because Barinthus Manannan in reality is only a particular avatar (peculiar to the Isle of Man) of the god-or-demon known elsewhere in the great neighboring island with the name of Belin / Belen.

About avatar here is the definition of it a great sister religion gives .

The notion of an avatar was entirely developed only in late mythology, but it is already contained in the Upanishad. In Hinduism, an avatar (or avatara, "descent" in Sanskrit) is the embodiment of a deity on earth.

Vishnuism distinguishes several types of avatar , Krishna alone being considered in it as a full avatar of Vishnu (Purnavatara) as ultimate principle. Other avatars are considered to be partial incarnation or manifestations of some aspects of the divine one. The primary function of the avatar is, however, every time the same: restore the dharma or the eternal law by instituting the principles of knowledge adapted to the epoch in which he manifests himself. To this end, the avatar is sometimes helped by

157

special powers (vibhuti in Hinduism), then personified in the shape of companions who support him in his task.

In the Irish texts of the Middle Ages, Barinthus is called Manannan. This name, which means " the mannish " (i.e., from the Isle of Man) , is, of course, linked to that of the island , but it does not mean, of course, that it is a deity native from this place. In fact, it is simply the god-or-demon particularly worshipped in this island. It is the reason for whet people sometimes make him a guardian god-or-demon of the sailors going on the seas encircling the island or, on the contrary, a wrecker of ships. He is called "navigator" (moritex or moritasgus) because of his knowledge of stars and of the sea located between Great Britain and Ireland, but also because of the fact that he controls the weather and the elements. Contrary to what it would be possible to think nevertheless, Barinthus Mannanan is not a sea god-or-demon similar to Neptune, the Celtic people being at origin especially landowning.

Known also as Manannan Mac Lir in Gaelic language . Manawyddan ap Lyr in Welsh (a mabinogi is besides devoted to him). In this shape his name means "the Mannish son of the ocean.”

It is him who will replace Lug after the fall and the decline of the latter in the anti-taranism (in the odinism or in the varunism). See the Irish legend called "the violent death of the children of Tuireann" It is a rather mysterious god-or-demon , because he is not obviously at the origin a member of the tribe of the Goddess-or-Demoness (of the Tuatha De). He does not appear in the first versions of the Cath Maighe Tuireadh for example.

As well as we had opportunity to see it above, it is an avatar either of Taran / Toran / Tuireann, or of Belin / Belen, even of Lug, according to the authors. Therefore a sovereign god or demon of the Celtic Next World, the Sidh, Tir Tairngiri, Mag Meld, etc. He is the manager, and in that capacity, he gives to the other god-or-demons the fabulous pigs which will be served by Gobannus the blacksmith, in the Feast of Immortality. He has two cows which give some milk permanently.

The interpretatio romana makes him an Apollo, but his nickname (moritex, moritasgus) evokes the sea (mori) as as we saw it, and mean perhaps something like "sailor.” The world of the god-or-demons (the sedodumnon) or the heavenly kingdom of the dead (Mag Meld, etc.) being traditionally put among the Celtic people of this region on islands located in the West of the world; it is indeed from beyond the sea this Moritasgus was supposed to arrive most often. From where his nickname of "sailor.”

There is so indeed pun in that case with the name of his father, which means "ocean" but ocean also as an element or source of life (Lero).

One of his typically divine characteristics is the gift of ubiquity or of transformation. He intervenes in the world of the mortals we are in various shapes.

It is to him the other god-or-demons owe the vegtos vidtuos (Irish feth fiada) often represented by a hooded coat type bardocucutlon (cowl of bard). A coat of invisibility that Manannan precisely, at the end of the Gaelic story called "the illness of Cuchulainn,” will agitate between his wife Wanda and the hesus Setanta, to make her definitely invisible in the eyes of the latter.

Let us notice nevertheless this story is not very clear and that finally Wanda / Fand will have only Manannan as ultimate support. Saying that marriage is not always what it is believed.

In short, it is therefore this vegtos vidtuos or Gaelic feth fiada ; granted by the avatar of Taran / Toran / Tuireann, or of Belin / Belen, or of Lug; which, since their withdrawal in the Next World, will make the god-or-demons physically distinct from the human beings; they can see from now on WITHOUT BEING SEEN.

The precise sense of this word (vegtos vidtuos / feth fiada) is indeterminable, considering the multiplicity of meaning likely to be ascribed to each of both words, but it involves perhaps something as magical fog or veil making invisible.

Only some divine science indeed makes it possible to “see the god-or-demons.” Belin/Belen/Manannan/Barinthus is also a healing god-or-demon,especially diseases of eyes. If Belin/Belen/Manannan/Barinthus was invoked for such diseases, as in the town of Alise-Sainte-Reine (ex Alisiia or Alesia); it is perhaps because local populations recognized well in him justly, the god-or-demon ruler of the invisibility fog , the vegtos vidtuos / feth fiada, which makes it possible not to see (or to see, when the aforementioned invisibility fog is cleared). The reasoning of these sick persons was simple: they invoked very naturally to recover from their ill sight or from their blindness, the god-or-demon who personified in those days, the power to make visible or invisible.

158

The Dindsenchas consider him to be an artist druid (a drui, a cerd and a cendaige). They say to us more he had an extraordinarily fast horse. The story of the children of Tuireann calls him "Enobarros (Enbarr) of the flowing mane,” it is possible that it alludes to the crowned with foam waves of the backwash, that they call besides "the horses of Mac Lir.” The Lebor Gabala ascribes to him as father Allodios (Gaelic Elloth or Alloïd) and informs us that he had two other names: Orbasio and Cadros (Irish Orbsiu and Gaer).

As guardian of the islands located West of the World, Belin / Belen / Barinthus/Manannan is also linked to the isle called "Abelliomagos": the apple orchard . These mysterious islands beyond seas were considered to be communication means with the Next World, at least according to the Celtic legends, some places where soul / minds met after death. Belin / Belen / Barinthus/Manannan was considered as the guardian of these passages linking up the two worlds. He was then the boat Man who transports the soul / minds of the dead.

It is on this island where the magical silver branch with three gold apples was found. When it was shaken, its music put to sleep the mere mortals.

It happened that an audacious hero succeeds in going it around before coming back to his country to tell what he had seen. The fabulous expedition of Bran Mac Febal is the best known of these travels in the "land of the living.” The third day Bran saw Belin / Belen / Manannan crossing the sea as the Christ walking on water, in a magical chariot pulled by a white mare. This mare was as comfortable on waves as on earth, and Belin / Belen / Manannan drives his chariot therefore as well on the waves as in plains. Like all Aryan sea god-or-demon, he is indeed more or less in touch with magical horses.

The adventure of the king Corbomapos (Cormac) is another example of trip in the country of Belin / Belen / Manannan. The king having gone to the land of eternal youth, Belin / Belen / Manannan gave him a marvelous golden cup: the cup of truth. The slightest lie broke it. Belin / Belen / Manannan would also have made Corbomapos (Cormac) visit the well of knowledge from where five streams run. Five salmons swam in it and ate hazelnuts there, because there were nine hazel trees all around. Belin / Belen / Manannan is besides the guardian of many other wonders.

He had a sword called Moralltach, but he gave it to Mabon / Maponos / Oengus. He had of another one called "Atearegaracos" (Irish Fragarach; the one which answers), which no armor could resist for a long time and that he will also lend to Lug. He had a breastplate that no weapon could pierce as well as a blazing helmet.

He also wore a large mantle which could take all colors. And it is besides this topcoat which he will shake between Wand / Fand, his wife, and the hesus Cuchulainn, his lover, to separate them forever, by preventing the hesus Cuchulainn from seeing her.

Another one of his most interesting treasures was his bag made out crane feathers, fabricated with the skin of Aupa (Aoife) second wife of Lero (Aupa / Aoife had betrayed the children of Lero: to be changed into crane before dying was her punishment.). What this bag contained seems a priori rather heterogeneous: the skeleton of the pig of Assal (or of Essach), the helmet of the king of Loccolandos/Lochlann, the belt and the hook of the divine blacksmith (Gobannus), etc.

The bag will be successively given to Lug, to Camulus Tridoricenos (Cumhal Mac Tredhor), and lastly to his son Vindos Camulogenos (Finn Mac Cumhal).

Belin / Belen / Manannan, after the defeat suffered by the god-or-demons in front of the human beings (battle for the Talantio / Tailtiu, battle of Druim Lighean) will find them a shelter under nicest hills in the country.

Note.

The druids or more exactly the bards of the Early Middle Ages, already slaves of the imperatives of a myth transcribed in pseudo-history, were no longer capable of expressing, even less of understanding the ancient druidic notion of Next World. They therefore used the image of a distribution of the world or of the universe between men, the Fir (Gallioin or Belg, etc.) and god-or-demons (the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy called Tuatha De).

The first ones on the surface of the ground and the second ones , thanks to Belin / Belen / Manannan, in Another World, underground, heavenly or insular, very far towards the West according to legends.

But this Next World that is the Sedodumnon being gifted with ubiquity, the occasional contacts of the human being and of the divine being are always in the direction of the bursting of the divinity in the human world; because our world is immersed literally in the divine world (without seeing it!) The time

159

being backward turned in its flight in such case, it is the man who feels on the contrary enter the world of the god-or-demons, and it is the reason of the eternal youth [granted by Belin / Belen / Manannan. Editor’s note].

Identically, the coming back in this world, cause of sudden old age, of illness, and of death, by multiplied acceleration of the human time, for those who were unwise to come back there again; is less, then, a return than a fading or a withdrawal of the Other World.

Later Belin / Belen / Manannan will help Mabon / Maponos / Oengus to get at the last moment the Brug na Boinne. Some apocryphal manuscripts add that he was killed by a called Uillenn Faebarderg, during a battle fought in Mag Cuilenn. Belin / Belen / Manannan would have been buried then standing in his grave, immediately covered by a lake since then called Orbsen’s lake (another name of Belin / Belen / Manannan). The thing is rather strange, because Belin / Belen / Manannan was, as god-or-demon, in reality undying).

Various speculations on the real identity of Manannan.

The Welsh, Manawyddan Fab Llyr, double of the Irish Manannan Mac Lir, suggests the idea that Lug and Manannan are the same character. In the Mabinogi of Manawyddan, the hero, accompanied by Pryderi son of Pwyll, travels from city to city , dismissed from their country by a curse. In each of them Manawyddan develops an intrusive craft activity (manufacture of saddles, of shields, of shoes). So that every time, the other craftsmen evict our two heroes who therefore have to leave to settle elsewhere. This equally skilled in many arts, aspect, of Manawyddan Fab Llyr in Ireland matches the god-or-demon Lug, the king-god-or-demon who includes all functions of the society (see the Indo-European tripartite functions of the Aryan society).

Lug would be therefore double. He would be a luminous king-god-or-demon under his own name (Lugh / Llew) and he would also be a lord of the Sidh (in the Isle of Man, Manannan / Manawyddan " the mannish "), procreated by primordial waters (Mac Lir/Fab Llyr).

But the Irish apocryphal writings are particularly absurd on his subject and on several occasions put the Isle of Man his supposed adoptive country in the West!

The most plausible hypothesis is therefore that Manannan Mac Lir is an avatar or a particular located aspect of the great god-or-demon of the island of Man: Belin / Belen.

CELTIC CHRISTIANITY: BARRIND, BARINTUS, BARRI.

Under the name of saint Barinthus or saint Barrind, he will make even a short appearance in the Irish legendary hagiography, especially in the voyage of noibo Brendan, to speak to him about the Land of Mag Meld called insula deliciosa in Latin.

St. Brendan, son of Finnlug Ua Alta, of the race of Eoghan, was born in the marshy district of Munster. He was famed for his great abstinence and his many virtues, and was the patriarch of nearly three thousand monks.

While he was in his spiritual war–fare, at a place called Ardfert Brendan there came to him one evening, a certain father, named Barinthus, of the race of King Niall, who, when questioned by St Brendan, in frequent converse, could only weep, and cast himself prostrate, and continue the longer in prayer; but Brendan raising him up, embraced him, saying: ‘Father, why should we be thus grieved on the occasion of your visit? Have you not come to give us comfort? You ought, indeed, make better cheer for the brethren.

In God’s name, make known to us the divine secrets, and refresh our souls by recounting to us the various wonders you have seen upon the great ocean.’

Then Barinthus, in reply, proceeds to tell of a certain island: ‘My godchild, Mernoc, the steward of the poor of Christ, had fled away from me to become a solitary, and found, nigh unto Stone Mountain, an island full of delights. After some time I learned that he had many monks there in his charge, and that God had worked through him many marvels. I, therefore, went to visit him, and when I had approached within three days’ journey, he, with some of the brethren, came out to meet me, for God had revealed to him my advent. As we sailed unto the island, the brethren came forth from their cells towards us, like a swarm of bees, for they dwelt apart from each other, though their intercourse was of one accord, well grounded in faith, hope, and charity; one refectory; one church for all, wherein to

160

discharge the divine offices. No food was served but fruits and nuts, roots and vegetables of other kinds. The brethren, after compline, spent the night in their respective cells until the cockcrow, or the bell tolled for prayer. When my godson and I had traversed the island, he led me to the western shore, where there was a small boat, and he then said: ‘Father, enter this boat, and’ we will sail on to the west, towards the island called the Promised land for the saints (Latin terra repromissionis sanctorum), which God will grant to those who succeed us in the next days.’

When we entered the boat and set sail, clouds overshadowed us on every side, so dense that we could scarcely see the prow or the stern of the boat. After the lapse of an hour or so, a great light shone around us, and land appeared, spacious and grassy, and bearing all manner of fruits. When the boat touched the shore; we landed, and walked round about the island for fifteen days, yet could not reach the limits thereof. No plant saw we there without its flower; no tree without its fruit and all the stones thereon were precious gems. But on the fifteenth day we discovered a river flowing from the west towards the east, when, being at a loss what to do, though we wished to cross over the river, we awaited the direction of the Lord. While we thus considered the matter, there appeared suddenly before us a certain man, shining with a great light, who, calling us by our names, addressed us thus: ‘Welcome, worthy brothers, for the Lord has revealed to yon the land He will grant unto His saints. There is one half of the island up to this river, which you are not permitted to pass over; return, therefore, whence you came’ …

When he had ceased to speak, we asked him his name, and whence he had come. But he said: 'Why do you ask these questions? Should you not rather inquire about this island. Such as you see it now, so has it continued from the beginning of the world. Do you now need food or drink or clothes? Because indeed you remained here during a whole year. Have you been weighed down by sleep, or shrouded in the darkness of the night. Here it is for ever day, without a shadow of darkness, for the Lord Jesus Christ is the light thereof.

We set out on our return journey, the man aforesaid accompanying us to the shore, where our boat was moored. When we had entered the boat, this man was taken from our sight, and we went on into the thick darkness we had passed through before, and thus unto the Island of delights. When the brethren there saw us, they rejoiced with great joy at our return, as they had long bewailed our absence, and they said: ‘Why, O fathers, did you leave us, your little flock, to stray without a shepherd in the wilderness? We knew, indeed, that our abbot frequently departed somewhere from us, and remained away sometimes a month, sometimes a fortnight, or a week more or less but never a whole year.

When I heard this I tried to console them, and said: ‘Brethren, harbor no thought of evil, for your lives here are, of course, passed at the very portals of paradise. Not far away from you lies the island, called the Promised land for the saints,’where night never falls nor day closes; thither your abbot, Mernoc, resorts, and the angels of God watch over it. Do you not know, by the fragrance of our garments, that we have been in the paradise of God?’

This avatar of Belin / Belen or of Taran / Toran / Tuireann or even still of Lug, has as consort Wanda / Fand, the Celtic Venus whose name also means "swallow" in Irish (Vadnalo / Vandalo in berla fene or in old Celtic). Wanda / Fand who will have a love affair with the hesus Cuchulainn. Belin/Belen/Manannan is the father of many divine or human children. He notably has as son Donall Donn-Ruadh, Sgoith Gleigeil, Goitne Gorm-Shuileach, Sine Sindearg and Ilubrectos / Elubrectos (Gaelic Ilbrech).

He will also be responsible for bringing up some gods, of whom Lug himself. He would have taken the child death threatened by his grandfather Balaros, in his magical mantle, and would then have taken him in his small crystal or bronze boat, into the Next World, his kingdom beyond seas.

He will also be the father of Monganos by Cantigerna, the wife of Fiacha, because Monganos (Mongan) was perhaps only a reincarnation or an avatar of this avatar of Belin / Belen in Ireland. He was transported for example in the «Land of Promise» (Christianization of the Sedodumnon) three days (or more exactly three nights) after his birth.

Among his powers, as we could see it, there are the gift of transformation and of ubiquity, as well as his psychopompous role. If the Sidh is located under the ground , people always reach it indeed beyond water (seas, lakes, rivers). It is therefore himself also who guides the soul / minds of the late towards the Celtic heaven located beyond seas; at least on a part of the course, and it is therefore

161

always himself as a result who will guide Merlin and Taliesin accompanying the king of Britain Arthur in his last trip towards the island of Avalon (cf. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini).

Barinthus / Manannan had a magical craft which sailed itself. This craft had neither sail nor oar, but went automatically or all at once where they wanted.

If it happens to you one day or during a storm night, to take you for a walk at the seaside, facing waves going up and breaking in front of you ; then you will be perhaps, too, lucky to see Belinos Barinthus Manannan in his magical boat running on streams; or lucky to hear the marvelous and spellbinding music of the silver apple branch being on this island. Because Belinos Barinthus Manannan still lived in the heart of true Celts.

FRANCE.

Distortion and disqualification (or demonization ) of the Abellinian ideal in the Middle Ages in France. The prince Belin in Jura and the lord Belin in the Bas-Maine are the final avatars of this Celtic god-or-demon.

There was in the past a lord of Belin, an impetuous and formidable lord. Dismissed from the city of Le Mans ( of which the Christianization is previous, of course, to that of the countryside, he had taken refuge in his castle of Orthe. He rode a marvelous white horse called, because of his speed, the Bird. This horse, who had to take him in one leap four leagues away from there, was the demon himself. He printed his heel on a granite block, two kilometers away of the chapel of Our Lady. It is the "heeled stone; that a document of 1455 calls the Roche-Belin. Lady of Belin too is a damned woman. Every night, she comes back in a fire chariot , pulled by steeds also spitting fire through their nostrils. As for the oak locked up in the chapel, it is only now a very old dead trunk, protected by a wire netting. At his time, before there should be a chapel there, Lord of Belin had seen an ox who looked at the tree. The ox was always young and vigorous, although he should not eat. Etc. Etc. Follow details which mark the initial tries of Christianization: Lord of Belin wanted to dispel the ox; the ox nearly smashed him to pieces; Lord of Belin must invoke the Virgin. She imposed on him to build a chapel around the oak. He repaired his past scandals by an edifying life. Mrs. of Belin, herself, one instant Christian, died unrepentant , etc., etc.

Belinus survived in the dialectal French " Belin " with the meaning of "sorcerer " according to W. von Wartburg and, another indication which could not deceive for a long time, it is the Christian disqualification of which the toponym " Maubelin” (“bad Belin”) witnesses.

The prince Belin of our legends is besides also in various epics of the Middle Ages ( the epic of Fierabras for example, etc.)

Although genuine Saracen , Balan indeed appears blond-haired, clear-eyed, and with a white horse.

He is the perfect type of the solar hero and his name does only emphasize his nature. The country of Balan appears a little like the druidic next world: to reach it, it is necessary to cross a mountain and a magical bridge in the best Celtic tradition.

The daughter of Balan is called Floripas, what is to bring closer to the Welsh legend of Blodeuwedd, which forms the last part of the Cad Goddeu.

Our lord Belin appears in the shape Balan or Balin in the Arthurian cycle (the knight with the two swords).

The tragic story of Balin indeed is narrated in the Suite du Merlin in Old French and in the Malory's Morte d'Arthur in English. Balin and Balan are two tragic brothers who, despite their nobility, will end up killing each other sooner or later. Balin particularly seems cursed by fate. For example, when he offers his protection to a knight, he is unable to foresee--or even see--the danger which will end up killing that knight, the treacherous Garlon who rides invisible.

And when he attempts to avenge the death, he does so in the castle of King Garlon and winds up defending himself and wounding the lord of the castle, King Pellam, with the sacred spear that pierced the side of Christ. Though the action was performed blindly and in self-defense, the blow is the Dolorous Stroke, which lays the land waste ((ill , maimed or dead men, fallen trees, lost harvests, lightning, avalanches) and produces a wound that can only be healed when the Grail is achieved. It will be necessary therefore for that to wait for Galaat, the only knight worthy of breaking this enchantment. Belain or Balainn the savage end up dying in an island in the course of a duel with his brother (he did not recognize).

162

LAST MINUTE. NOTICE REGARDING THE MESSIANISM OF ABELLINIAN TYPE.

The Church has to resolve to Christianize superficially Belin / Belen by making him St. Michael, who took the place therefore of the god-or-demon Belenus. Saint-Michael’s mount was besides called in the past Tombelaine, that is to say Tomb-Belen.

Can Belin / Belen come back one day from the last long trip undertaken by him ( his occultation by disappearance in the Next World)? Our answer is "yes, one day Belin will come back! Because the undefeated sun returns still!" And that, in spite of the racist insults hurled towards him by the Book of Christians which equates our poor "Apollyon" to a little Satan named Abaddon (Revelation , 9, 11).

Christianity indeed is going to develop very fast a very negative view of dreams, and under its iron rule , it will begin a long descent into hell, the devil or the demons being supposed to be at its origin. From 813, oppressive measures will be taken against its various interpretations. It will therefore be necessary to wait, as we saw it, Carl Gustav Jung, so that the dream finds again its role of warning, even of premonition.

But for Jung dreams will also express, and this, it will be new, the anxiety and the aspirations of our society.

163

THE SURGEON GOD, OF HEALERS AND WITCHES: DIANCECHT / DEINOCACECTIS.

The alleviation of pain, healing at least visible, the removal of the ineluctable expiry date, figure among the most legitimate aspirations of the human being.

As we have already had the opportunity to underline it in the above chapter, as the ancient druidic medicine (let there be no mistake, it is not because we are talking about it here that we recommend returning to it absolutely) as ancient druidic medicine was of a holistic type, different or specialized gods could intervene to make everything return to normal in this field.

We have just seen the case of Belin (Borvo Grannos Moritasgos) as a healing god but there was also Lug.

In Mandeure (French department of the Doubs), two oculist seals (ophthalmologic medicine on the Continent was indeed a druidic specialty comparable to the Greek medicine of the epoch) were found which have the signature of the doctor L.F. Mercurialis. The adoption of such a nickname certainly means that the practitioner placed himself under the patronage of Lug who would then have been endowed with curative virtues with a specialization in ophthalmia.

Lug’s medical skills are also evident in an episode in the Tain bo Cuailnge, when he comes to help his son Cu Chulainn.

We know in Ireland very many tobar na suil "fountain of the eyes" which cured ocular affections. During the popular Lugnasade festivities, it was common to go to a spring or a well. This was particularly the case in Tristia (County Mayo) where one of the curative powers associated with a well, concerned eye pain. This was not an isolated case since healing rituals for this organ are found in several places on the island.

In France, some springs were dedicated to Saint Gengoult, such at Ormes (Aube), where it had the power to cure ophthalmia; as the patron saint of the "unhappily married,” the healing of the eyes brought by Gengoult was to make the too gullible spouses able to open their eyes. In other words, reverse holistic therapy, you're unhappily married, go and get your eyes treated! Humor! In other words, reverse holistic therapy, you're badly married, go get your eyes treated! Humor!Humor!

Let’s say that Celtic-Druidic medicine is a medicine that takes into account all aspects of a person to treat their ailments. That is, takes into account their psychic, spiritual and general health, rather than focusing only on one symptom. Celtic-Druidic medicine insists that the psychic pains of the human beings often result in bodily pains, and that it is useless to treat the physical aspect without treating the mental aspect. It is therefore the whole human being which is treated.

Editor’s note. The relationship between the eye and the sun can be understood in this way: the peoples from Indo-Europeans - with categorical attestations in India and Greece - defined vision as a fire in the water of the eye; with the microcosm-macrocosm homology, vision is described as the emission of igneous light from the stars - especially the sun - which are the eyes that see.

Since the beginning of the world, man tried to relieve the bodily suffering of his fellow creatures. He first used his hands for that and therefore very quickly realized they could relieve or even to heal. That's how all traditions of mankind experimented manual therapies under various forms. Doctor Still, the founder of the modern osteopathy, was besides not only doctor but also bonesetter.

During thousands years, long before the appearance of pre-modern medicine, of druidic or Greek type, the healers were respectable, even feared, persons.

164

These men and these women that people commonly called "healers" "bonesetters" or "witches" made the people who came to consult them benefitting from their gifts and from their knowledge about medicinal herbs.

In the Middle Ages in Europe, there was no well-defined border between doctors, healers, witches, sorceresses.

Let us notice nevertheless straightaway that the time of the traditional healers, who practiced in the country and had a true knowledge in pharmacopeia, is practically past. There remain no longer some of them at our of latitude (we do not speak here about Amazonian shamans or others). At present on the contrary, our cities house a large number of charlatans.

The Irishman Deinocacectis (Diancecht) is the last intellectual descendant of the healing shamans in the Hercynian Forest ( of the hunters gatherers in Hercynian Forest ).

Another name according to our texts: Scal Balb. He is known as a son of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. His harpist was called Corann. Diancecht was the father of Ceno/Cian (and therefore the grandfather of Lug) Cu and Cethne. His other children were called Miacos / Miach (the bushel), Aremiacos / Ormiach (the big bushel), Aremedia / Airmed (the measure) as well as Etan the poetess according to some manuscripts.

In Ireland, Diancecht is also known under the names of Cainte, Canta, in other words, by a reference to the notion of conjuration. Would Diancecht have been a common caragius?

St Caesarius of Arles is the first, it seems, to have used this word. After him, it was used, notably in the article IV of the proceedings of the synod of Auxerre, held in 578, on the initiative of saint Aunacharius, bishop of this city: "Non licet ad sortilegos, vel ad auguria respicere, vel ad Caragios" "it is forbidden to consult sorcerers, fortune tellers, soothsayers..."

Measures taken again in 598 by another council held in Narbonne:» Si qui viri ac mulieres divinatores, quos dicunt esse Charagios atque sorticularios...» (If men and women, who are known as magicians and sorcerers).

For some people his name would mean: " quick catch " and it would evoke the precision of the gesture of the bonesetter who can put back in place the "crumpled” nerves or the “displaced” tendons , unknot muscles, treat "sprains" and dislocated joints even fractures.

In Gaelic mythology Diancecht / Deinocacectis is the doctor-god-or-demon of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy if it is preferred , Danu (bia); the archetypal god-or-demon of military and warrior medicine.

His function pertains the three classes of the Indo-European schema (priestly, military, craft), such as it was studied not long ago by George Dumezil. He is specialized in bloody medicine and his power is especially that to keep the secret of herbs and bewitching. Not that one to make better as the Abellinian sun and its mental (or psychoanalytic like in Grand) medicine.

According to Irish bards, it was him who once saved Ireland and was indirectly the cause of the name of the River Barrow. The Morrigu, the heaven-gods fierce wife, had borne a son of such terrible aspect that the physician of the gods foreseeing danger, counseled that he should be destroyed in his infancy. This was done and Diancecht opened the infant’s heart. He found within three serpents, capable, when they grew full size, of depopulating Ireland. He lost no time in destroying these serpents also and burning them into ashes. Then he flung ashes into the nearest river, for he feared that there might be danger even in them; and indeed , so venomous were the ashes that the river boiled up and slew every living creature in it, and since that has been called the River Barrow, the “Boiling one.”

Oh these Irish bards!

He would have blessed a fountain called Slane, located to the west of Magh Tuireadh and east of the lake Arboch, where the Tuatha De went and bathed when they were wounded, they left it healed and continued immediately fighting. This well indeed would heal any wound but beheading.

165

In the story of the "Cath Maighe Tuireadh" (battle of the plain of the pillars) indeed , he treats and reinstates healing in the injured men, or revives the dead by submerging them in the well of Health (Slane), while singing ritual and magical conjurations; Aremedia / Airmed gathers the curative plants intended for the well. When Noadatus / Nuada Airgetlam has his arm severed in the first battle of the plain of the stone pillars, he makes himself a silver prosthesis to overcome this infirmity therefore to give him again his sovereignty. Later, through jealousy, professional in a way, or for another reason, he kills his son Miacos who had grafted a true human arm on Noadatus / Nuada.

It is therefore a vindictive and bellicose god-or-demon.

At least still according to the bards of the Irish Middle Ages. The sister of Miach; Airmed (a small stone picture found in Grand, and currently kept in the museum of Epinal, represents her in a dispensary of pharmacy) collapsed tearful on the grave of her brother and from under her tears all healing herbs in the world grew out. Airmed arranged and catalogued the herbs but Diancecht again felt anger and jealousy and he scattered all the herbs , destroying his daughter's work as well as his son's. For this reason it is said that no human knows really the healing properties of all these herbs.

Diancecht would have been also able to heal Medros / Mider after the latter lost an eye when struck with the twig of a hazel tree.

According to the glosses of Saint Gall some Irishmen in the full 8th century sent to him as well as to Gobannos / Goibniu, prayers for healing.

“Admuinur in slánicid foracab dian cecht liamuntir coropslán.” “I invoke the remedy which Dian Cécht left with his household, that whereon it goes may be whole.”

The not very common feat which Irish apocryphal texts suppose to this god of healers and sorceresses as Airmed (a silver prosthesis to replace a cut hand) should not make us forget that in the real world which is ours the recourse to a healer often gives very good results only when the pathology is of psychological order. By taking care of stress especially, the clinical effects of eczema or of psoriasis are likely to decrease quickly! Most often recognized healers are those who treat recurring warts or stop shingles. Placebo effect or unexplainable phenomenon? But if the patient can draw an improvement of his state additionally and without interference with his medical treatment, why to deprive oneself of this additive?

A healer really guided by a druidic ethic of a high level will never take the place of your doctor. He will not tell you to stop every treatment (without having possibly consulted the latter). If the charlatan makes his supposed gift paid at a high price before even the beginning of the treatment, the one who has a real power is generally more modest. He knows the limits of his art and asks only for a negligible contribution even nothing at all! If the treatment proves to be efficient, it will be still time for the person treated to do service to the "expert in this field.” Be therefore wary of the really excessive sums it is possible to claim you, in that case, it is better to flee...

NOTE CONCERNING THE MESSIANISM OF DIANCECHT’S TYPE.

(“One day Diancecht will come back and it will be forever “).

According to the Gaelic poet Eochaid Ua Flainn, died around the year 1000, Diancecht was still accustomed to undertake long voyages: Dian Cécht fri dul rot roichthle. Fri dul rot roichthle means: liked to make long tours.

This sentence of Eochaid Ua Flainn therefore leads us to ask the following question: Will Diancecht come back one day from the last long long voyage undertaken by him (his occultation by disappearance in the Next World)? Our answer is “Yes, Diancecht one day will come back! It is even already done “. Science rediscovers today the old empirical receipts, and much of drugs are containing plants. It is very well! But attention, the herbs contain active ingredients. It is therefore essential to ask beforehand for the opinion of your herbal doctor or your pharmacist. There is always a risk of allergies, of which consequences can be serious. Certain herbs can be contraindicated, or decrease, even cancel, the action of drugs which are essential for you.

166

If we have in one century gained several decades of life expectancy, it is well thanks to the progress of official medicine. Priority for science: cancer is not cured with herbal teas.

In daily life, the remedies of bonesetter can be useful for the auxiliary treatments. After checking that there is not, medically speaking, some contraindication.

CAMULUS SMERTRIUS.

Unlike Frenchmen think since Lucian of Samosata was taken for a ride by a druid of Marseilles on this subject, the genuine Celtic Hercules is not Ogmius/Ogma but Camulus.

What Irish material says to us about him is besides very clear in this respect. He is said son of Trenmor, what means strong and great.

Camulus will therefore be represented in our material as a true Hercules in the strict sense of word that is to say as tall man if it is not a giant, and gifted with a not very common physical strength. That’s all.

Camulus is a theonym being reproduced on an inscription found in Bar Hill in the Dunbartonshire: Deo Marti Camulo. It is also found it in the place names Camulodunum (Colchester, Almondbury, Yorkshire) Camulosessa Præsidium (Castle Greg in Scotland). The toponym Camilty undoubtedly comes too from the name of Camulus (Camuls Treb, the “village of Camulus “) and the name of Camulus is found perhaps even in that of the Arthurian city of Camelot.

The recent discovery in London of a bronze plate bearing the inscription NVM AVGG DEO MARTI CAMVLO TIBERINIVS CELERIANVS C BELL MORITIX LONDINIENSIVM MVS; seems to combine Camulus with the fights gladiators (C BELL may be indeed understood as “custos bellatorum “ in other words “responsible for the gladiators “). What would make in this case Camulus an owner of martial arts. The inscription means: “to the divine emperor and to the god Mars Camulus, Tiberinius Celerianus, Person in charge of the gladiators, Moritex of London “.

In the Irish mythology as we already saw it, Cumhal (or Cumal) is a warlike god-or-demon, son of the king of the children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada, husband of Muirne and father of Vindos/Finn, called Demne (deer) when he was a child. Wanting to marry the beautiful Muirne, against the opinion of his father the druid Tagd, master of the sidh in Almu, he has to abduct her. As reprisals, Tagd makes the king of Ireland, Conn Cetchathach (Conn with the Hundred battles) take part in the conflict , he declares him an outlaw. The battle of Cnucha will therefore oppose Conn and Cumhal. The latter will be killed there by Goll mac Morna, who will be chief of the Fenians consequently.

Camulus is also a theonym which, on the Continent, is found in various inscriptions. In Mainz and in Rindern in Germany where he is compared with Mars, in Solin in Croatia, where he is combined with Jupiter as with Epona, in Italy in Rome where he is combined with Jupiter, Arduinna, Mercury, and even Hercules, in Rheims. The stone of Rindern is interesting: a tree and a crown of oak leaves are engraved there. In Sarmizegetusa in Romania, we find the form Camulus. See also the anthroponym Camulogenus for example. This name is very close to that of Cumhal (a common Celtic heritage?) What leads us to believe this hero would be therefore only an euhemerized figure of the war god-or-demon, but the importance of this deity in the Celtic world very clearly shows the preference of Celts for singular combats or duels. Romans nevertheless will compare him to Mars.

To note that the Welsh twin of Vindos/Finn son of Cumhal is Gwynn ap Nudd, in other words, Gwynn son of Nudd. The name of this Nudd (duplicate of King Llud) is the phonetic result of the name of the Britannic god-or-demon Nodons (Mars) and matches Irish Nuada. As Nodons and Camulus are nicknames referring to the Roman war god-or-demon Mars, it is possible that Cumhal is ultimately only an heroic double of his father, the king of the god-or-demons Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada.

The presence of Smertrius (from the Celtic *smer- abundance, and *tris- three) on the pillar of the Parisian boatmen, proves obvious that he was one of the best-known god-or-demons of the druidic Panth-eon or Pleroma; but that it is perhaps an aspect or an avatar of the god-or-demon

167

Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada. Lludd in Wales is, himself, a victorious snake hunter. We find his name in that of the Smertae, a tribe of the Highlands in Scotland, but also in Grossbuch in Norica (area astride on Austria and Slovenia, Hallstatt’s civilization).

Monsters, when they are not divine, are also an enemy of Man and cattle: the god-or-demon who removes them and makes thus prosperity possible, has a beautiful name, “Provider “ in Celtic language: Smertrius. Same stem as in the name of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Rosemartha.

As we saw it, he is represented on one of the low-reliefs in Paris, with the features of a bearded athlete who raises his bludgeon on a big snake standing up in front of him. This champion of the bodily strength resembles Hercules of whom the sculptor gave him the aspect besides, but his name, quite Celtic (Smertrius) emphasizes his beneficial nature. This Celtic Hercules uses his exceptional strength only to exterminate the natural enemies of mankind. These monsters represent the forces of evil, a perpetual threat against the harmony of the world.

Such as for example in the case of the monster called Tauriscus by Ammianus Marcellinus, or in Tarascon in Provence.

Our conviction to us nevertheless, high knowers of the druidiaction of today, it is that the “through anus fire-spitting” dragon of which it will be a question was never a monster having really existed (a kind of hybrid gigantic skunk ?) but a symbol representing or synthesizing the ancestral fears of Mankind. From where the Celtic myth of Camulus Smertrius bringing down Tauriscus, the fire-spitting (its venom) bullheaded snake.

As for the Nerluc of the Christian (golden) legends, it is, of course, more a “Black Wood” than a “Black Lake,” a “Black Wood” perhaps similar to the mysterious forest of the surroundings of Marseilles described by Lucan. This forest also haunted by spitting-fire dragons having been also thereafter in the same way combined with Martha ( The Sainte Baume) it will not therefore be without interest to make a quotation about it also.

“Not far from the town stood a grove

Which from the earliest time

No hand of man had dared to violate;

Stood in the shade of a north-facing side

By its matted boughs entwined it clasped

Darkness and frozen shades.

No rustic Pans here found a home,

Nor sylvans nor even nymphs

But savage rites and barbarous worship,

Altars horrible on bleak mounds raised up;

Sacred with blood of men was every tree.

If faith be given to credulous ancient times,

No fowl has ever dared to rest upon those branches,

And no beast has made his lair beneath:

The wind never falls down in this grove

Nor lightning flashes upon it from the cloud.

Stagnant the air, unmoving,

Yet the leaves filled with mysterious trembling;

Dripped the streams from coal-black fountains;

Sinister effigies of gods [Latin simulacra],

Scarcely fashioned, appear on fallen trunk

And, pallid with decay, their rotting shapes

Struck terror.

Because the men fear less the deities

Of whom the effigies are them familiar,

So much adds to terror the fact not know the gods.

It was said that caves rumbled with earthquakes,

That the prostrate yew rose up again;

That fiery tongues of flame gleamed in the forest depths,

Yet were the trees not kindled;

168

And those dragons in frequent folds were coiled around the trunks.

Men flee the spot

Nor dare to worship near:

Even the priest

Or when bright Phoebus holds the height,

Or when a dark night controls the heavens,

In anxious dread draws near the grove

And fears to find its lord” (Lucan)

It is to be wondered if, in this legend of the Tarascon’s dragon , Saint Martha does not represent Christianity triumphing over paganism and this Christian Golden Legend is only perhaps a local adaptation of such a myth (our ancestors had much imagination).

The Romans also compared Camulus Smetrius to Mars and in particular in Mohn (Smertulitanus is perhaps a variant of the name) as in Coblentz in Germany through interpretatio romana, where he is called upon in the company of Vindoridius and Boudena. As a Hercules many sovereigns and particularly the Gallic emperors of the 3rd century supported his worship: on the coins of Postumus, the god-or-demon has even indigenous nicknames.

One of the characteristics of the Celtic-Roman worship of Hercules is that women were not excluded from it, as it was the case, on the other hand, in Rome. Thus in Corbridge, one of them was even a priestess of the god-or-demon. This female participation seems to be typically Celtic.

Nicknames of Camulus Smertriuos (called Hercules by Romans).

Alabuandus, Andossus, Devsoniensis, Graius, Hveteris/Hvitiris/Vitris, Hunnus, Ilunnus, Magisus, Magusanus, Mertronnus, Saegon, Saxanus, Toliandossus.

Various authors brought this deity closer to Mogons or Moguns mentioned by certain inscriptions. Mogetius, Mogounus, Mogti, Mounti, Mogont, Mogunt. The word seems neither Latin nor Germanic, and refers perhaps to a notion of “power “ in the strict sense of the word (bodily strength). The fact that his offering persons are for the majority some privates, advocates for this literal interpretation of the word. Other authors brought it closer to one of the original names of St. Patrick : Magonus. On the continent we have Magunia, Magunius, Maguno, Magunna, Magonus, Magunus, Magono-rix.

For others lastly, Smertrius too would be himself only an aspect of Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada. Well-known phenomenon with the name of pempedulia. The basic believer chooses a deity or a concrete aspect of the divine one, an avatar , in whom he is interested particularly and to whom, consequently, he gives up oneself entirely, what is called istadevata (in India) as we already have had the opportunity to signal it.

169

NOADATUS/NODENS/NUADA/NUDD

AND THE KING ARTHUR.

A Jungian archetype of the good ruler. Good king Noadatus? What is sure it is that he was a better or at least better liked by his subjects, king, than his successor Bregsos/Bres, the usurper who took his place after he had lost an arm or a hand accidentally. And that he was once again chosen as king of the gods even before the latter is militarily defeated.

As we have already had the opportunity to observe it, the hierarchy of the Irish pantheon is in many points different of the hierarchy of the Indo-European pantheon.

Dyeus Pater is the great god of the day-lit sky and the emperor of the gods of the Indo-European pantheon. The name survives in the Greek Zeus with a vocative form Zeu pater; Latin Jupiter (from the archaic Latin Iovis pater; Diespiter), Sanskrit Dyaus Pita. And that matches Taran/Toran/Tuireann strictly.

This Irish pantheon notably seems still in movement and crossed by various evolutions, contrary to the Celtic pantheon of Great Britain or of the Continent.

The main reason is , of course, that the Celtic pantheon survived in this island much longer than elsewhere and that Christianized bards had all time to alter it as they please.

But there are perhaps also other causes our researchers in druidism will discover one day perhaps.

A thing is blindingly obvious in Irish legends nevertheless ,the rivalry between the family of Taran / Toran / Tuireann and that of Lug.

Another singularity, the strange succession of the kings of this divine society which can only be due to the influence of the Christian bards who were no longer open to the notion of immutability and ended up designing it like the human society, even more than before. While myth is on the whole a-historical and timeless.

Gaelic mythology therefore.

Noadatus in old Celtic, Nuada Airgetlam in Gaelic language, Nudd or Lludd Llaw Ereint in Welsh. Latinized forms: Nodens, Nudens, Nodons in Great Britain.

Julius Pokorny makes his name come from a Proto-Indo-European stem *neu-d- meaning “to get, use, fish “. The etymological assumption draws its importance from the fact that Noadatus is sometimes quoted as a psychopompous god-or-demon, fishing the soul/mind of men; and for this reason, the fisher King of the Arthurian cycle , who tries to fish the salmon of wisdom, Pelles, is therefore regarded as being inspired by the character of Noadatus. Both have in common the capacity to guide men towards another state: the death for Noadatus, a higher state of awareness (symbolized by the Grail) for Pelles.

In Great Britain, the excavations of Lydney Park (on the mouth of the Severn) unearthed a great site including a temple, a dwelling house, and thermal baths. Noadatus appears there on various inscriptions (including a defixio) found in the temple of Mars Nodens (Templum Marti Nodentis). The

170

temple is 72 meters long and 54 meters broad, and it has a cella being 49 meters long for 29 meters wide. Its north-western end consists of three rooms of six meters. This temple was built a little after 364 and continued to be used until the 5th century. It provided several inscriptions dedicated to Noadatus. A metal arm was found there, as we will see it.

Text of the defixio found on the spot.

DEVO NODENTI SILVIANVS ANILVM PERDEDIT DEMEDIAM PARTEM DONAVIT NODENTI INTER QVIBVS NOMEN SENICIANI NOLLIS PETMITTAS SANITATEM.

For the god Noadatus , Silvianus has lost a ring, he has donated one half [of its worth] to Noadatus. Among those named Senicianus, do not permit good health.

Another inscription, which is reproduced on a bronze dish, compares Noadatus to the god-or-demon Mars through interpretatio romana.

D M. NODONTI FLAVIVS BLANDINVS ARMATVRA.

To the god Mars Nodons, Flavius Blandinus, the drill instructor of gladiators.

Another dish bears the image of a hound barking it seems, and also compares Noadatus with Mars by interpretatio romana.

PECTILLVS VOTVM QVOD PROMISSIT DEO NVDENTE M. DEDIT.

Pectillus dedicates this votive offering had promised to the god Noadatus Mars.

On the other hand, two other inscriptions in Lydney Park seem to compare Noadatus with Mercury, which shows well the Romans hesitated in what relates to him.

The cella was equipped with a mosaic floor . What remains of it shows dolphins, fish and sea monsters. The bronze artifacts discovered on the spot comprise reliefs showing a sea deity, fishermen and tritons. Another of the items out of bronze discovered at the time of the excavations represents a sea god-or-demon driving a chariot , between putti torchbearer putti (some representations of chubby-checked and mocking infants) and tritons. Moreover nine stone or bronze dogs were found on the spot , of whom certain similar to the Irish greyhounds, a bronze plate with a woman engraved on it , an arm out of bronze, an oculist seal, approximately 320 fibulae, nearly 300 bracelets; as more than 8.000 coins which made it possible to date the building.

The iconography therefore highlights a clear association of this god-or-demon with the sea, whereas the dogs, the fibulae, and the bracelets, rather make think of a healing deity. The dog is a companion of the healing aspect of Mars, and the fibulae or safety pins are associated with childbirth. The dogs, and the assimilation with Silvan, on the other hand, rather make think of hunting.

Another inscription mentioning Noadatus, engraved on a silver statuette, was discovered in 1718, in Cockersand Moss in Lancashire.

LVCIANVS. D M. N. COL LIC APRILI Lucianus. To the god Nodontis Mars. The College of Lictors and Aprilis.

Noadatus is also known by an inscription found in Mainz in Germany, where he is compared with Mars by interpretatio romana. A statue representing him was discovered at the top of the Donon in France. A half-naked god-or-demon simply dressed with a fold of his coat covering his left shoulder, leaving unclothed his right arm and his right shoulder. This character held, with his right hand, horizontally and in front of him, a drawn sword. His left hand was not visible, but was replaced by a satchel, a satchel which probably covered a stump in order to protect it.

Noadatus enters History (or more exactly Gaelic mythology what is not completely the same thing) as first king of the god-or-demons. But it is true that we hardly have information over the centuries of separate evolution of the children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu, well away from the world, in their islands located completely to north, in short on their metahistory. The Gaelic genealogies are contradictory about him. According to certain manuscripts, Noadatus would be the preferred son of Dagda, he would be a son of Echtach, son of Etarlam, son of Ordan, son of Ionnaoi, or Allaoi according to others.

Some authors affirm nevertheless that the first king of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), was in reality Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

But according to all this mythology appeared in Ireland; Noadatus, king of the god-or-demons known as children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia); would have brought from the island of Findias (Abalum?) an invincible sword. In the Welsh tradition, this sword is named Caledfwlch, what would mean “hard breaching “and it had the reputation of being unbreakable (just like the Durandal of

171

Charlemagne's nephew) or to cut everything. For other people his name would come from Caladbolg: “hard lightning “ from where the name Caliborn, then Escalibor, Excalibur.

Noadatus will lose his right arm or more exactly his hand during the first battle of the Plain of the standing stones and of the mounds.

After having temporarily had to yield his throne to a temporary king named Bregsos (Bres) because of the loss of the use of his right arm; he will return in power at the request of the other god-or-demons with a silver prosthesis in the place of the hand. From where the 2nd battle of the Plain of stone pillars or hillocks, fought against the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent and Fomore in Ireland. God-or-demons known as children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), will end up overcoming , but Noadatus will lose his life there (symbolically speaking, of course, since god-or-demons never die really).

One moment eclipsed by Lug (newcomer come on tardily) it will be therefore in the final analysis by Belinus/Manannan/Barinthus (another newcomer) that he will be definitively replaced; Lug having sunk in the anti-taranism , in the varunism or in the odinism (in short, having become “lugiferian “).

As we have had the opportunity to see it, in Ireland Noadatus is called Argantolamios (Airgetlam = with a silver hand).

In Wales Noadatus will thereafter be called Nudd or LLud llawereint (i.e., there too “with a silver hand “ Lamargantios).

It is difficult to explain the passage of Nudd to Ludd. Specialists generally believe in assimilation: Nudd Llawereint would have become Llud Llawereint.

But it is necessary to also take into account another data of the myth, the fact that Noadatus, because of his famous wound to his arm (or his hand), has one moment lost his throne because of this infirmity. That produces , in the story of the Grail , the character of the Maimed (i.e., wounded, in Old French) king, who is, also, a fisher king, whose wound is due to a dolorous stroke, or to a felon stroke. However the consequence is that his kingdom became an afflicted land, a country having lost every fertility. The winter is the frozen, snow-covered, afflicted, decoration, of this waste land.

In the romances of the Round Table (in the Perceval of Chretien de Troyes for example), the “pilot “as well as the one legged man “with a silver leg “ ( old French “eschacier”) matches obviously Noadatus.

Noadatus is therefore the symbol even of the need for a good eugenics. Here indeed what the French Jean-Marie Ricolfis wrote in connection with the king or the chief, the lord.

“His bodily entirety has to be total. This Celtic characteristic is a very strange remain of the times when the “king “ was the strongest male of the pack; disabled, wounded seriously, he has to be replaced. He must much eat or drink to show his strength and to ensure it. He may reach the throne only if he has proven his manliness as his fruitfulness. If he becomes barren (it is the famous dolorous stroke of the legends), the seasons are put out of order, women have no longer children “.

CONCLUSION.

The Irish tradition shows him to us as having been the first king of the god-or-demons known as children of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Danu (bia). But before the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), leave their four islands located north of the world, they already had probably a long history of which Irish mythology does not give a real account to us. Some authors maintain besides that the first king of the tribe of the goddess Danu (bia) would have been Taran / Toran / Tuireann; but this part of the metahistory of the god-or-demons would have been forgotten in Ireland. Following the example of other Aryan deities of the first judicial and law function, like Tyr and Mucius Scaevola, Noadatus is represented in one-armed person. His favorite weapon is the double-edged sword. It is also a god-or-demon associated with healing and therefore with the dog, an animal which was considered as able to cure himself by licking his wounds.

Consorts, according to manuscripts: Magosia / Macha, Nemain, or Etain/ Etanna.

Father of Tadg and of Gaible.

NOTICES OF THE DRUID JEAN-PIERRE MARTIN ABOUT THE CHARACTER OF NOADATUS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

172

Although he appears for the first time in Perceval, the fisher King takes root in Celtic mythology. It is a figure more or less derived from Noadatus/Nodens/Nuada.

In the texts of the Late Middle Ages, he is described as the “Rich Fisher King “ in reference to the priceless treasure (a spiritual more than material treasure) of which he carries out the guard.

Since his wound, his kingdom seems to share his sufferings, as if the infirmity of the king made the land unproductive. It is the myth of the “Devastated land “( old French Waste Land). Therefore there remains to him nothing to do but to fish in the river near his castle. From all the horizons, the knights run in order to heal the fisher King, but only the chosen knight , the good knight, will be able one day to perform this miracle. In the first stories, it will be Perceval, accompanied by Bohort and Galaat, replaced by the latter, in the following versions.

What can be misleading , it is the presence on several occasions of two wounded kings in all these legends - a father (or grandfather) and his son – living in the same castle and protecting the Grail. The father, more seriously wounded, remains in the castle, only kept in life by the power of the Grail, whereas the son, more lively, can still welcome the guests or go fishing.

The fisher King appears for the first time in the unfinished romance of Chretien de Troyes, Perceval or the story of the Grail, around 1180. Neither his wound nor that of his father are then explained. Perceval discovers thereafter that the kings would have been cured if he had questioned them about the Grail , but his tutor had taught to him not to ask questions too much. Perceval is informed that he is related to both kings by his mother, the daughter of the wounded King. The story stops before the return of Perceval to the castle which shelters the Grail 1).

To note that Chretien de Troyes never designates the object of the quest by the term Holy Grail. It seems well that he used the word while knowing that the object in question would be familiar to the reader. It is only with Robert de Boron (see below) that the Grail will be explicitly related to Jesus of Nazareth. In a similar way , later authors associated the Holy Lance, used by the Roman centurion Longinus who would have wounded the Nazarene in his side, and on which therefore some blood of Christ would be, with the spear of Lug.

In the Welsh romance heading “Peredur “ which is based on the story of Chretien de Troyes while bringing many evolutions, the Grail was abandoned completely. The character of the fisher King, even if he is no longer named so, appears alone, and presents to Peredur a head cut on a plate. The latter will be informed thereafter that he has family relationship with this king, and that the head is that of his cousin, whose he will have to avenge the death.

The Christianization of the fisher King will be done in the Joseph of Arimathia by Robert de Boron (first part of his Grail story), he will be the first to explicitly link this mysterious vase to the history of the Nazorean Jesus.

The “rich fisher king “is there known as brother-in-law of Joseph of Arimathia, who collected the blood of Christ thanks to the chalice in question. Joseph discovers a religious community which travels as far as Great Britain, and he will therefore entrust over there the Grail to a named Bron, called the “rich fisher king “ because it is him who fishes daily the salmon having to feed all his table.

The cycle combining the Grail and Lancelot goes ahead in the history which surrounds the fisher King, whose many relatives would have been wounded for their failures.

The two only kings of the line surviving in the Arthurian time are Pellam (or Pellehan), the wounded king, as Pelles, who causes the birth of Galaat by leading Lancelot to go to the bed of his daughter Elaine of Corbenic; the latter taking, under the effect of a spell of Brison the enchantress, the features of Guinevere.

The prophecy which closes this story is that it is Galaat who will discover finally the Grail , and will therefore bring back to life this “Waste” land.

In the Romance of the Grail , like in the Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory (written about 1470); the fisher King Pellam was wounded by a lord called Balin (see above) who, to defend himself, inflicts to him the “dolorous stroke “ with the spear of Destiny. Pellam and his kingdom must then cross a period of desolation until the coming of Galaat.

What is not without resembling the destiny of the kingdom of Noadatus/Nodens/Nuada just after the loss of his right arm during the first battle of the Plain of the standing stones and barrows, but it is true that the wound is appreciably different.

173

Other authors prefer to link the myth of the fisher king to that of Vindos/Finn, son of Camulos. The salmon is indeed the fish most often mentioned in Celtic legends. It is at the same time knowledge, life and food, offered by the liquid element and the Ocean deities . Like the wild boar, bear and stag, the salmon is one of the primordial animals in the druidic religion, it is said bearer of knowledge, wisdom, and science.

The figure of Noadatus was taken over in a very different sense by the great writer who is Lovecraft, in his famous Cthulhu Mythos (the strange high house in the mist, 1926); but the latter inflected considerably the idea that people get up to that point. We find in “ the strange high house in the mist “ the little sad poetry of the oneiric cycle of Lovecraft. The god-or-demons are merciful and sometimes imprinted with kindness, but it is always to the detriment of the mortals. It is necessary to get used to it , dreamers make room for the Cartesians. The madness will be only larger. Nodens is known to have visited our planet on several occasions. He belongs to the Elder God-or-Demons and is served by the Nightgaunts, or animals of night and darkness. He drives out the bad creatures like Shantaks, as well as the servants of the Great Old Ones (Andernas renamed Fomore in Ireland?) who will cause a little more difficulties to him because of their intelligence. This hunting thus leads him in helping the human beings, incidentally more than by desire to help Mankind. We find him again thereafter in some other texts such as “ the quest of the unknown Kadath “ in which he appears as the eternal enemy of Nyarlathotep. This relation is not fortuitous besides. But Nodens is far from being “a good “god-or-demon. His human aspect and his detachment with respect to Mankind (he is hardly concerned with it, therefore he does not wish harm to it either); make him nevertheless an interesting entity and apart from the models to which Lovecraft often accustomed us. We may also see Nodens as one of the rare god-or-demons seeking to help human beings. He often moves by means of a chariot made up of an enormous shell, pulled by extraterrestrial monsters, or fantastic creatures resulting from the legends of our earth (some Andernas or Fomore??).

1. One of the innumerable developments or continuations of this unfinished romance kept the attention of the great French scholar who is Jean-Marie Ricolfis. Perlesvaux is even richer in extraordinary and especially authentic antiquated details. Arthur remains in a residence with cut heads; a king gives his dead son suitably boiled and cut into pieces, to eat to his avengers; Perlesvaux avenges his mother by beheading eleven murderers, of whom he sheds blood in a tank; the twelfth is plunged in it upside down,tidy remind of the sacrifices to the teutates. Lastly, he disappears on a royal boat which carries the maimed king with the sacred artifacts, etc.

NOTICE OF THE DRUID LEONORIUS ABOUT THE MYTH NOADATUS / NODENS / NUADA / NUDD AND KING ARTHUR.

Noadatus personifies therefore the royal function according to the Celts, i.e., not the research of wealth , but the (re) distribution of the wealth. The ancient historians handed down to us, of the Celtic sovereigns, a bright image, probably preserved in the popular memory by the songs of the bards. King Luernius, who lived about the middle of the second century before our era, for example remained famous for his wealth and his prodigality. He had made enclose, tells us Posidonius, a field of twelve stadia square (more than 2000 meters); inside of which were laid out tanks full of a remarkable drink; and such a quantity of food that, during several days, all those who wanted could enter to benefit from these accumulated provisions, served without interruption. The monarch had fixed a date for this feast. One of the poets of the time having come late and yet having met the king, sang his impressiveness while deploring having missed the appointment.

Flattered, the king, taking a full of gold purse, therefore thew it to the poet who followed his chariot while running. After having collected it, the bard would then have burst into a new song to his glory: “His very chariot prints upon the earth over which he drove produced benefits to, etc., etc. “.

D’Arbois de Jubainville him, on his side, describes us the records of a named Ariamnes, which had announced that he would feed during one year all the Galatians , in Asia Minor, which would come. He made build rooms out of wooden and wicker, vast enough to contain several hundreds of guests.

174

He had made manufactured the previous year enormous copper cauldrons, where each day the cooks made cooking oxen, sheep, and pigs, by dozens. Even the foreigners could come there. Wine was served discretionary.

What seems obvious to us researchers in today's druidism it is that this Noadatus / Nodens / Nuada / Nudd represents the social justice and the re-distribution function of the State. It is in a way the prime minister of the republic of the united sidhs, Taran / Torann / Tuireann being of it the president (overthrown by a mysterious coup in the Irish case). And if the metaphor shocks let us say that Noadatus it is a kind of king Arthur but a king Arthur having a superior.

The single and outright king having never existed in Celtic civilization (what seems to have existed there on the contrary it is a kind of widespread vassal’s pyramid , from the chieftain to the king of kings through the king of a province (Vergobretus or President on the Continent); the druids of the time therefore saw fit to cultivate for their flock the picture of the ideal king of Arthurian type: a strong man , good warrior but wise, unifier and well advised. This king, it is Ambigatus on the Continent, Arthur in Great Britain, Nuada in Ireland.

Because if it is necessary to give each one what comes down to him, what is coming down to each one ? The solution which immediately comes to mind consists in dividing the goods by the number of potential beneficiaries. I have sixty apples and we are thirty: it is necessary to give two apples to each one. It is what the Greeks called the arithmetical equality,

Following the criticism of the drawing, Plato proposed another wording besides,the equality which consists in giving to each one according to his nature. But what is the nature of each one and how is it determined? The example of our sixty apples puts this difficulty into relief: will I have to give four apples instead of two to the one who is very hungry even if he never contributes to the common good, or rather to the one who contributes most to the common good even if he is in full indigestion? The question here asked is that of the recognition of the difference.

What difference is it then necessary to take into account, and in the name of what?

Inequality is tolerable only as soon as they are for the benefit of all, and therefore also (and perhaps above all) for the benefit of most disadvantaged persons.

Inequality is therefore tolerable as long as the situation of the most disadvantaged ones thanks to it is improved, even if therefore arithmetical equality is accomplished through that. The notion of justice is so deeply separated from that of arithmetical equality. We should not forget indeed that de facto inequality exists and that they can be increased by an abstract equality before the law and a mechanical or uncompromising application of this one. French Revolution began by advocating an abstract egalitarianism: any subject of law was equal before the law. By virtue of what a mother who stole some bread for her dying of hunger children was liable to a severe sentence.

The severity of criminal justice therefore has to be little by little tempered by equity sense . To be equitable, it is precisely not to conform oneself blindly to law and to take into account special situations. Equity makes it possible to overcome the lacunas of the law. True justice does not consist merely of pure and simple legality but demands a practical intelligence of what is right, a virtue of divining which makes it possible to find the most balanced possible situation and to reconcile the general one with the concrete one.

Justice refers so to the problem of the judgment. It is not indeed enough to apply a criterion (that of equality) or a norm (that of the substantive law) to be righteous; still it is necessary to have this aptitude for justice which defines the righteous man. If rules are not enough for judging, it is because it is needed a natural gift, a special talent for that. The judgment is a special gift which can be learned in no way, but only practiced.

What is equitable is not what is equal, and to judge, it is not to apply a mathematical instrument of equality. Kant saw in it a form of common sense. It is not therefore enough to reason to judge: everybody is capable of reasoning, very few of judging. It is therefore fundamentally the righteous man who does justice, because he has this disposition to judge according to the good, disposition which is deducted of no rule.

This brings us back straight, of course, to the myth of the king Arthur. No given law can be applied such in the judgment if we want the judgment is right and makes sense.

And the double-edged sword of Noadatus as the Excalibur of Arthur reminds that justice is nothing without the force which makes it possible to make it applied, to judge consists not only in examining, weighing, balancing, but also still in deciding and in punishing. The double-edged sword indicates so

175

what to judge can have painful: the determination of what is right is not only a question of intellectual evaluation, it implicates especially a final, executable, decision, definitely settling a conflict between divergent interests. A forceless law is nothing.

We see therefore being clarified, little by little, the portrait of an important deity people even could compare with Jupiter sometimes. It is indeed an important character for the mortals that we are, because it is him the master of the Justice. He is the god-or-demon who poses the boundaries of the civilized world then protects them. His sword has two edges. One heals, the other punishes (or kills), a little like the mallet or the bludgeon of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt besides.

MEDROS (MIDIR IN IRELAND, MEDYR SON OF METHREDYDD

IN WALES).

Personification of the trick it is possible to display to achieve, therefore of obstinacy and tenacity.

Ulysses, the Greeks would say. The god of resourcefulness, Frenchmen would say.

In the first recension of the Lebar Gabala, Medros / Midir is known as son of Indui son of Echtach son of Etarlam.

Consorts: Vocusmnaca / Fuamnach then Etanna / Etain. Some variants give him as daughters Aife, Doirenn, and Aillbhe.

The name of Medros can be brought closer to the Teutatis Meduris of Great Britain. It also finds its analog in the divine hero Midir, of Irish epic. This god-or-demon was therefore changed according to a rather usual process, in a legendary hero with complicated adventures, with dubious functions.

The etymology of this name was called upon.We are still in the dark as it is often the case. We may attach it to the root * med “to measure, to calculate.“ That would indicate a mental activity. But it is also possible it is of the family of mid (mead). If it is legitimate to relate it to the Indo-European root * med, “to measure, calculate “ that could indicate a god-or-demon particularly full with science.

Let us dare a personal assumption in connection with this eminent member of the druidic dodecahedron : considering the plurality of meaning generally of the Celtic theonyms, Medros also means “skillful “ and it is perhaps there, in fact, the true meaning of his name. In Wales the character appears in the history of Kulhwch and Olwen. It is Medyr, son of Methredydd, who, from Kelliwic to Esgeir Oervel in Iwerddon (in Ireland), was able to pass, in a flash, between the two legs of a wren. Medyr has here the meaning of skill or skillful to aim; Methredydd (medrydydd) is a derivation of it. His name can also be compared to the Cymric word medr (strength, ability) and may therefore suggest that it means “capable of anything.”

Irish Material.

The Irish god-or-demon Midir appears only in the stories of the cycle of the Wooing of Etain (Tochmarc Etaine).

Medros is a god-or-demon of the Next World of the Sedodumnon, "brother " of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, the god-or-demon of contracts and of friendship (among others). He is besides sometimes considered as being his double.

After the defeat suffered by the god-or-demons facing the human beings (battle for the possession of the Talantio / Tailtiu and battle of Druim Lighean) he will take refuge in the sidh of Leita-Briga (Irish Bri-Leith); one of the numerous palaces or front doors of the Sedodumnon put at his disposal by the king of the god-or-demons ; and will become a very important character of this strange republic of United Sidhs. Some people say even that he almost became the king of it.

The few things we know in addition, about this distinguished member of the druidic dodecahedron, hold in some words. He will be in charge of the education of Oengus (also called Mac Oc or Maponos), the child-god-or-demon his brother had had with the goddess-or-demoness or the good fairy of the Boyne (Bo vinda damona or Boand).

176

The infant Mabon/Maponos/Oengus having been entrusted to Medros / Midir (custom of the "Fosterage"); this one completes his education successfully and does not hide from it that he is the son of this great lord whose residence in Sedodumnon is the marvelous Palace of the Boyne (Brug Na Boinne in the Irish euhemerization of the Middle Ages).

The Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt having forgotten Mabon / Maponos / Oengus in his distribution of the Sedodumnon between the god-or-demons [here there is certainly mixing up indeed with Manannan] the latter was therefore without official domain.

Mabon / Maponos / Oengus will nevertheless succeed in deceiving his father on his intentions and will get for himself lastly, the usage of the aforementioned Palace on the Boyne.

At least according to the Irish apocryphal story called “The Taking of the Sidh.” In the stories called “The nourishment of the house of the two milk buckets” or “the wooing of Etanna “ (Irish Etain), it is to the detriment of the brother of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, Elcomaros (Gaelic Elcmar ); and not to the detriment of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt himself; that this transfer of property will take place. What is clearly less comprehensible from the point of view of theology.

Medros / Midir having visited his foster son soon after, he loses an eye there, following a regrettable accident. Although healed (by Diancecht), he claims then to Mabon / Maponos / Oengus, as compensation for his temporary disability, considering his status, a chariot, a coat, and the most beautiful girl in the country. Who is Etanna (Etain) [well, still according to the apocryphal text in question].

Here is therefore our Mabon / Maponos / Oengus forced to go into a search of a little special type. It will be finally fruitful: Mabon / Maponos will bring back Etanna / Etain to his uncle Medros.

As soon as he sees her, Medros / Midir there falls immediately in love with her and decides to make her his mistress. But he already has a legitimate wife, the sorceress Vocusmnaca. The latter pursues her rival therefore using the most powerful bewitching of her magic. She transforms her successively into a puddle by touching her with the branch of a rowan tree, then in a butterfly whom a storm takes in air for seven years. She becomes then a tiny midge and falls in a cup of drink. She will then be swallowed under this shape then "delivered" by the wife of the king of Ulster, Etar. It is so therefore she will be able to come back to life on earth, but while having forgotten everything of her previous life.

Etanna / Etain marries Ivocatuos Airem, the Ard ri Erenn ( king of the kings in reland), but Medros / Midir who wants to take her back, will win then Etanna / Etain in chess after having trapped the king Ivocatuos. By losing voluntarily the first two games in order to win his trust. Ivocatuos / Eochaid loses therefore in turn, but does not keep his word and dismisses the god-or-demon from his capital: Tara. Medros / Midir manages to come back in the city and in the castle, then joins Etanna / Etain. Both are transformed into swans and fly away . The warriors of the king will be able only to observe their disappearance on the horizon, changed completely into swans, joined by a thin gold small chain 1). The king will pursue them and make all the sidhs in Ireland searched, but the god-or-demon uses his magical powers. He changes fifty girls into doubles of Etanna / Etain and asks Ivocatuos / Eochaid for choosing one. The king complies and, sure of his choice, sleeps with his sweetheart, who proves to be in fact the daughter of Etanna / Etain, and therefore his own daughter also. From this incestuous intercourse, a famous dynasty of kings will go out.

CONCLUSION.

It is possible to consider the aptitude that Medrus personifies as what brings fraud or on the contrary, as what creates surprise and revenge of the weakest one. The stroke of Jarnac in a way ! 2) This frame of mind can take, on the one hand, the face of the lie, of the craftiness; on the other one, it is the ultimate weapon, which assures victory in any circumstances on other people.

The positive side of Medros / Midir it is also the extraordinary fidelity that he will demonstrate towards the last best love of his life, the beautiful Etain. In this senses he is a model of perseverance or even of obstinacy. Backed up by a very big smartness. He is therefore a complex character since he can also appear as an archetype of fidelity among Celtic people like Chiomara, whether it is in business (the fact to keep one’s word, etc.) in friendship, in love. And this in spite of his adultery, of course. Among Celts the true clairvoyants, they are the blind persons, the god or demon of the word has a stammer, etc.

177

1. The country of Medros / Midir towards into which they came back (country of which the god or demon had extolled the attraction during a year to Etanna), it is, of course, the parallel world of which Medros / Midir was the king.

2. The famous stroke of Jarnac was not in reality a stab in the back but a backhand stroke in the hollow of the knee, therefore a perfectly regular although very unusual blow.

Continental documentation.

In the forest of Haguenau in France, was found a low-relief on which there is a man who holds a lance in his left hand, and who is pressed, with his right, on the head of a bull. Here is the inscription: D [eo] Medru Matutina Cobnert [I filia]. What means: “To the G [od] Medros, Matutina daughter of Cobnertus “(CIL XIII 06017).

The link with the bull is interesting because it suggests that this deity represented a rather high grade of the druidic pantheon since the bull was a symbol generally linked to kingship.

Medros is represented on the low-relief in question with a lance and a helmet, but it is by no means enough to make him a warrior god-or-demon, a war god-or-demon. And nothing proves the bull which appears behind him is “spoils of war “.

In any event, if it were a war god-or-demon , it would be then, of course, a war god-or-demon full with tricks, following the example of Odin, for example. Is it necessary to link importance to the fact that one and the other are one-eyed?

A second monument of the same kind, reproducing the same deity , almost line for line , but with a slightly different helmet, was discovered in Gunstett, on the northern edge of the forest, 8 km away from the other. This Medros is the member of a group of deities especially worshipped in an area which we may regard as having been the territory, after the invasion of Ariovistus, occupied by the tribe of Triboci.

Medros was even honored in Rome (privilege he shares with Epona). The religion which prevailed in the Celtic-Roman provinces therefore had the force to place at the service of the Empire certain moral values of its mythology, which was more living in reality than the monuments let it be believed.

CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT TRICKS IN GENERAL.

The imagination of the prisoners running for freedom is the typical representative of “slick" intelligence. It supposes creativity: to divert the sense of an object, to make light the vigilance by the unexpected one and to work precisely against intellectual routines and usual thought processes.

To speak about trick is tantamount to regenerate this practical intelligence which, most often, is neither written nor shown, but without which our societies could not survive, our powers be maintained and our engineers no construct. There are arts of knowledge, commenting or informing , and we produce for it intellectuals, as in the past our society produced monks. There are also arts of the making which imply the gesture and its extension the machine, and some arts of know-how which are learned by observing, by carrying out and by creating. And according to places, ways of promoting the one or the other one of these families of the human intelligence. But dichotomies remain with formidable oppositions between “ the practical one " and " the intellectual one ,” the knowledge " and the skill .” If the major fact of the evolution of mankind is the still bigger development of the brain and of its nervous connections ,it is necessary to never lose sight that the body and the nervous system form a whole and that it is completely arbitrary to separate them.

The demonstrations of practical intelligence accompany thus the slow becoming of Mankind. It is built during thousand years through the techniques of hunt, fishing, animal husbandry, farming, building of accommodation, means of transport. It is the product of progressive skills in handling and of handed down gesture dexterity then little by little reproduced by machines.

Animals, insects and mollusks practice camouflage. With the trick, we are in the presence of a mental category, playing in various classes. There is everything in the trick, but never this "craftiness" in the

178

sense of the today common opinion. Mind, skill and experience games. Game also of the compositions we will be able to make according to what we know and what we have, compared with what we see, even it is possible to foresee.

The trick is the practical intelligence of the woodcutter, of the carpenter, of the basket maker. It is the skill of the politician, of the doctor and of the strategist. For each one of those people, trick consists in tracking the favorable circumstance, even in creating it.

The trick is what saves effort, avoids brutality. It is the trick of the oppressed against domination, the trick of the citizen against the established power.

In every situation of conflict or of competition, victory can be obtained in two ways.

Either because you are the strongest in the field in question, or by the use of techniques intended to distort the trial and to make triumphing the one everybody thought he has no chance. For example, the baron of Jarnac in 1547.

The art of war indeed teaches how to take advantage of an irregularity in the landscape, of a weakness of the adversary. In the same way, daily life imposes every minute to take advantage of the event, to invest in some possible ones, in some virtual ones. Trick makes it possible, facing circumstances, to organize or to create one’s own freedom areas.

The Celts therefore personified under the name of Medros or Midir the form of special intelligence, which mixes tactics and subtlety. Difficult to define, it is, however, present everywhere: in the mind of the strategist, of the hunter or of the handyman...

179

COBANNUS / GOBANNUS.

Deity pertaining the craft third function, according to the tripartite ideology of Indo-Europeans defined by George Dumezil.

He is the master of craftsmen, makes weapons and chairs a feast of immortality [Ulida Gobannionos, Fled Goibnenn in Gaelic language] where the god-or-demons are regenerated by eating the magic pigs [of Belin/Belen/Manannan]. And acquire thus immortality or eternal youth, by consuming the mead which belongs to him. Gobannos is also associated with the manufacture of ale which heals or cures everything, and protects from diseases; served at the time of the immortality feast which gets together the god-or-demons periodically, and which is capable of reviving the dead.

Cobannus/Gobannus will play such a large role in the technical superiority of the Tuatha De or Tribe of the Goddess-or-demoness (it is him who manufactures, with the assistance of Credne and Luchta, the weapons of the god-or-demons, and even a silver prosthesis for their chief Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada); that at the time of the famous battle of the Plain of the stone pillars or barrows - the second one – he will be almost assassinated by a spy in the pay of the anguipedic wyverns called andernas on the Continent, and fomorians in Ireland, named Roudianos (Ruadan).

In Great Britain the blacksmith god seems to have been particularly honored in the north of the country where a whole series of pots decorated with blacksmith tools were discovered. They cover a wide area from Malton (Yorkshire) to Corbridge (Northumberland). The Roman town even produced to us at the latter a depiction of Cobannus himself. A bearded man wearing a belted tunic to belt and a conical cap, he stands over his anvil with a pair of tongs in one hand and a hammer in the other. According to John Leach, these objects found close to Hadrian’s wall would date back to the end of the 2nd century.Also let us notice there was formerly a fort and a Roman colony called Gobannium in Abergavenny in current Wales.

In Wales, Gobannos is called Gofannon. He is the son of the goddess-or-demoness Don and of the god-or-demon Beli. A brother of Amaethon, Arianrode, Gilvaethwy, Gwydyon and Nudd. Uncle of Lleu and of Dylan. His name means blacksmith there too, and it is the equivalent of the Irish god-or-demon Goibniu. Gofannon seems to be especially a specialist of plows in the Mabinogi of Kulhwch. He also appears in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi reporting the adventures of Math son of Mathonwy, at the time of the death of Dylan Eil Ton.

Riocalatis Ariocalatis is perhaps an attribute of Gobannos [or of the war god-or-demon?], known by an inscription discovered in the Cumberland in 1875 [RIB number 1017].

RIOCALAT ET TOVTAT MAR COCIDO VOTO FECIT VITALIS.

To Riocalatis and Toutatis, Cocidius Mars, Vitalis made this vow.

From Celtic *arios lord and * latis drink.

Braciaca is perhaps also another divine attribute of Cobannus. Known by an inscription found in the castle of Haddon Hall, in Derbyshire.

DEO MARTI BRACIACAE Q. SITTIUS CAECILIANUS…

To the god Mars Braciaca, Quintus Sittius Caecilianus…

Braciaca = of the many arms

The association with the god-or-demon Mars, by interpretatio romana, rises from the practices of time (intoxication of the combat, warrior fury, etc.): people drank much before going to the battle (sacred intoxication ?)

180

Possible consort: Arnomecta, Arnomecte, Arnomectae. Goddess-or-demoness or fairy, known by an inscription found in Brough-on-Noe in the Derbyshire.

In Ireland Cobannus is known as son of Esarg or of Tuirbe Tragmar, the “thrower of axes.” A brother of Ceno/Cian and of Samthainn. His residence is located in Druim na Teine.

He is often linked with Credne and Luchta the carpenter manufacturer of chariots. Or with Credne and Diancecht the healer.

Gobannos also survived in Irish folklore under the name of Gobhan Saor, a giant who builds bridges in one night.

A very interesting Irish text dealing the adventures of the 5 sons of Eochaid Mugmedon (Gaelic Echtra Mac nEchach Muigmedóin) says to us a little more about the symbolism of the blacksmith in the Irish society. It is him who will be responsible for designating the future king of the kings in Ireland by imposing a strange trial over the five boys. The five boys arrive to the blacksmith. He sets fire to the smithy in which the five sons were placed.

Brian saves the sledgehammers , Ailill, the chest in which were the weapons, Fiachna, a pail of beer and the bellows, Fergus, the withered wood, but Niall takes the anvil and its block.

Then Eochaid declares that Niall will be king.

The motif of the anvil containing the Sovereignty sword makes us go back to the former time and transports us in civilizations where blacksmith and kingship were very closely linked.

This episode is besides very much previous to the tale in which it appears; it is met indeed already, separately and as a kind of anecdote, in a text which dates back to the 8th century according to Rachel Bromwich.

Lastly, it is perhaps also Gobannus who appears under the name of Culann in the biography of the hesus Cuchulainn precisely. There would be here therefore a whole section of the original Panceltic myth concerning our eternally young lord of Muirthemne…..disappeared with all hand s undoubtedly under the influence of Christianization. See besides on this subject the way in which the copyist monks or the learned people altered the story of the Grail.

According to the manuscript in Saint Gall in Switzerland Irishmen still called him in the 8th century when they had been pricked by a thorn.

Ni artu ní nim ni domnu ní muir….. rogarg fiss goibnen aird goibnenn renaird goibnenn ceingeth ass.

Nothing is higher than heaven, nothing is deeper than the sea … Gobannus’ science is very sharp , let Gobannus’ goad go out before Gobannus’ goad!

The Armorican Breton counterpart of this Irish Gobannos in Saint Gall seems well to be saint Gobrien whose name is constructed on the same root (gob) that people go to pray while bringing nails and who cures furuncles.

On the Continent, among the dedications to Vulcan found in the Western provinces of the empire, the only group a little bit substantial and homogeneous is of Celtic origin; and the examination of the figured documents shows us the god-or-demon was honored there like anywhere else; especially in East and Northeast which, alone, struck coins in his effigy. Outside Italy and outside the provinces with a Celtic population indeed, trace of his worship was not found.

In Bern in Switzerland, it is an inscription in Greek letters.

DOBNOREDO GOBANO BRENODOR NANTAROR.

To Gobannus, the world traveler, dedicated by the people of Brennoduron in the Arura Valley (Nantaror).

Cobannus is also mentioned in an inscription found in the 1970s in Fontenay-pres-Vezelay, reading as follows: AVG (VSTO) SAC (RVM) [DE] O COBANNO; that is to say, "To Augustus and to the god Cobannus.”

And at the end of the 1980s apparently some bronze artifacts given in his honor with a cauldron dedicated to the Deus Cobannus were purchased by the museum of the Getty Center in California.

181

It is therefore certain that there was, in the mythology and the worship of the Celtic and Germanic populations, a deity similar at least comparable to the Volcanus of Latin people. Volcanus or Bolcanus belonged to the nicknames of the divine blacksmith in Old Celtic. Cf the Irish toponym Glen Bolcain, in the past Glanna Bolcani, which means “the pure (water) of Bolcanos “(the water he uses to quench his swords. Editor’s note).

So comparable deity that it was completely covered by the Roman god-or-demon, and that its name and its indigenous aspect have completely disappeared. It could only be similar to the Greco-Roman blacksmith, the only craft god-or-demon in Olympus, very strongly characterized by his technical equipment.

INTERPRETATIO CELTICA OF THE GRECO-ROMAN MYTH.

Nevertheless it seems that Vulcan reached in these countries the dignity of a very great god-or-demon, that he did not have with the same degree in Roman mythology. We see him, on a low-relief in Paris, a pole in his hand, majestically standing upright between Venus his wife and Mars his rival; but, instead of being made ridiculous as he was in Homer by the liaison of the two lovers, it is the victory won over them by his cleverness and his art which is glorified here.

This unique representation underlines the exceptional role of Vulcan in the Celtic countries of the Roman Empire.

Admittedly, it is to the Germanic ones that Caesar ascribes the worship of Vulcan (BG VI, 21). But he could not lead very far beyond the river neither his conquest nor his investigation and, these residents of the Rhine, it is supposed today that they were hardly different from the Celts: Celts themselves or influenced by Celtic civilization. Moreover, the Insubrian Celts sacrificed for a long time to a “Vulcan “. Florus, Epitome. Book second, IV: “They vowed the arms of the Romans to Vulcan; but their vows had a very different result; for Marcellus, having killed their king… “

The secrets of the forging, it is therefore a Celtic god or demon who held them on the Rhine like elsewhere.

It is remarkable that the Celtic name of iron, * isarno-, is related to an Indo-European name of the “divinity“ eisar: this gift of the god-or-demons is well, indeed, the treasure of this time we call the Iron Age. It has magic properties; so the blacksmith who holds it [Gobannus] has in addition to the fire prestige, the gift of the magic spells, the virtues of the healer.

It is therefore an archetypal figure, which in a lot of pre-Christian cultures practice magical-religious functions and who indeed continued to match "magical attitudes" and to "initiation techniques" remaining "in Western Europe till the end of the Middle Ages."

MEDIEVAL SURVIVAL.

Cobannus probably appears under the name of Trabuchet that is to say " bow-legged " in the story of the grail.

Loomis thinks this mysterious blacksmith has nothing to do in the story of the Grail. But, by taking into account the also symbolic value of the sword, and especially by attaching this one to the topic of the sovereignty, we can consider on the contrary the break of the weapon then its repairing by the blacksmith as a brilliant invention of Chretien of Troyes.

Chretien of Troyes says to us nevertheless little things regarding Trabuchet.

This blacksmith lives in a region difficult to reach, and in or near a lake named Cotouatre.

He made only three swords and he will not be able to make a fourth because he will not be late dying.

He is the only one who will be able to repair the weapon when it is broken (what will occur at the time when Perceval has entered a decisive battle, what makes a little think of the mysterious illness of the Ulaid – Ces Noinden Ulad -- which always happens not placed at the right rime).

Contrary to what Loomis thinks , the necessity to stage the blacksmith before Perceval finishes his search was apparently so urging that two different continuators ended up introducing him nevertheless into their stories. It is possible to doubt they do it for the only reason that they had inherited a capricious sword.

These continuators of Chretien, Manessier and Gerbert, will add only some details, however. Both stress the highly professional competence of the blacksmith. Nevertheless they make the sword which received Perceval repaired only when he arrives to Trabuchet more or less incidentally.

182

Gerbert adds nevertheless several details which show us Trabuchet in strange light. The smithy, a "manor,” is at the foot of a castle called Cotouatre, in a lake; a big fire burns there continuously.

The bridge which leads to this house is guarded by two dragons to prevent that the possessor of one of the three swords formerly made by Trabuchet enters to demand that this one repairs it: the blacksmith would not survive for a long time after that. While Perceval is busy to kill the two "serpents,” it is more than once a question of " two feet "; later, when he enters the smithy, his shield bearing the deep marks of two claws, the old Trabuchet asks him if he arrived by air!

The blacksmith, barely sketched in Chretien , gets here undoubtedly a lot of interesting features.

It appears therefore that Trabuchet has to be related as well with Perceval's origins, his roots and his "clan,” as with his future, his destiny; he is in the romance a figure more important than it seems. The hall in the castle of the Grail, in the center of which , in the quadrangular chimney, this huge "open" fire burns, makes us besides strangely think of a smithy. This importance of the blacksmith Trabuchet is also expressed in the structure of the episode in question; the two passages relating to the sword and to Trabuchet flank the central part: meals, comings and goings of the Procession, Perceval's silence, and these passages contain equivalent elements which link them up mutually. Firstly, of course, the blacksmith himself, who is mentioned in the text not long before and shortly after the test (cf. the momentary appearance of the '"one-legged man" just before the adventure of Gawain).

CONCLUSION.

Because of his name, and of the boat in the deep river, we have a tendency to link the fisher king only to water.

But it is well two elements which are recalled in this essential episode where the author puts his King of Water very close to the Fire, just like are combined both basic elements of the druidic metaphysic according to Strabo: “One day only fire and water will prevail “(Geography IV, 4).

The events which occur in the castle of the Fisher King relate therefore to a former magical-religious ritual being used to test the future sovereign and to award him his privileged rank. Some authors indeed saw in the procession of the grail a failed or in two parts initiation ceremony.

The procession indeed had as purpose to lead Perceval to ask some questions: "Why is the lance bleeding ? Of whom is the head put down on the Grail?"

But during his first visit in the mysterious castle, Perceval fails because he does not ask the expected saving questions

Then Perceval would have found the smith, but…. where "adventure" leads him at the end of five years of restless wanderings?

At a hermit uncle, who enlightens him about his family, who reveals the secret of the Grail (that is to say tells what should have once again been shown to launch, this time,the right reaction ) and who, after a religious teaching and a Purification ritual relating to Perceval's "sin,” teaches him many secret names of the Lord. In other words, the hermit hands down to Perceval an esoteric knowledge.

Universal initiatory scenario: Perceval, who armed himself with an ax (!), isolates himself from people living in "Cotouatre" to enter Another World through a perilous trespassing including a crossing of water. He kills chthonian monsters who inflict on him (inflict on his shield which replaces him) the initiatory mutilation, arrives to the perpetual fire which fascinated him for a long time and in that the old Trabuchet forges again finally his sword by making again the letter over it, and goes back to the community cheered by the jubilant crowd . As frightened by his very pagan boldness, our author will therefore make the old blacksmith die immediately.

It is possible to think that Perceval's story, crowned or not by a marriage, should have roughly ended so. In his second try, Perceval attains what the fisher had allocated him as an objective, to wit the complete perfection, but it is not the fisher king who informs him about that. And it is only after his meeting with the blacksmith that the ex-"fallen from the nest simple" will go back to the castle of the Grail as "the best of all" and that he will receive the sovereignty for which he had been born.

183

That we are in the presence of a tradition relating to the worship of the Mother-Goddess and of her son... is obvious. That in this sacred story the topic of the Revenge occupies a central place.... is equally obvious. Is it necessary to stay there ? Some facts lead to think that to the exoteric literal meaning of the myth was added an esoteric another one, in a word that we are in the presence of a kind of parable handed down by a priestly caste who knew the hidden meaning of it.

One of the central topics of the more complex text by Chretien is perhaps that the practice and the handing down of a sovereignty represented by the grail as a container carried by a woman. This symbolism refers to a society of matrilinear type in which the power, if it is practiced by men, is handed down by women, what would explain the preponderance, in our story, of Perceval's mother and maternal family. But, if it is thus and that, on the other hand, the ceremony which takes place in the castle of the grail has to be interpreted as a ritual of initiatory nature, it is rather strange the blacksmith does not take part in it, not only as an instructor and a relay runner of knowledge, but also as being himself directly concerned by the designation of the heir of the sovereignty belonging to his family, which is a royal family.

184

THE ARCHETYPE OF THE WAR LEADER: THE THREE-HEADED BRENUS, IVOCARUS, AND IVOCARBUS.

A mixture of several archetypes, the explorer the hero the magician etc....

Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba (Brennus, Ivocarus and Carbus) are known as sons of Tuireann (Tuirenn and Tuirill Biccreo) in the Irish apocryphal texts staying at our disposition, that is to say principally the Oidhe Chloinne Tuireann.

One of the most intriguing Irish legends is indeed the one who stages the tragic death of the children of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Gaelic Oidhe Chloinne Tuireann. To wit Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba known as Uar (that is to say "cold,” in the Colloquy f the two Sages).

Some passages of the Lebor Gabala Erenn nevertheless present us these Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba as sons of Delbaeth Mac Ogma.

All that is complicated enough and proves if it was needed there that the philosophical and thoughtful paganism of the original pan-Celtic myths , had ended up degenerating under the repeated attacks of the Christian under-culture of the epoch. The Irish bards dealt no longer this matter as timeless mythology but as genealogies similar to those of their sponsoring bosses.

What appears nevertheless from all this hodgepodge it is that Brian Iuchar and Iucharb (Brennus Ivocarus and Ivocarbus in old Celtic), are well active and high-ranking members of the druidic pantheon, even if it seems to have occurred there in Ireland and in comparison with Great Britain or with the Continent, a kind of (matriarchal?) palace revolution having dethroned Taran / Toran / Tuireann to the advantage of Noadatus / Nuada and of Lug.

The stem brenn, Latinized into brennus, means "war leader"; but the recurrence of this name in our historical material indeed encourages thinking that it was more a title than a proper noun.

A modern archetype of war leader was represented for a long time for example by the German Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) and his famous Afrikakorps.

The legend of the bright and honest soldier Erwin Rommel indeed predominated during at least thirty years. It was convenient for everybody. The Englishmen hid behind the brilliant « desert fox» their boorish military mediocrity. The Germans, and notably Speidel who exercised high responsibilities in NATO, restored their image with a Rommel gifted but not Nazi, even plotter of July 20, 1944.

It will have been necessary to wait for David Irving, in the seventies, so that the truth begins to become clear about him. Erwin Rommel: an audacious man, a leader, to whom no mass murder is reproached , but nevertheless fascinated by Hitler and in no way brilliant strategist.

Because we should especially not mix up strategy and tactics. Strategy, it is the planning of the main lines, the tactic this is the operations on the ground intended to gather in the results expected from the aforementioned strategy.

These two notions are nevertheless it is true, inseparable: no efficient tactics without the previous development of a consistent strategy, and, on the other hand, a consistent strategy cannot work without the implementation of an efficient tactic.

To Erwin Rommel therefore it will be preferred the reality, the plausible reality, paradoxically, of the king Arthur.

The sources which mention him are rare, but let appear the following elements:

- he would have been provided with the title of dux bellorum or Imperator (commander - in - chief),

- he would have won about 12 battles,

- He would have fought with horsemen, against barbaric force including a majority of infantrymen.

185

The legend will idealize later this medieval chivalry with his "knights of the Round Table.”

Historical context.

Facing generalized invasions over all the Roman empire, Emperor Honorius decides from the beginning of the 5th century to leave the Great Britain which is too difficult to protect: the "Roman-British" are therefore invited to defend themselves alone.

A certain resistance of the "Roman-British " population is therefore organized progressively: it suffers, of course, at the beginning of a lack of union, and it is in this context therefore that war leaders will appear.

These last ones often come from the former Roman aristocracy, and are as a result large landowners, original base of the future feudal class.

Among these leaders, a certain Artus or Artorius really existed during the second half of the 5th century and the beginning of the 6th. He would have managed to unify the Roman-British provisionally in their struggle against the barbarian Irish , Picts and Saxons.

WHAT GAELIC HERESY SAYS TO US (the story called "The tragic destiny of the children of Tuireann").

To resist the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomoire in Ireland, Ceno/Cian, the father of the god-or-demon Lug, searches reinforcements. Unfortunately, on his way, he crosses the three sons of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, his sworn enemies. He is changed into a wild boar, but Brennus/Brian sees him and warns his brothers, Iuchar and Iucharba. Then, using his own science, he changes his brothers into hounds and pursues Ceno/Cian he transpierces with a javelin. He kills him by pelting him with stones. For this murder Lug will require three apples, a magic pigskin belonging to a Greek king, a poisoned lance pertaining to a Persian king, two horses harnessed to a chariot, the pigs of the king of the Golden Pillars, Assal, a dog, a spit belonging to the nymphs of an undersea kingdom under; and lastly three cries to be let out on the top of a hill belonging to King Miodhchaoin. The three brothers are lucky and manage to overcome six of the eight ordeals. Lug then casts a spell to them and they forget their last two missions.

They go back home , but must set out again from it at once in order to bring back the spit which is at the bottom of the sea and to let out the three cries at the top of the hill. They will be mortally wounded by Miodhchaoin or his sons; and Lug, in spite of the pleas from Taran/Toran/Tuireann, will let them die.

The Gaelic account does not hide to us therefore the hostility which opposes the children of Taran/Toran/Tuireann; Brenus, Ivocarus and Ivocarbus (Brian Iuchar and Iucharba); close relations of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt however, according to the Irish Book of Conquests of it; to the children of Cainte, i.e., Cu (the dog), Ceno (the distant) and Ceitheann/Catuenos. We do not know very well what Ceitheann/Catuenos means in Gaelic (the fighter?) ; but it is more embarrassing that our text does not indicate the reason, because there is one of them, of course, of the open competition which opposes these two family branches thus.

In addition, Lug is resulting from that which is by far, most obscure. Of all that it is advisable to retain above all, the seniority of a legend the base of which is an internal conflict, a serious quarrel of sovereignty between two collateral branches of the family (in the Irish legal meaning) of the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia). In other words, an open conflict between Taran/Toran/Tuireann and Lug. In Ireland, the worship of Lug therefore ousted that of Taran/Torann/Tuireann and his children.

As the great French historian C.-J. Guyonvarc'h wrote it in connection with the tragic end of Brenus in the Irish legend, and, in conclusion, of this myth, “it was well necessary, sometimes, to precisely put an end to the [vicious. Editor’s note.] cycle of revenges, and to thus preserve a relative coherence or an essential to the existence of a State, stability. “

Justice, as truth, is a social and not only moral need. If there is, in this myth, an obvious share of, let us say, “lugiferian“ responsibility, it is largely reduced by the divine fatality and the true net of geasa which encloses any individual life. Lug himself does not escape it.

We should not be made indignant about the hardness Lug shows here: we by no means have to deal with human beings, but with emanations of the divine power, which embody supernatural principles.

The fundamental idea contained in this myth, it is that the search of the initiation is a redemption, that it leads, of course, to death, but that this death is a victory. It is for example in death and by becoming a hero that the traitor or the criminal redeems himself.

186

!----------------- ---------------------------- ----------------------------- !

If Bran in Wales is a formidable hero, following the example of Cúchulainn, some legends make him a god-or-demon of the Next World, at the same time soothsayer, musician and warrior. His nickname is obviously a Christian, late attribute. In Welsh Celtic mythology, Bran the Blessed (or Bran Vendigeit) appears in the Mabinogi of Branwen, of whom he is the brother, with Manawyddan Fab Llyr. As his name indicates it, he is the son of Lero/Lir. What is not made to simplify the things, because the data hardly agree with those of the medieval Irish tradition, which incorporates sometimes later historical elements.

He is a giant who can enter no house, because of his size, nor to board any ship. His name means “raven “ animal linked with death. He is the sovereign of one of the kingdoms in Wales, and lives Harddlech i.e., the “fair place “(today Harllech in Merionethshire). Matholwch, king of Iwerddon (Ireland), comes to ask for the hand of his sister and, at the same time, to conclude a peace treaty. Evnissyen, his half-brother, furious not to have been consulted, cut lips, ears and tail of the Irish horses. In order to compensate his guests, Bran the Blessed provides to the victims some new mounts, as well as a magic cauldron. Three years after the wedding, informed by a message brought by a starling, about the ill-treatment Branwen undergoes from her husband, he organizes a military expedition against the Irish king, who ends up in a massacre. The Welsh win the war, but only seven men survive the battle. Bran himself dies from a wound to his foot. He orders that his head is detached from the rest of his body, and is buried on the white hill in London, in order to protect the country. During the 87 years which follow, the seven survivors will continue to dialog with the head which is still able to speak to them. King Arthur would have made it withdrawn from the site, while proclaiming that Great Britain was to be protected by the value of her men rather than by supernatural means.

By going back still farther in time, it takes place there to notice that the text by Pausanias recounting to us the beginning of the raid of the alleged historical Brennus on Delphi, is rather surprising. This in principle historical Brennus is as gifted with ubiquity (a war god-or-demon ??).

“ It was then that Brennus, both in public meetings and also in personal talks with individual Gallic officers, strongly urged a campaign against Hellada” (Description of Greece. Book 10. Phocis. XIX, Section 8).

As for Livy too, apparently, he links the first Brennus with the tactic, in short with the military science. “ So, not only Fortune, but tactics also, were on the side of the barbarians “ He notices about him (the History of Rome since the city’s founding. Ab Vrbe Condita. Book V. XXXVIII).

Brenos would be thus, not a war god-or-demon , but a god-or-demon personifying the skill and style to lead a raid. In a way a source of inspiration source for war leaders or generals, and not for the privates. What matches rather well the role and the action of the character of Brian in the Irish legend.

As the existence even of the name of Taranucnus, which means born from Taran-, proves it, Taran/Toran/Tuireann could very well have children. Ivocarus > Iuchar and Ivocarbus > Iucharba are obviously some duplicates the one of the other. Either Iuchar is a form shortened by apocope of Iucharba, if this splitting in two was done in Ireland; or it is Ivocarbus which is derived from Ivocarus (yew friend) if the dividing in two dates back to the berla fene i.e.to the Ol Celtic, by insertion of the ending obus > * Ivocarobus > Ivocarus. Like in the case of Rudios “the red one “ which produced Rudiobus “ the glowing “ on the Continent.

What would leave us only Brennus > Brian and one of his brothers.But there was perhaps in reality triplication of Brenus, Ivocarbus having hardly more personality than Ivocarus and vice versa.

The continuation of the account shows us that Brenus is at the same time the leader and the brains of the trio, his two brothers being supporting characters without autonomy in action. A kind of three headed man, therefore, in reality. There are [on the Continent] thirty images of a god-or-demon equipped with three faces. Sometimes the three heads are one beside the other , sometimes they are

187

so quite merged that, although the three noses are seen; both eyes of the central face also belong to both other faces (cf the altar in Rheims).

A certain number of these three headed statues incontestably refer to Lug (Mercury), but it is not the case of all, example those of Rheims and Malmaison, since in this case MERCURY (therefore Lug) APPEARS THERE ALONGSIDE. The three headed man therefore in this case, it is quite simply Brenus.

N.B. On a more general and more philosophical level, the three headed man also represents for the druids the components of the being (body/soul/mind) the three dimensions (height, length, width) past, present and future, as well as the three different states of the same being (sleep, dream and wakefulness). This three headed man therefore also represents in fact the main manifestations of divine power. They are consequently made hypostasis,equipped with a shared affinity, primordial forces. We find again there, exactly, the Slavic notion of Triglav i.e., of “three-horned “.

The notion of three headed man is summarized consequently in the formula: three equal and distinct persons in one nature.

On the military level it is the personification of a man who always makes good decisions at once, and who can be everywhere at the same time, who reacts straight off and exactly like it is suitable.

The word brennos, Latinized in brennus, means “war leader” we have said. Brennos or Brennus is the name that Greek historiography and Latin historiography retained respectively to designate chiefs of the Celts of the period of “Celtic migrations “. We are unaware in fact of their proper noun. All that we may say about it, it is that, in both cases, it was to be worshippers or believers of the god-or-demon of the war management. Necessarily!

The first of these brenn led his warriors in Italy and became famous by holding to ransom Rome, in 390 before our era. ; It is at the time of this event that the aforementioned “Brennus “would have been the author of the sentence “Woe betide the loser! “(Uai uictebo, in Latin Vae victis), become famous thereafter.

There was to be in the family of Livy , who was of Celtic origin, tales and legends referring to the invasion into the north of Italy; and in particular to the decisive played by the god or demon “Brian” (sorry for the anachronism!) in the motivation of the troops having overcome Rome. Livy therefore took over all these family traditions and made the opposite of what we call generally euhemerism, by presenting them as History. (We call historicization the euhemerism in the wrong way.) And Pausanias also, so much what he reports is not very credible!

188

THE GOD OF LOVE AND YOUTH MABON/MAPONOS/OENGUS.

Oengus (or Aengus in the most recent written forms) what means “one choice “ in Ireland. The other name of Mabon in this country is Mac Oc or Mac Ind Oc, which can result in “young son “or “son of the young man “or “of the youth “. Mabon simply in Wales.

God of youth and of everything what goes with it (health, love, pleasures of its age). In other words, youth and its pleasures. The solar nature of the character is also well highlighted by the fact that, in the romance of Diarmat and Grannia, where he is presented to us as being the foster father of Diarmat, protecting the two lovers (he saves Grannia by covering her with his invisibility coat ); he appears in strange clothing with a broad gold striped coat.

In Scottish mythology, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus is the consort of Brigit (Bride) and is found for this reason many times in conflict with the Old woman of Beara (Cailleach Bheur). Mabon/Maponos/Oengus is also one of the patron saints of martial arts, with the Scottish woman Scothache and some other deities of this type.

In the organization chart of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia) in Ireland, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus is a god-or-demon who takes part in the three (priestly, warlike and craft) functions. In the preliminary episode of the second battle of the Plain of the pillar stones or mounds, it is him who will also suggest to his father, the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, how to get rid of the odious Cridenbel, and what reward to require from King Bregsos/Bres. After the second battle in the Plain of the stone pillars, it is him who, with the assistance of the Morrigani, will expel from the country the last five anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomore in Ireland. He was as a moment foreseen becoming king of the god-or-demons after the defeat the human beings will inflict to them (battle for the possession of the Talantio/Tailtiu and battle of Druim Lighean).

According to Irish material and according to Irish bards (Oh these bards!)

Parents: The Suqellus / Dagda / Gurgunt and the river nymph called Bovinda (cf. Sequana on the Continent).

The Suqellus / Dagda / Gurgunt therefore has a loving adventure with Bovinda, wife of the water God (Nechtan in Ireland, Lero on the Continent). To hide their error the Suqellus / Dagda / Gurgunt , stronger than Joshua during the battle of Gabaon (10,12) , stops the course of the sun during 9 months; the time necessary for this love child is born before the return of the wretched husband; whose name varies according to versions (Elcmar?? Ogmius?? Nechtan??).

Mabon / Maponos / Oengus is therefore conceived gestated and delivered the same day. According to the custom of the epoch (fosterage), he will be brought up by Medros / Midir, a brother of his father, lord of the sidh of Leita Briga (Bri Leith).

Become an adult Mabon will take revenge on this abandonment at his birth by forcing the Suqellus/Dagda/Gurgunt to recognize him and to give him his estate called the Brug Na Boinne; following a trick remained famous and which was kept to us by an apocryphal story called «The Taking of the Sidh» (De Gabail in t-Sida).

Mabon / Maponos / Oengus having left to meet the Suqellus/Dagda/ Gurgunt an evening of Samon, he comes, makes himself recognized by him as his son, and claims to him a fief. The Suqellus/Dagda/ Gurgunt having nothing more to give him, Mabon / Maponos / Oengus will ask him therefore he could have at his disposal the palace of the Boinne River at least one night and one day. The Suqellus / Dagda / Gurgunt accepted. But since for lack of the article, this sentence was equivocal and could

189

mean so "day and night ,” that is to say "all the time " Mabon / Maponos / Oengus could therefore have till kingdom come his famous Brug na Boinne.

In another version of this anecdote appearing in the Wooing of Etanna / Etain, Mabon / Maponos / Oengus uses the same trick to lure Ogmius / Elcmar out of the Brug na Boinne with the complicity of the Suqellus / Dagda / Gurgunt.

According to the stories narrating us the death of the Tuatha De Danann, Mabon / Maponos / Oengus would have killed his foster-father Ogmius / Elcmar to avenge the murder of Medros / Midir.

Mabon / Maponos would also have killed the official poet of Lug because of the lies, according to him, on his brother Cermat. The poet indeed said that Cermat had had a liaison apparently with one of the wives ???? of Lug.

The solar nature of this youth god-or-demon is also proven by the variant of his name in Chretien de Troyes: Mabonagrain. Grain comes from the Celtic grannos (= radiant sun), but it also appears very clearly in the story of the wooig of Etanna/Etain.

The foster father of Mabon/Maponos/Oengus, Medros/Midir, having lost an eye because of him, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus will compensate him by searching for him the beautiful Etanna, with whom he will also fall in love, of course.

But in order to have her, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus is forced there to make clear twelve plains in the forest, so that people can build houses there, to gather cattle, and to organize festivals there. This allusion to the sun of which the course through the twelve signs of the sonnocingos [of the zodiac] gets from the divine omnipotence (the fate or Tocade) the fruitfulness of the ground; show well once again that the day star is undoubtedly linked , in one way or another, with the character of Mabon/Maponos/Oengus. Then, after many adventures, the unhappy Etanna/Etain , changed into a butterfly, having fallen in one of the folds of his coat, he will carry her in his residence of the Brug Na Boinne in order to protect her; “in its crystal room “1) which he fills for her with good green grasses and flowers to give back some strength to her. He used to sleep in this sun room each night near her, and he thus comforted her until her joy and her colors come back to her. Platonic love, of course, since Etanna/Etain is, at this moment, in the shape of a butterfly ? Etanna/Etain will remain in this solar chamber with Mabon/Maponos/Oengus until Vocusmnaca/Fuamnach, having heard about the love and the regard in which she was held in his house; returns to persecute her again and to drive her out (ultimately, she will end up falling on earth).

Interesting parallelism of the situations with this famous passage of the Folie Tristan. I will take along Iseult up there “between the clouds and heaven, into a fair chamber glazed. The beams of the sun shine through it, yet the winds do not trouble it at all. There would I bear the Queen into that crystal chamber of mine all compact of roses and the morning.”

In the story of the house of the two milk pails, a woman of the sidh, foster daughter of Mabon, gets lost and finishes together with St. Patrick. The poor unfortunate becomes a convert to Christianity, and Mabon / Maponos / Oengus does not succeed in recovering her. He leaves her therefore to her destiny and she dies from grief some weeks later (let this therefore is used as a lesson for those of ours who through intellectual conformity would be attracted by Christianity).

The apocryphal Gaelic story entitled the dream of Oinogustios (Irish Aislinge Oenguso) reports us his great and touching love story with Cadra Eburomatia (Caer Ibormaith).

One night, in a dream, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus falls in love with the beautiful Cadra Eburomatia/Caer Ibormaith, that her father, Ethal, refuses to give him in marriage, on the pretext that Cadra Eburomatia / Caer Ibormaith is more powerful than him and that this one will have to win her without any help.

Oengus forces him to say to him where she hides; and on the feast day of Samon (November 1st) he discovers her swimming on the lake of the Dragon’smouth (today the Lake Muskry in the mountains of Galtee); in the shape of a swan, in the middle of a hundred and fifty others, because she had been condemned to thus live part of her life.

Mabon/Maponos/Oengus also changes himself into a swan in turn, recognizes her in the middle of the 150 other similar ones to her, takes her hand , and Cadra Eburomatia/Caer Ibormaith will follow him to his palace of Brugh Na Boinne.

190

Let us notice here in the defense of this wretched Irish bards that it is one of the nicest love stories of the universal literature there. Only for it therefore they will be excused.

Mabon/Maponos/Oengus and Cadra Eburomatia/Caer Ibormaith will adopt thereafter Diarmat Ua Duibhne, him also a kind of god-or-demon of the love. The girls or the women who saw her beauty spot fell instantaneously in love from there. Mabon/Maponos/Oengus will also have a girl called Curcog.

In short, it is a god-or-demon of youth, health, linked with the growth of the days after the winter solstice. From where his comparison, wrongly nevertheless, with the god-or-demon Apollo, by the Romans. It is a poet and an accomplished musician. Also god-or-demon of the beauty or of the perfection of the forms. Considering his role in the famous Irish novel of the pursuit (by Finn) of Diarmat and Grannia, it is incontestably a protective god-or-demon of in love persons. His kisses are supposed being unforgettable, because they are changed at once into marvelous birds. He is himself constantly accompanied besides by three or four splendid birds fluttering around his head.

As we have had already the opportunity to say it, in several places of the Continent, a deity, sometimes looking a man, sometimes looking a woman, is represented with two birds; the sites are Mont Auxois, Nevers, Alesia,as Compiegne in France, and Luxembourg. On the monuments in Nevers, this character is combined with the mallet god-or-demon. Like in Compiegne, Alesia, and Beaune, the birds appear above the shoulder of the deity, towards whom they turn the nozzle.

On the statue of Compiegne, there are, in addition to the two birds which approach their nozzle towards the ear of the god-or-demon, two others which are on a par with his chest. On the statue of Alesia, there is a male character between two birds; at his feet a dog is sitting. The same image is also reproduced on capitals: in Martigny (Switzerland) the character is male, as regards Avenches (Switzerland still) he looks rather female.

It is often difficult to say what bird they wanted to represent. The sculptures are generally too coarse for that. The features of the deity are equally vague; it is in general a god-or-demon, but who is either old or young . In 1932, at Alise-Sainte-Reine the place called “La Fandrolle “ presented a more complete image: the god-or-demon, standing, is leant against oak branches enriched with many acorns; his bearded head has a bushel on his head.

If it is not there a figuration of Pipius, the egregore of birds, it is a representation of our Mabon/Maponos/Oengus.

Mabon / Maponos / Oengus will be himself therefore the foster father and the protector of Diarmat and Grannia. He will get them out of trouble twice during their pursuit by Fenians.

He had a sword called Moralltach, the Great Fury, that Belin / Belen / Manannan had given him. This sword he gave it in turn to his foster-son Diarmat. He also had a sword called Beagalltach or little fury, as well as two formidable spears: the Gae Buide as well as the Gae Derg, which he will also donate to Diarmat. When the young man will die, Mabon / Maponos / Oengus will bring back his body to the Brug na Boinne to give him again life each time he would like to converse with him. Other legends show him to us capable of curing mutilated bodies in order to bring them back to life. A kind of doctor Frankenstein in a way, but in much more elegant therefore.

Mabon/Maponos/Oengus is therefore a god-or-demon of youth. But of which youth? It is undoubtedly to better admit that he was precisely a god-or-demon of young people aged enough to make the war. The most plausible assumption is indeed that of a god-or-demon protecting the male teenagers, and if it could be compared with the classical god-or-demon Apollon by interpretatio romana, it is because of his role of youth guard (Iovantucaros). And there is nothing surprising in it that a god-or-demon of youth also gives health.

Two inscriptions mention him under the name Maponus, a name derived from the Celtic mapos/maqos “son “ as we saw it.

AE 1975,00568: Chesterholm (Vindolanda). Deo Mapono (for the god Maponus).

CIL 13,05924: Bourbonne-les-Bains (France). Maponus/histrior ocaba/tus decessit ann (orum) XXX.

191

Four inscriptions compare him to the god-or-demon Apollo by interpretatio Romana.

RIB 1120 (Corbridge): Apollini Mapono, Q Terentius Q F (for Apollo Maponus, Quintus Terentius Firmus, son of Quintus).

RIB 1121 (Corbridge): Deo Mapono Apolloni P AE […] lus/Leg VI (to the god Maponus Apollo, Publius Ae [lius Lucul] lus, a centurion of the sixth legion).

RIB 1122 (Corbridge): [Deo]/[M] apo [no] /Apo [llini] (to the god Maponos Apollo).

RIB 583 (Ribchester): Deo san (cto)/[A] pollini Mapono/[pr] o salute d (omini) n (ostri)… to the saint god Apollo Maponos for the health of our lord.

A very strange inscription found at Nettleton Shrub, in Wiltshire.

DEO APOLLINI CVNOMAGLO COROTICA IVTI [F]. To the god Apollo Cunomaglus Cunomaglus, Corotica son of Iutus.

Cunomaglus comes from cuno hound and magalo great.

It is either a hound or a dog guard of the other world (or both at the same time of course).

The equating by interpretatio romana of Mabon/Maponos/Oengus with the god Apollo makes nevertheless problems.

As a god-or-demon of the young men, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus is also combined with hunting. Hunting was formerly a very important activity. It was one of the means of feeding the tribe. It was also a means of going from childhood to adulthood. It was finally a means for the warriors of training themselves in peace times. The association of this activity to the god-or-demons or to the sacredness is confirmed to us besides by the famous word of Arrian: “This Celtic law I follow with my fellows, because I declare no human undertaking to have a prosperous issue without the interposition of the gods (Hunting chapter XXXV) “.

His complete Welsh name is Mabon Ap Modron, which simply means “the son of the mother “. The dedication to Maponus found in Bourbonne-les-Bains in France, not far from the spring of the Marne River, also seems to combine this deity with the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Matrona, and the one explains perhaps the other (the mythological topic of the fire in water).

Some authors think that it was perhaps in the beginning a deity especially honored by the Celtic tribe of the Parisi who precisely lived… in Paris! A part of these Parisi would therefore have emigrated in Great Britain in Yorkshire.

Corbridge, where three dedications to Maponos were found, is in the Northumberland, and Chesterholm as Ribchester, in the Lancaster shire. Two zones close to the settling area of these Parisi in Great Britain. Let us add that the town of Locus Maponi, mentioned in the Ravenna Cosmography, is undoubtedly the current Lochmaben (Dumfries and Galloway), not far from the Cumberland. The worship of Maponos therefore seems to be especially centered on the North of England and the South of Scotland, area which became at the beginning of the Middle Ages the kingdom of Rheged. What perhaps explains the relations being able to exist between Mabon and Owain ap Urien. There exist indeed several legends evoking Urien and his son Owain, and also mentioning Mabon and Modron. In one of the manuscripts of the Peniarth’s collection (number 147), it is for example specified that the children of Urien had as a mother Modron, daughter of the king of Annwfn. This legend is perhaps the echo of an antique hierogamy or of a disappeared ritual of fruitfulness. In one of the poems ascribed to Taliesin, Owain seems comparable with Mabon. That all these details appear in legends of the area where the worship of Maponos was formerly established, cannot be a simple chance. There is therefore a link between Maponos and Mabon. The question is to know up to what point the myths relating to Maponos match those which are relating to Mabon. The common point seems to be the cosmological topic of the fire in water. Mabon would have been born from the union of Taran/Toran/Tuireann called Meldos (Mellt in Welsh language) and of Matrona (the mother river). In Ireland, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus for example is associated with the river called Boyne.

In the Welsh legends, Mabon is kidnapped from his mother when he was three days old and kept in Caer Lowy, Gloucester, which also means “light city “. And he could be localized only by questioning the oldest animal of creation. He is also known as being a great hunter. The name of Mabon appears in several other Welsh legends: “Culhwch and Olwen “ “Pa Gur “ and the “Englynion y Beddau “.

Mabon/Maponos/Oengus is an avatar of Taran/Toran/Tuireann since his father is the flash: Mellt (Taran can indeed have sons according to the various mentions of the word Taranucnus in epigraphy). As announced higher, it is a young hero kidnapped from his mother when he was three days old and kept since, in prison. He is the one being able to hunt with the hound called Drutwyn dog, without which nobody is able to take the pig called Trwyth pig. In order to be able to undertake this hunting, the king of Great Britain Arthur personally will free Mabon/Maponos/Oengus. Perhaps this release of

192

the young god-or-demon symbolizes that of the sun prisoner of the night, and without which life cannot continue.

On the Continent, we also find his name on a magic defixio tablet unearthed in Chamalières (France) in 1971, in the locality “ Rock Springs “. The text into Latin cursive script is readable and complete.

Andedion uediíumi diíiuion risunartiu mapon (on) aruerriíatin

I invoke Maponos arueriiatis through the magic force of the underworld gods.

lopites sníeððdic sos brixtía anderon

Harass ? The following persons….? Through the magic of the hellish (gods)

c lucion floron nigrinon adgarion aemilíon paterin claudíon legitumon caelion pelign claudío pelign marcion uictorin asiatícon aððedillí

Caius Lucius Florus Nigrinus accuser (adgarion), Aemilius Paterinus, Claudius Legitimus, Caelius Pelignus, Claudius Pelignus, Marcius, Victorinus, Asiaticus son of aððedillos

etic secoui toncnaman toncsiíontío

and all those who would swear this false oath

meíon toncsesit buetid ollon reguccambion

As for the one who swore this false oath, let his bones are completely twisted ???

exsops pissíiumítsoccantí rissuis onson bissíet

though blind I will see???? thanks to you he will be given up to us ?

luge dessummiis luge/dessumíis luge dessumíís

luxe.

Come to my right, come to my right, come to my right

Come?????????????????????????????????????????

What people therefore request from Mabon/Maponos/Oengus, in this case, and if we understand well, it is, within the framework of a legal procedure, to punish and to curse the culprits of a false oath.

MEDIEVAL SURVIVAL.

Mabon/Maponos/Oengus appears in the Arthurian literature (the Erec of Chretien de Troyes) in the form Mabonagrain. A knight or squire of King Lac. Nephew of King Evrain, who dubs him. A lover of the cousin of Enide. he is known to be a prisoner of a magic orchard, because he gave his word not to leave this place before being overcome here by a knight. Overcome by Erec, he will therefore be released, to the greatest delight of the Court of the King. In the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, he is called Mabuz and known as “son of the lady of the lake’s son “. He is sometimes mixed up with Pryderi.

1. Allusion perhaps to the funerary chamber of this megalithic monument (Newgrange) located in the County of Meath, in the north of Dublin. It is a mound 85 meters in diameter inside which the funerary chamber is reached by a long chambered passage. It was built around 3200 before our era, that is to say nearly six hundred years before the great pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and nearly thousand years before Stonehenge in England. The site was restored between 1962 and 1975. It consists of a large circular mound in the center of which a funerary chamber which is entered through a very long chambered corridor. The external wall of the mound is flanked with monumental stones on which it is possible to observe spiral drawings and some triskelions. Each year, the day of the winter solstice (on December 21st), at 9:17 in the morning, the sun penetrates directly in the central chamber during about 15 minutes. The precision in the orientation of the building is therefore spectacular. The purpose of the construction seems to have been “to preserve “ ancestors, or important characters whose bodies were laid down in the central funerary chamber, so that they take part and that the days start again to grow. Let us remind nevertheless the megalithic monuments were not built by the Celtic people. It is simply a recovery by the druids or the bards of a monument and a concept having been current in the former populations: the idea that a dead placed in this funerary chamber could revive, at least at the time of the winter solstice.

193

THE THREE PILLARS OF THE DRUIDIC PANTHEON.

194

THE GOD OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE OGMIUS.

The Celts were born speakers. They had therefore a god of rhetoric and of art to speak well (argute loqui) on the Continent, a god of writing in Ireland.

In the Irish druidic mythology, the god-or-demon Ogmius is designated by the spelling variants: Ogma/Ogme. An h is sometimes coupled with the g of his name, showing thus that it is almost inaudible in Irish.

Julius Caesar compares him with Mars, but Lucian of Samosata (2nd century) compares him to Heracles.

Here what Henry Lizeray had in his time (1903), thought about Ogmius. “He was one of the main characters of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), who took possession of Ireland about year 1796 before Jesus Christ, according to Irish annals. In addition to the military chiefs, there were masters of arts and trades, as carpenters, smiths and manufacturers of weapons, and doctors. Ogma was their poet. These people practiced magic especially. Their name of Tuatha Dé Danann means “people of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia) “. It was a tribe of the Nemetian people , who occupied Ireland on several occasions. The word “Nemetian“ (from nem, sky) means “heavenly “(Henry Lizeray. Ogmius and Orpheus).

Celtic theology having progressed much since 1900, the basic intuition of Henry Lizeray was confirmed, of course, but all the rest was contradicted or almost, by the later discoveries.

And, first of all, the name of this god-or-demon is Ogmius and not Ogma (we find it intact in the account of Lucian of Samosata). Ogma is only a late Gaelic form.

The name of seems well Celtic, being mentioned on two curse tablets (defixio) found in Bregenz; it belongs, Lucian says, to the language of the country; the name of the Irish god-or-demon Ogma betrays a non-Gaelic phonetics and has to be explained by a borrowing .

The localization in Ireland is only a late euhemerization of the primitive myth; which was relating, of course, to another (real or imaginary, it does not matter!) country, in the beginning. And the year 1796 before our era is, of course, a rather arbitrary date, the specialists currently tend to date back much earlier, this event.

Moreover, poetry was not really the only specialty of Ogmius. The fact that a mental activity generally was ascribed to him, nevertheless is confirmed by the fact that he is supposed to be a descendant from Elada; this name indeed means “poetic art “or “science “. He is called, moreover, grian-ainech, “ sun faced “ in Gaelic language; may we compare that to the laughing face of Ogmius on the picture depicted by Lucian of Samosata?? But at the time of the second battle of the Plain of the stone pillars or burial mounds , the god-or-demon Ogma also looks like Trenfer, i.e., a strong man. He manages to seize Orna, the sword of the king of the Andernas or Fomore named Tethra. The Irishmen, in a somewhat heretic way, forgot the eloquence of Ogmius and made Ogme especially a Hercules in the bodily meaning of the word.

According to the text of Lucian of Samosata, Ogmius is the Celtic god-or-demon of eloquence and rhetoric, and not that of the brute strength. This is why he was represented as a Hercules, but as an old or becoming old Hercules, with gold chains from his mouth to the ears of the human beings who follow him; symbol of the subtle link joining, by the sacred word, sky and earth, the divine world and the human world.

In the Irish bardic mythology, the god or demon Ogmius is also perhaps designated by the nickname Labraid < labratios (cf labaron or Latin labarum) what means “the speaker “. He has a stammer, but that is normal for a god-or-demon of the eloquence! As a patron saint of poetry and eloquence, he is also often called in Gaelic language Milbel (what means “honey mouth “).

The best known Labraid is that who is called Loingsech in Gaelic language (the exiled, the ultramarine one). It is a priori a historical character, king of the kings in Ireland, ancestor of the

195

Laginians in Leinster. Perhaps an adventurer come to settle thereby leading a powerful troop of warriors come from the Continent, and more precisely from Armorica according to T.F. O'Rahilly.

Láithe gaile Galián

gabsit inna lamaib laigne

Lagin of sin

slóg Galain glonnach.

Nothing of all that would relate to our subject (the druidic pantheon) if some Irish documents did not present to us this “historical” Labraid as a god ruling over men and gods.

Ór ós gréin glemair

gabais for doine domnaib sceo déib

dia oín ace Moín

macc Áine oen-ríg.

Labraid being an adjective meaning something like eloquent or talkative, that must be therefore an epithet designating a better known god under another name and there is here recycling in the biography of the historical Labraid of details drawn by the bards from the mythology or the worship of this divine figure. Some lays dealing with this character for example resemble extremely the kinds of prayers you could send to such a deity at the same time god of eloquence and war, like Ogmius on the continent.

He is sometimes (perhaps) also called Elcmar < Elcomaros (the bad one, the jealous one), in the Etain cycle, what refers us to wolf symbolism (Volcomarus). Some people think that we may also ascribe to him the epithet of Celtchar “the crafty one “.

Labraid, Cermat Milbel, Elcmar and Celtchar, would be therefore as many aspects or avatars of Ogmius.

Ogmios also appears in the Irish legend which deals with the cattle raid of Cooley ( the famous Tain Bo Cualnge). At least according to MacCulloch, because, according to him, among the Ulster forces, there is a strong man with seven chains on his neck, and seven men dragged along at the end of each, so that their noses strike the ground, whereupon they reproach him” (Celtic Mythology by John Arnott MacCulloch, mythology of all aces volume III introduction page 11).

All that encourages seeing in this enigmatic Ogmius a god-or-demon of the Hercules-Mars type. It is known that in India, Indra was accompanied by the crowd of his Maruts. But we may also compare this heavenly company with the troop of Einherjar the Scandinavian mythology allocates to Odin. The image of a general and of his troops therefore seems well to be appropriate for a god-or-demon of war and warriors.

If we think, moreover, that Caesar affirms us with what loyalty the Celtic warriors followed their chief to death (see his notices about the soldurs); we may think very well that beside the war god-or-demon himself, a second mythical figure was worked out, symbolizing the loyalty of armies this time.

One of the fight techniques of the ancient Celts left more than a doubtful observer : the fact of fighting chained. The thing is mentioned for the Cimbri during the battle of Vercelli according to Plutarch: Marius XXVII. “The greatest number and the best fighters of the enemy were cut to pieces on the spot; for to prevent their ranks from being broken, those who fought in front were bound fast to one another with long chains which were passed through their belts.”

The Greek author obviously did not understand the religious meaning of the chain: even if it prevented the first rows from moving back, it was, tactically, much more an embarrassment that an advantage. It was in fact, for these warriors, a way of expressing their allegiance to Ogmius. This example proves that the warlike use of the chain is impossible to separate from its religious use. “The chain is one of the signs through which you recognize an intervention of the Other World. Because all these Germanic or Celtic warriors were dedicated to the war and to the warlike fury “.

Below the text by Lucian of Samosata dealing with Ogmius.

196

“Our Heracles is known among the Celts of the Continent under the local name of Ogmius; and the appearance he presents in their pictures is truly grotesque. They make him out as old as old can be, the few hairs he has left (he is quite bald in front) are dead white, and his skin is wrinkled and tanned as black as any old salt's. You would take him for some infernal deity, for Charon or Iapetus—anyone rather than Heracles. Such as he is, however, he has all the proper attributes of that god: the lion's-skin hangs over his shoulders, his right hand grasps the club, his left the strung bow, and a quiver is slung at his side; nothing is wanting to the Heraclean equipment.

Now I thought at first that this was just a cut at the Greek gods; that in taking these liberties with the personal appearance of Heracles, the Celts were merely exacting pictorial vengeance for his invasion of their territory; for in his search after the herds of Geryones he had overrun and plundered most of the peoples of the West. However, I have yet to mention the most remarkable feature in the portrait. This ancient Heracles drags after him a vast crowd of men, all of whom are fastened by the ears with thin chains composed of gold and amber, looking more like beautiful necklaces than anything else.

From this flimsy bondage they make no attempt to escape, though escape must be easy.

There is not the slightest show of resistance: instead of planting their heels in the ground and dragging back, they follow with joyful alacrity, singing their captor's praises the while; and from the eagerness with which they hurry after him to prevent the chains from tightening, one would say that release is the last thing they desire. Nor will I conceal from you what struck me as the most curious circumstance of all. Heracles's right hand is occupied with the club, and his left with the bow, how is he to hold the ends of the chains? The painter solves the difficulty by boring a hole in the tip of the god's tongue, and making that the means of attachment; his head is turned round, and he regards his followers with a smiling countenance.

For a long time I stood staring at this in amazement, I did not know what to make of it, and was beginning to feel somewhat nettled, when I was addressed in admirable Greek by a Celt who stood at my side, and who besides possessing a scholarly acquaintance with their national science, proved to be not unfamiliar with our own. He told me, Noble stranger; I see this fresco puzzles you: let me solve the riddle. We Celts connect eloquence not with Hermes, as you do, but with the mightier Heracles.

Nor need it surprise you to see him represented as an old man. It is the prerogative of eloquence that it reaches perfection in old age; at least if we may believe your poets, who tell us that…

Youth has a wandering wit

Whereas old age has wiser words to say than youth.

Thus we find that from Nestor's lips honey is distilled; and that the words of the Trojan counselors are compared to the lily, which, if I have not forgotten my Greek, is the name of a flower. Hence, if you consider the relation that exists between tongue and ear, you will find nothing more natural than the way in which our Heracles, who is eloquence personified, draws men along with their ears tied to his tongue. Nor is any slight intended by the hole bored through that member because I recollect verses in one of your comic poets in which we are told that…

There is a hole in every glib tongue's tip.

Indeed, we refer the achievements of the original Heracles, from first to last, to his wisdom and persuasive eloquence. His shafts, as I take it, are no other than his words: swift, keen-pointed, true-aimed to do deadly execution on the soul. And, in conclusion, he reminded me of our own phrase: 'winged words.' (Introductory lecture: Heracles: 1-7).

In short, the Celtic god-or-demon depicted by this fresco is old and ugly, unlike Hercules, and it is what shocked Lucian of Samosata. The Greco-Roman religion does not have something similar indeed, Ogmius does not threaten, he does not frighten, it does not spread terror; it is on the contrary a smiling leader, who invites to follow him. The classical religion has no merry Charon. Ogmius does not remain less a god-or-demon of violence and magic (of the writing, in short all that is dark, chaotic, sinister, but also demagogic).

197

The second intellectual having recognized and had a presentiment of the essence even of this god-or-demon, is Albrecht Dürer. But when it is known of what meticulousness, of what richness in detail, Dürer was able; you defend yourself badly against the double feeling that his drawing is not finished and that it is not only the illustration of the Ogmius of Lucian of Samosata. Because the latter author is far from to have enumerated or described all what the drawing by Dürer contains.

Just as time is a disordered state of eternity, writing is magic and sometimes fatal voice fixing and this is why the double magic of the voice as well as of the writing, is left to the night and violence god-or-demon.

He is found combined with Brigit and the Roman Dispater in the defixio (curse) of Bregenz in Austria. (Brigid Dagda and Ogma??)

There exist indeed two other, epigraphic this time, documents relative to Ogmios.

A lead tablet discovered in Bregenz in 1865, CIL III, 11882.

On the front : Domitius Niger et Lollius et lulius Severus et Severus Nigri ser (v) us adve [rs] ar (ii) Bruttae et quisquis adversus itam loqu (i) t (ur) itam loqu (i) tT (ur) omnes par [ea] tis.

And on the back: [ro] g (o) vos omnes [q] ui illi malum [pa] ratis dari … dm. o, dari O [g] moi, a [bs] umi mort [e]… t… t… t… nti et Nige [r] dim… o… Valerium… a et Ni [g] er.

Another lead tablet discovered in 1930 in Bregenz, during road works, and that Rudolf Egger studied magnificently.

De (fi) go AMC ea (m) Re (m) i (m) p/e (u) id D (is) p (at) er ad era (m) Ogm/ius salute (m) cur talus re [n (es] /anum genital (ia), c… m auri/s cest < h > ula (m) utens (ilia) /dav (it) ispiridebus/- aci- ne qu/iat nubere. ira de [i].

What is requested from Ogmius in this case, and in a very precise way, it is to obstruct or “to paralyze “somebody in her existence; or, better still, to integrate her among the subjects who follow him, chained by her ears, to her maker. Because, if we understand well, Ogmius is above all the dead god-or-demon.

The second curse more precisely aims several body parts or organs, heels, kidneys, anus, genitalia, with a very clear intention: ne quiat nubere, “so that she cannot be married “. In order for the effect being complete, the god-or-demon is requested to attack also the goods (cestula et utensilia) of the victim.

These two inscriptions belong to the well-known Greco-Roman kind of the defixiones or curses. The defixions or tabellae defixionum are instruments of GRECO-ROMAN magic (a Celtic defixio should be engraved on yew wood) and appeared as rectangular lead plates, small plates or small bars which can be rolled; that a large nail crosses. They are engraved with inscriptions and magic formulas, generally of a curse or spell, and their name comes from the Latin verb “defigere “ to fix, to transpierce. They take part in a magic operation by which you hammer in a nail in order to torture somebody or his substitute: the tablet itself. This magic is largely widespread, especially around the Mediterranean basin. The tabellae are laid down in wells, or in graves (the Lead tablet in Larzac was discovered in a Rutenian burial ), springs (like the Arvernian tablet of Chamalieres) or also in pits; which are traditional access roads to the Other World, by which we can communicate with the chthonian deities.

The magic of the tabellae defixionum is related to the importance you attach to the Word and to the Name. The Celts in Bregenz borrowed these techniques from the Greco-Roman world. But the use of these defixiones matches that of the Celtic runes, sometimes engraved on yew small planks (fidlanna) by druids, or exceptionally by a warrior; except still that the runes engraved by the hesus Cuchulainn, in the story of the rustling of the cows of Cooley particularly, express prohibitions and not one or several curses. These are strictly speaking some obstacles, of which the intrinsic magic is rather strong so that nobody dares to cross them.

The oldest known writing of the Celts is the Lepontic alphabet derived from the Etruscan alphabet, in the 7th century before our era, that is to say thousand years before the oghamic writing (North Italy , Lugano, Lake Como, Lake Maggiore)…

198

The oghamic writing or ogam on the other hand, is the oldest known writing of the Irishmen, who considered the god-or-demon Ogme as for his inventor (according to the Irish tract heading Auraicept na nEces). It is an alphabetical writing made up of twenty letters which was used in British Isles, and would have been invented around the 3rd century, starting from the Latin alphabet. The oghamic alphabet is composed of four groups of five notches each one, on the left, on the right, transversely and in the middle, of a vertical line. Later, a fifth group of five diphthongs or additional letters, the forfeda, to represent foreign sounds, was added.

The majority of the texts transcribed in the oghamic alphabet are in old Gaelic; except some inscriptions supposed to be in Pictish language. Specialists found, also, in the annals of Inisfalen, an oghamic inscription written in Latin. Sacred writing, they found traces of it engraved on various standing stones, or vestiges out of wooden, but also out of bone.

Notes of Peter DeLaCrau found by his heirs.

The oghamic alphabet includes twenty different letters (feda), divided into four families (aicm, plural of aicme). Each aicme in question was called according to its first letter: Aicme Beithe, Aicme Húatha, Aicme Muine, Aicme Ailme.

There does not exist letter for p, since the phoneme disappeared as of the Proto-Celtic, there appears only with the contributions of the Latin (Patrick, and so on). On the contrary, we find a letter for Q, whereas the phoneme exists no longer in old Irish.

Other letters were added in certain manuscripts, at a very late time, and are called forfeda. They are completely contrary to the previous ones with regard to the written form and are perhaps due to Christian monks.

- EA: ébad.

- OI: óir.

- UI: uillenn.

- IO: iphín.

- AE: emancholl.

The characters of the oghamic alphabet , which also have a divinatory or magic role, correspond symbolically to trees grouped in three categories.

- NobleTrees.

- Rustic Trees.

- Shrub trees.

But let us remind it once again! The oghamic alphabet is not the oldest of the alphabets used by the Celts! It is even relatively recent compared with the runes of the Lepontic alphabet .

The Gallic Ogmius described by Lucian of Samosata (very old god-or-demon, half bald, with back length gray hair, with his skin, dark, tanned, wrinkled, pulling some chains); the Ogmius of the defixio tablets in Bregenz, who binds the genitals and prevents the wedding ; the Ogmios of Dürer, its chains and its knots; the Irish warriors imitating Ogme in the first battle of the plain of the standing stones or of the mounds, all enter without difficulty the Varunian framework described by Dumezil. Ogmius is indeed the Celtic equivalent of the Vedic Varuna , He controls all what is obscure, out of order, violent, magic. He is the enemy brother (or the son?) of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt who is, himself, a jack of all trades god-or-demon, matching Mithra.

In the hierarchy of the Irish Panth-eon, Ogmius comes in third position behind Lug, the upper many-skilled god-or-demon , and the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, the druid-god-or-demon, of whom he is the brother (or the son) as well as the supplement. He is similarly ranked as Noadatus/Nuada, therefore forms part of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the People of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia) and pertains the second warlike class, whose function is to lead heroes and warriors. As a god-or-demon of the magic, Ogmius has the capacity to paralyze his enemies.

199

THE GOD OF TECHNIQUES TRADE AND BUSINESS LUG/LUGOS.

French historian Bernard Sergent has proposed a hypothesis about the absence of a doctor god in Wales: in the Indo-European era, the doctor god was of the Apollo / Belenus type; Wales would have remained faithful to this model whereas Ireland would have created a figure detached from Lug with Dian Cecht. Their proximity is revealed on two points: Dian Cecht is close to Lug at the family level.

The original Celtic god doctor could have been Lugus, although Welsh literature gives no information on Lleu's possible medical skills.

It may not be by chance that Lugus is also attached to healing the eyes. Indeed, these organs are often associated with the sun, this star which precisely characterizes the Celtic god.

Even if it only means "eye,” its relation to the sun is admissible. This double association would be understood as a metaphor going back to the Indo-European era, where the eyes were called "the lights" of the head.

The scarcity of the documents found in certain areas produces doubts about the exceptional position that Caesar grants to the Celtic “Mercury “. Other clues go in the same direction. To this first observation two others are added, which are not less significant. In spite of the very large number of the dedications addressed to the Celtic Mercury, the status of signatories appears, as a whole, definitely lower than that of the believer attached to the Celtic Mars (Noadatus/Nuada). If we consider lastly, the number and the material importance of the shrines, the moral place that they have within a community, the advantage goes clearly to at the Celtic Mars. We distinguish only seldom the case where such temple of the Celtic Mercury appears to play a role in the political life of the city. But why such a fall or such a loss of the god-or-demon flash light bearer on the Continent? It is there undoubtedly one of the major mysteries of the Western tradition.

The god-or-demon Lug makes problems (it is the own word used by the French J. - J. Hatt) particularly by his rather ambiguous relations with Taran/Tuireann (Competition? Revolt?).

“We may wonder whether Lug, brought up by the Mother-Earth, does not have, like Dis and Pluto, married her daughter. It is remarkable that, like other Irish heroes, for example Conchobar, Lug is designated by the name of his mother. The name of his father being dubious and various. In the book of Conquests, Lug is known as son of Ceno, son of Cantios or Deinocacectis (Diancecht) son of Isarcos (Esarg), son of Nanto (Net in the Irish language) and Ogmius son of Elatio (Elada) son of Deluato (Delbaeth) son of Nanto (what means “strength “or “sun radiance“ in old Celtic). The only thing sure, delbæth or deluato is an epithet often characterizing Taran/Toran/Tuireann, in other words, Taranis on the Continent. With regard to this problem therefore , see our talk about mythology.

In Spain and Switzerland, inscriptions mention this god-or-demon in the plural: Lugoves. In Switzerland (Avenches) remains only the word Lugove. At Osma in Spain, it is the dedication of a trade association of shoemakers.

LUGOVIBUS, SACRUM, LL VRICO, COLLEGE SVTORVM. TO LUGOVES, THIS SACRED OBJECT, LL URCO [FROM] THE COLLEGE OF SHOEMAKERS.

The name even of Lug, in connection with the light (cf loucetios, leucetios) makes him a solar god-or-demon. Lug is outside function and outside class because he can take up all the functions and because he transcends all the classes. He is the Celtic god or demon par excellence, but he is too, also, triple: a regrouping of several “lugoues “. What is enough to explain the plural in a Gallo-Roman inscription of Avenches in Switzerland, and the plural dative lugovibus in two other inscriptions, at Osma in Tarraconese Spain, as in Bonn in Germany. The lug (oues) are all the god-or-demons of Lug type expressed into one theonym.

All what the primordial druids had sought to express in the multiples Lug or Epona, etc. was thus summarized by the belief in one Lug, one Epona, and so on.

The worship of Lug extended on vast areas from Europe. His name is identifiable in about fifteen toponyms as Carlisle (ex Luguvalium), Loudon in Scotland, Leiden in the Netherlands, Lugano,

200

Locarno and Lugarus in Switzerland, Lugo in Italy and Spain, Legnica/Liegnitz in Poland, Lugoj in Romania, Lugansk in Ukraine (there were formerly Celts in Ruthenia), etc. Regarding Lugansk let us notice that the international press definitely disgraced itself by dealing with the civil war which tore the southeast of Ukraine since April 15, 2014: the shameless sheeplike blind conformity in the lack of critical attitude, double standard, disinformation, the suffering of the other side untold. A last and tragic example of obedience and of treason of the intellectuals about which Julien Benda had not thought, of double language in the Orwell way, in the whole world. All that in aid of a government strongly infiltrated by neo-Nazis or hard-line extreme right-wing . A true and coward collective psychopathy.

But let-us return to more worthwhile sheep.

It therefore happened that whole, large or small human groups, are placed under the protection of this Celtic Mercury by taking him as a patron saint in a way. Case for example of the shoemakers in question.

In the Welsh tradition, Lleu Law Gyffes also seems a shoemaker besides (in the third and fourth branch of the mabinogi particularly). Lleu is also quoted as one of the three shoemakers of the Dexterous Hand in the Welsh triads. If Lleu Law is well a Lug’s form , it is therefore possible to see here Lug as a shoemaker, combined with the idea of anonymity.

Caesar names him Mercury and says him inventor of all arts. It is necessary, however, to agree about it means. The worshippers of the Celtic Mercury are taken on among workers and craftsmen. Nothing makes it possible to suspect that people placed under the Mercury protection the trafficking of shady bankers, the usury, the scandalous benefit characteristic of our current society (the billions lost in the market , the enormous wages of certain executives or chairman and president… Caesar, who largely practiced these methods to face his immense needs for money, perhaps evoked them when he speaks about the expected pecuniary profits from Mercury’s benevolence. But in the Celtica of Ambicatus, the context is very different: the wealth is above all that you acquire at the price of a sustained work, directed by wise intelligence, for the simple reason that Mercury there is not the god-or-demon of the robbers, but the initiator of arts and techniques. The arts about which it is spoken here relate to the whole of creations and of the improvements, resulted from the clever mind of Man.

You can be convinced that many inexplicit dedications are sent to inventive and inspiring Mercury. The Celtic Mercury also protects the waterways and the ports, the sanctuary to Maia, Italic partner of the Celtic Mercury, installed opposite the port of Geneva, shows it.

The patronage of the Celtic Mercury is not limited to the companies of the industrial or artisanal type. The Latin nickname of cultor, which is sometimes awarded to him, relates obviously to the agricultural production. It is the land working , if it implements muscular strength, requires still more a always attentive observation, the search for better adapted methods as well as the improvement of the tools, which make it possible to increase the yield. Of course, that does not mean for all that and even quite to the contrary, that it is necessary to pollute the earth or to assassinate our good old Mother-Earth ,Rosemartha, by filling her with various chemicals.

It is in Irish documentation that it is the most question of this god-or-demon, in particular in the “Cath Maighe Tuireadh “or “Battle in the Plain of the stone pillars “). Lug is also called Lamfada (of the long arm), “ildanach “(the multitalented), Samildanach (super-multitalented). Lonnansclech or Maicnia (young warrior). N.B. But all these nicknames are therefore also in fact attempts of approaching the divine One, let us remind it !

Notice of the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau. Below a text found ( crossed out in the manuscripts of our father.

THE THESIS OF THE FRENCH JEAN-PAUL BOURRE ABOUT THE GOD LUG.

ARE IRISHMEN LUGIFERIAN ???

As we could see it, the relations of the Lug god-or-demon with Taran/Toran/Tuireann make a problem.

In a difficult to determine time in metahistory , Lug perhaps began to become still more “Varunian “ still more berserker, still more “Odinic“ ( specialists say), in short anti Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

This increased Odinization of Lug, who was up to that point rather in the majority of his characteristics of the Taran/Toran/Tuireann type, was very fraught with consequences.

201

Lug is rather different from the other Indo-European celestial god-or-demons. The only one who really resembles him is Wotan, what is rather logically explained by the fact that Wotan, whose name means “furious “ seized the celestial functions of the antique Germanic god-or-demon Tius, known at the Scandinavians under the name of Tyr. But his place in the Panth-eon or Pleroma is fundamental.

Lug stole the fire from the sky (cf his nickname of loucetius) to give back to Man his lost powers (the nine tenths of our brain are still unused apparently) and Lug is therefore a god-or-demon really bearer of light (loucetios). But he will be demonized by the Judeo-Christians, under the medieval name of Lucifer. Lugian ethics and science date back to time immemorial, before the Judeo-Christian notions of Good and Evil appear. It is therefore sometimes difficult to detect them through their actions, because they do not meet the moral standards of our current civilization, built over two thousand years of Christian philosophy.

What we find horrible today (human sacrifices for example) was in fact at the time perfectly accepted or at least understood, and by the victim and the executioner. The name even of Lugos was that of a variety of ravens. The raven belongs to the celestial world, since it is a bird, that it flies in the blue, goes down in the sun rays; but it also belongs,though its black color, to the world of darkness. And it is well that the specific nature of Lug: he is everything at the same time. He carries out in his person the union of the two worlds, that of the top and that of the bottom, the union of the mind and of the matter, of life and death, of thought as well as action.

Strabo speaks about a “two crows harbor ” on the Ocean coast , and informs us that these birds, which had a white wing, appeased conflicts. Of course of course… but what about the other wing of these crows, that which was not white? The reality, it is these crows of Lug have a wing made of pure light, the right, and a black wing, the left. When from the wing of the crow a light ray goes down, this ray of light enlightens soul/minds and brings peace. But from the left wing of the crow, that which comprises a certain measure of darkness, a shadow goes down, and it is from this shade that the world of illusions or war comes.

Truths as spiritual realities are poked by the right wing of Lug’s raven, whereas the world of illusion is the shade of its left wing. Violence, misery and vicissitudes, are poked like a fire by the left wing of Lug’s raven.

Like the famous historian of occultism says himself, for us today the life it is the man in his daily action. The safety of the flesh cover to which our awareness is reduced. But for genuine Celts, life was located on another level, in the deepest part of the individual, behind body appearances, where the secret mind matches the unlimited one, beyond the time and the space known of man. The man of every day, this shadow deprived from his own verticality, cannot claim to judge what he does not understand, and what millennia affirmed as a science. Only the deified man has the power to fathom the secrets of nature, without risking the disintegration which we commonly call the madness. Lug is a different state of consciousness, altered, the highest level of consciousness possible, the divine state bearing light mankind can reach thanks to a continual self-surpassing.

Lug is the genius of Mankind, the highest level of its evolution, the extreme point of knowledge, clearness, universal cosmic vision. The earthly Man recognizes in him an ideal brother, an objective to reach… the face of his own future. The aureole of the true holiness (en laith lon laith), that of the warrior victorious of himself and of his fears.

The worship of Lug, the bearer of light who stole a piece of the celestial fire as his name indicates it (loucetius), therefore offers a multitude of emotional ordeals which make it possible the Man to transgress his own terrors, to forge himself as ONE and indestructible, in a new body and spirit (to take over Jean-Paul Bourre’s own words there still). This philosophy supports the change and prepares its dagolitoi (its believers) to the requirements of the future: awakening of the Superman, of the New man, of the Son of mankind . It is therefore why Lug proclaimed, before the second battle of the Plain of the standing stones or burial mounds tumulus: “ Go and flatten the ground in front, gods come! “The symbolism of this flattening is clear. It is a question of preparing the hearts to the coming of the superman in us, even if that has to be done at the price of a long inner battle.

FROM LUG TO “LUGIFER“ (sic).

202

It is there undoubtedly one of the major mysteries of the Western tradition. Let us dare some assumptions. The “fall “of Lug and of some of the other god-or-demons in the deep-rooted and dyed-in-the-wool anti Taranist hostility , genesis of Western Luciferism, was the requirement for the coming on earth of the instructors having to bring the science of the good and of the evil to mankind.

Only Lug, the light bearer, and not Taran/Toran/Tuireann, could really become Prince of darkness i.e., to fall from the Sky like the lightning in order to go down in the human time and thus to be able to bring knowledge. Because when the man dreams of becoming a god-or-demon in turn, he will not have a better ally than him. While falling into the human time, like the lightning falling on the ground, Lug approached the Man. Lug therefore awaits us in the world of the true knowledge and of the true power, where Man may finally have the science and the power which are refused to him in this one.

The heavenly disaster in question (the fall of Lug in the anti-Taranism in the Varunism and in the Odinism) of course,gives an avatar of Belin/Belen (Barinthus Manannan Mac Lir in Ireland) free rein, but it made again the world formless and dark (tabula rasa) , terrifying counterpart of eternal cosmic Nature. As a chief of the god-or-demons, Lug had ended up involving little by little a certain number of divine entities in terrible and hubristic revolt against Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

His Odinic nature had become more and more marked, he had become a god-or-demon even darker, even more warrior. This anti Taran/Toran/Tuireann evolution was started besides already quite before, that is seen in the most recent versions of the battle of the Plain of pillar stones and burial mounds (CMT III) and in the story entitled “the tragic fate of the children of Tuireann “. Lug appears there under a very dark avenger aspect.

This fall of Lug, the light bearer god-or-demon, matches the excessive materialization of the Spirit, devolving and finally falling like the lightning into the matter.

The fall of Lug into the anti-taranism - into the Odinism or into the Varunism - it is the whole problem of Evil.

Its existence, only due to human ignorance, is only a refraction of the original Light which, buried in the Matter, wrapped in the darkness, reflected in the disorder of the human conscience, constantly tends to become clear.

This distortion of the original light, by the sufferings it involves, can be the means of recognizing the true hierarchy of the values, and of constituting the starting point of a transmutation of the conscientiousness, which becomes able to reflect the pure original light.

The Man of today dies, because in him life has no longer the possibility of being renewed. This asphyxiation of every day is a true atrophy of the soul/mind, and, what information popes or media think about that, we attend by no means a spiritual progress of our civilization, but well a decline. Or a decadence. Man disappeared, and to echo some prophecy we may affirm that we are already in the end of the world (i.e., the end of a certain category of men).

What remains us? Individualities, outside spiritualistic currents and Schools of philosophy, some pseudo-magi and charlatans from all sides ? To scream and to shout the major values of the traditional Man is not enough, not more than the window displays of bookstore overflowing with books of magic and occultism can be enough. It is high time that the sons and the daughters of Hyperborea wave up the flame of the new times and of the divine superman, heir to their Destiny….

Jean-Paul Bourre had thousand times reason to underline it. The only race of new pagan ones which is important it is the mental race of the waked up people who dare to face the sun like the druid Mog Ruith of the Irish legends. The disciples of this new Lug should not, of course, seek Evil for Evil. They should seek only to surpass the human nature, which is regarded as an evil by their adversaries (the power of the word and of the speech: labaron or Latin labarum; the blood of the sacrifices, vital energy vehicle, the sexual energy, almost entirely cerebralized like in White Tantrism, isn't it said that the woman is then like penetrated by lightning?) is in fact only a stage is towards the Absolute Good, because nobody can seek Evil for Evil. Moreover what’s Evil?

Heavenly god-or-demon formerly nearest to Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Lug kept the beauty as well as the seduction of the great god-or-demon he was. But far from being a simple allegory, the Lugiferian myth matches a truth well, indeed: the return to the divine man: the theios aner of the Greeks.

Some traditions speak about a future time called Crystal Age (an allusion to Hyperborea’s ice?) , where Man would reinstate his former transparency, where he would reach the utmost his mental possibilities by an astonishing change. The magic is the direct relation linking man with the cosmic prospects which live in him and he ignores, a kind of vibratory link between each aspect of nature,

203

from the smallest bit of life to the remotest galaxy, from the simply human emotion to the formidable preternatural powers which make the Man a semi-god-or-demon, i.e., a being waked up to his genuine possibilities, because in truth there was not fall but amnesia, forgetting of the major values. Aren't the neurons of our brain in their nine the tenth unused ? New Lug therefore remains a civilizing god-or-demon even if, as for the Zarathustra by Nietzsche, his kindness seems terrible in the eyes of the men who explain the world starting from different values.

This new Lug is not “the god of Evil “opposed to the god or to the demiurge of the Bible (supposed being a god of Good. Editor’s note. What is more than contestable) but a divine principle that we find in the mythological fight of Mahasura, the Hindu “Lucifer “fighting to enter the human time: the instructing fire fallen from the sky so that Man can wake up to his own divinity.

The “Lugiferism“ it is the reconquest of the lost powers, a true knowledge making it possible the Man to transgress Time laws in order to become equal the god-or-demons. A fabulous science aiming at the reintegration of Mankind on the divine level. Like the Nietzschean hero, the follower of the Antique Audacity has the power of the demystification: he knows how to laugh on ruins. In that nothing can reach him, if not the sacrifice he imposes to himself .

The Western “Lugifer“is not a cursed and struck down angel, it is the god-or-demon who enlightens and who regenerates by burning, but of course, as the occultist Eliphas Levi in his time noted it, “il est aux dieu-ou-démons de paix ce que la comète est aux paisibles étoiles des constellations du Printemps “.Said in another way, "he is a true comet not an evening star during spring."

Lug, however, really opened a road of light and hope. The deposed god or is still a master and a model, but in a completely different senses , it is true.

“Lugiferism“is therefore

- A genuine Lugian ethics , constantly risen against the Judeo-Christian revelation and the legal or social order which, over the centuries, resulted from it.

- A suffering it is necessary to overstep in order to be born again, in the image of one’s god-or-demon, insensitive to human laws, pre-empting by his presence the come back of the bearer of lightning Man, uncontested master of himself and of the world. A new birth which would therefore make it possible the contemplation of what Mankind distinguishes no longer, the terrible vision of the universe or bitus perceived from every angle of its manifestation in Time . See the Horla by Maupassant.

MORE CAREFUL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE TRUE BIOGRAPHY OF LUG OR ABOUT HIS SYMBOLISM.

As we could see it, Lug does not form part of the primordial god-or-demons of the druidic Panth-eon, in spite of his obvious Panceltic nature. He is in reality a newcomer.

The king of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns locks up his daughter Eithne in a crystal tower built on a small island in order to prevent from becoming mother (an antique prophecy announced indeed that he would be one day killed by his grandson). But Ceno/Cian, with the assistance of a woman called Birog, succeeds in entering this tower and charming her. Eithne gives birth to triplets. Balor throws them into the sea. Two of them die drowned or are changed in puppy seals, but Birog succeeds in saving the third one, the future Lug , and entrusts him to Belin Belen Manannan mac Lir, who therefore becomes thus his foster father.

If it is necessary to believe this version of the legend, Lug, after a rather obscure childhood, will end up nevertheless joining the side of the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Danu (bia), just before their great battle against the gigantic anguipedic wyverns , called Andernas on the Continent and Fomore in Gaelic language.

The guard of the gates of the castle of Noadatus/Nuada not wanting to let him enter, unless he has a competence being able to be useful for the king, Lug offers successively his services as a blacksmith, fencer, champion, harpist, poet, historian, wizard, craftsman… And each time he is refused, because the children of the goddess-or-demon or fairy Danu (bia) have already remarkable men in all these fields. But when Lug asks whether they have somebody having at the same time all these competences, there the gatekeeper must recognize that not, and he therefore lets him come in. It is allowed in the court and wins an ultimate test imposed by the champion of the champions called Ogma. It is nevertheless as a chess player that he will be definitively accepted: he plays a game with

204

the king he beats in a flash. This game is purely symbolic since it is an intellectual tournament, at the conclusion of which Lug seizes the power. Magician god-or-demon, Lug will protect the army as of his by gesticulating one arm, by hopping and by closing an eye, then will kill his grandfather Balor with a sling. It is therefore in a way a one-eyed god-or-demon near to Vedic Varuna it seems, following the example of the Scandinavian Odin . We will find Lug fighting with his son the hesus/Cuchulainn, during the invasion of Ulidia by Queen Medb.

Lug can be vindicatory and dark. He has a magic spear, a weapon which kills every time, but which is also used for the royal dubbing; she is inseparable from the Cauldron of the Suqellus/Dagda/Gurgunt filled with blood: it is necessary that sit is plunged there in order to prevent it destroys everything (it is the Gae Assail, an obvious symbolization of the lightning). Taran/Toran/Tuirean brings the light of sky and mind and fights darkness, but Lug himself, brings the destroying lightning and the death of enemies, of all the enemies, even simply human. In the artistic field, he has a harp which plays music by itself, but that he too can also use admirably, it can get to sleep, make laugh or cry.

According to some authors, in Ireland Lug is also called Trefuilngid Tre-Eochair (in particular in the story of the settling of the manor of Tara. The most probable meaning is “Demiurge of the triple key “).

In Welsh mythology, this god-or-demon matches Llew Llaw Gyffes (of the skillful hand), a character who appears in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, that which is entitled Math son of Mathonwy. The meaning of his nickname “of the fast hand “ is to be compared to that of “lamfada “(“of the long arm “) which is given to Lug in Ireland sometimes, and of which it is an equivalent, without being the exact replica.

His birth, as that of his twin Dylan Eil Ton, results from a magic practice, used by King Math wanting to test the virginity of Arianrhode. To be avenged for the insult, his mother pronounces three geisa on the child: she deprives him of his name, prohibits to him from bearing weapons, and also prohibits to him to have a wife of the human race. The child having grown, his mother will note his skill and will use a name in reference (Llaw Gyffes) to designate him, which will therefore cause to lift the first spell cast on him.

Then, his uncle and tutor Gwydion will then force him to take up arms by simulating an attack against his residence, which will cause to lift the second geis cast on him. In order to circumvent the third prohibition, King Math, who is also a magician, and his nephew Gwydion, make to him a wife with flowers and plants (broom, primula, queen-of-meadows, hawthorn… etc.). Their “creature “will be more beautiful than the most beautiful among women, and will be named Blodeuwedd, what means “face of flowers “. Their wedding will be celebrated but one day that Llew visits King Math, in his residence of Caer Dathyl, Blodeuwedd receives Goronwy (called Gronw Pebyr sometimes), the lord of Penllyn, who hunts in the vicinity. She falls in love with him and the two lovers will try to kill Llew. But Llew is a god-or-demon who can be killed only according to certain very precise methods: he can be killed neither inside nor outside, neither when he rides nor when he walks. In fact, he can be assassinated in one position: while bathing, a foot on a goat and the other on a cauldron, and by a spear made especially for this purpose. As incredible as may appear, these conditions will be one day gathered (see the prophecies of the Alfred Huth’s Merlin), and Llew will be slaughtered then changed into an eagle. But Gwydion will change Blodeuwedd into an owl, and will give again a human shape to LLew, who will enable him to be avenged by killing the lover. As we can see it, the Welsh story, although very detailed, no longer has to do with the original pan-Celtic myth.

This original Celtic myth, we are less away from it on the Continent with the Gallo-Roman iconography.

Various monuments represent a mature, bearded, sometimes wearing a heavy coat, god-or-demon. Sometimes standing, sometimes and more frequently sitting, in this case, he looks majestic. Apart from these monuments, so aberrant from the point of view of the Greco-Roman world that their identification with Mercury was sometimes disputed, specialists noticed the presence of unexpected elements: familiar snakes, phallic figurations.

The attentive observation detected less obvious nuances. In several models made out of terra cotta, the petasus is reduced to a kind of cap or beret, topped with shapeless outgrowths [Editor’s note: some horns?] where it is difficult to recognize the traditional wings of the Greco-Roman Mercury.

On the other hand, the snakes of the caduceus receive a spectacular development. The concern of evoking, about the Celtic “Mercury “ the concept of fruitfulness, justifies the insistence with which are often figurated the genitals of the god-or-demon, on a large number of stone figurations, out of terra cotta, as well as out of bronze. It even happens that the isolated representation the male organ is

205

found on a monument devoted to the Celtic Mercury. A dedication in Poitiers is proven flanked of such a sculpture and we would be wrong to take this pattern for a simple decorative element: it symbolizes something.

The Mercury of Saint-Reverien in France wears one sandal, at his left foot, his right one being barefoot. However Lug, when he goes around the host of the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (in the Irish version of the myth. Editor’s note) goes it while hopping a strange Mercury with winged petasus in Strasbourg (Esperandieu. 5490) holds up a hammer with his right hand, and shows, furthermore, the interesting characteristic to have an open eye and a closed eye. This detail corresponds to an episode of the fight of Lug against Balor. It makes it possible therefore to bring closer to the pan-Celtic Lug the Mercury of Strasbourg.

Tallest of the statues of this god-or-demon known to date is perhaps that which was carried out by the Greek sculptor named Zenodorus in the 1st century of our era, and which sat in a temple built at the top of the Puy de Dome, in France 1), destroyed in 256 according to Gregory of Tours: “Veniens [Chrocus rex] vero Arvernus, delybrium illud, quod Gallica lingua Vassogalate vocant, incendit, diruit atque subvertit “. (Historia Francorum I, 29). “And coming in Auvergne he set on fire, overthrew and destroyed that shrine which they call Vasso Galatæ in the Celtic tongue “. This temple had been built and made strong with wonderful skill because its wall was double, for on the inside it was built of small stone and on the outside of squared blocks. The wall had a thickness of thirty feet. It was adorned on the inside with marble and mosaics. The pavement of the temple was also of marble and its roof was of lead. N.B. The wall of the Saracens located street Rameau, opposite the school Nestor Perret, in Clermont-Ferrand, is perhaps all what remains of this temple. It is made up small well-cut lava blocks alternating with flat brick layers.What is strange, on the other hand, it is the use of the present indicative “vocant “ by Gregory, but it is true that the Celtic language was still spoken in the 7th century in what was going to become the German-speaking Switzerland.

To notice also. For many authors, but not least, the god-or-demon thus represented under the Latin name of Mercury; by interpretatio romana, besides coarsely erroneous; would be the national or tribal genius of the Arverni (their teutatis or their egregore) and not the Pan-Celtic god-or-demon Lug.

On the Continent, Lug has tens of nicknames, attested either by the epigraphy, or by the later Celtic literature. Some examples.

Cissonius, what means approximately “car attendant “ therefore perhaps by extension “guard of the travelers “. As we already have had the opportunity to notice it, the link between travel and trade in Antiquity seems obvious, but why the travels?? The reasons of that are no longer clearly perceived today. Because it is necessary to have much ingeniousness to overcome the difficulties of a long travel??

Visucius, what means “the one who knows “ or “who sees “(thanks to the ravens which informs him every day?)

We are unaware if the Celtic Mercury was a soothsayer, but his eyes are often emphasized. Pieces of evidence of this characteristic do not miss. In Chateaubleau in France, for example, was found a statue with its head decorated with large oblong eyes accompanied by the dedication “to Mercury Solitumaros (of the Great Sight) “.

Lug is also the patron saint of the emigration due to religious cause according to two of his divine attributes, Excingiorigiatis, and Atepomarus, which are the name of one of the founders of the holy city of Lyon , which is on the whole, logic enough, Lugdunum meaning “ town of Lug or of ravens “.

The worship of Lug disappeared on the Continent, not during the prohibition, theoretical and probably only applied in a progressive way, of the druidism, in the reign of the emperor Claudius, but at the time of the Christianization of the land which began in the 4th with Saint Martin. According to Sulpicius-Severus, ecclesiastical historian of Latin language, born in Aquitaine around 363, and deceased during the first quarter of the 5th century, the Pannonnian ill disciplined soldier gone down in history under the name of St Martin will have dealt besides more with Lug than with Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

“…..Moreover, he was in the habit of rebuking the demons by their special names, according as they severally came to him. He found Mercury [Lug] a cause of special annoyance, while he said that Jupiter [Taran/Toran/Tuireann] was stupid and doltish. “ (Sulpicius Severus. Dialogs concerning the virtues of saint Martin II, 13).

N.B. Among Celts, Lug is the celestial god-or-demon which controls the lightning as his name indicates, but it is Taran/Toran/Tuireann who reigns as we could see.

206

In Ireland, Lug’s Consort is perhaps the Celtic princess called Talantio/Tailtiu. It is in fact his adoptive mother and not his wife. On the Continent, it is a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it you prefer to use this word called Rosemartha, even Italic Maia.

His favorite animal is the raven and perhaps the wolf.

His weapon is the javelin , but this javelin (Gae Assail, the spear of Assal) also indicates the flash of inspiration and intuition.

The great harvest festival, Lugnasade, was celebrated in all the Celtic countries including in France, under the name of Gulaust (the first of August).

As astonishing as that can appear, we have representations of Lug under his own name, due to the Romans. For example, in France on coins from Lugdunum: there appears in the reverse the image of the genius of the city (therefore Lug) standing naked close to a little hill bearing a raven. On coins struck by Clodius Albinus (195-197). There appears in the reverse the image of the genius of the city crowned with towers, looking towards the right, holding a scepter and a horn of plenty, an eagle at his feet. The inscription “GEN LVG COS II “ identifies him unambiguously to Lug.

1) The tribe of the Arverni had indeed ordered to the sculptor of Nero a bronze statue forty meters high. Ten years of work were necessary.

207

THE MYTH OF THE GOOD GIANT.

In the Bible giants are supposed to come from sexual relations that various angels would have had with the same at home women. These are the Nephilim. See Genesis Chapter 6.

We will make here the skip on the possible historical existence of this giants' race the interest of which we do not see and we will concentrate here especially on the symbol they represent.

Giants appear in mythologies to explain what the ancients could not understand (at least in the current European zone): in Ireland (for some geological formations like the Giants' Causeway), in France (to explain many elements of the landscape) in Scandinavia (to explain the origins of natural phenomena: glaciers, etc.)., at the Greek people for the cyclopean buildings (like Mycenae).

Giants are generally anthropomorphic and very large sized beings. Indo-European beliefs often make giants primordial beings linked to cosmogony and to the force of nature. These giants characterized by their strength and brutality are often in conflict with the gods, notably in Greek, and Ossetian mythologies.

Huge and generally hostile Giants (jötunn, in the plural jötnar), play a primordial role in Scandinavian myths. They represent generally the force of Chaos and Evil against the influence of which gods have to struggle for maintaining the order of their world. - In short, they have a marked Fomorean nature (with this important difference that in Ireland Fomoire are only half anthropomorphic).

The Celts on the contrary, themselves, had good giants, supposed notably to explain some features of the landscape.

According to the canon De Cosse-Brissac our current Santa-Klaus would come from the synthesis of several mythical giants, such Gargan, a beneficent giant wearing heavy boots and on his back (in France) a basket full of presents, or Thor, the Scandinavian god of fire sometimes represented in white-bearded old man, who wore red clothes, and went down by chimneys to join his element.

208

THE SANTA CLAUS GOD SUQELLUS/DAGDA/GURGUNT.

Sucaelus, Suecelus. From the Celtic *su- (good, very) + *keld- (to strike). His name, which perhaps designates in Celtic “the one who strikes well (su) “even who “strikes hardly “ is the evidence of seniority, but we have no document relating to it before the Roman epoch.

Some of our texts like the courtship of Ferb (Tochmarc Feirbe) mention for example a "Castle of Gurgunt.” We convey thus the Gaelic expression Dunud Geirg. Geirg is a Gaelic name where we find the root gar / ger of an uncertain meaning. In this story he is obviously combined with the notion of abundance and colossal feasts. It is a rather mysterious character often linked by some mythologists with the Dagda . He is supposed to be at the origin of many localities, for example the city of Norwich in the east of England. It is wrongly, however, that some French authors linked him with Mount Gargano located in Italy. It is historically impossible……

!---------- -------------------------------- ------------------------------!

An inscription discovered on a ring found in York (RIB 2 2422). His name is also transcribed Sucaelus in an inscription found in Mainz in Germany and is brought closer to Jupiter or Silvanus, the guard of the forests, master of agriculture, by the Romans, who obviously hesitate over him.

See the inscriptions discovered in Worms in Germany, where he is equated by Roman interpretation with Silvanus, in Vichy in the Allier, Ancey-Malain in Côte-d’Or, Metz and Sarrebourg in the Moselle department (where he is honored with Nantosuelta) and Lyon in the Rhone department. He is also honored in Yverdon and Augst in Switzerland (where he is once more compared with Silvanus by interpretatio romana).

In honor (em) D (omus) D (ivinae) deo Sucello Silv (ano), Spart (us).

In the honor of the house of the god Suqellus Silvanus, Spartus.

Caesar makes him a druidic equivalent of Dispater, the great master of death, ground, and life, ancestor of the whole mankind.

But it is there, not the fatherhood of Man as being endowed with a soul and a mind, but the fatherhood of Man as being endowed with a physical body. The fact that, for Caesar, this god-or-demon is linked, not with the spiritual richness, but with the material wealth…proves it! From where his transformation into Santa-Klaus later.

Mature and bearded, he is dressed, like every good self-respecting Celt, with a short belted tunic, a hood, a pair of breeches or boots. The genuine deities of these countries with cold and rigorous winters are indeed generally dressed (often according to the fashion of human beings), contrary to the Mediterranean god-or-demons. Suqellus is usually represented with a mallet, sometimes high as a scepter, giving life on a side or death of the other, and a paunchy pot (a olla), to which can be added, put beside him, one or two small casks: as many feeding symbols. Moreover, a dog often accompanies him. He probably has to lead the dead in the hereafter. The dogs (mainly those who are white with red ears) are indeed always related to the beyond in the Celtic legend system. The tunic of the god-or-demon is sometimes strewn with signs which can be interpreted as astral symbols, evoking the celestial stay of the soul/minds or the starlight night (from where the name of Sucaelus?) When he has a partner, it is often a goddess-or-demoness or a fairy bearing a horn of plenty. Suqellus is thus dispenser of food: he offers, on the flat of his hand, the pot where it is possible to see the continental equivalent of the Irish cauldron, inexhaustible source of porridge. Such is therefore this god-or-demon, lord of life and perhaps of death, since the wealth of the ground plunges its roots in the underground domain, where treasures are hidden and he looks to be remained himself throughout the Roman epoch (except his partial equating with Silvanus).

The altar from Sarrebourg (department of the Moselle) represents a standing character, holding with his left hand a very long handled mallet with his right hand an olla (a small pot). At his right there is a

209

completely draped woman equally sized, holding with her raised left hand a long pole topped with of kind of miniature house and lowering her right hand, which holds a sacrificial bowl, towards an altar. An inscription placed above the low-relief informs us the god-or-demon is called Suqellus and his Consort Nantosuelta. If the second name is rather obscure, Suqellus itself, is, of course, Celtic ; the first word is found in the Celtic names Su-carus, Su-naritu, and the meaning of the word seems to be “the one who strikes well “or “who has a good hammer “. The mallet god-or-demon in question is a deity of whom we found other representations which, generally, hardly differ from the Suqellus of Sarrebourg. Most singular represents a bearded god-or-demon covered with the skin of a lion (a comparison with Hercules?) leant on with his left hand on a pole and holding with his right hand an olla or miniature cauldron; behind him is raised above his head an enormous mallet in which five smaller mallets arranged in half-circle are stuck.

Suqellus has a double symbolism. God-or-demon of festivals and abundance (he broaches barrels), but also a psychopompous god-or-demon, god-or-demon of good death, or of serene and peaceful death, called upon by the vates to accompany the last moments of a dying person. From where the name of Sucaelus perhaps we have said. The broached barrel, in this case, symbolizes the soul or the mind which escapes from the body.

The goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Nantosuelta, was a fertility goddess-or-demoness or fairy, linked with rivers, and comparable in that with the aspects “ fertility goddess-or-demoness or good fairy“of the goddess Danu (bia) in Ireland. One of the interpretations of the name of Nantosuelta (who flowers the valley) is not without reminding of the name of the Irish Blathnat and of the Welsh Blodeuwedd. What makes the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt a parallel of Curoi mac Daire in the Irish deviation, and a parallel of Arawn prince on Annwn in the Welsh heresy. He also besides has red-eared dogs.

The divine couple Suqellus/Sucaelus and Nantosuelta differs notably from the god-or-demons of the first function like Lug, because he was rather perhaps to pertain the third function (since ensuring the fertility of human beings animals and plants).

The couple Sucaelus and Nantosuelta is a divine couple we in the whole Celtic Europe. They are combined with the notions of fertility or fruitfulness; their union, or their good agreement, probably conceived as being to be shown at the time of the festival of Samon, ensured the prosperity of the country. In short, this Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt acts a little as Santa Klaus and what characterizes him is abundance or generosity. In Ireland, he is besides known to have inexhaustible fruit trees and two magic pigs, one being always roasted on a spit and the other always in the fattening.

It is not enough the mallet is reproduced with the cauldron on a coin of the Unelli so that we can see a divine attribute there, but what is certain, it is that it is well a weapon (called Meldos - Mellt in Welsh). The Meldos of this Dis Patersymbolizes the power that Suqellus has to make the soul/minds going into the other world. He can indeed release the lots soul/minds by clearing a passage in the matter before them (a little like a mallet making the bunghole of a barrel popping and thus releasing the ale it contained). By hitting with his mallet, Suqellus can therefore release the soul/mind awaiting reincarnation in the next world and which, according to former druids, was in the head. From where perhaps the famous Gallo-Roman prayer: Sucellum propitium nobis!

And conversely. The bacuceos all would be therefore resulting from the so much liberating action of the Celtic Dis Pater taking care of the reservoir of soul/minds. The druidic hell was not a place of eternal damnation, but only the underground kingdom where in the coldness the lost soul/minds wandered while awaiting reincarnation, on earth. A negligible minority according to some people.

In Great Britain, this idea is perhaps found in the character of Gurguit Barbtruc, also called Gurgunt or Gurgiunt (Welsh Gwrgant Varf Drwch). Geoffrey of Monmouth makes him a fabulous character living at the time of Partholon in the 4th century of our era (Book III, chapter XI). Historia regum Britanniae or History of the Kings of Britain is a book by Geoffrey of Monmouth written between 1136 and 1139, supposed to report the history of the first sovereigns of the Isle of Britain since Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneas, to Cadvalladr or Caedwalla, king of North Wales (7th century). Geoffrey of Monmouth claims to do as a historian, but his book is mainly a work of imagination mingling a multitude of stories with national traditions like these with the king of Bretons Arthur. He will enjoy, however, a great credit in the eyes of the later writers, including Shakespeare (for his king Lear). In other words, many

210

legends and very little History! Geoffrey of Monmouth makes him a son of Belinus. But we saw how much this character was mythical in the bad sense of the word.

Having met the tribe of Partholon at sea when he was returning from a victorious expedition forwarding, Gurgiunt would not have allowed them to settle in Great Britain, but would have allocated the Ireland then uninhabited (what is once again, of course, completely false!) Gurgiunt would have died after a length and great reign, and would have been buried in Caerleon, a town founded by his father.

In France in any case, this divine concept of the big friendly giant produced Gargantua in the Middle Ages. Gargantua, of course, is one of the two favorite heroes of the French Rabelais, but this author, born about 1494, did not invent him. The first mention of him we know (in which his name is spelled besides Gargantuas) is found in the roll of the collector of the bishop of Limoges in Saint-Leonard, and dates back to 1471.

In the “Great and inestimable chronicles of the big and enormous giant Gargantua containing his genealogy “ published in Lyons in 1532, he is associated with the king of Britain Arthur and with Morgan Le Fay.

THE GRETE AND INESTIMABLE CRONICLES OF THE BIG AND ENORMOUS GIANT GARGANTUA. CONTAINING HIS GENEALOGY (1532).

Knights and gentlemen, you must know that at the time of the good king Artus, there was a great philosopher called Merlin, expert in the art of the nygromauncy more than anybody in the world…

As soon as Merlin had heard his hammers, he made the bones of a bull whale to be brought, watered them with the blood of the aforesaid ampulla , and put them on the anvil, the aforementioned bones were consumed immediately or nearly , and were almost powdered. It is therefore in this way, by the heat of the sun, the anvil and the hammers, that was generated the father of Gargantua, by means of the aforementioned powder…

And it is thus that Gargantua lived in the service of Prince Arthus in the space of two hundred years three months and three days exactly. Then he was carried in fairyhood by the fairy Morgain and Melusine, with several others.

Behind our larger-than-life and glutton giant hides an apparently benevolent deity very old who perhaps dates back like the construction of the standing stones, beyond the Celts.

The “inestimable life “of Gargantua, according to Rabelais, does nothing but take over an old content which shows through in innumerable popular traditions, on the whole territory.

The state of the indications given by Rabelais, who made it his Gargantua, does not inform us very much, because, as Henry Lizeray had seen it well already in his time, “the mocking genealogies by Rabelais are intended to caricature the never-ending pedigrees which block the Bible and which are useless “.

It is possible to consider that in France, the fairy Melusine is her partner, although in living memory, they were not married (in the novel written at the end of the 14th century by Jean d’Arras, the husband of Melusine is Raymondin).

Gargantua is the picturesque personalization of the gigantic, but beneficial, energy, who puts in order the primordial chaos. In his travels , he modifies the landscapes while dropping the contents from his sack. The trace or drop-off from his shoes causes hills and hillocks, his dejection forms needles, and his micturition some rivers! Many megaliths are pucks of Gargantua therefore, called chair, armchair, bowl… It is an unaware energy , but directed, recognized as beneficial. The stones of Gargantua give rise to fruitfulness worships, his third leg (his male organ) is famous! See in that the 54

meters giant engraved on the slope of Cerne Abbas in the Dorset in Great Britain. It is a phallic deity who will also be represented in anguipedic forms, sometimes ram headed.

Christianity demonized him by renaming the places, pits, rock chaos, standing stones, known as Gargantua’s; in places, pits, chaos, stones… of the Devil. In same time, he is Christianized as saint Gorgon who replaces him for the worship of fruitfulness, like in Rouen. Saint-Michel’s Mount was a former of worship devoted to Gargantua and the small island of Tombelaine would be the burial of Gargamelle. Not counting the rivers Gargas, Gargelle or Jarjattes, the caves like the prehistoric cave

211

of Gargas, famous for the traces of hands we find there. It is completely probable these toponyms are reminders of this giant who was popular on all the territory.

Even if it sometimes happens to him to dry up rivers because of his thirst or to swallow some individuals, it is as a whole rather a good giant. A trait he has in common with the Dagda. He could be a herdsman , although he did not object to devouring cattle. He was also a reaper or woodcutter.

Gargantua is probably the survival of this Celtic god-or-demon of the good death, whose worship was too much implanted in mentalities to be eradicated. His popularity makes us a little think of that of the Irish Dagda. These two characters have several common points besides, like their gigantic size and their link with food.

The text which follows, extracted from the Anthology of the Albret region, due to the abbot Leopold Dardy, deserves to be quoted: “There was once in the moor a giant who was called Gargantua. His mother was a cow. She had only him; alone he drove out the Englishmen from here [during the Hundred Years’ War]. He tore off oaks like leeks and launched them against the Englishmen such simple sticks… Gargantua fed himself only with sheep and game “. This somewhat military nature of Gargantua echoes the warlike exploits of the Dagda in Ireland.

In Ireland, as we could see it, this divine concept produced, in a somewhat heretic it is true, the jack of all trades god-or-demon, called Dagda. In Ireland anyway this Dagda occupies a place apart in the pantheon.

He is the oldest of the god-or-demons in Ireland. He appears in particular in the story of the “Cath Maighe Tuireadh “or “Battles of the standing stones Plain “. He is the guard of oaths, contracts, and friendship. In the Irish legend entitled “Tochmarc Etainne “ we can read he judges every contract according to the intentions of the one who signs it (concerta sidhe cor caich amal a indelle ). Dagda reigns over time, eternity as over elements. He is usually supposed to dwell in the Brugh Na Boinne. His steward is called Dichu (father of Etain ) and his blacksmith a by the name Len Linfiaclach. Mabon/Maponos/Oengus, his son, will take this residence from him under the pretext to enjoy it during a night and a day. This residence, which is not other than a sidh or one of the main gates of the United Republic of the Sidh, is comparable, at least in Ireland, with the megalithic site in Newgrange (in the north of Dublin).

The Dagda is combined with his brother Ogmius (the Ogme of Irishmen), the god-or-demon of the warlike magic, of whom he is the supplement. Through his function, he is also a powerful warrior. He has a paternal and feeding streak. Of course, very powerful and omniscient, but boorish,pot-bellied, ribald, dressed with a short tunic and a hood, wearing leather boots and dragging behind him his enormous wheeled bludgeon, which kills by an end, but brings back to life through the other; this giant is also endowed with an inexhaustible cauldron which feeds all those who approach him. His couplings with the goddess-or-demonesses or fairies of the Panth-eon are numerous.

We know to him indeed several talismans, of which the cauldron of plenty (olla or symbol of prosperity on the Continent), the bludgeon which kills and revives (symbol of his power), and a magic harp called Daurblada or Coir Cethar Chuir. This instrument has the characteristic to know all the melodies in the world, and to be able to play them by itself. The care with which this harp was made, as well as the quality of the materials, is, of course, enough to explain its capacity: to get to sleep or to make dying. In the story entitled the Second Battle of the Plain of the stone pillars or mounds (Cath Maighe Tuireadh), this harp is stolen by the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent and Fomoire in Ireland. The Suqelluss Dagda searches it , accompanied by Lug and Ogme. They find it hung to the wall of a residence of their enemies. To the call of the god-or-demon, the harp flies away and kills nine of the anguipeds having stolen it from the Dagda.

It plays the wailing harmony and women begin to cry, then it plays the mirth harmony and the boys begin to laugh; lastly, it plays the music of sleep, and the opposing army falls asleep. Dagda is therefore also the guardian god-or-demon of the musicians. As such he sometimes resorts to the services of a harpist named Uaithne (what means “harmony “).

The cauldron is another important component of Celtic mythology. That of the Dagda comes from the island of Murias, an island located north of the world and which had as a master the druid Semias. He symbolizes sovereignty, abundance and resurrection (see the cauldron of Gundestrup). We find it in the Gallo-Roman statuary in the shape of a simple olla. We find it in the Arthurian legend in the form of the “grail “.

212

As we saw above, the Irish Dagda therefore has power of life and death over the human beings: his bludgeon kills by an end and resuscitates by the other one. It can crush nine warriors with one blow. It is so heavy that eight men are necessary to carry it, it leaves a furrow in the ground which can be used as a border. It is equipped with wheels. All that therefore makes us a little thinking of the French Gargantua. From where perhaps his capacities of an architect or builder (at the time of the phase previous to the second battle of the menhirs or burial mounds plain, he is made responsible by the temporary king Bregsos/Bres for building fortresses).

The Suqellus is also known in Ireland under the nicknames of Ivocatuos Ollater (the one who fights with yew) father of everybody (Eochaid Ollathair in Gaelic language), but also roudianus rovesus (the red one who knows everything: from where Gaelic ruadh rofessa ), dergodercus (the red eye = sun, Irish deirgderc ) and lastly dagodevus (“the Jack of all trades“ god-or-demon) from where the Dagda in Gaelic language still.

His brothers are Elcmar, Nechtan and Medros/Midir. He is the father of Eriu, Votala and Banuta (Eire, Fodla and Banuta/Banba/Banva), and even of Ainge or Diancecht according to some people. From his adulterous relationship with Boand (Vinda Damona), he will have a son: Mabon/Maponos/Oengus. He is also the father of Brigit according to certain variants, as well as of the king Dergos Boduos (Bobd Derg). N.B. The Celts in the Continent went further since they also made their Suqellus the ancestor of mankind; But as regards the physical bodies, not as regards the rest of the personality of Man. The fact that, for Caesar, this god-or-demon is linked, not with the spiritual richness, but with the material wealth….proves it.

His consort is the war goddess Morrigani (Catubodua on the Continent).

The Suqellus Dagda is, with Lug, and Ogmius, one of the three greatest god-or-demons of the Celtic Panth-eon or Pleroma. He is therefore as we already saw it above, through the great watery female deity (equated with the Boyne in Ireland) the father of the youth god-or-demon , Mabon/Maponos/Oengus (Mabonagrain in Chretien de Troyes).

At least according to the Irish apocryphal legends and the very complicated adultery story committed with Bo-Vinda/Damona-Vinda (Boand) that they report us.

DOCUMENT.

GARGANTUA ACCORDING TO OUR FRENCH SPEAKING PEN FRIENDS AND COUNTERPARTS.

Http//lamainrouge. wordpress. com/2007/08/01/gargantua-et-les-divinites-celtiques.

His name appears in toponymy and folklore in more 300 places. It is a civilizing hero who clears the territory: He is attached thus to the oldest races (Partholon and Nemed in the Irish tradition). He is in turn a woodcutter (like Esus) and a reaper. He reigns…

a) Over the mountains he erected by carrying materials in his hood (and of which straps often broke); they are sometimes his graves.

b) Over the hillocks, tumuli and hill forts which are the rest of the ground stuck to the sole of his clogs; in the same way, the Irish hillocks belong to the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia).

c) Over water, because he dug lakes, drank or fed rivers and marshes.

d) On rock fragments and megaliths, which are his excrement or gravels left from his clogs ; the standing stones are also stones to sharpen his scythe, or the skittles with which he plays, the tables of the dolmens being used by him as pucks.

The Gargantua inhabiting Picardy is the son of a bear (what could make suppose a relationship with the Arthurian myth) and is born in a cave (in the center of the Cosmos).

In his youth, Gargantua is invited to dig a well, but it seems well that it is here a rite of initiation, the Belgian legend specifies that Gargantua “dies “; it is only a symbolic death , as the continuation of the myth shows it.

He founds towns like the Gallic Hercules who founded Alesia. Fought off from Quantilly (Cher), the giant casts his hammer in the airs and built to the place where it falls, the fortress of Avaricum (Bourges). This ritual gesture is found in the Christian legendary: Jean-Charles Varennes mentions a sacred spring in the Bourbonnais, spouting out at the place where Saint Mazeran launched his hammer.

213

A stater of the Baiocasses represents a rider, holding up a sword, who has just cast a hammer of which trajectory is illustrated by a broken line; under the horse a kind of cauldron is. In the same way, the giant of Guerande (Loire-Atlantique), in addition to his scythe and his flail, is armed with three hammers.

Gargantua is a rich and complex figure who appears to have inherited the features own to several Celtic deities. He is not malicious, but glutton and dressed like a backwoodsman, and the farmers retained certain obscene aspects of his myth. Through all these features, he evokes Eochaid “Oll-Athair “(the father of everybody) known as “Dag-Da “(the Jack of all trades God-or-demon), the druid God-or-demon of “the Staff “ of the men of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia).

Gargantua is leaning on a club (which is generally an uprooted oak, from where his nickname of “Twists-Ak “ “Tuist-Ak “ etc.) and carries a grape basket. These two attributes are symbolically equivalent to the oak bludgeon and to the cauldron of Dagda.

Just as the trace of one of the wheels of the carriage being used for the transport of the Dagda’s bludgeon is a ditch as broad as the border of two provinces, Gargantua traces behind Quantilly a 10 km long by 3 km wide, ditch.

Once a year, the stone bowl of the giant poured the wine to the poor people in Bourges, in the same way nobody left the Dagda’s cauldron without being satisfied.

Eochaid Ollathir is coupled ritually, on the bank of a river, at certain periods of the year, with the female deities in the country, and we see Gargantua crossing the Loire River “to meet the girls of Saint-Genouph “ on the banks of the large median river. Briefly let us remind the conclusions of a study about the Dagda which seems valid for Gargantua: “Chief-god-or-demon, he is such regarded as the father of his people of which he is, by his science, the first magician, by his mace, the defender, by his cauldron, the feeder one. His food orgies are at the same time shows of vitality but also rites of abundance. By his periodic couplings with the ground deities, he ensures to his people the protection of those and devotes in his person the union of man and of the land.”

In addition, the Gargantua of Avranches (French department of the Manche ) is accompanied by a badger which is used by him as a dog, just as Suqellus, the mallet or cup god-or-demon , is represented with a dog at his right. This god-or-demon was compared with the Dis Pater of Caesar , master of life and death, father of mankind. But it is a purely biological paternity, relating only to the bodies. As we have had already the opportunity to notice it, the fact that, for Caesar, this god-or-demon is linked, not with the spiritual richness, but with the material… wealth, proves it.

Gargantua has a hammer, and reigns on the mounds, abode of the dead . Like the mallet god-or-demon , he is bearded and his swearword “By my beard! “ at the same time evokes the sacred but also magic nature at the same time , of the archetypal male ornament, like in the “Shame on our beards “of Welshmen.

The majority of the sites with legends and toponyms referring to the gargantuan myth, mark out former Roman and pre-Roman ways. Gargantua makes the “passage” easier, he drinks in the fords, builds bridges, establishes the communication between earth and heaven, the tangible world and the supratangible world. We find besides the same symbolism when Gargantua draws in the firmament of Bresse a splendid rainbow.

Not only does he build bridges, but in several legends, he “is “ himself the bridge, according to the well-known Welsh expression ( "He who is chief, let him be a bridge" ), and the presumptuous mortal who crosses this bridge is precipitated in the river.

Gargantua is the Chief or King of the World (Bitu-Rix) of the continental Celtic tradition, and that explains why he founds Avaricum (Bourges), capital of the Bituriges, why the population of this town was in communion once a year in a kind of ritual drinking bout.

The guard of the communication routes is, in Roman mythology, Mercury, substitute for “grianainech “( sun faced) Lug. However we see Gargantua in action close to the “dun “of Lug [Loudun?]: he plays with a puck close to Lyon and built the hill fort of Laon (Aisne).

Henry Dontenville insisted on the race from east to west that Gargantua carries out, from the Donon (in the Vosges) to the Mount-Tomb (Mount-Saint-Michael, French department of the Manche). Saint Christopher,Christian substitute for the giant,goes round the earth in 24 gigantic strides and in the Vexin in Normandy, the beams of the sun which pass through the clouds are called in a rather picturesque way: “legs of Gargantua “.

If the name of Gargantua does not appear in the Irish tradition, the Welsh chronicles, we saw it, mention a Gurgiunt, gentle and firm “ king “ son of Belinus, founder of Caerleon (Editor’s note. Ruined

214

town in Wales, one of the main fortified towns of Arthur) and the effigy of this Gurgiunt was still carried in procession on the ramparts of Norwich (Norfolk. England) in 1578.

The mentioned above “Great and Inestimable Chronicles “ which represent folk recollections about him, report that the parents of Gargantua were “made “ on the highest mountain in the East, with the bones of a bull whale and of a female whale, in which Mr. Henry Dontenville recognized the deities Belenus and Belisama.

Let us notice that Gargantua is sometimes described riding his Huge Great Mare, which is the exact equivalent of the name of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, if it is preferred to use this word, Epona. The name of the Irish god-or-demon with which we compared Gargantua is, in the Book of Ballymote, Eochaid; which is explained by the old Celtic iuo-katus, “yew warrior “ i.e., with a javelin out of yew wood, the tree of the dead; but in the Book of Leinster, previous of two centuries, we find the form “Eocho “( genitive Echach) which represents an old Gaelic Eqos (Gaulish and old Brittonic Epos) meaning “rider, knight “.

DOCUMENT.

GARGANTUA ACCORDING TO OUR IRISH PEN FRIENDS AND COUNTERPARTS.

EXTRACT OF THE LEGEND ENTITLED: THE SETTLING OF THE MANOR OF TARA (SUIDIGUD TELLAIG TEMRA).

Once we were holding a great assembly of the men of Ireland around Conaing Bec-eclach. On a day then in that assembly we beheld a great hero, fair and mighty, approaching us from the west at sunset. We wondered greatly at the magnitude of his form. As high as a wood was the top of his shoulders, the sky and the sun visible between his legs, by reason of his size and his comeliness. A shining crystal veil about him like unto raiment of precious linen. Sandals upon his feet, and it is not known of what material they were. Golden-yellow hair upon him falling in curls to the level of his thighs.

Stone tablets in his left hand, a branch with three fruits in his right hand, and these are the three fruits which were on it, nuts and apples and acorns in May-time: and unripe was each fruit. He strode past us then round the assembly, with his golden many colored branch behind him, and one of us said to him, ‘Come hither - and hold speech with the king, Conaing Bec-eclach.’ He made answer and said, ‘What is it that you desire of me?’ ‘To know whence you have come,’ said they, ‘and whither you go and what is your name and surname."

"I have come indeed," said he, "from the setting of the sun, and I am going unto the rising, and my name is Trefuilngid Tre-eochair." [Gaelic lord of the triple key. Editor’s note]

"Why has that name been given to you?’" said they. ""Because it is I who cause the rising of the sun and its setting." "And what has brought you to the setting, if it is at the rising you do be?"

"A man who has been tortured — that is, who has been crucified by Jews today; for it stepped past them after that deed, and has not shone upon them, and that is what has brought me to the setting to find out what ailed the sun; and then it was revealed to me, and when I knew the lands over which the sun set I came to mis Gluairi off Irrus Domnann; and I found no land from that westwards, for that is the threshold over which the sun sets.

"Say then," said he, "what is your race, and whence have you come into this island?"

----------------- ----------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------- ---------------------- -----

Follow then several rather obscure paragraphs, deeply marked by the underculture of the Christian monks of the time: exaggerated biblism, mixtures between Greek and Latin culture, the Baby Jesus, the crucifixion, the role of the Jews, etc. We will thus curtail all this passage which offers no species of interest in fact and we will remind only the beginning, to give an idea of it to our readers.

---------------- ------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------- -----

"How many are you in this island?" said Trefuilngid. "I should like to see you assembled in one place."

"We are not so few indeed," replied Conaing, "and if you desire it, so shall it be done; only I think it will distress the people to support you during that period."

215

"It will be no distress," said he, "for the fragrance of this branch which is in my hand will serve me for food and drink as long as I live."

He remained then with them forty days and nights until the men of Ireland were assembled for him at Tara. And he saw them all in one place, and he said to them, "What chronicles have you? Make them known to us."

And they answered, "We have no historian , in truth, to whom we could entrust the chronicles until you did come to us."

"Ye will have that from me," said he. "I will establish for you the progression of the stories and chronicles of the kingdom of Tara itself with the four quarters of Ireland round about; for I am the truly learned witness who explains to all everything unknown."

"Bring to me then seven from every quarter in Ireland, who are the wisest, the most prudent and most cunning also, and the historians of the king himself who are of the kingdom of Tara; for it is right that the four quarters [should be present] at the partition of Tara and its chronicles that each seven may take its due share of the chronicles of the kingdom of Tara."

Thereupon he addressed those historians, and related to them the chronicles of every part of Ireland. And afterwards he said to the king, even Conaing. "Do you come yourself for a space apart that I may relate to you and the company of the men of Ireland with you how we have partitioned Ireland, as I have made it known to the four groups of seven yonder."

Thereupon he related it to them all again in general, "and it was to me," said Vindosenos Fintan, "it was entrusted for explanation and for delivery before the host, I being the oldest historian he found before him in Ireland. For I was in Tul Tuinde at the time of the Deluge, and I was alone there after the Deluge for a thousand and two years, when Ireland was deserted.

Then Trefuilngid Tre-Eochair questioned Fintan through his knowledge of interrogation:"

"O Fintan," said he, "and Ireland, how has it been partitioned, where have things been therein?"

"Knowledge in the west, battle in the north, prosperity in the east, music in the south, kingship in the center “

So Trefuilngid Tre-eochair left that ordinance with the men of Ireland for ever, and he left with Fintan son of Bochra some of the berries from the branch which was in his hand, so that he planted them in whatever places he thought it likely they would grow in Ireland. These are the trees which grew up from those berries: the Tree of Tortu and the yew tree of Ross, the yew tree of Mugna and the Branching Tree of Dathe, the Tree of Usnech.

And this is the judgment Fintan passed, "let it be as we have found it, we shall not go contrary to the arrangement which Trefuilngid Tre-eochair has left us, for he was an angel of God, or he was God Himself."

216

THE IDEAL WOMAN BRIGANTIA/BRIGINDO/BRIGIT.

The Irish sublimated her in the Jungian sense of the word.

The concept of sublimated woman is equated by analytical psychology to an archetype, a psychological process emanating from the collective unconscious, more precisely that of the anima, considered as corresponding to "the feminine part of man."

Represented most often in the West under the figure of the Virgin but also under the features of goddesses such as Isis (ancient Egypt) or Kali (Hinduism), for the Jungians this concept forms the third level of the anima, which includes four of them.

In 1946, in his book Psychology of Transference, Jung distinguishes four levels of the anima:

- the "primitive woman," of whom "Eve" is the best known representation: the purely instinctual level;

- the "woman of action," or "Helen" (in reference to the character in Goethe's Faust): the romantic and aesthetic level;

- the "sublimated woman," of whom "Mary" is the main illustration: a stage bordering on spiritual devotion;

- the "wise woman," or "Wisdom": and final stage. Inspired by Gnosticism.

The stage of the sublimated woman corresponds to a rather high level of psycho-affective maturity: the individual maintains a rather rich spiritual, even religious, life and is able to clearly differentiate his desires from existential realities.

The best nevertheless would be perhaps to make noiba Brigitte an archetype of the wise woman.

In the process of individuation, the stage of the wise woman corresponds to the highest level of psycho-affective maturity and rare are the men, according to Jung, to reach it because "the archetypal experience is an intense and upsetting experience.

The name of this great goddess-or-demoness or fairy, is written in various ways: Bridig, Brigit, Brigindona, Brighid, Bríd, Bride, Brigan, Brigandu, Braidd, Breg, and she shows herself through innumerable avatars.

She was compared with Minerva/Athena by Caesar and has in common indeed a certain number of functions with this Roman goddess-or-demoness or fairy.

“They worship as their deity, Mercury particularly.... Next to him they worship Apollo, and Mars, and Jupiter, and Minerva; respecting these deities, they have for the most part the same belief as other nations: that Apollo averts diseases, that Minerva imparts the invention of work and art, that Jupiter possesses the sovereignty of the heavenly powers; that Mars presides over wars” (De Bello Gallico VI, 17).

As Henry Lizeray in his. S.D.D. notices it very well, Caesar is not convenient to explain when he arranges Minerva among the Celtic deities. Who is the goddess-or-demoness or fairy got up in this Roman name? We will never underline enough what Caesar said about her: according to him the Celts he met get the same idea of her as the people of the Graeco-Latin world.

Minerva being a goddess-or-demoness or fairy of arts and trades, the Celtic goddess-or-demon or fairy in question therefore has to be, it also, initially a goddess-or-demon or fairy of arts and trades, anything else, not a cosmic goddess-or-demoness, nor celestial or watery mother- goddess-or-demoness. The historians wanting, contrary to the text by Caesar, to make her a cosmic great mother-goddess-or-demoness, are wrong.

Noiba Brigitte has the characteristic, in this interpretatio romana, to be the single female divine principle mentioned by Caesar, and that explains perhaps, at least partly, the series of the incests of the Gaelic mythology seen by the bards. She can indeed , in this diagram, only be at the same time

217

the mother, the wife, the sister and the daughter, other god-or-demons. Situation exactly similar to that of the Pandavas of Hinduism which, who together, has only one wife, the beautiful Draupadi.

At the time of one of his raids, Arjuna, one of the five Pândava, wins Draupadi, the most beautiful woman in the world. She is the embodiment of Sri, goddess-or-demoness or good fairy of the prosperity even of the splendor (of the kingdom). Arjuna back, Kunti, the mother of this one, is convinced that he brings back food and invites him to share his spoils with his brothers.

She declares: “Whatever it is with share it with your brothers “. However, the word of a mother is always sacred. Draupadi therefore will have to become the shared wife of the five Pandava brothers who “enjoy her recurringly, one after the other, at agreed intervals “. A scandalous matrimonial mode (it is a very rare case of polyandry) for the morals of former Aryans, if still not for ours. Most difficult was to make the father of Draupadi accepting his daughter was to have five husbands 1).

The great central deity of the Caesarian diagram being single, she concentrates in her all the states, all the statuses, all the aspects as all the manifestations of the femininity: mother, daughter, wife, sister. In other words, she is Minerva, but also Venus, and so on (polymorphism and multi-functionalism).

It could be the great goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, to whom the Parisian boatmen bring, on one of the faces of their pillar, an honor torc . Identification made with reservations. Historians not having succeeded in agreeing on the exact Celtic name of the Minerva/Athena in question.

Noiba Brigit takes part more or less of the three functions. First function: poets and clairvoyants or doctors. Second function: weapons made by the smiths. Third function: fruitfulness as well as fertility, since she is a member of the “mopates “ what means “having a child in her arms “ goddess-or-demonesses or good fairies “ It is therefore also a home goddess-or-demoness or fairy.

In the mythology of Ireland, but is everything in conformity with the original druidism appeared in the 2nd thousand years before our era somewhere in Europe north of the Alps, in this Gaelic mythology therefore , noiba Brigit is known as a daughter of the Suqellus Dagda and wife of Bregsos/Bres. Mother of Brennus, Iuchar and Iucharba, by Taran/Torann/Tuireann in other versions, still Irish, of the original Pan-Celtic myth. Not simple!

She had two exceptional oxen, Fea and Men, having cleared the plain of Feimhean. She also had Torc Triath, the king of wild boars.

It is her who would have let out the first cry of pain heard in the country after the death of his son Ruadhan, during the second battle of the standing stones Plain.

The Irish tradition also insists on her tripleness.

- Goddess or demoness of the blacksmiths. Besides as a patron saint of the blacksmiths, certain authors bring her closer to the famous lady of the lake having entrusted the magic sword Excalibur, to the young Arthur.

- Goddess or demoness of intellectuals, the belisama Brigindo is therefore also a goddess-or-demoness or fairy of knowledge, of science, she purifies and enriches mind. Goddess-or-demoness or fairy of arts and music, she plays harp.

- Goddess or demoness or fairy of medicine. As well as we had the opportunity to point it out, among Celtic people the medical function was indeed apparently scattered a little everywhere and divided between different gods but as for diseases of body it was especially held by feminine elements feminine (apart from surgery which was reserved for the men and therefore for warrior druids). Some people wonder even if the picture of the anonymous good sorceress represented on a small votive stele (found in Grand and now kept in the Museum of Epinal) in what seems to be a chemist's dispensary, concocting some potions, would not be a representation of this continental Airmed.

Other legends ascribe to her the possession of an apple orchard of which the pollen gathered by bees produced a legendary mead.

We find in an old dictionary, written about the year 900 and called the Glossary of Cormac that noiba Brigit, for Gaels, is a poetess daughter of the Suqellus Dagda or more exactly than it is the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Brigit the velledae (file) honored because of the protection they received from her.

218

There were three sisters of the same name: in addition to Brigit the poetess, a second Brigit who practiced medicine, and a third Brigit, who forged iron. All three were goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if you prefer to use this word, daughters of the Suqellus/Dagda/Gurgunt; among Irishmen the name of Brigit therefore designated all three. It is consequently, according to the glossary of Cormac, a triple goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, whose competences extend to the poetic creation, the medicine and the fire of the forging mill.

Let us not forget nevertheless that the poetry of this time is not what we understand today with this name. The poets were then also clairvoyants, prophets, or wizard. As an owner of the veledae or filid, noiba Brigit has to be regarded as a goddess-or-demoness or fairy, of inspiration, of the type clairvoyant or medium. And it is undoubtedly because of her competences in the field of the magic that her protection was also extended to the smiths whose trade fascinated the men of the time. Same thing for medicine. Isn’t the Christian she saint who succeeded Brigit the great patron saint of herbs and cure?

In short noiba Brigit reigns therefore over arts, magic and medicine. She is the owner of some druids, bards (poets), vates (prophesying and medicine) as well as smiths rather strangely (at least in Ireland).

In the Christian belief, noiba Brigit became Saint Brigit, the guardian of cattle, the dispenser of fertility, both for domestic animals and human beings. She presides even over childbirth, since people will make her the midwife having been delivered the Virgin-Mary.

Noiba Brigit is combined with the feast of Ambolc, the purification of February 1st, supposed to protect herds and to support fruitfulness.

Notice on noiba Brigit seen by the Christians. Saint Brigit of Ireland or Kildare (451-523) was born in Faughart close to Dundalk, county of Louth, in Ireland. The unquestionable facts in connection with her life are very few, because the accounts about her started to be written down only in the 7th century, with the vita prima sanctae Brigitae.

The accounts relating to her do not match. They consist especially of accounts of miracles or anecdotes, of which some are rooted in the Irish folklore.

According to the origin legend of the royal clan of the Fotharta, of which she would be a member, her birth was announced by a druid, just like that of another Mary, mother of the great Lord, from where her nickname of “Mary of the Gaels “.

Certain legends make saint Brigit a daughter of the druid called Dubthach the brown . This druid could be fed only by the milk of a red-eared white cow. Other people state on the contrary her parents were of humble origin; others still that her father Dubhthach, was the chief of a clan in Leinster, and her mother a Christian prisoner called Brocca.

The accounts agree, however, on a point: all say her to have been baptized by saint Patrick and the future saint would have known her well; but in reality it is not certain that she ever met him.

As she wanted to remain virgin, Brigit would have requested the Lord to make her gift of an unspecified infirmity in order no man proposes marriage to her. She thus lost an eye (see the blindness of certain druids like Mog Ruith, who was voluntarily become blind in one eye in order to reinforce his gifts of clairvoyance) and the fact of becoming one-eyed made her become so ugly, that nobody wanted her as a wife.

Same legendary diagram with the small Frenchwoman saint called Neomaye, Neomoise, Neomee, Neomadie or Ennemoye, besides, who, to escape her suitors , obtained from God or Devil the grace to become goose-footed.

Some churches or chapels in the West of France represent her besides still thus. The saint was figured there as a goose shepherdess or guardian [what my maternal grandmother was a time before becoming the appointed cooker in the castle, of the counts of Salignac-Fenelon] or goose footed.

But let us return to our sheep. When Saint Macaille gave her the veil of a nun , he saw then above the head of the future saint , a fire column. At the moment when she leant to kiss the staircase which led to the altar, its wood started to grow green again and Brigit found again her eye as her whole beauty (when you marry the God-or-Devil of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it is better to be beautiful indeed).

Book of Lismore. Around 468, Brigit and some other maidens went to be veiled by the bishop Mel in Telcha Mide. He was happy to see them. Through humility, Brigitte remained behind in order to be the

219

last to be veiled. A red rose fell on her head, from the roof peak of the church. The bishop, somewhat disturbed, said to her : “Come now , Brigit, that I can veil your head before the others “. And in error he recited or read then for her… the ritual of the episcopal ordinations.

Macaille protested that episcopal ordination was not to be awarded to a woman, the bishop answered him that it was too late and that he could no longer do something for that.

Editor’s note.This story was perhaps invented to justify the very particular status of St. Brigit in her time. She had to exert semi-episcopal functions, like preaching, receiving confessions (without absolution), or to direct the Christians of her area even if some of our texts mention that it was through her friend St Conleth (Conlaed), chosen by her as bishop of Kildare around 490. In any event, for the Vatican, there was an official bishop in Kildare only since 519.

With those of her friends, who were veiled at the same time, she moved towards the forest which stretched not far from Dublin. They chose an enormous oak there and arranged three cells in its trunk there. From where the name of this place after that: “Kill-Dara “ i.e. “church of the oak “. Three cells in the trunk of a giant oak or three huts at the foot of an oak, even in a thicket of oaks?

Brigit is one of the patron saints of children and breast-feeding. To Brigitte many springs were dedicated the water of which was considered to cure sterility as well as headaches, and her main attribute was a coat (Gaelic brat). According to the legend, she used it one day to remove an unhappy person from the ass ears with which he was saddled: she covers with it his head that, on his knees in front of her, he had posed in her lap, or, to acquire grounds and to make her cow feed there: people grant her the surface her coat will be able to cover, but the aforementioned coat then starts to increase on its own exponentially. Brigit indeed had a cow which gave her an exceptional milk. One day that she received bishops, having nothing to give them, she prayed God or the Demiurge and could thus milk his cow 3 times in the course of the day. What to sustain the famished bishops, but that makes much think of the cauldron of plenty or of the famous pot (olla) of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt.

Most probable is that there was conversion to Christianity of a college of druids and priestesses up to that point dedicated to the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer this word, Brigit, and it is possible that the one who was going to become St. Brigit then presided over the destiny of the two communities become Christian.

Inside the sanctuary, there was a perpetual flame, and Gerald of Wales in the 13th century (1220?) notices that it was surrounded by a circle of bushes in which no man had the right to penetrate. This fire, at the time, was still maintained by 20 nuns.

The ritual of Ambolc or great lustration (Ambivolcos) normally is celebrated on January 31st or on February 1st, using a butcher's broom and some mistletoe, collected in the previous Cintusamoni. Ambolc is especially a festival of the andirons or of the fire-dogs, therefore of family home , and of children. Its rituals are celebrated indoors.

This feast is that of the great Brigit (Brigindo on the Continent) this is why the celebrant this day may not be a man, but has to be a priestess.

In spite of the date that matches the spring cleaning. At the time of the festival of St. Brigit, nature itself seems to get its breath back. This coming back of the sun, however, has to be combined with its purification (with its baptism in a way) from where the name of this festival: Ambivolcos. Everything therefore has to be clean and to shine. It is necessary to have one’s feet and one’s head washed three times (great ablution) to celebrate the ritual.

A certain number of the druidism deities are by definition heavenly, since their name even makes them beings located in the heights above the trivial circumstances of our world. They are all the theonyms beginning with ber bre bir or bri (Brixia, Bricta etc).

The theonyms Brigindo and Brigantia are derived from old Celtic (some say Proto-Celtic) “brigantiia “or “brigantis “ of which the meaning is “very high “ “very lofty “. The origin is the word “briga“ (height, fortress) which, used as a prefix, produced many place names, so much in the insular space, than in Gaul and in the Iberian peninsula.

It is also present in the composition of the name of certain people. Brigantia is found in particular in the name of the people of the Brigantes (current territories of Yorkshire and Northumberland) and of the Brigantii (close to the lake Constance), whose capital Brigantion (Bregenz) has the same origin; idem for Briançon. This meaning confirms the central role of the goddess-or-demoness. Or of this fairy.

220

The inscription found in Vaison-la-Romaine : MINERVAE BELISSIMAE SACRUM, was to be that of one of her temples, since the word belisama, which means “absolutely brilliant , blazing “ is one of her epithets. We also find in France inscriptions mentioning Brigindo (at Auxey in Cote-d’Or ).

In Bregentz in Austria, we found a defixio (a curse) engraved on lead, mentioning Ogmius and the Roman Dis pater. What is not without making us think of the Irish triad Brighid, Dagda and Ogma.

In Brampton, in Cumberland and in Irthington in Yorkshire, she is called upon as deae Nymphae Brigantiae (goddess and nymphs Brigantiae) what makes her also a multiple goddess-or-demoness or fairy, in relation with the mythical topic of fire in water.

In Corbridge, in Northumberland, she is associated with Taran/Toran/Tuireann (Jupiter in the interpretatio romana).

In Greetland, in Yorkshire, she is honored as a Victoria (victory).

In Blackmoorgate in Derbyshire, she is linked with Dis pater , Hercules, Apollo and Arvalus.

At Luxueil in the French department of the Haute-Saone, she is combined with Lusovius.

In Scotland, under the name of Bride , she is associated with Mabon/Maponos/Angus. On the Continent, it seems that she has rather relationship with Belin/Belen).

As we have had the opportunity to write it, belisama is one of the epithets usually associated with Brigindo/Brigantia/Brigitte. But there is another one, quite as known, nantosuelta.

At East Stoke in Nottinghamshire, we found a small stone representing a goddess-or-demoness or fairy, with her hair disheveled, holding a cup containing fruits, perhaps some apples. In France a goddess-or-demoness or fairy if you prefer, having the same look, is also reproduced on an altar found in Metz.

Her name is known to us by inscriptions found in Sarrebourg in the department of the Moselle, where she is combined with Suqellus. Deo Svcello Nantosvelte Bellavsvs Masse Filivs. To the god Suqellus and Nantosuelta, Bellausus, son of Massa.

The goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, holds in her left hand the rather diagrammatic representation of a small house at the end of a pole and in her right hand a sacrificial bowl from which she seems to pour the contents on an altar. The presence of a raven on some of her representations, makes her perhaps a psychopompous goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, from where her presence in the cemeteries.

One loses oneself in conjecture about the meaning of the little house she holds at the end of a pole there (some people wanted to see here not the representation of a house, but of a hive) as about the meaning to be being given to her name. The first word has to be translated into “valley “ but the second, suelta, is more enigmatic, and is perhaps stemmed from one of the names of the sun: sul. Some people deduce from it a meaning of the kind “ sunny or happy valley “ what, of course, in this case, would make her an image exactly opposite to the famous “valley of the shadow of death “or “tears “in the Bible.

In short, in her aspect “goddess-or-demoness or fairy, of rivers “ Brigindo/Brigantia/Brigitte was therefore a goddess-or-demoness or a good fairy of fertility, linked with rivers, and comparable in that with the aspects “goddess-or-demoness or fairy of fertility “ of the Gaelic Morrigani , in Ireland. One of the interpretations of the name of Nantosuelta (who flowers the valley) reminds of the name of the Irish Blathnat and of the Welsh Blodeuwedd . What makes the Suqellus Dagda a parallel of Curoi mac Daire in the Irish deviation, and a parallel of Arawn the prince of Annwn in the Welsh heresy. He also besides has red-eared hounds. The consort of this aspect of Bringindo/Brigantia/Brigit is undoubtedly the god-or-demon Suqellus (= Dagda) on the Continent. But that we had already noticed it.

1.The Pandavas are the five sons of Pandu. Arjuna, Yudhishithira, Bhîmasena, Nakula and Sahadeva.They are in conflict with their cousins, the Kauravas. This famous episode is narrated to us in the Bhagavad Gita, one of the books of the Mahabharata. This endless text, written in verses between the 5th century before our era and the 3rd century, recounts the fratricidal fights of two clans within the same family of deities. These eighteen chapters are originally founding myths of the Indian culture and civilization. The chapter first testifies to the including ambition of the poem and to its philosophical orientation: For all that relates to the

221

“goals of mankind “: conformity in Dharma (Cosmic Order), material wealth, love desire, freeing [from rebirths], what is in this text is also elsewhere. What is not in it exists nowhere.

CONCLUSION.

These twelve joined together god-or-demons therefore form the druidic sacred dodecahedron, but let us not forget that this list or this classification of the main deities, especially excerpted from the so much learned works and patient research of our fellow member in the old continent Dyfed lloyd Evans, cornerstone of the association Nemeton (www.celtnet.org.uk) is neither exhaustive neither complete, that it is neither a dogma nor an article of faith.

It is a challenge to take up (for all those to whom nothing of what is human is unfamiliar). If somebody is by chance in agreement with everything including in the least detail, then that means that he is unable of personal reflection. To be aware of the issues raised by this list or this classification is the only fertile and positive attitude to develop mentally. Is truly Celtic minded not the one who agrees at 100% with everything which is previous, but the one who is able to see the weak points of it in order to correct them or to improve them, because nothing of what human is, should be unfamiliar to us, we uns Fenians, men of thousand and one books and not of one. The goal of these few notes is to lead to reflect about the divinity and nothing else.

Just as in a firm, the president delegates some of his powers to efficient collaborators, these entities, or these hypostases (that Judeo-Islamic-Christians call angels or jinns and Hindus vyuha) range in a hierarchy going from the most spiritual (the closest to the demiurge or to the higher god-or-demon) down to the most diluted; the god-or-demons who structure and organize the matter, even less (the universal matter itself). Called anguipedic wyverns or Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Ireland.

The belief in the existence of these god-or-demons forms not surprisingly some shirk akbar or some shirk to the tenth power, for Muslim theologians.

222

FOUNDATIONS OF THE SUPREME TRINITY : THE PERSONIFICATION OF THE ELEMENTARY DYAD SOUL/MATTER, FIRE AND WATER. OR FIRE IN WATER.

223

THE WATERY GREAT MOTHER GODDESS: DANU/ANU.

Arrived at this level of the pleroma the Jungian archetypes are no longer of much use to us, and it is necessary to return to the usual analyses on the subject.

Among Celts, who were ecologists in a way, rivers were deified as sons or daughters of the ocean (Lero / Lir) and fathers or mothers of a crowd of fairies of waters.

Water is in a lot of traditions, the materia prima , or original ocean. The notion of primordial waters, of original ocean, is almost universal. Primordial waters indeed appear in many cosmogonies:

“Not only the druids, but others as well, say that men's souls, and also the universe, are indestructible, although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them” (Strabo Book IV, chapter IV, section 4).

The symbolism of water can therefore lead us very far, from the spring in the estuary, then from the estuary to the spring. The water circuit is rich in many lessons. It is the end which procreates its beginning, because, through the eternity of its perpetual cycle, water never seems to end or to begin.

Fire and Water are often linked in initiatory rituals of purification and re-generation. These elements supplement each other mutually, but at different levels. If water cleans soul up to supreme spirituality, Fire makes the thing effective through the realization of the highest spirituality level: the enlightenment. With Water, the being advances slowly, while he is completely changed with Fire.

Various authors illustrate the importance of water at the dawn of mankind by stressing also the combination of water and earth, and the setting up of this original paste, which the man kneads and manufactures to give it a shape, therefore a life (on a potter's wheel for example).

Water is life, origin of the world: rainwater, seawater, quiet water of the lakes, tumultuous water of the torrents. The water is the Mother and matrix, spring of everything. Water is everywhere, even in deserts, in oasis shape. Water is the origin and the vehicle of every life, vital fluid, blood in our veins, sweat of our efforts, tears of our eyes. In nature, water is everywhere. The sap of plants, it is water. A tree is a skyward raised river: water, through sap, gets ahead in a tree to meet light.

Water is fluid it hugs all the shapes it meets without ever upsetting them, water follows its course, it seems weak while in reality it is force. In the three terrestrial elements , it always prevails. Whether it is by softness when it erodes rocks through the ages and draws coasts in the shape of laces. By its anger, in torrents or in rains, it subjects earth to its wrath. Even fire, which has also the symbolic virtue of the purification, does not resist it. If incidentally fire becomes vengeful, water always brings it back to reason.

Water is free and without ties. It runs while following the slope of the ground or while following the current. Water strength is a female strength. But it also has its dark sides. The strength of the water, it is possible to see it during an inundation or during the most famous floods of the Danube. It slips everywhere, it goes in every direction. It is possible to stop a fire, it is not possible to contain an inundation.

The symbolism of the river and of the flow of waters is that of the universal possibility and of the flow of the shapes. It is also the symbol of fertility, death and renewal.

The descent towards ocean is the gathering of waters, the return to the lack of differentiation, the access to the Big Whole of the Pariollon. To go upstream like salmons do it, it is to go back to the divine spring, to the principle.

The river going down from mountains, meandering in valleys, getting lost in lakes and seas, represents the human existence with its succession of desires, feelings, intentions, and the variety of their wavering.

The last property of water, which is found in druidic religion is that of the body of water which acts as a mirror. Poetry, artistic writing as opera, indeed used a lot the beauty or peace associations

224

conveyed still water. Water becomes there then the instrument of this state, we all search deep down in our heart.

Fresh water also occurs in many stories or tales as a life, knowledge and truth elixir . Calm waters symbolize harmony and peace. Water is part of all initiatory rituals. Every pilgrimage place has its water point, its sacred spring or its healing well.

Water is also, of course, a food, but it is the only food which is without shape, smell, color nor taste! The newborn baby can feed only on liquid food, what refers therefore to the milk water, life and affection symbol.

Water makes noise, and the song of the streams is often linked to childish fresh, clear and "gurgling" lack of care.

The food water also has quite a different symbolic significance as soon as it is identified as a vehicle. The civilizations which were built around rivers included the notion of departure and travel to that of death: to leave far on the river or the sea, "it is to die a little.” Water appears then as a means of transport.

According to Saintine * the Celtic people used different means to remove the human remains. For example, in some regions, bodies were buried in the trunk of a dug tree then this trunk given over to the river. Such trunks in the mouth of the Rhine were indeed found. This custom mixes the worship of trees, only element making possible to pass from the earth into the heaven (cf. Jack and the beanstalk) and the worship of rivers.

In the other end of the Aryan world, the Ganges is undoubtedly the most sacred river in India, it is venerated from immemorial time as a true mother, she dispenser of life and of incomparable benefits. A sometimes fearsome mother, who always reminds of the evanescence of the things and of the impermanence of the world, who takes away, immerses and devastates. An especially protective and loving mother, who feeds and fertilizes generously, who washes her children from their sins and awakens spiritual aspiration in them. No river seems to be able to claim such a complex and spectacular mythology as that of the Ganges. Several amazing legends recall thus the wonderful descent of the goddess Ganga on the earth, come from heaven to save Mankind.

In Mesopotamian mythology, as shows it the poem of “Birth of gracious Gods,” found in Ugarit in Phoenicia, water is behind the creation of the world and of life.

The Mesopotamians imagine the origins of the world in the way they consider the world. Ki, Earth is a disc floating on Apsu, Fresh water, that encircles a big ocean edged with mountains. The whole is locked up in a sphere the upper part of which forms An, the Sky, and the lower part, the Hell world. This sphere is immersed in the primeval sea.

The Enuma Elish is the Epic poem of the Creation, Sumerian version. This poem of 1 100 lines of verse , written in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar 1st ( 1124-1103 before the common era), recounts the most famous narrative of the mystery of the origins.

In the beginning was Apsu, Fresh water, primeval masculine element, infinite stretch of underground fresh water and his wife Tiamat (Akkadian word designating the sea), the Salt Water, maternal and female element, composed of the immensity of salt waters. These two indeterminate supreme entities form a single and indistinct element. Nothing exists out of them before their waters mingle. The union of these two liquid elements procreates new primeval elements from where other gods are born and from where comes into sight the Earth which is going to make it possible the development of human life.

The union of Apsu and of Tiamat therefore gives birth to the Turmoil of streams, Mummu, then to the first divine creatures, two monstrous snakes, Lahmu and Lahamu. These two snakes give birth to Anshar, " Complete Sky ,” the male principle linked to the celestial world, and Kishar, " Complete Earth ,” the female principle equated to the terrestrial world. From these two worlds are born Anu, God of the Sky and two other kinds of deities: the Igigi, small Gods who people the Sky, and the Anunnaki, genies of Hell. This host of new gods turns out to be turbulent and loud. It disturbs the rest of Tiamat, who, supported by Apsu and Mummu, decides to destroy them ….

225

* Mythology of the Rhine. Joseph Xavier BONIFACE, known as Saintine). 1798-1865. Considering the Druidomania or the Celtomania of the epoch, we express nevertheless the deepest reservations on this information.

But let us return to our sheep that is to say to our beautiful Blue Danube.

WORKING DOCUMENTS: THE BLUE DANUBE.

By Franz von Gernerth.

Danube so blue,

So beautiful and blue,

Through vale and field

You flow peacefully,

Our Vienna greets you,

Your silver ribbon

Links all our lands

You merry the heart

With your beautiful shores.

Far from the Black Forest

You hurry to the sea

Giving your blessing

To everything.

Eastward you flow,

Welcoming your brothers,

A picture of unity

For all time!

Old castles looking

Down from high,

Greet you smiling

From their distant heights;

And the mountains corrie,

In morning light

Mirror in your dancing waves.

The nixies from the ground,

Whisper in a familiar way,

And all we can see

From the sky, gives to your waves a blue color.

…………

You know very well your brother, the Rhine,

On its banks grows a divine wine,

There is also, day and night,

The firmest and most faithful watch.

But envy him not those heavenly gifts

By you, too, many blessings stream down

And the brave hand protects

Our homeland!

…………..

226

The boat travels on the waves so softly,

Still is the night,

Love watching only

The bargeman whispers in the lover's ear,

That his heart long ago she owned.

O Heaven, have mercy on the loving couple,

Protect them from danger there forever!

Now carry them in blissful repose;

O small boat, therefore sail always on!

At the first Celts primeval waters were therefore especially personified or represented in the form of the goddess Danu in Central Europe (place of worship an island in the middle of the Danube?), Danu become the goddess Nerthus more in the north (place of worship an island in the North or in Baltic Sea?)

But this goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, if you prefer to use this word, such as she appears in the ancient druidism, is already, also, a synthesis. She is at the same time a water goddess-o-demoness, or fairy, but also a divine ancestor, mother of the god-or-demons. It is her who names them and individualizes them: the fact to say, to name things, it is, in a way, to give them an existence. In the story of Culhwch and Olwen for example, one of the tales appearing in the Welsh mabinogion, she is besides precisely the mother of the youth and love god-or-demon, Mabon / Maponos / Oengus.

Following the example of the she primordial ancestor of god-or-demons and men (since the mythology in Ireland is categorical in this respect, men and god-or-demons for it, have the same origin, or even speaks the same language, the Celtic), this watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness, having procreated our world with him, left it plays no longer an active role in it. She became in a way a dea otiosa, having delegated her power of intervention to her three main elements, to her three main aspects. From where from the fact, the Irish tradition teaches us almost nothing about her.

Maternal or procreating aspect of the W. G.M.G. (Danubia or Nerthus?)

The most ancient deity whose we know something is therefore Danu (bia) herself, the goddess-or-demoness or the fairy from whom all the hierarchy of god-or-demons received its name of Tuatha De Danann in Ireland. She was the universal mother. Her spouse is never mentioned specifically by his name as we will see it at the end of this chapter (the Bilios/Irminsul?)

In this respect, we will follow roughly the thesis of the great French archaeologist Jean-Jacques HATT, which is based on the interpretatio celtica of the Romano-British or Gallo-Roman, monuments or statuary. But on some points nevertheless, we will move away from it nevertheless, considering the reactions provoked by his theses in the scientific community (there does not exist, for example, toutatis or teutates god-or-demon; as we have had the opportunity to emphasize it many times over, but a multitude of tribal deities called so, what means precisely the word teutates which is a common noun, or the name of a category of god-or-demons, and absolutely not the name of a very definite entity).

A. The presence on the pictures of the cauldron of Gundestrup of a female deity sometimes isolated, sometimes accompanied either by two identical more small-sized characters, or by two different masculine characters, or of one character of the masculine gender, proves that it existed in the druidic panth-eon or pleroma a goddess-or-demoness, or a fairy if you prefer to use this word, occupying a place more important than the poor Roman Minerva brought to our attention by Caesar. The cauldron of Gundestrup represents the Celtic great mother-goddess-or-demoness (Nerthus? Danubia?) taming a formidable carnivorous monster, with the collaboration of two peaceful griffons, and also holding at bay two elephants, symbols of the death danger existing on battlefields for the warriors. The Celtic mercenaries fighting in the Carthaginian or Hellenic armies were indeed sometimes confronted with these formidable animals, which represented for them a lethal danger.

227

B. As we have had already the opportunity to see it, a great, sovereign, single, goddess-or-demoness or fairy, is called in the druidic panth-eon or pleroma described by Caesar, through interpretatio romana.

The latter included, besides three masculine deities, matching the three Indo-European functions, a female deity, equated by the latter to the Roman Minerva. It goes without saying this interpretatio romana is more than simplistic, and perhaps due to the prejudices of the conqueror about women.

C. This goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Jean-Jacques HATT besides began by naming her «mother goddess» in 1965.

D. As for us, and to avoid every ambiguity by adding on her designation, we will call her the "watery great mother goddess-or-demoness” by using an acronym, W.G.M. G.

E. According to Jean-Jacques HATT her true name appears on a bowl in fired clay, discovered at Lezoux in France. This inscription may be read thus: E…. ieuru Rigani Rosmertiac. She can mean, either …

- I gave this to Rigani and to Rosmerta.

Or …

- I gave this to Rigani, in other words, Rosmerta.

The problem is therefore the following one: is it a question of two distinct deities, or of the same deity having two different names?

Jean-Jacques Hatt opted for the second hypothesis, in agreement on this point with the following opinion of Dumezil apparently: «It seems that it is necessary to put back to the Indo-European community a type of goddess-or-demoness or fairy, whose trifunctionality is highlighted, and who is intentionally linked to the functional god-or-demons. This goddess-or-demoness or fairy, her gender and her intersection point attaché to the third function, is, however, active at the three levels, and it seems that her presence in the lists expresses the theological principle of a female skillfulness or “multivalence,” doubling the multitude of the masculine specialists. (The tripartite ideology of the Indo-Europeans.)

Of course, in that case, if what thinks this great French specialist of Indo-Europeans is not a simple carefully phrased remark ; it makes hardly the task easier for us. And we find ourselves regretting

the holy and biblical simplicity of Christianity, Roman and Catholic version, with all his saints or blessed persons.

Pierre-Yves Lambert, other great specialist of Celtic culture on the Continent, himself, opted for the first hypothesis, since he makes Rigani and Rosmerta, two goddesses-or-demonesses , or good fairies, different. What simplifies things damn.

According to Jean-Jacques Hatt the goddess-or-demoness or fairy called Rigani = Queen, had in fact three functional names.

- Cantismerta, the wheel dispenser.

-Catubodua / Cassibodua, the war and destruction goddess-or-demoness . It was this always bloodthirsty and murder thirsty Catubodua / Cassibodua who chose those who are going to die and who accompanied their soul / mind in the heaven of warriors (they called then the heads brought back by the victorious warriors "acorns"). Rigani, just as Epona, appeared on graves and in graveyards, the one as she guardian of tombs and she protector of the deceased, another one as the she driver of soul / minds.

- And and…. Now here we do not agree with the identification made by Jean-Jacques Hatt of the third aspect of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness, and we will go back besides on this point. The other great French specialist Pierre-Yves Lambert is indeed categorical, Rigani and Rosmerta are two distinct deities. As for us, we will opt therefore for the aspect …

- Danubia (Danu / Anu in Ireland, Don in Wales).

The Watery Great Mother-Goddess-or-Demoness is a pattern present in all parts of the world. The daughter, the mother and the old woman: such are indeed most often the three aspects of the great female deity.

The daughter, goddess-or-demoness or fairy, strong and individualized; the mother, a feeding deity, source of every food; and the old woman, the death and change goddess-or-demoness.

228

This symbolism includes all the activity of the higher great mother-goddess-or-demoness, in the various stages of existence: from birth to death, and from the death to a new birth.

As we have had the opportunity to say it, but repetere = ars docendi, we may accept the idea this watery mother- goddess-or-demoness is inherited from a pre-Indo-European substrate in some respects. It is certain, indeed, that she covers a very much ancient deity. The god-or-demons in India too, have Aditi for communal mother. It is therefore unquestionable that, since their origin (the area of the springs of the Rhine, of the Danube, and of the Rhone, in the second thousand years before our era) the Celts knew a female Primary Power, from whom comes all subsequent generation of god-or-demons, even of men.

Like all the goddess-or-demonesses or fairies, the great mother-goddess-or-demoness while going down on the human level since the end of the Hyperborean time, and was divided up in multiplicity.

The archaic goddess-or-demoness or fairy is the archetypal Goddess-or-demoness or fairy some women feel naturally, and some men also besides. She is , as an archetype, in every woman and in every man. But in order to be able to grasp her essence, it is necessary to be connected to most primitive aspects of the woman: womanhood, fortitude, seduction, menstruation, sexuality, pregnancy, delivery, feeding, relation to children, menopause, etc.

This not exhaustive list calls on all what exists in a woman since the beginning of Mankind, and the today's women are still very close to this archaic woman, who is before everything a mammal. I do not think it is necessary to think it is insulting, on the contrary.

It is obvious that at the beginning of mankind , men were impressed by this faculty the woman had to give life. Their society was not based then on a sexual discrimination, but on the importance granted to the feminine one, the woman representing the kind reproduction and its hope of permanence not to say of immortality.

The existence of this matriarchy during prehistory is hardly called into question , even if ethnologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists, do not agree on its definition. What makes problems more is to know why and how patriarchy took its place to impose itself with the invention of agriculture, between - 5000 and - 3000.

In the societies of the upper Paleolithic, where the mother was considered to be the one relative, where the ancestor worship constituted apparently the base of the rites or rituals, and where genealogy took into account only the lineage of women, the image of the creator of human life the clan made for itself , was that of a very first woman deified as a Divine Ancestor. Many feminine statuettes, which were very often called Venus, give us tangible pieces of evidence of that. These found statuettes represent, such as the Venus of Willendorf, chunky women from whom the attributes are brought out (a big breast, big belly, sometimes big vulvas as the Sheela na Gig).

We find the same idea in Mircea Eliade in his book entitled "The sacred and the profane.” The woman is mystically joined together with the Earth; and the childbirth appears as a variant, on a human scale, of the telluric fertility. All religious experiments in touch with fecundity as well as with birth have a cosmic structure. The sacredness of the woman depends on the sanctity of the Earth. Female fecundity has a cosmic model: that of Nerthus the Terra Mater of Romans, the universal Genitrix. In some religions besides, the Mother-Earth is seen as being capable of conceiving alone, without the help of a consort. The watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness Nerthus is also the one who reigns over what is confusedly felt without being seen: intuition, knowledge, spirit….. She reigns over waters: seas, oceans, large rivers, little rivers, streams and springs, arteries and veins of the Mother Earth, on lakes, deep wells, feelings and emotions.

These matriarchal values are often considered as a kind of golden age by some women, a marvelous and gentle life…. for them. And of course, it is indeed always nicer to be on the side of those who govern and have power, but it is not obvious nevertheless that these periods were always characterized by the deepest of harmony. Patriarchy is not good for the women, since it conveys values which they have to absorb in their daily life to the detriment of their own values , but matriarchy is not either satisfactory for the men who constitute, like it or not, the other half of Mankind, who therefore have to enjoy the same rights. Men equate women in rights and in dignity. Rivalry or jealousy between women permanently had to tear the clan and the males to act as armed wing or as

229

executioners of such or such a forceful woman. But men and women are made to live together by definition, that it is at the stage of small childhood, by being brought up together, or later, at the time of the necessary reproduction of the kind, not to go from a domination state to a submission state. The ideal is therefore to set up a cooperation which takes into account the person even of the men and of the women, to make tit possible to them to live, and to die, in dignity.

Primitive, Celtic, later druidic, religion, is by definition the religion of the people the language of which was worked out little by little during the 3rd thousand years before our era, somewhere in Central Europe, and more precisely in the Alps, in the area of the springs of the Danube, of the Rhine and of the Rhone. Of course, since it is here the cradle of the Celtic peoples, descendant of the first Indo-European farmers having gone upstream the Danube. Let us remind Frenchmen who are more than ever angry with geography that the springs of the Danube are only forty kilometers away of their dear Colmar.

- 1250: birth of the Urnfield civilization in Central Europe. Living in cleared glades where there are few places for big burials, the first Celts burn bodies and put their ashes in urns regrouped in collective graveyards out of villages. But later, they will take over for their leaders the usage of burial mounds. - 1200: first Celtic urnfields in South Germany then in the east of France.

The properly speaking "Celtic” civilization then slowly developed by cultural spreading on a substrate of previous prehistoric population 1).

The existence, from Bohemia to Alsace and Lorraine, of very ancient toponyms of Celtic origin to designate mountains and rivers; the permanence, through the successive epochs of the Copper, ancient bronze and Middle bronze, Ages, of a homogeneous area of population and civilization, stretching over the southern and Western part of Germany and over Eastern France, demonstrate the idea that it is really there the original cradle of the Celts 2).

In this region, a true continuity appears, at the same time in the funeral rituals ( burial mound with internal buildings), the various aspects of the material civilization (ceramic and bronzes) and, to some extent, in anthropological types.

Around -900-800, a considerable technological innovation comes to upset a relatively stable civilization: the metallurgy of iron. The beginning of this metallurgy is known in the South of Germany, in Austria and in the East of France: they seem linked to the emergence of a warlike aristocracy prestige of which is based on the usage of the sword as well as on the possession of pomp horses and carts (the first Celtic chariots). It is the civilization of Hallstatt. Less than hundred years is needed so that these technologies spread on the whole of the Celtic world, evidence of a strong cohesion of this population. Among the sites of this epoch, one of the best known is the grave of the Vix princess, in France. Other known funeral sites are located in Germany, notably the burials of Hochdorf, Waldalgesheim, Reinheim, Kleinaspergle, made similarly (a chariot, some gold jewelry,torcs and bracelets, amber pendants coming from Scandinavian or Baltic lands, some bronze pottery from Greek or Etruscan cities).

Traces of Celtic settlement in the south of Poland since the 5th century before our era are found. They came perhaps from Bohemia and Moravia and took up residence in Upper Silesia near Glubczyce (Czech border) as well as in Lower Silesia between Wroclaw, Legnica and the mount Sleza (Zobten). Another group seems to have come from Moravia in the 2nd century before our era, to become settled in the region of Krakow , where they contributed to the setting up of the Przeworsk civilization.

1. There is another thesis, equally serious. A wave of pre-Celtic or Celtic peopling of Europe would have taken place, overlapping one or several previous populations. The problem is then to know when and from what center would have left this first wave. The studies of some authors like Venceslas Kruta try to show that in reality the invasion of Western Europe by the historical Celts (that is to say those who spread in Europe in the first half of the first thousand years, from the Celtic "cradle" in Central Europe) would have been preceded in a large part of the Continent, in the Centre and in the West, by a strong Proto-Celtic substrate dating back to a much more ancient period, of at least six or seven centuries. The historical Celts would have pervaded regions already occupied by Proto-Celtic people, or culturally resembling, peoples, that is to say speaking a close of ancient Celtic language, and having social or religious structures equally close to those of their invaders. The Celtic peopling of Europe would therefore be previous in fact of several centuries to the classical hypothesis, which dates it of the 7th or 8th century before our era, approximately.

230

Some authors show thus Great Britain as Proto-Celtic from the 15th century before our era, while wanting to discover in civilization known as which prevailed then in this part of the world, some heroic social characteristics matching these of the first Irish Celtic myths. Come from a strong non-Indo-European substrate, this people would have been in full agreement since this epoch with Indo-European languages and culture.

Similarly, Venceslas Kruta thinks of a link of direct filiation between the Celts and a more ancient civilization, known as civilization of burial mounds (small artificial hillocks destined for burials). This civilization, which occupied the same part of the Central Europe as well as a part of France in the Central-East from the 2nd thousand years , would besides have ended up giving birth to the "historical" Celts. The first Celtic migrations therefore would have begun between the 16th century and the 13th century before our era, with the extension of the civilization of the burial mounds and the Goidels, Celtic occupiers of Ireland, would have been settled there at the beginning of the 2nd thousand years. The Celtiberians would come from the evolution of these proto-Celtic Civilizations of the Bronze Age, rather than from a merging between the historical Celts and the previous civilization (even if the historical Celts got as far as there

and left traces in the peninsula). How to explain in another way, for example, the apparent anteriority of the Celtic population in the Iberian peninsula?

How to explain the easiness with which the Celtic languages would have established themselves in regions won by them, when you know the time which is needed for a language to supplant another one? How to explain the absence of visible traces, as regards the cultural mutations which causes inevitably every invasion , in an island endowed with, however, so evidently Celtic population and culture than Ireland?

2. Notice of the heirs of Peter DeLaCrau . Our father besides explained to us always that the cradle of the family in 1635 (Attancourt) was well a part of this area with an initial Celtic population.

But let us return to this aspect of the great mother-goddess-or-demoness , ignored by our archaeologist (Jean-Jacques Hatt): her aspect Dana or Danu (bia).

The Danube is the most formerly known by the Celts, river. In Europe no river seems to be able to claim such a spectacular and complex mythology as that of the Danube. Several legends about it even reached up to the ears of the Greek navigators trading with the region.

The Danube is indeed one of the most ancient and of the most important European trade roads. Since prehistory, this watercourse was used as means of transport, for example for fur, which were transported along the river on rafts, or for the amber from the Baltic Sea.

Hesiod in his theogony in the 8th century before our era, already knows our beautiful blue Danube that he attaches to the god-or-demon of ocean (Lero???).

« Tethys bare to Ocean eddying rivers, Nilus, and Alpheus, and deep-swirling Eridanus, Strymon, and Meander, and the fair stream of Ister…… Also she brought forth a holy company of nymphs who, etc..”

Hesiod lists the whole race of the descendants of Lero, principle of waters. This listing is made without order ; Hesiod, like his contemporaries, had only incomplete notions in geography: except for the Nile, for the Po, for the Danube and for the Ardescus River, the scholiasts put in Scythia, all the rivers about which Hesiod speaks belong to Greece and Asia Minor.

In the 8th century before our era, the Greeks went upstream the Danube from the Black Sea, through the city of Tomis, the current Constanta. Their trip stopped near Bazias, where begin the Iron Gates, a place where the Danube takes on several dozen kilometers a very narrow and steep-side valley, and where the bed of the river made impossible their progress towards the Southern Carpathians or the Serbian Ore mountains.

According to some people, Jason and his argonauts, on their way back, would have arrived to Ljubljana, the capital of current Slovenia. It is, of course, a mythological narrative. What is sure on the contrary, it is that the place was occupied from the Neolithic that a lake habitat stretched in the south of the city, that Illyrians then Celts settled in the basin of Ljubljanica, and that in the century previous to our era, the Romans installed in it a military camp.

231

The other most ancient record on the Danube is in the historian Herodotus (about 484 - 430 before our era).

”The Nile flows from Libya, right through the middle of it; and as I guess, reasoning about things unknown from visible signs, it rises proportionally as far away as does the Ister. For the Ister flows from the land of the Celts and the city of Pyrene through the very middle of Europe; now the Celts live beyond the Pillars of Heracles, being neighbors of the Cynesii, who are the westernmost of all the peoples inhabiting Europe. The Ister, then, flows clean across Europe and ends its course in the Euxine Sea, at Istria, which is inhabited by Milesian colonists” (II, 33).

“The Ister in fact traverses the whole of Europe, rising among the Celts, who are the most westerly dwellers in Europe, except for the Cynetes, and flowing thus clean across Europe it issues forth along the borders of Scythia” (IV, 49).

Herodotus, who has never stayed in this region, probably refers to an even more ancient text by Hecataeus of Miletus, of the middle of the 6th century before our era. We have no older sources. The name of Pyrene resembles much, of course, that of the famous mountain range separating Spain from France, but some indications let to think that this city is rather the Hillfort of Heuneburg, by the Upper Danube (near Hundersingen in Germany).

The Keltoï are therefore some "Danubians,” what does not say more to us a, unless if we point out that the Danube was known as Ister in Greek, and that in Greek hyster also means "matrix.” The Danube would be therefore a matrix of peoples, and even more precisely a matrix of Celtic peoples. Herodotus was perhaps influenced by this druidic religious conception since he made the springs of the Danube the country of origin of the Celts.

If Celts is said Keltoi in Greek, let point out that a little more in the north, in Finnish, keltos means amber. Keltoi would be therefore also "those of amber" for the Greeks. The Ister / Danube being obviously the amber (fluvial) route, it would be quite possible.

It is difficult to endow with a very simple geographical spring such a complex river , coming straightly from primeval waters (Lero). We would like it to be untraceable, this spring, lost forever, but the Romans could locate it with accuracy.

There was a first progress in the knowledge of the Alps range and of the springs of the big rivers it houses, thanks to the military campaigns of Terentius Varro against the Salassi in 25 before our era and thanks to military operations of Tiberius and of Drusus, in the reign of Augustus, in 16 and 15 before our era, which made it possible to know better the region of the upper Rhine, of the Danube, and of the Lake Constance.

These military campaigns of the beginning of Empire were also useful for correcting the mistake of Herodotus on the location of the spring of the Danube, called first only Istros or Ister, and as a result for knowing better the mountains from which the river comes. Since Herodotus (II, 33), taken over by Aristotle (Meteorology, book I, XIII, 19), who mixed up the Alps and the Pyrenees, where he located the spring of Ister, progress was hardly made indeed.

Tiberius discovers the springs of the Danube after the submission of the Vindelicians of the Lake Constance, in - 16 - 15. The texts after this campaign show new knowledge of the region and locate them then with accuracy, near the springs of the Rhine, in the mountains of the Black Forest. Strabo acts as a witness from his time and claims the progress of the knowledge of these mountains by giving the historical landmark of the campaign of Tiberius (VII, 1, 5): “Near it (the Hercynian Forest) are the sources of both the Ister and the Rhenus […..] Tiberius had proceeded only a day's journey from the lake when he saw the sources of the Ister.”

It is true that the discovery of the springs of the Danube was sensed as such progress as Horace sang it in two of his Odes (IV, 14, 15). Pomponius Mela added that the Danube springs in Germania and also speaks about the discovery of its sources as well as of the finally done equating, between Danube and Istros / Ister. He explains that it is the upper course which is called Danuuius, and the lower course Ister (II, 8).

"The river that separates the peoples of Scythia from their neighbors, however, begins –its sources in Germany are known- with a name different from the one with which it ends.”

232

Pliny the Elder mentons even a proper noun (IV, 79): "The Ister rises in Germany in the heights of Mount Abnoba.”

Tacitus takes over the information, but uses the name Danuuius, what proves the equating is really achieved between both names, whatever the place of the river of which it is spoken (Germ. I, 1): "The Danube pours from the gradual and gently rising slope of Mount Abnoba.”

But in reality the Danube has not one spring but two. It is formed by two small tributaries. The meeting of the two forms the Danube. The Breg River (name originally Celtic) is the longest of the two streams which unite to form the Danube (other one is the Brigach, a name also of Celtic origin). It wells at 1078 m above the sea level in the massif of the Black Forest above Furtwangen. Its spring is, for the geographers, the true source of the Danube, because the Breg is a little longer than the Brigach. It is a natural site. After a 49 km course , the Breg joins the Brigach in Donaueschingen, at the beginning of the big river which goes through all Europe before flowing into the Black Sea. The catchment area of the Breg covers a 291,2 km area; the spring is a hundred meters away from the water shed between Rhine and Danube. At 200 meters away from there indeed is the spring of another stream, the Elz River, the waters of which will join, through the Rhine, the North Sea. The symbolic source of the Danube is nevertheless in Donaueschingen as we said it, because it is only from there that the watercourse takes its name of Danube.

IN SEARCH OF THE CONSORT OF THE GODDESS DANU.

It is becomE frequent at present, in some Celtologist or Druidicist circles, to speak about the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia). Some people claim even to be fervent faithful of her worship. Such is notably the opinion of Charles Squire (Celtic Myth and Legend, Poetry and Romance. 1905). For this author, Danubia would have had as spouse Bilios (Bile in Welsh mythology). She represents the land and its fruits. All other god-or-demons are, at least theoretically, her children.

Peter Berresford Ellis (The Chronicles of the Celts.1999). For this author, Danu (bia) bia would also have had as spouse Bilios and procreated Dagda as well as Brigit.

All these affirmations are at the moment pure speculations to be taken with largest precautions.

Let us remind first that Danu is a theoretical form never found as such in the Irish book of conquests (Lebor Gabala Erenn). What is found in this book, it is the form Danand or Donand, notably in the expression "mother of Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba?” Linguists nevertheless consider well really this form (Danand) as a genitive of Danu.

As for Bilios, in spite of its rather logical association with the water (spring in the forest) nothing proves that it is this cosmic tree which would be the cause of the gods or of the human beings.

As for its meaning see the Irminsul tree cut down by Charlemagne in 722 and which was probably a sacred oak roughly fit out (a simulacrum would have said Lucan).

The name Bile appears in the Book of Conquests (in Ireland) without links with Danu (bia) and only to designate one of the sons of Bregon or Breogan brother of Ith, father of Mile , and so on.

But the Danu of our Irish material undoubtedly corresponds on the contrary, to the Don of the medieval Welsh literature (mother of the god-or-demons named Gwydion, Gofannnon, Amaethon, Arianrode, etc.). And the triad of the Island of Britain N ° 35 considers Beli to be the father of Arianrode (Aryanrot Merch Veli). The link is thin but believable.

Bile / Beli can it be the same name?

The most believable etymology of the Irish Bile name (see billiard billet as well as the noun deshabille) brings us back anyway to the word " bilios" which designates particularly a sacred tree. Example the toponym Biliomagus in the Massif Central (etymology of the town of Billom). Useless to say that, in that case, the tree in question had to be an oak, even if medieval Ireland experimented others of them. In any case, it doesn't much matter, as for a symbol, the image imposes, the water and the Hercynian Forest, tree and spring. Danubia and Bilios.

Let us notice nevertheless that in the same region as the source of the Danu (bia), the Latin poet Avienus speaks to us about a mountain called "Pillar of the sun" (solis columna). A column located by our author at the spring of the Rhone, but considering the epoch (the 6th century before our era) it is possible to wonder if there was not a mix-up. Herodotus puts the spring of the Danube in the Pyrenees, so ?

233

"But the situation requires that I explain more fully to you the river Rhone. Bear, my Probus, with my dwelling on the rising of the river, the course of the water’s wandering, what people’s land it washes. And we will say what great advantage the river brings to the natives and what are the divisions of its mouth. The alps raise their snowy ridge up into the sky in the east, and the fields of Celtic soil are cut by its rocky height. Winds are always breathing storm. The Rhone flows from here and raising itself up its source cuts through a gaping cave with savage force. It is navigable at its first source and rising. But that side of the ridge that rises up and gives forth the river, the natives call the “Pillar of the sun.” For it rises up to the heavens with such a great height that the southern sun is scarcely visible due to the when the sun goes to the north to bring back the day. For you know that such was the view of the Epicureans. The sun does not set, it does not sink into the waters, it is never hidden. Rather it goes around the world, it runs through the corners of the sky, it gives life to the land, it gives nourishment with the food of its light to all the recesses , but to certain regions in turn, the bright face of Phoebus is denied (a mountain opposes to it with its high summit which, being continued from the West up to the Far North, divides into two parts the stretch of the world and the road of the sun). When the sun cuts through the southern course and the light sinks on the Atlantic axis in order that the sun spread its fire to the furthermost Hyperboreans and bring itself back to the Achaemenian rising (Persia) , it bends towards other sections of the sky curved course and passes the goal. And when he denies bright light to our view, black night rushes from the sky, and murky darkness suddenly covers all in our area. But clear day then enlightens those who shiver exposed to the north wind. But again when shade of night possesses the north, all our race passes a splendid day (Avienus. Sea Coasts ).

We are much more near the image of the Indian Mount Meru there than of the ash Yggdrasil of the Germanic people or of Saxon Irminsul.

Petronius: Satyricon, 122. « There, high in the Alps, where the crags, by a Greek god [Graius?] once trodden, Slope down and permit of approach, is a spot ever sacred to Hercules's altar; the winter with frozen snow seals it and rears to the heavens a summit eternally hoary as though the sky there had slipped down: no warmth from the sunbeams,no breath from the Springtime can soften the pile's wintry rigor nor slacken the frost chains that bind; and its menacing shoulders the weight of the world could sustain.”

IRISH BALLAD.

Under the name of ANU//ANA the Irish bards (oh these bards!) accentuated the Nerthus or terrestrial characteristic of the watery great mother goddess Danu (bia) but nevertheless kept the basics of her nature.

The Sanas Cormaic or Cormac's glossary, an old Irish dictionary of the 9th or 10th century, specifies: Ana.i. mater deorum hibernensium. Robumaith din rosbiathadsi na dee (deos. de cujus nomine anæ dicitur.i. ímbed 7 de) cujus nomine da cich (n) Anainne iar Luachair nominantur ut fabulaverunt (vel fertur). vel ana quod is annio vel aniud graece quod interpretatur dapes.

In other words: Ana i.e. mater deorum hibernensium. Feeding mother of gods (deos de cujus nomine anæ dicitur.i.e abundance) and de cujus nomine the two paps of Anu located in the West of Luachair nominantur ut fabulaverunt (vel fertur). Vel ana quod est annio vel aniud graece quod interpretatur dapes.

Ana is therefore the biological mother or the wet nurse of the god-or-demons , known as children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Danu (bia) in Ireland and more precisely of the three god-or-demons of Danu.

But, as the god-or-demon Janus who had two faces, Anu is not only a goddess-or-demoness or fairy of fertility, but also a goddess-or-demoness of death, of the underground world and of the hereafter, ruling over marshes (Celtic ana), considered as an entrance of Hell. Goddess-or-demoness or fairy of

234

life and death, she is at the same time, like the earth itself, symbol of fecundity, of course, but also of rotting, everything being born from earth and going back to earth.

From where from the famous lines of verses of the Parisian great poet that was Villon (ballad to Our Lady).

Lady of Heaven and earth,

Empress of the marshes of Hell …

The worship of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Anu was continued, either in that of St. Ann, mother of the virgin Mary and patron saint of the Bretons or of the Canadians, or in the worship of Mary as " black virgin .” When the Parisian great poet Francis Villon prays Mary by naming her "Empress of the marshes of Hell,” he means thereby that Mary rules, as Danu/Anu , on the underground world, of which marshes are an entrance.

The Celtized Germanic people who were the Cimbri or the Teutons had made the Celtic great mother-goddess-or-demoness a simple mother-earth, with their Nerthus. At least according to the Roman Tacitus because in fact his dwelling is a lake or an island. We have the same phenomenon therefore of late location by euhemerization and degeneration of the myth in Ireland, with the legend concerning the two hills in the region of Killarney, County Kerry, in Munster, which are called "Da chich Anan,” the two paps of Anu" according to Cormac's glossary. In his book dedicated to Celtic religion, Jan De Vries himself admits that it designates a goddess-or-demoness or good fairy of fertility well, that it expresses obviously this Anu or Ana is equated with the mother-water, who gives fertility to Munster, and not to Munster only besides, but to the whole Ireland. The island, indeed, is also called "iath nAnnan" what means "Anu’s land or country.”

Some authors claim another hypothesis. We would find the name of Anu in the Irano-Aryan Anaitis / Anahita and in the Annapurna of the Indo-Aryans, it means Anna the provider, appellation allocated then to a summit of the Himalayas, as well as in the Anna-Perena of the Romans. Therefore a primeval Indo-European Goddess-or-demoness, mother of the god-or-demons and of the mortals.

Let our readers form as usual their own opinion after a careful examination of the facts. All that is secondary! What is important it is the spirit and not the letter of our spiritual approach! We are not people of one book but of twelve. We are Fianna.

THE IN ROMANO-BRITISH OR GALLO-ROMAN STATUARY GODDESS DANU: FILE.

On the cauldron of Gundestrup, Danu/Nerthus is , obviously, in the center of the myth, the main character of which she is. She appears on it in her majesty, sovereign of the earth next to Taran / Toran / Tuireann, she protector of warriors. She is seen for example holding at bay the elephants, therefore protecting thereby the Celtic mercenaries fighting against these monstrous assistant helpers of the Carthaginian or Mediterranean armies.

Later, during the Roman period, and for the great French archaeologist Jean-Jacques Hatt, we will attend therefore two opposite , but concomitant, phenomena.

a) The splitting of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness Danu in two or three "Roman" well separated epigones: Minerva, the Fortune, Juno. The first observation which is indeed obvious in her case is the (relative) importance of the worship of Juno among the Romano-British or Gallo-Roman people. Many inscriptions show it. But we also have Diana and Venus, Venus and the Fortune.

b) The elevation of some deities at the rank of multipurpose goddess-or-demonesses or fairies, due to needs and to requirements of the believers. Some secondary, archaic or recent deities, as the mother- goddess-or-demonesses or fairies , Epona, Sirona, or even goddess-or-demonesses or fairies of rivers, of large rivers and of the Sea, as Sequana [and it would be possible to add the Boyne in Ireland] are shown in their figurations so that they take the shape and the aspect of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness Danu (Rigani in Jean-Jacques Hatt).

235

The deities who will be shortly reviewed below by Jean-Jacques Hatt, either it is Juno Queen, Fortune, Diana, Minerva, or the Victory, belong all , seemingly, to a purely Greco-Roman pantheon. However, according to the well-known process of the Celtic interpretation of the Hellenic then Roman images and concepts, they cover deities or concepts of druidic origin. It is particularly true for Juno Queen, who is other than the Romanised form of the Celtic Danu . Other deities, as Fortune, Minerva, Victory, separately, or in couples, are made responsible for representing the various functions of Danu, by becoming identified partly with her.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

On some capitals of Hellenic -Celtic art found in Saint-Remy (in Provence) is represented a group of deities including bearded Taran / Toran / Tuireann, combined with three different deities, representing three shapes of the sovereign goddess-or-demoness or fairy. Three deities combined on this capital of Glanum, make it possible to imagine better in a concrete way the concept of the triple competence of Danu , so that its subsequent splitting , in the practice of the worship, in several different Greco-Roman deities, making up therefore, in a way, her hypostases: most often Juno, Minerva, Fortune, sometimes Venus. The presence of Venus in the triad of deities brought to the judgment of Paris by Hermes, on the Mount Ida, was known by indigenous druids, who probably interpreted it in the sense of their own religious traditions. Like did it the druid having explained the Celtic interpretation of Hercules to Lucian of Samosata.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

An indigenous, queen, goddess-or-demoness or fairy, is known in Alsace: it is the dea Rigina Candida, who is invoked on two written bas-reliefs discovered in Ingwiller, unfortunately destroyed by the fire of Strasbourg in 1870, but of which the memory was preserved to us by two drawings of the canon Straub.

The written form of the second inscription "Deae Can… Riginae…. ex voto p. l. l. m." is particularly interesting, because it shows the survival of a provincial form: Rigina, from the Celtic Rigani. On one of the bas-reliefs, the queen goddess-or-demoness or fairy, is accompanied by a male companion, on another one,by two consorts, probably female.

The list of inscriptions mentioning Regina Candida has recently increased with two specimens, unearthed on the occasion of excavations carried out by the Landesdenkmalamt of the Bade-Wurttemberg in a sanctuary close to the Limes camp in Osterburken. It is about two altars, devoted the one to Deae Candidae Reginae, the other one to Diae Candide Regine.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

A bronze statuette, found in Strasbourg, at the edge of the Ill River, but today disappeared, shows a draped Fortune, holding with her left hand a horn of plenty and with her right hand a rudder. From a grapes bunch which overflows from the horn of plenty , an eagle goes out. The fact the Jupiter’s eagle is landed on the horn of plenty , expresses the idea of the union of Jupiter-Taranis with Abundance, another form of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu-Cantismerta. This union favors the fertility of the soil and the abundance of harvest. It is there still a Celtic interpretation of the goddess-or-demoness Fortune, as a she-dispenser of the worldly goods, by the heavenly way. In other words, Fortune is equated here with the heavenly form of the goddess-or-demoness or sovereign fairy, of druids.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

Esperandieu Emile 4475: Fortune sitting, draped , crowned with a diadem, in a round-topped niche. She holds with her right hand a sacrificial bowl , with the other hand a horn of plenty . At her right a bowl, at her left, put down on the ground, a shield. This representation illustrates the skillfulness of the Fortune: sovereign of the world, because of the diadem which crowns her head, and of the globe which is put down to her left, presiding over war and defense dramas, by virtue of the shield which is in her right. She also contributes to proving that the Fortune was one of the forms, in Celtic interpretation, taken by Danu.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

236

The watery goddess-or-demoness or fairy,Danu, took the aspect, in Naix (goddess-or-demoness or fairy of Naix No. 1) of a matrona, but this matrona derives in a direct continuation from the Celtic watery goddess Danu, because her monument keeps the memory of the code of the Latenian religious signs. However, this deity, accompanied with her maidservants, takes at the same time a very realistic appearance, that of a grandmother. Her two maidservants, holders of jugs, attach her to the worship of springs.

The goddess-or-demoness or sovereign fairy Danu , in the shape of Cantismerta, wheel she-dispenser, also took the look, in Naix (goddess-or-demoness or fairy of Naix No. 2) of a sitting goddess-or-demoness or fairy, bare-chested, with her body lower part draped. The two X of her seat are replaced with two horns of plenty crossed in saltire. A wheel rests on the seat, to the right of the deity. If it is a classical iconographic type of Greco-Roman art, Fortune; it is changed in the direction of the indigenous interpretation, in order to represent the watery sovereign deity in her cosmic functions, as she shares with his seasonal spouse, Taran / Toran / Tuireann, the power over the lightning and the weather; she is also a dispenser of the fruits from the earth. If her horns of plenty are arranged in saltire, it is to remind by the X sign, the fertilizing power of the lightning, already evoked by the presence of the wheel put vertically on the seat to the right of the goddess-or-demoness. Or of the fairy, if this word is preferred.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

On a four deities stele unearthed in 1949 in Toul: in the center, Jupiter, bare-chested on a seat with back. He is accompanied, at his right, by a female deity, also bare-chested (her well-marked breast, as well as her slightly prominent belly, shows clearly her gender). She is sitting and rests her foot on a scaled-down sphere. She holds a horn of plenty with her left hand. To the left of the god-or-demon , a standing up character, also bare-chested , represents perhaps Hesus. The sphere, the horn of plenty, the female genitals of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, characterize obviously Danu, as sovereign divinity of the water responsible for abundance. The group represents a condensed episode of the tribulations of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

The careful drawing, looking precise and relatively faithful, of a missing monument coming from the sanctuary of the Châtelet (Esperandieu Emile. VI 4742), preserves to us the memory of a sitting Fortune, bare right shouldered. She holds in her right hand a horn of plenty , supported on an altar, and with the left one a globe encircled with a ribbon forming a cross. On each of both altars framing the seat of the deity , a child’s foot , remain of a missing statue. The goddess-or-demoness or fairy, if this term is preferred, was therefore surrounded by two childish characters.

I think there is here an image of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, queen, sovereign of heaven and earth, accompanied by the dioscuri or Celtic divine twins. The globe does not represent the Earth, but the universe, and links in one sphere, both hemispheres, one of the lower world, another one of the upper world. Both twins were precisely the symbols of both hemispheres. We saw above that druidic mythology had attributed them the role of the passage from a hemisphere to the other one. As for the ribbon forming a cross, it appears to me to represent the sidereal power of Taran / Toran / Tuireann, master of the fire in the sky, linked to the goddess-or-demoness or sovereign fairy represented as Fortune.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

On a capital in Toul, today in bad state, but the development of which, luckily, in a more ancient and better state, was preserved to us by a very good drawing (Esperandieu Emile. 4107), a group of three deities includes: in the center, a bare Jupiter, having on his right a helmeted , armored, Minerva; on his left a bare Venus holding a torch in her left hand. This ternary group is framed by two groups of three gigantic anguipedics.

The whole indeed has the same meaning as that of the Jupiter on horseback and anguiped.

The Taranis Jupiter , in the center, is accompanied and assisted, in his struggle against the Titans, personifying the uncontrolled lifeblood of earth (Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Ireland), by a Minerva, on his right, which represents the warlike aspect of the goddess-or-demoness or sovereign fairy Danu, and on his left by the Venus with a torch, who represents her chthonic and hellish aspect. The capital in Toul expresses therefore at the same time the idea of a conflict, of a victory, then of a reconciliation between the heavenly power and the lifeblood of earth. This again found harmony is

237

expressed by the presence, beside Jupiter, of the Venus with a torch, symbol of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy queen in her chthonic and funeral functions.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

The discovery, in 1973, in Kerguilly-en-Dineault, of a tall statuette representing a Celtic war deity , makes it possible to find again the face of Danu in her warlike aspect.

The comparison with a stele of Birrens, in the Museum of Edimburg, is very much instructive. If the goddess-or-demoness or fairy appearing on this monument has the name of Brigantia, it is because this deity is nothing other than a regional avatar of Danu. Indeed, she bears on the crest of her helmet the trifid sign of the goddess-or-demoness or sovereign fairy. She holds in her left hand an apple, in her right hand a spear. Her shield is extremely simplified, to her left by the simple segment of an in relief circle. To her right, a stele rests over the ground. The apple as the stele allude to the worship of the dead warriors, of whom the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, if you prefer to use this word, is the guardian. It is therefore here the protecting function over the deceased persons, fulfilled for the warriors by this epigone of Danu.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt. On the pediment of a small religious building in Alesia, located on the area of the main temple probably devoted to Taran / Toran / Tuireann, is one of the representations of the episodes of the myth of Danu: her rise skyward to join her spouse Taranis. On this pediment, Danu is represented while she is taken away skyward by two cupids. The top of the hairstyle of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, if this term is preferred, is formed by two tufts standing on end, and ending by a motif reminding of the false lyre, symbol of Danu.

Interpretatio druidica of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

The three hares group is a part of the folklore in the east of France and in Alsace. Is it a series of offering, ritually preserved in the popular customs, a long time after their meaning had disappeared? Hares are given to the goddess-or-demoness or to the fairy by young people, on a bas-relief in Entremont (Esperandieu. 7844). Hares given at that time? Would it be the distant justification of the folk customs of the Easter hare? We are in the field of the pure hypotheses, but I think that it is in this direction it is necessary to search precise and persuasive pieces of evidence either in folklore, or in islander Celtic literature and traditions.

As for the golden apples of the Hesperides, it is necessary to notice that apples are often carried in the lap of the mother-goddess-or-demonesses, who are sometimes in close relationship with the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, queen, Danu, if they are not mixed with her. We know that apples had, in the eyes of the Celts, a the value of an amulet, for the passage from a world to the other one.

Interpretatio druidica by Peter DeLacrau .

How now to reconcile these different designs of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness?

Through the druidic philosophy of the five levels of truth (Pempedulia) in which every god-or-demon can be found.

His supreme, invisible , inaccessible to the human eye, state ; in this case and for the W. G. M. G. that of the mother of all what is living.

The hypostases of this supreme form, made necessary by our status of human beings.

Possibly more precise temporary embodiments, a lot being nevertheless very much controversial. The basic diversity of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness is expressed very naturally in these hypostases and these incarnations. Henry Lizeray himself was waffling for a long time between Epona (whom he equates to Proserpina) and this Fata Dana or Morrigani. The precise quotation is: "Our Lady in whom it is possible to recognize Proserpina or the Morgan La Fey of the ancient time" (Henry Lizeray. Ogmius or Orpheus).

The invisible presence of the goddess-or-demoness , or of the fairy, in the human soul / mind.

The shape, finally, in which it is possible to pay tribute to her, that is to say the statue, the representation, or the symbol (simulacra / arcana - in Sanskrit language-) into which a consecration ceremony introduced something like a reflection of the deity.

Conclusion (very provisional according to us) of Jean-Jacques Hatt.

According to Jean-Jacques HATT, the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness is sometimes triple, sometimes double.

238

This visible anomaly results from the collation , in Danu (bia) , of two designs coming from different traditions.

The Indo-European "theological principle" of the three functions, the concept, of pre-Celtic origin (shaman??? part of the civilization of the hunter-gatherer peoples), of the participation of the deity in two distinct areas. In the myth indeed, the existence of the watery great mother goddess-or-demoness is continually , or rather successively, shared between both parts of the world: the heavenly part with Taran / Toran / Tuireann, and the chthonic part with the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. This duality apparently is previous to the Indo-European reform of the druids, since we find the same design in certain more ancient deities, like Nerthus the Mother Earth according to the Roman Tacitus, even if she sits in an island, who also shows two hypostases: a Mother-goddess- or-demoness-Fortune , of the higher space, and a Venus-goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of waters, of lower spaces.

The signs or symbols of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness Danu.

Before Roman conquest, Danu prevails by her signs, in Celtic art, in symbolic representations of the god-or-demons and in their mythical relationships. The symbols of her power appear in the decoration of the most various objects: containers, weapon, jewelry, coins. Because even of her double, or triple nature, Danu is indeed among all Celtic deities, the one who has the largest number of symbols on the Continent.

Female power is also represented by the rhomb. The rhomb is the symbol of the woman of whom it represents the genitals and as a result the fecundity. Another of the most ancient signs is formed by three circles put together in an isosceles triangle, or three globules, or three decorative heads; it made its first appearance in the final Hallstattian epoch, to continue existing during the whole Latenian period. These numerous symbols of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness our author designates with the term Rigani (= queen), correspond, without doubt, to the multiplicity of her functions: the three discs represent her triple nature, sidereal, chthonic, terrestrial, the false lyre with its turned around ends , as well as the constricted curls, symbolizes her sovereignty, the two affrontant symmetrical S-scrolls, her double sidereal and chthonic nature, the heart her womanhood as well as her motherhood, the Amazon’s shield (pelta) her power of protection of warriors, the pistil, her links with the fecundity of nature and her power of distribution of the worldly goods. She also shares with Taran / Toran / Tuireann the wheel, symbol of the striking sky and of the fertilizing lightning , but also wheel of destiny or cosmic wheel. In short, this group of signs, in general linked in the Celtic decoration to those of the other god-or-demons , forms therefore a kind of book opening up on beliefs and myths, for the use of a civilization which resorted hardly to writing. At the same time, they had the magical value of amulets, protecting their bearers in the life as in the world of beyond the grave.

On the cauldron of Gundestrup, Danu/Nerthus is for example, obviously, in the center of the myth, the main character of which she is. She appears on it in her majesty, sovereign of the earth next to Taran / Toran / Tuireann, she protector of warriors. We have said.

After the Roman conquest, the figurations of Juno seem well to represent a survival of this great cosmic mother-goddess-or-demoness in her double nature, watery and chthonic, with a clear predominance of the first function, demonstrated besides by her title of Regina, and her epithet of Candida in Alsace, in Ingwiller. And likewise the Roman goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Fortune , sometimes also took the place of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Rigani Cantismerta in the statuary. It is indeed, to Juno and Minerva , the only goddess-or-demoness or fairy who is said, sometimes queen (rigani), sometimes saint.

On series of capitals in Saint-Remy in Provence (Glanum) , by interpretatio celtica, she appears in three aspects, accompanied by a bearded Taranis. Cantismerta, bearing the diadem of sovereignty, Catubodua / Cassibodua, wearing according to the custom of the Hellenistic figures in Africa, of the trophy of an elephant, and finally a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer use this word, chthonic, distributing and protecting, with her hair down.

This picture reminds, obviously, of that of the cauldron from Gundestrup, on which she is seen holding at bay the elephants, therefore protecting thereby the Celtic mercenaries fighting against these monstrous assistant helpers of the Carthaginian or Mediterranean armies.

This accumulation of three functions on one deity of the female type complies with an Indo-European concept, remarkably sensed and emphasized by G. Dumezil. However, to this trifunctionality is added a depolarization. The goddess-or-demoness or fairy in question is double as for her seasonal trip

239

between both parts of the world, the two cosmic areas separated by the surface of the ground between them: celestial with Taran / Toran / Tuireann in the heaven, but also chthonic with the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt!

This alternation, which gives her an additional dimension, dates back up to designs perhaps previous to the ideas of the Indo-Europeans about the ternary classification of functions, matching social classes. It is also very spread in the populations foreign to Indo-Europeans. It is found as well in Egypt as in China. Besides, the appearance, in the 4th century, on some Celtic works, of the symbol of the encircled S-scroll or Yin Yang, probably reveals a Far Eastern influence on the religious designs of the Celts, at the time of the warring states in China, the whole through the Scythian peoples. But the Celts had not at all waited for this epoch to make their goddesses-or-demonesses or fairies travel between both parts of the world. If they adopted the sign of the encircled S-scroll of the Yin Yang, it was to express their own beliefs in the dualism of the world.

It is nevertheless plausible that the druids, reorganizing beliefs according to Indo-European concepts, tried hard to gather, on the head of this deity, the functions of many pre-existent goddesses-or-demonesses or fairies dating back up to various periods.

The unity of Danu is therefore a nominal unity, covering rather disparate traditions.

Equally provisional conclusion by Peter DeLaCrau.

DANUBIA, CANTISMERTA, AND CATUBODUA / CASSIBODUA, represent therefore respectively.

A. The creation. The woman is the mother, the she-procreator. But also the growth, the development and the preservation. Being Earth Goddess-or-demoness or fairy, in a broader sense, that is to say including its waters, she is also that of the Sovereignty, the king can get power only by marrying her during a solemn ceremony.

B. The growth, change and, therefore, illusion; as well as the moon changes her aspect, the Great Goddess-or-demoness , or fairy if you prefer using this word, shoulders many roles in turn. The daughter, the mother and the old woman are most often three aspects of the great female deity.

C. The Decline the Destruction and the Death, the goddess-or-demoness of the Night and of the downstairs World , of cave and grave. Because what is born has to grow, get old and die. The watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness, in the shape Catubodua / Cassibodua, will preside over the destruction of the world as a result. Catubodua / Cassibodua is therefore also the goddess-or-demoness of the end of cycles (Setlokenia). Cycles whose incredible length (for the time) made the Romans and Greeks like Strabo laugh.

In the Book IV chapter IV section 4 of Strabo, we find indeed the following passage: " Not only the druids, but others as well, say that men's souls, and also the universe, are indestructible, although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them.”

In the Book of Lismore (fo.151, b 2).

“Three years for the field (three-field system ?)

Three lifetimes of the field for the hound.

Three lifetimes of the hound for the horse.

Three lifetimes of the horse for the human being.

Three lifetimes of the human being for the stag.

Three lifetimes of the stag for the blackbird

Three lifetimes of the blackbird for the eagle.

Three lifetimes of the eagle for the salmon.

Three lifetimes of the salmon for the yew.

Three lifetimes of the yew for the world from its beginning to its end.”

That our favorite author [[Eleanor Hull, “The Hawk of Achill or the legend of the oldest animals in the world,” Folklore, Vol. 43, No. 4 (1932): pp. 376–409] comments in this way.

“We arrive thus at 59,050 years, i.e., two multiples of three more than the Westminster calculation, which made 6561 years ; i.e., down to the salmon in the Irish list.”

240

It’s besides Catubodua who, in Ireland, under the name of Morrigani, will prophesy the coming Dark Ages (for Mankind). To echo what is relieving this prophecy and do everything in order to go out as quickly as possible, and without too much damage, from this Celtic Kali Yuga; will be besides one of the fundamental tasks of primordial druids. Because it is obvious that no druid worthy of the name can accept such situation with a light heart , and that it is necessary to do everything to avoid it, or at least to go out from it as soon as possible.

“Peace up to heaven

Heaven down to earth

Earth under heaven

Strength in everyone.”

This, it is the first part of the message, the druids echo from age to age since, since…. thousands of years. It is a positive ideal (peace, health, strength) and the druids, of course, are happy to repeat it continuously by making it known all over the world.

The second part of the message of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness on the contrary, is resumed by druids only to report what is wrong in the society:

“I shall not see a world

That will be dear to me

Summer without flowers

Kine will be without milk,

Women without modesty,

Men without valor,

Captures without a king...

Woods without masts,

Sea without produce...

Wrong judgments of old men,

False precedents of lawyers,

Every man a betrayer,

Every boy a robber

Son will enter his father’s bed,

Father will enter his son's bed,

Everyone will be his brother's brother-in-law....

Son will deceive his father,

Daughter will deceive her mother.”

This, of course, it is less joyful, but it is the situation we live currently, who would dare to deny it? It is only possible to observe (or repeat) this truth. For more details on this a little worrying prophecy, see our booklet on ethics.

D. Some people add to this goddess-or-demoness or fairy a fourth aspect, that of the rebirth, because from death always comes life, after all is said and done.

“They assert that they are descended from Dis Pater 1) , and say that this tradition has been handed down by the druids. For that reason they establish the divisions of every season, not by the number of days, but of nights and they compute birthdays and the beginnings of months and years in such an order that the day follows the night.” (Caesar. B.G. VI, 18).

1. What is exact on the condition of understanding well that it is a question in that case of the physical bodies only and not of the totality of the human being; that is to say including his soul and his mind.

NOTICES REGARDING THE ORIGINAL AMBIVALENCE OF THE GODDESS DANU.

241

As every water which runs, as every , the Danube is a woman, the Danube is a mother. A formidable mother who takes, immerses, devastates. But a protective mother also, who fertilizes and feeds. The Danube holds therefore an extremely important place in the original druidic religion which is, let us remind of it, by definition, that of people living in this region of the Alps around the 2nd thousand years before our era.

It is indeed more than a river, it is the goddess-or-demoness , or fairy if man prefers this word, Danu herself, gone down from Abnoba mounts for the greatest benefit of men . This primordial river was sensed as a water goddess-or-demoness or fairy, a mother goddess-or-demoness, a divine ancestor. Druidic. This druidic Danubia is the equivalent of the Ganges of the Indian Brahmans.

The figure of this goddess-or-demoness , or fairy if it is preferred, at the same time she creator and destroyer through her existence even, is going to assert itself little by little within Schools which honor the creative power of universal cosmic soul in the female aspect which is coexistent to it, that is to say the matter, concrete expression of its potential energy.

One of the epithets of this watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness is besides that of Matrona, from where the name of the large river in the east of France bearing this name (the Marne River); which corresponded perhaps to the Danube in the mind of the first Celtic waves coming in the region. As well as the Fate does not create the world itself, but entrusts the care of it to Taran / Toran / Tuireann, master of the second causes, Taran / Toran / Tuireann, irremovable principle, for his part, makes responsible his Consort Danu for regulating what concerns the relative one. And a shift in meaning (from energy to matter) has perhaps led at some ancient druids, the notion of “matter which is only a more or less misleading appearance …"

According to the great French specialist J.-J. Hatt, anyway one of the representations of this ambivalence of the watery great mother goddess or demoness in the service of the fate is Cantismerta, the wheel even “of the wheel” goddess-or-demoness or fairy.

It is, of course, in that case the wheel of Fate as the equating of this aspect of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness or fairy to the goddess-or-demoness Fortune of Romans, proves it. The drawing (Esperandieu VI 4742) representing the goddess-or-demoness Fortune of the Châtelet, surrounded by the Dioscuri and holding the globe , reveals to us why and how the Celtic interpretation sometimes chose the goddess-or-demoness Fortune to represent the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness.

It is well necessary to suppose that it was easy for the druids, or some of their heirs like the professors named by Ausonius, to interpret the Greco-Roman representations of the Fortune in order to make them tally with their own conception to them. Light modifications of iconographic type, notably as regards the place of the wheel were enough.

For Jean-Jacques Hatt, the first appearance of her representation appears on a coin of the Ambiani representing a naked horsewoman, holding with her right hand a torc and with the left hand a wheel. On a coin of the Parisii, the head of the goddess-or-demoness, or of the fairy if it is preferred, tops the segment of a wheel . This coin belongs to the most ancient series of gold coins, still close to the Hellenic models and of good style. It is therefore well Cantismerta according to J.-J. Hatt. To the right of the head of the goddess-or-demoness , in diagonal, two dolphins frame a disc, funeral symbol representing the trip of the late towards the paradise located beyond the ocean. In Roman epoch, are also known several representations of the wheel goddess-or-demoness or fairy, The pattern of the goddess-or-demoness or good fairy holding a wheel, is represented on a large space, ranging from Pont-Saint-Esprit in France to Tongeren in Belgium.

Notice by Peter DeLaCrau. Considering her links with the Fate , the watery cosmic great mother-goddess-or-demoness was naturally supposed to know the future. We find besides this cosmic great mother-goddess-or-demoness under the aspect of «clairvoyant knowing the future» in the cattle raid of Cooley , with the name of Fedelma. Gaelic name probably stemmed from Vedilama and meaning "very obstinate.” Fedelma will indeed announce in it to the queen Medb, what the hesus called Cuchulainn is going to do with her armies: a massacre. Facts are facts!

MEDIEVAL SURVIVAL.

This ambivalence of W.G.M.G. enchanting the world, but able also to drive it to its destruction (cf. the battle of Camlann), is besides also in the character of Morgan La Fey.

242

Morgan appears for the first time in the Life of Merlin (1150) by Geoffrey of Monmouth as a very learned sorceress occupying an important position in the island of Avalon where she welcomes Arthur fatally injured. In fact, she plays clearly here in this account therefore the role of a goddess of the dead. She also appears in the Matter of France where she has as lover and accomplice Ogier the Dane . In Huon of Bordeaux, she has a son of Julius Caesar, Oberon. She is mentioned in the Chronicles of Gargantua as the godmother of the latter under the name of Morgan-la-Fay, while in Pantagruel, she is called Morgue, fairy of the Island of Avalon. Morgan is the wife of Gargantua in some popular tales, and his godmother in Rabelais; she wears like him a kind of apron in which apparently she transports stones. Morgan’s character survived in France under the name of fairy Margot, and you find a little everywhere in this country therefore "Cellars of Margot,” some "chambers of the fairy Margot," or some " Margot’s rock .” Just as there are many " Gargan’s” Mounts, there are mounts (Morgon, Margantin, Mercantour…), rivers (Morgon, Mourgon, Morge, Mourgues), fountains (of the Mourgue), which could owe her their name (thesis of the great French folklorist Henry Dontenville).

In the other most ancient texts where the Morgan La Fay appears, just as in Geoffrey of Monmouth, her role is positive: in Chretien de Troyes (Erec and Enide, Yvain or the Knight of the lion), she cures her brother as well as Yvain and Lancelot; in Wace (the Roman de Brut), she takes Arthur on the island of Avalon to treat his wounds. Thomas Malory will take over this episode besides in the story called in middle French " La Morte d' Arthur .”

Since the Lancelot-Grail, she appears as the daughter of Igraine and Gorlois, the duke of Cornwall, sister of Elaine and of Morgause and stepsister of Arthur. Sent in a convent when Uther Pendragon kills her father then marries her mother, she starts there the study of magic, which she will continue later with Merlin . Uther forces her to marry Urien whom she does not love. Different stories of the cycle will give her several lovers and make her exiled from the court by Guinevere for this reason. Nevertheless, the latter not being herself a model of fidelity, we see, in some tales, Morgan, trying to take revenge by catching herself in non-compliance , for example by bringing in the court a magical cup which reveals infidelities (prose Tristan).

Her animosity extends to other members of the entourage of the king, especially Lancelot. In Sir Gawain and the green knight, Morgan is an accomplice of the beautiful lady of Hautdesert, both searching the death of Gawain by means of various treacheries. Some sources ascribe her the motherhood of Mordred, conceived in a "fortuitous " way: Morgan, during a pagan festival, plays the role of the virgin given to the horned god who is none other than Arthur disguised , without any of the two knowing the true identity of the other one.

In the narrative of Thomas Malory about the death of Arthur, she takes over Excalibur and urges her lover Accolon to kill the king, but the plan fails. In some stories, she takes over the scabbard - in which lies, according to some authors, the protective power of the magical sword - and throws it into a lake.

N.B. Contemporary continuations. In The Series of Avallon of our friend Marion Zimmer Bradley, Morgan lives in an island (Avalon) identified with Atlantis, and plays here the role of guardian of the British religious or magical traditions, against the advance of the oppressing and patriarchal Christianity. She is shown there as a disciple of the high priestess Vivian and mother of Mordred.

Our conclusion to us will be therefore simple. This evolution from positive to negative of the character of Morgan La Fey is only the consequence of the ambivalence of the initial deity. The name of Morgain comes from the Celtic *mori-gena which means "born from the sea.” It is also possible to compare it to that of the Irish goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Morrigan. But one of the sources of the character of Morgan also lies in the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Modron, islander equivalent of the continental Dea Matrona, such as she appears in medieval Welsh literature. A daughter of Avallach or of the king of Avallach (Avalon?) in the Welsh Triads, she is, as in the Arthurian cycle, linked to the king Urien Rheged (or Urien of Gorre in various subsequent texts). And as Morgan La Fay is also supposed to be the wife of a named Urien in other documents; it is plausible that it is there the same divine…. person. She has from him two sons, Owain and Morvydd where the name of Mordred is easily recognized . Cf. Rachel Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydein, page 195. Pages 449 - 451.

The fairy Morgue or Morgan La Fey is therefore the ultimate evolution of the at the same time watery and terrestrial great mother-goddess-or-demoness, representing nature in the broader sense of the word, the ultimate evolution of the great goddess-or-demoness or good fairy, of the Proto-Celtic paganism. Her medieval Celtic name of Morgana comes from the triple coalescence of the designations of Morigena (born from the Sea), Mori Rigana ( queen of the sea ), Mara Rigana (Great Queen) this last form having produced Morrigu, genitive Morrigain in Gaelic language.

243

-------------------- ----------------------------------------- ----------------------------------- ---------------------------------

[Manuscripts found by Millicent DeLaCrau and inserted by her into this place].

THE MAN-EATING BITCH MEDUA / MEDB.

(Or Maeve, Maev Medhbh, Meadhbh, Meabh, in the heresy worked out in Ireland.)

Goddess-or-demoness or fairy of sovereignty, or even of the ecstasy of power. Particularly active in some circles. For example, in France from 2002. Her name means "she who intoxicates.”

The Irishmen made her the legendary queen Medb by inventing all kinds of stories about her. But the best piece of evidence that she is a more mythical than historical character is still the fact that she appears in some stories staging characters of the other world; like one which is called in Gaelic language Aislinge Oengusso (the dream of Oengus). She also appears in the legend of the "rustling of the cows of Cooley" (Táin Bó Cúailnge), a long mythical story belonging to the Ulster cycle. Her most famous feat of arms is indeed the invasion of this province to capture his famous brown bull there (the termagant of Cooley). Medua / Medb reigns in Tara or in Cruachan, but she is in reality, as we could see it, an upside down euhemerized divine figure; she besides seems to be a member of the group of the islander goddess-or-demonesses or fairies, of war, sexuality but also of territory.

Her first spouse is the king Conchobar. Then, two rivals aspire to her hand and the king Tinde has the upper hand at the end of a hard battle. In turn he is killed during a duel and another king, Eochaid Dala, succeeds him in the favors of the queen. The fourth on the list is Ailill. He also kills his precursor, gets marriage and reaches kingship. Fergus mac Roth will be the last one.

Lascivious seductress, Medua / Medb represents sexuality. The fact that her name is linked to a type of alcoholic brew (the mead in this case) can make think of the notion of a union or of a hierogamy between the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, allegory of power, and the mortal king; that the goddess-or-demoness sanctifies by giving him a liqueur cup. A little like the Rosemartha studied above besides.

The divine nature of Medua / Medb is also shown by her faculty to change her shape and to be completely transformed, for example from an old harridan into a maiden.

She also shares the destruction power of deities as Catubodua: she is the cause of the death of Fergus, of Conall Cernach, of her husband Ailill and finally of Cuchulainn. The presence of Medb, who turns around the battlefield on her chariot, can remove courage to the warriors; besides she is capable of running at a superhuman speed (more quickly than a horse) and she has totemic animals, a bird and a squirrel.

The great conflict between Ulster and Connaught has principally as starting point the jealousy of Medb. Following a quarrel regarding their personal wealth, it is proven that Ailill has an additional bull, the beautiful White-Horned of Ai . The thing is important since in the Irish Celtic society, wealth determines royal precedence.

She makes ask Dare, a noble lord in Ulster, to give him up his bull, the famous brown Termagant of Cualnge, but the latter refuses in spite of the fortune she gives him. Medb provokes a large alliance of the other provinces in Ireland (Leinster, Munster and Meath), and organizes an expedition against Ulster, to capture the bull in question. But the clairvoyant of Medb, Fedelma, predicted that his enemy, Cuchulainn, will destroy the biggest part of his army. Medb tricks with him, tries to suborn him by giving him his daughter Finnabair. But Cuchulainn slaughters a large number of his men and, after the waking of the Ulaid (who had been affected by a very mysterious illness representing human weakness) the Irishmen will definitely be routed .

The death of Medua / Medb will be the result of revenge. She will be killed by her nephew, Forbai (Furbaidhe), whose mother, Clothra , she assassinated not long ago. A son of the king Conchobar Mac Nessa, he had discovered that she had the habit to have a swim in a pond. He measured therefore accurately the distance which separated the place where she had a swim from the shore, and went back then to the fortress of Emain Macha, in Ulster; where he trained sling up to the point of being capable of hitting an apple put on a mast planted at the same distance.

The great queen-goddess-or-demoness or fairy, had as a result a not very glorious end, killed by a rancid cheese piece thrown by the sling of Forbai.

244

COMMENTARIES REGARDING THE ASPECT BACCHUS OF THE MEDUA / MEDB.

Druidism takes an inventory of the different levels of awareness and makes an opening to them possible, thanks to different techniques. Often with the help of physical processes: control of breathing or ecstatic dance in the case of warriors, but also sometimes by using external artifices, for example the sacred drunkenness or intoxication. Druidism indeed always took note of the existence of some transcendence in the manifestations of the nature which surrounds it. It immerses itself in it, starts dialogue….. and nature answers it, by giving it, "powers.” Natural or supernatural? Ultimately the question is not there. Supernatural is only some not measurable natural one…

Christian symbolism equates the wine with the blood of Jesus, the pagans linked it to god-or-demons.

Hallucinogens always gave to the human being fundamental experiments, forcing to call into question completely, the usual demarcation: subject-object, inside-outside. Some individuals sensed so a feeling of unity with the whole world or bitus, others could "project" their awareness into an eagle or a wolf. The plasticity of the human psyche (see on this subject the edifying Irish legend dealing with Etain) was expressed for them in a real and ontological ubiquity of awareness. But there is not only under the influence of hallucinogens that the world can be differently sensed. Some internal experiences lead the concerned person to feel the world or the bitus as a big living being, or an ocean of awareness. But is the interpretation of these experiments correct? The human brain always produces meaning from incoherent data, as various experiments in social psychology showed it. These rituals and these sacred substances lead to catharsis by means of a cleaning up or of purification. A clinical death followed by a “resurrection” caused by the intensity of the situation, which produces a level break by taking the subject away from his usual space and time to put him in the center of oneself. What is equivalent to a different reality or to another reading of reality.

Celtic peoples as the huge majority of the traditional peoples used alcohol, during their ceremonies, to promote knowledge and to establish through it the contact with the god-or-demons (to link up).

The North, Centre and South Indians, absorbed besides as traditionally fermented alcoholic drinks: pulque, balche, chicha. The ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs for ritual aims ( peyote, mushrooms, ayahuasca) is closely related to this process.

The former Medua personified therefore the states of altered consciousness, or the trances due to these substances.

“In the ocean, he says, there is a small island, not very far out to sea, situated off the outlet of the Liger River; and the island is inhabited by women of the Namnetes (in Greek Samnitôn], they are possessed by Dionysus and make this god propitious by appeasing him with mystic initiations as well as other sacred performances; no man sets foot on the island, although the women themselves, sailing from it, have intercourse with the men and then return. And, he says, it is a custom of theirs once a year to un-roof the temple and roof it again on the same day before sunset, each woman bringing her load to add to the roof; but the woman whose load falls out of her arms is rent to pieces by the rest, and they carry the pieces round the temple with cries of (Dionysian) enthusiasm and do not cease until their frenzy ceases; and it is always the case, he says, that someone jostles the woman who is to suffer this fate. The following story which Artemidorus has told about the case of the crows is still more fabulous: there is a certain harbor….” (Strabo, Book IV, chapter IV).

In this tangible world, there is no objective "Truth" (synonymous with reality) , but “some " truths, each one having to find his, coming from his personal life path (quest for the grail).

Every truth is not necessarily erroneous, but remains subjective, partial, bond to the mind and to the person who keeps it. There is between Truth and us, an incommensurable abyss. It happens, sometimes, when we are ready, that an invisible chance reveals what there is before our eyes, but is not seen by us! And it is "always " a moving instant that the one of the discovery of a long time sought-after grail. ….We are, if the try succeeds, "terrified ,’ "petrified ,’ "annihilated,’ by the simple evocation of the hidden in deeper parts of ourselves "infinite" divine power (we say infinite, but infinity exists only with regard to our limitations) and of the abyss which separates us from it.

245

Only Medua as a personification of the altered states of consciousness, blessed be the latter for that, can, in her huge commiseration, half-open the door….. But look out! " Truth ,” let us repeat it, is incomprehensible to us without the help of the divinity.

Conclusion. The allegory or the personification of this shamanic experiment which is the sacred intoxication was not therefore unknown of druidic teaching. It is an archaic symbol universally spread in the search of initiation. The sacred drunkenness during the ceremonious practices of Celts was usual. The pattern of the intoxicated Celt appears besides among the most constant stereotypes of the ancient literature dealing with Barbarian people. Since the 4th century before our era to the 6th century of our era, not less than around thirty texts mention the immoderate taste of Celts for alcoholic beverages, indigenous or imported, ransacked or acquired at a high price. But unlike a very spread idea, it appears clearly that the spreading of the wine is not linked to that of the Greco-Roman symposium. Its props (simpula, situlae , jugs, sacrificial bowls, bronze basins, kraters and drink set in Campanian crockery ) appear, outside the Narbonese, only in very late date, later to the Roman conquest. And more than a century after the arrival of the first wine amphorae. Big cauldrons, iron firedogs and pairs of buckets, on the other hand, show the attachment to a traditional, abandoned for a long time in the Greco-Roman world, festive tradition. The conservatism peculiar to the Celtic feast, which includes wine without changing its other food prescripts, is also expressed by the absence of other southern products (oil or brine). Amphorae render the image of a product imported independently of the manners and of the ideology which surrounded it, in its original civilization.

Wine consumption had a quite other cultural dimension than in the south of the Alps, and did not take part initially in the food or physiological field. It met a conscious and selective choice, made by indigenous societies accustomed to local fermented drinks (ale and mead). The permanence of the props of the traditional feast shows that wine does not take at all the place of their consumption: it comes in addition , in the setting of pre-existing rituals.

These rituals were practiced in different scales. Within big confederal sanctuaries, as on small rural places of worship; in the heart of the countryside or within fenced enclosures of various sizes (form the largest, copied from the model of the Viereckschanzen, to the most modest, attached to the habitat); even within domestic space.

Some places of worship gathering in their enclosures considerable wine quantities seem to have been specifically dedicated to this use. This activity resorted to well-identified drink offerings devices, wells, pits, favissae or other " hollow altars ,”equipped with amphorae, with metallic dishes and with ceramics used during festivities or during worship. The itinerary of the amphorae within the sacred space obeys permanent features; their opening, followed by drink offerings, was made inside or close to the temples; the wine consumption, in built in their periphery large areas or monumental galleries; their fragments were buried or relegated to the periphery of the worship area, along the outer surrounding wall.

These "drink offerings sanctuaries” are placed outside the identification field of the traditional sanctuaries, principally centered on the military aspect, and limited in their spread to the northern and Western borders. Their activity appears often centered on fertility worship , materialized by the laying down of amphorae, millstones and agricultural tools. A clear cultural caesura separates, in this respect, the regions located on both sides the course of the Loire and of the Seine. For a long time restricted to Aquitaine, these sanctuaries stretched in fact in the whole of the Centre-East and Southwest. The deposit of wine amphorae in “offering” wells, especially, covers a reality communal to the whole Western Celtic domain, proportional to the regional import volume. It materializes the meeting of drink-offering practices centered on the symbolism of the wine, known in the Mediterranean world since the 8th century before our era, on one hand; and, on the other hand, a tradition of burying crockery and food offering developed in the temperate zone since the Bronze Age, where indigenous drinks probably held the first place.

These practices stretch to a large series of ditch worked enclosures with a quadrangular plan, characterized by their isolated position as well as by the absence of structures of housing and of domestic furniture. The considerable quantities of amphorae that they gave up, often linked to weaponry, metallic dishes and other prestige goods, designate some of them as areas reserved for the festive assemblies of religious, political and legal kind. This " banquet enclosures" show, following the example of the sanctuaries, clear scale differences, according to the importance of the

246

manifestations which took place but also, of course, the number of the guests. The largest of them join the first interpretation of the Viereckschanzen in the south of Germany, as meeting areas with festive and religious vocation. These structures of enclosures are the protohistorical equivalent of the "theaters" which were used, according to Posidonius, as settings , for Celtic feasts; they were undoubtedly previous, in their function, to these Romano-British or Gallo-Roman shows buildings, dedicated to community meetings and/or to worship. Their border position emphasizes their probable role in the definition of alliances or the settlement of territorial conflicts.

Some monumental buildings with collective and/or religious aim seem to have fulfilled the same function: the temples and the big wooden porticos which constitute the layout of certain sanctuaries are identified as being areas devoted to the feast.

The reproduction of these practices in the private sphere is guessed in small enclosures with festive and/or religious aim more or less included into the housing; scale version of the big enclosures and public sanctuaries, they were adapted to manifestations organized on the scale of the family, of the clan or of the broader agricultural community, chaired by an elite authorized for the private worship. Some in pit or in well votive deposits , composed of amphorae, weaponry, human remains and/or metallic dishes, buried in the domestic space, show some drink offerings practiced in the middle of housing, a little in the image of the "Lararia" of the Roman epoch.

The exercise of the feast and of the drink offerings in a funeral surrounding shows through across the omnipresence of wine and of amphorae on the incineration or burial sites of this period; the border with the worship field is not always easy to highlight. The use of the wine in the funeral feast and to extinguish the funeral pyre, constitute objective realities, demonstrated on some funeral sites, it is probable that the deposit of amphorae in graves or in their periphery covered numerous and complex functions.

As in the first Iron Age, it seems possible to differentiate two different features of the wine consumption.

The first, known as "hieratic,” peculiar to the rather "egalitarian" societies in the South, consists of an ostentatious redistribution of large quantities of wine intended to feed all social classes.

The second one, known as "hierarchical,” peculiar to the more elitist societies in the North, advocates the promotion of small quantities of wine made sacred extremely, by means of metallic props emphasized in graves.

To the first feature correspond the regions of the Center and of the Center-East (Arverni, Eduans, SegusiavI), where wine appears in large quantities on the sites of sanctuaries or of enclosures devoted to the practice of feasts. Based on a redistribution and clientelism logic, they show, with the absence of "rich" burials, not much organized into a hierarchy, and divided by the power struggles, societies.

To the second feature correspond the regions of East Belgium, of the Atlantic and of the Northeast; where more restrained wine quantities are gathered mainly, following the example of the metallic dishes, in the hands of a land and military elite opened to external commercial and cultural contributions. The most part of the discoveries indeed concern the sanctuaries, the burials and the residences with "aristocratic" nature, where they were highlighted as part of a first based on local drinks traditional liturgy.

These different features cover cultural, political and social, very deep oppositions, the logic of which exceeds the vision of a nation simply divided between "egalitarians" or "Elitist,” between "traditionalist " and "pro-Roman" parties. Feasts as well as drink rites mark the meeting of so opposed concepts as wine ideology (amphorae, kraters, situlae, simpula, drinking cups) and ideology of ale or mead (buckets, cauldrons, situlae, indigenous vases to drink ); symposium and archaic feast; feast enclosures or aristocratic burials These civilizations have , according to the regions, very clear borders or transition zones, which evolve in time. They show a civilization and historical "shock" of which texts echo, and among which the main emblems, the amphora and the cauldron, illustrate coins.

247

CATUBODUA / MORRIGANI / NEMAIN.

THE TRIPLE GODDESS-OR-DEMONESS

OF DESTRUCTION MASSACRES DEATH AND NOTHINGNESS.

The Celtic Kali, out of the ordinary and out of the functionss unlike Ogmius or the other war gods in the druidic sacred dodecahedron.

It should be noted at the outset that this Celtic goddess or demon does not only have a negative aspect. The high knowers in the old days knew that good can arise from any evil and made her rather a goddess who knows how to wipe out the slate, which destroys to better rebuild.

What misleads us is that the former druids gave another face to the creative and positive aspects of this demoness: that of the Mother-Water. The water which, on the one hand, destroys everything in its wake but which, on the other hand, waters the cattle and make life grow.

Alas, for the lovers of extreme simplicity, as we are going to see it, the goddess or demoness or fairy who presides over the battles, is at the same time a sexuality symbol.

An ancient legend of Marseilles, intended to make up a defeat inflicted on the city by the Celtic tribes around, is one of the first stories of this warrior aspect of the watery or cosmic great mother-goddess-or-demoness of the druids.

“But after a time, when Massilia [today Marseilles] was at the height of distinction, as well for the fame of its exploits as for the abundance of its wealth and its reputation for strength, the neighboring people suddenly conspired to destroy the very name of Massilia, as they would have united to put out a fire that threatened them all. Catumandus, one of their petty princes, was unanimously chosen general, who, when he was besieging the enemy's city with a vast army of select troops, was frightened in his sleep by the vision of a witch-looking woman, who told him that she was a goddess, and after this he made peace with the Massilians. Having then asked permission to enter their city and pay adoration to their gods, and having gone into the temple of Minerva, and observed in the portico the statue of the goddess whom he had seen in his sleep, he suddenly exclaimed that it was she who had frightened him in the night; that it was she who had ordered him to raise the siege; then, congratulating the Massilians that they were under the care, as he perceived, of the immortal gods, and offering a necklace [ in Latin torquis, a torc ] of gold to the goddess, he made a league with them forever…(Justin, epitome of the philippic history by Pompey Trogue XLIII, chapter, 4 and following).

A little farther it is said that the inhabitants of Marseilles, hearing of the taking of Rome by the Celts, would have used gold and all the whole silver of the Treasury as well as of the individuals to help the Romans to pay the ransom demanded by the warriors of Brennus (Justin, 43). Marvelous generosity! The most plausible is that, if War Horse (Catumandus) entered Marseilles, it was while leading his troops, yes, and that if the inhabitants of Marseilles delivered all that they had, it was to pay himself, and not to pay the ransom for Rome. The expression "Having then asked permission to enter their city and pay adoration to their gods…" is, of course, a little strange , but the account does not remain less essential.

Konrad Lorenz, peaceful man if ever there was one, thought about the contribution of aggressiveness throughout the slow evolution which leads to current species, especially to the case of Mankind. He thinks that aggressiveness was a fundamental factor of survival and of development of species through evolution.

248

By means of the sexual selection: the strongest, most aggressive (and most intelligent , at the hominoid) as most chances to procreate. To notice that, in some species, this behavior extends to the females, between them; for example, among wolves. Crueler than the male, the dominant she-wolf kills the young rival who searches the favors of her mate.

For the defense of the group, especially of the whelps, against the predators.

For the conquest of the group feeding facing the competition of other species in the same biotope; carnivores in the case of man.

Recent studies, under the microscope, of fossil teeth, showed the base of the feeding of Man was on average more and more meat-based , until the Neolithic Era. What constitutes therefore a radical difference with the great primates, although chimpanzees could, sometimes, be carnivorous. This, with a marked predominance for the man hunter-provider, compared to the woman who, more forced to sedentary lifestyle by her maternal loads , found a supplement more often by the collecting of vegetables. Ancient consequence, or better adaptability of the woman, the restrictions of the last conflict (1939-1945) showed that she adapts more easily than man to an especially vegetable diet.

But the bodily abilities of our hominid ancestors - teeth, muscle structure, nails, race speed , etc. - were very limited to guarantee the permanence of a species at the same time predatory and prey; living in a zone, the savanna, where, if the game proves to be abundant, the large carnivores are not less so, and the shelters are rare. Very early it was therefore necessary to compensate for bodily handicaps by artificial means,the hunting weapons, and by the intelligence. Moreover, whether we like it or not, descending from those who could hand down to us the life only because they were among the strongest, the most crafty, the most aggressive especially, we bear their biological inheritance. By nature the human being is aggressive. Civilization, individual conscience, can and must channel this instinct, even enhance it. For some philosophers, the curiosity or research instinct , which gave us nuclear power, the computer science as well as the laser, and leads on the Moon, would be a substitute to aggressiveness; and, naturally, most sports where the thing is more obvious. To postpone the demarcations of knowledge would be a kind "action-reaction" to the challenge of our ignorance.

But to deny or to be ignorant of this inheritance is a dangerous inanity (he who would play the angel plays the beast), even if it prevails overwhelmingly at the journalists intellectuals or media people, of our epoch. Of course since they do not give to more clear-headed minds than them the opportunity to express themselves. It is enough to look at television debates in France *. Ah, of course, all the speakers express themselves very well, but what a mediocrity in the thought, what superficiality from men or women having in principle as a vocation to enlighten public opinion. All that is, of course, bright but hardly deep. That of cowardice! Too much conformity and not enough intellectual independence perhaps.They are among nice people, nice and smart people who have a single flaw (they are poor since they give everything to poorer than themselves). As the adage says, "in our country, those who sound the alarm are put into a jail and firestarters are decorated.”

A little before his death, the French polemologist Gaston Bouthoul noticed, with sadness, but without surprise, that having often had to speak about racism in front of audiences aligning oneself with the most entire antiracism, he had always felt the full of hatred reactions of a combative ideology (the intelligence indeed makes off in front of passionate reactions as soon as you take on the question of racism). Pacifists think they are peaceful, but their subconscious is not. The current ordinary language often mixes up the word peaceful and pacifist , having, however, very different meaning.

* The lack of empathy of these second-rate self-proclaimed elites (they are irrefutably natiopaths), which is undoubtedly explained by hubris conversely proportional to their THOROUGH intelligence of the situations, is rather astounding.

Let us add that in the peoples known as primitives, the women, if they do not take part in attack operations, contribute, however, energetically to the defense of the group. In the 20th century for example, in the Hmong tribes in the high plateaus (before their extermination by chemical weapons at the end of the 1970s), facing their democratic enemy (Viet-Minh, then Viet-Cong) the attack - ambushes principally - was the responsibility of the men. But for the defense of the village attacked by the Bodoi of the very popular Vietnamese democracy, the grown-up women fought with the same furious energy as the men, even with ferociousness for those who had children. This analysis can be surprising but it is there, however, a very common reflex in the higher animal species: the mother defends her whelps with an inflexible tenacity; and for better or for worse, the evolution from mammals to mankind represents only a very weak part of the life duration on Earth. (K. Lorenz. Das sogenannte Böse. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression. Chapter III).

249

Translation given without prejudice , my 4 years of German studies are distant.

!------------------- ------------------------- ---------- !

The first mention of the personification of this constant of nature and notably of human nature was discovered at Mieussy in Savoy: CATUBODUA.

A variant (Cassibodua = disheveled , curly , or in ringlets, Raven) is known to us by an inscription found in Herbitzheim in Alsace, where she is equated with the goddess or demoness Victoria Roman, by interpretatio romana. From the old Celtic *cassi, curly + *boduo, raven crow. The word " cassi" is perhaps an allusion to the habit the Celts had to wash THEIR hair with some plaster water or with some lime, what produced big locks glued together and mixed together, giving them a little shaggy but rather efficient aspect (better resistance to blows).

Bricriu, in spite of all efforts he makes in the court of Queen Meb, never holds a candle to Catubodua in this domain. All that he is capable of making it is to be a rumor monger and to provoke a general fight in the saloon. The Celtic Kali, herself, it is something else, she pushes really men into killing each other. She makes everything so that there is a war because she enjoys it; although she could assume the beauty of an angel (or of a fairy) when she wants , in order to be more persuasive.

What characterizes this aspect of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness Danu (bia) in its most ancient acceptation it is that she is a warrior besides being sovereign, but a warrior of a little special type, a she warrior who does not fight personally, but incites the fighters. Because even in the Irish apocryphal mythology, the war goddess-or-demonesses are not essentially some combatants.

And if Lug or Ogmius handles cudgel, spear or sword, Catubodua / Cassibodua, herself, reigns over the battlefield, called "the garden of the Badb" (in Ireland) without having to take part in it, by means of bewitching or of animal incarnations. When the watery cosmic great mother-goddess-or-demoness in her shape Cassibodua or Catubodua shows herself on the warlike level, it is indeed through in a way mystical, influences and never directly by weapon. She incites some combatants or blinds those she wants to downfall, that’s all.

According to the Irish legend called Tochmarc Ferbe (the wooing of Ferb), the formidable gigantic anguipedic wyverns (Fomorach) about whom we so often spoke in this booklet, for example serve obviously the battle goddess or demoness , Catubodua, and will make up as a result the almost totality of the troops of Cunocavaros / Conchobar. What makes this bloody raid (Tochmarc Ferbe) a not very natural operation worthy of the worst manipulations of public opinion intended to lead a country to the war (role of the Celtic-druidic Kali that was Catubodua if we understand well).

The action of this Celtic Kali, at least in the most ancient of the stories which reached us, is therefore of magical nature. As in the famous duel having opposed the Roman Marcus Valerius and an anonymous Celtic warrior in the year 349 before our era. Livy. Book VII. BECAUSE WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY THEY ALWAYS MAKE THEM BLIND.

“ Whilst the Romans were passing their time quietly at the outposts, a gigantic Celt in splendid armor, advanced towards them, and delivered a challenge through an interpreter: to meet any Roman in single combat. There was a young military tribune, named Marcus Valerius, who considered himself no less worthy of that honor than T. Manlius had been. After obtaining the consul's permission, he marched, completely armed, into the open ground between the two armies. The human element in the fight was thrown into the shade by the direct interposition of the gods, for just as they were engaging a crow settled all of a sudden on the Roman's helmet, with its head towards his antagonist. The tribune gladly accepted this, as a divinely sent augury, and prayed that whether it were a god or goddess who had sent the auspicious bird that deity would be gracious to him or help him. Wonderful to relate, not only did the bird keep its place, on the helmet, but every time they encountered it rose on its wings and attacked the Celt's face and eyes with beak and talon, until, terrified at the sight of so dire a portent and bewildered in eyes and mind alike, he was slain [by Valerius]. Then, soaring away eastwards the crow passed out of sight “.

As we have had already the opportunity to underline it, but now repetere = ars docendi, the raven in this case is not an appropriate, but the emblematic of battles, animal. It makes it possible to Marcus

250

Valerius, by settling on his helmet and by attacking the face of his adversary, to triumph over him by blinding it. WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY THEY ALWAYS MAKE THEM BLIND.

This miracle is the Roman transposition of a druidic myth which is found in Ireland, in the episode of the driving off of the cattle of Cooley (the goddess-or-demoness , or fairy, Morrigu, attends even the death throes of Cuchulainn, perched on his shoulder).

Conclusion. Under the name of Catubodua (Bodb-Catha in Ireland), the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness Danu (bia) is indeed also a war goddess-or-demoness, a little similar to the Kali of Hinduism.

And in Ireland as on the Continent the name of this Celtic Kali means " fight (catu) raven " (bodua) because, to perform this function, she often takes the aspect of a bird flying over battlefields. A raven, crow vulture, or quite another carrion feeder animal of this type besides.

THE IRISH VARIANT. MORRIGU / MORRIGAN. The great goddess-or-demoness or fairy in Ireland, Mara Rigana (Great Queen) this last form having produced Morrigu, genitive Morrigain in Gaelic language, goddess-or-demoness or fairy of fertility, sexuality, war.

The meaning of the name of the most famous Irish war goddess or demoness provoked numerous articles among the specialists because its orthography is different from a text to the next one. Mórrígain / Mórrígu or Morrígain / Morrígu. The second element of her name is void of any ambiguity. In old Irish, rígain means "queen,” as the Welsh rhiain , which originally meant "queen" but has today the sense of "young lady, girl, virgin.” They are both derived from an Old Celtic word rigani / rigana meaning "queen" equivalent of Latin regena. The “u” ending is due to an analogy with the other feminine words having a “an” ending of the genitive, like in the case of Mórrígain (singular genitive Mórrígan).

On the other hand, the first element of her name is more problematic, because it is sometimes written with a short vowel, that is to say mor meaning "ghost" or "nightmare,’ and sometimes with an accent on the vowel, that is to say mór meaning "great.’ This orthography difference changes the meaning of the name of the goddess or demoness. Especially as "muir" also means sea in old Irish.

The form Morrígain that is to say “ghost queen” is generally considered as being the most ancient and most primitive one. But at present the specialists are more disposed to consider the form Mórrígain, that is to say "great queen" is the most correct writing, considering that the adjective mór is often used to designate a goddess of the land in the Irish tradition, for example Mór Muman ("the great she feeder") who is the mother-goddess of Munster. What her name means perhaps simply besides. In addition, it seems well that the designation "Great queen" is more relevant for a goddess than the evocation of a" ghost,” although this last meaning could refer her link with death. Her association with the massacre and her function of warning messenger of death would therefore be more recent than her attributes of an earth goddess, and this is why some authors choose to write her name Mórrígain rather than Morrígain.

Without eliminating completely the hypothesis she is also a queen of the sea or born from the sea, let us admit that in that case everything would become clearer: her function would be not only death and massacre but it would also be, and essentially perhaps, a mother-goddess or a fertility- goddess, in short one of the many avatars of the mother-earth in Ireland, a kind of Irish Rosemartha. The whole Irish particularity (let us not speak about heresy) would have consisted, under the influence of Christianity perhaps, in developing too much her dark aspect linked to death, or even in making her a war goddess, while she also has an infinitely nicer and more luminous streak. The latter would have been forgotten or relegated in the background but it continues showing on the surface nevertheless here or there

since the goddess of war and massacres in Ireland can also appear to men sometimes, under infinitely more appealing exterior: these of a fairy. But let us return therefore to her aspect " Kali" or "destruction goddess.”

As well as the Irishwoman Cath-Badbh is similar to the continental Celtic goddess Cathubodua, the Mórrígain is therefore etymologically speaking linked to the epithet or name of goddess Rigani which is shown in a Latin form in three Roman inscriptions discovered in Great Britain and in Germany. The dedication found in Worringen (Germany), on the territory of the Ubii, reads thus: "In h (onorem) d (omus) d (ivinae) deae Regin (ae) vicani …" "In the honor of the divine household and of the goddess Queen, the inhabitants…." That discovered before 1732 in Lanchester, in the north-east of Great

251

Britain, is engraved on an altar, which bears a boar on the left side: " Reginae votum Misio v (otum) l (ibens) s (olvit) ", " To the goddess queen, Misio willingly fulfilled his vow.” The most interesting monument is the low-relief of Lemington, a town located a few kilometers in the north of Lanchester, because it bears an inscription linked to a representation of the goddess: DEA RIIGINA. The goddess is represented wearing a knee-length dress. In her left hand she holds a javelin resting on the ground and the right hand is based on a cylindrical object resembling the lower part of a twisted temple column. These attributes represent perhaps her sovereignty as well as her power.

This Morgan Le Fey shows in the Irish ancient legend Tochmarc Ferbe or wooing of Ferb, a lot of duplicity by talking similarly to both parties , but reversed to better play them off against each other. To be theologically a little more precise she personifies therefore in that case all that in man can encourage him to (collectively) attack his fellow.

After all, so that there is war, isn’t it necessary both camps feel like confronting each other? There is not war if, like in Munich in 1938 *, one of both camps refuses to fight. To illustrate this idea Morgan Le Fey plays therefore in that case the role of a war goddess or more exactly demoness, whose essential function by definition is to push men into killing each other.

The color linked to this goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, was the red. She could have a multitude of different shapes and be completely changed into a bird, into an eel, into a she-wolf, into a heifer….. The Morrigan is from the beginning a key figure of the mythical epic. There is no need in her case to search the supernatural being in human form. She appears straightaway on a cosmic scale, and " God sized.’ Before the battle of the Plain of the standing stones or of the burial mounds, she meets the Irish great god-or-demon in the house he has near a ford.”With one of her two feet at Allod Echae , to the south of the water, and the other at Loscuinn, to the north of the water.” Nine loosened tresses were on her head. The Dagda, conversed with her, and they made a union."The bed of the Couple" is the name of the place thenceforward . Then she told the Dagda that the Fomorians (Andernas on the Continent) would land at Mag Scene and on the day of battle she gave two handfuls of the blood of the king of the Andernas, Gaelic Fomorians, called Indech to the hosts that were waiting at the Ford. This ford was called from now on “ford of destruction.”

Morrigan is a very strange goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer. She occupies a separate place in the Irish theogony and cosmogony. Her birth (she was born from the Sea) gave her a kind of precedence on the other deities. She was a guardian of peace but also of war. Her action scope had the whole world as a setting that is why she was often identified with other goddess-or-demonesses , the Dea Danu (bia) for example. As Jan De Vries very well saw regarding this Rigani in Ireland, the sources on her subject speak to us about an almost demonic goddess who sometimes has a clearly sexual nature. She is even linked up with the birth ritual. Nothing amazing therefore there were scholars to want to make her be categorized as a mother-goddess-or-demonesse. Rightly? Her name anyway, opposes to it categorically. Her true Gaelic name is indeed Morrigu / Morrigain; it was translated: "Queen of ghosts" but wrongly.

In the heresy spread in Ireland, she is known as the wife of the god-or-demon Dagda, she is also sometimes shown as a consort of the eon Neto / Neith / Neit. About eons, see below. Her relations with our hero are also very ambiguous. Unlike the version of the Egerton manuscript, the manuscript kept in the book of Leinster indeed shows us the war goddess or demoness making unusable the chariot of our Lord (of Muirthemne)in order to prevent him from leaving.

This deity plays therefore a very ambiguous role in this drama by going successively from hate to love. But perhaps is it the particularity of any excessive hate or love. Everybody knows that hate and love are both sides of the same coin.

Unfortunately for those who dream only about childish simplicity what characterizes therefore this goddess-or-demoness or fairy, it is therefore her polymorphism, or even her functional pluralism. Morrigan has as a result a triple aspect at least and bears several names.

Notice on loose sheets found by the heirs Peter DeLaCrau.

Nemain or Nemhain, Neman, Nemon. In the Irish Celtic mythology, is a warrior goddess-or-demoness , who appears notably in the mythical story of the rustling of the cows of Cooley (Táin B ó Cúailnge). It

252

is a representation of the Bodb, herself an avatar of Morrigan, the death goddess-or-demoness . Her name means "frenzy,” "wrath.” Well, perhaps!

CATUBODUA-MORRIGANI-AND-NEMAIN: THE DESTROYING ASPECT

OF THE WATERY GREAT MOTHER GODDESS (DANU) AS AGENT OF THE FATE.

In the same way as Danu (bia) appears on some coins in her function of Cantismerta, heavenly goddess-or-demoness or fairy; in the same way, she appears as a war goddess-or-demoness on other ones. On a whole series of coins of the Namnetes, she is represented as a warlike fury, running towards the left and holding with her hand a short sword in its sheath. The latter besides is adorned, in the end, with the Amazon shielded (pelta) sign of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy. On an important series of coins of the Redones, she is represented naked, on a galloping horse, holding a shield with a hand and a spear with the other one. On another one of these coins, she holds her shield with her right hand, and brandishes skyward her sign with her left hand : the three bowls.

Danu is therefore a complex deity: a prophetess, warrior, queen, and goddess-or-demoness or fairy of sovereignty or of fecundity, very closely linked to the destiny of the country itself.

Danu may embody the maternal, gentle, protective and loving, energy, of the divine Mother, she also embodies the opposite aspect, because she is a totality, fullness, having as such some polarities which, if they seem to oppose, are in reality completely supplementary.

She has therefore a dark face (the Badb-Catha), mysterious and terrible, which it is well necessary to admit and to accept as her luminous aspects. Since all what is born must die, and that the watery great mother goddess-or-demoness represents the matter, it is logical that her role is also linked, in one way or another, to the end of the life, to death. The end, the death, which scares so much the human beings, also led them to see and to fear the watery great mother goddess-or-demoness in this terrifying aspect. And in that case, really, the Morrigan can take the shape of f a cruel, bloody and merciless, goddess-or-demoness. The Badb-Catha enjoys the blood of the warriors died on the battlefield.

This conception of the woman which may seem monstrous to Judeo-Christians, for whom the woman evokes the sin or the spiritual death more than the bodily death, is for the true druids a challenge without any personal aggressiveness, because it is the same goddess-or-demoness or fairy if you prefer, who leads to the heaven of the warriors the soul / mind of those who are dead in action .

POPULAR CONSEQUENCE IN FOLKLORE.

Notice of Peter DeLaCrau found on a loose sheet and inserted in this place by his heirs.

The epigones of (the aspect) Danu (bia), Cantismerta, or Bodua. The fairies sign of death. There are various appellations according to the countries, then to regions.

Ireland: Bansidh, Bean Si, meaning "woman of the Sidh" (the sidh is a hillock or a hill reputed to be the dwelling of fairies).

Scotland: Bean Sith, Bean Nighe (the washerwoman of the ford), Caointeach (the wailer).

Wales: Cyhiraeth or Gwrach y Rhibyn.

Brittany: Kannerezed-noz (night washerwoman).

The fairy warning about a coming death is a legendary being, coming from Irish or Scottish folklore, who is also found in Welsh folklore, or even in that of Brittany. Her howl was supposed to announce a coming death.

Banshee is the English word derived from the Gaelic. The banshee can take on several appearances. She is met in the shape of a beautiful girl with her face covered with tears or on the contrary of a long and thin-haired hideous old woman , wearing a green dress and a gray coat. She also appears sometimes in the shape of a crow.

253

The shouting of the banshee is the most horrible we could imagine. It takes at the same time after the howl of the wolf, the calls of the abandoned child, the complaints of the woman who gives birth, and the sound of the wild goose. Those who heard it maintain this shouting would awaken whoever, and that it remains audible even in the middle of a violent storm.

When a banshee makes this shouting, the one who hears it knows that a member of his family died, or gets ready to die. It sometimes happens that some banshees meet to howl in unison, announcing the coming of a big disaster or the decease of an important person.

The banshee sometimes stands near a ford, where she moans while washing the shroud of a future deceased person. It is notably the case of the Armorican Night washerwomen. This washerwoman role, rather strangely, does nothing but strengthening the close association which exists in general between water or rivers notably, and the cosmic great mother-goddess-or-demoness.

Initially the banshee is a kind of angel of female gender acting as an intermediary between the world of the god-or-demons and the world of men. She does not necessarily have the gruesome role to announce deaths by washing the covered with blood linen or the shroud of the future victim, but both topics ended up becoming mixed up in the folklore. The Christianization debased the role of the Morrigani or Morrigu to relegate her, in the folklore, on the level of the fairies, sorceresses and ghosts. The character of the night washerwoman is therefore an avatar of the goddess-or-demoness , or fairy if his word is preferred , Danu (bia), Cantismerta, or Bodua, influenced by the druidic topic of the messengers of the other world. The hesus Cuchulainn himself will meet a washerwoman washing his linen in a river, shortly before his death, crucified on the menhir in Muirthemne.

Editor’s note. In France, some White Ladies are clearly some banshees. We have notably the example of the Lady of the palace of the Bourbons, who appeared the day before the death of one of the members of this family. The modern evolution of the myth changed it into an urban legend: she appears most often today on isolated roads most often by showing herself to the drivers.

The epigones of (the aspect) Bodua. As we have already had the opportunity to say it, the Irish queen Medb is unquestionably one of the avatars of the aspect Catubodua or Cassibodua of the W.G.M.G. Refer to what we noted higher on this subject.

But the rather terrible nature of this Catubodua / Cassibodua is also to be linked with the type of representation called Sheela na Gig by the specialists.

People call Sheela na gig the (engraved sculpted or drawn) figurations representing a horrible old woman, naked, bald, with bulging eyes, with dilated genitals ( she opens with her own hands). The symbolism of the Sheela na Gig is rather clear: the one who gives life is also the one who presides over death, in this way, she takes back her good.

The most ancient specimens were found in the south-west of France (11, Cleyrac in Charente, Fontaine d’Ozillac etc.) and date back to the 12th century, but these Romanesque sculptures on stone, have to be preceded by wood carvings having since disappeared.

Some manuscripts of Irish medieval literature perhaps also allude to her, with various appellations (the idol, the old woman, the sorceress, cailleach …)

The huge majority of the specimens which were preserved to us are now besides in this country (more than one hundred) from where the etymology of their name. The first mention of the word Sheela Na Gig is in a book published in 1840, and designates a sculpture of the church of Rochestown in the county of Tipperary in Ireland. Another mention, still in 1840, is reported by an artillery officer speaking about the church of Kiltinane in the same county.

Gig is habitually interpreted in gCioch or Giob meaning breast, buttocks (Sile-ina-Giob). There is debate on the other hand as regards the origin and the meaning of the first word. It is possible indeed to find the words Sheila, Síle and Sila. Eamonn Kelly mentions an Irish expression containing the word Sighle na gCioch and meaning the old sorceress of the breast or Síle-ina-Giob meaning the kneeling Sheila (Sheila coming from the Irish Sile, Cecil or Cecilia). But these interpretations are questionable, because not many Sheela Na Gig have their breast visible.

Other authors compare the word to the Gaelic word sidh meaning Next World (like in ban shee).

The most ancient name used to designate one of these sculptures is nevertheless that of idol, it is mentioned by R. WORSLEY in 1781, in his "History of the Isle of Wight.” The term "idol" was also used to designate one of these representations today lost, but that existed still at Lusk in Ireland at the end of the 18th century.

254

The case of the islands of Inishkea (off Mullet’s peninsula in the County Mayo) was a little different ,nothing proves this idol, still worshipped in the beginning of the 20th century, had been a Sheela Na Gig.

Until the 17th century, this sheela na gig figured prominently (often above the entrance) in churches, castles, or other monuments of this type, where they were considered to be representations of local she saints, but in many cases, it was rather the reemployment of a sculpture or of a bas-relief coming from a more ancient monument. Since this epoch, they began being relegated out of the view of the visitors with other images become undesirable. The spreading of this type of representation in Ireland, where there are 101 of them, proves that in this country at least it had to match a still very living idea. And if we find many fewer of them in the United Kingdom (45. The most famous is in the castle of Kilpeck, in Herefordshire), it is probably because this relegation or destruction process had to begin in this country much more early than in Ireland.

These representations are in no way realistic, and emphasize some parts of the body heavily, just like in what is known of the ancient Celtic art. The eyes notably (their size was clearly exaggerated perhaps in order to evoke the soul or the mind of this character. People say commonly that eyes are the mirror of soul?)

The Sheela na gig sometimes stands on one leg like in Kiltinane and in Fiddington.

The biggest uncertainty prevails regarding these often ridiculous but always with oversized genital parts, female representations.

Five or six possible meanings were taken on by the art historians.

The worship of fertility. The widening of the vulva can, of course, draw attention to this function, and the fact that many women came to touch it to have children also, but the rest does lend itself hardly in it, and it is therefore still only a hypothesis.

Some protection against the evil, apotropaic amulets intended to bring luck and to move aside the evil eye (a little like the skulls of other monuments). Especially in cases where these representations were very within sight at the entrance of the buildings in question (Doon, Cashel, Fethard abbey, Ballynahinch).

Prude and misogynous warnings of the Christians, intended to warn the believers against the female sexuality linked to sin or Satanism.

It can be true of the sheela na gigs found in churches with representations of other sins (Kilpeck) and also in France.

Ancient representations of saints, notably St Catherine (Tugford Sheelas). This applies for Ireland as well as Great Britain.

The Sheela Na Gigs would be a kind of equivalent of the gargoyles and of the demons' representations in churches and cathedrals in Europe.

An aspect of the goddess-or-demoness Morrigani. The front door in the life, the womb would be then in that case the symbol of the return to the mother- earth through death, and the sheela na gig would make this aspect of the Morrigani the precise equivalent of the goddess-or-demoness Kali in India.

The theory, adopted by Joane McMahon and Jack Robert, is that the Sheela Na Gigs are a recollection of a pre-Christian worship of fertility or of Mother-goddess-or-demoness. According to them, the Sheela Na Gigs were found in buildings of pre-Christian worship, but would have been included then into the architecture of churches.

Ann Ross and Margaret Murray think these sculptures would represent either Earth goddess-or-demonesses or fairies, or war goddess-or-demonesses. It would be a Celtic deity, a sorceress such as the Cailleach of the Scottish and Irish mythologies. It is the most popular theory, but it is not shared by the majority of the academics.

Maureen Concannon links these representations to the Mother-goddess-or-demoness and Joergen Andersen evokes a vague pagan influence in a resolutely medieval context. Sculptures of men, of women and of animals are often found indeed, next to animals devouring human beings, in the representations of Hell. These figurations would have been aimed at reminding to the widely illiterate populations of the epoch, the precepts of Christian religion. In this case not to succumb to the pleasures of the flesh.

Another hypothesis put forward by Joergen Andersen then taken over by James Jerman and Anthony Weir, is that these sculptures appeared in the 11th century in France and in Spain before being introduced into the British isles in the 12th century. Some differences were indeed noticed with the sculptures of the Continent where the masculine figures and some extravagant positions are much

255

more present than in the British isles, what provides adequate evidence to claim the thesis of a subsequent assimilation of its representations in Ireland and in the United Kingdom. These authors think therefore that this type of representation went back up on the British isles following the roads of Santiago-de-Compostella. Eamonn Kelly, custodian of the Irish antiquities in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin points out that the distribution of the Sheela Na Gig in Ireland matches the zones pervaded by Anglo-Norman. The Sheela Na Gigs of churches would have been affixed so to denounce the desire and the perversion that would represent the women, but Barbara Frietag questions this point. This theory does not explain representations being on monuments which have nothing religious as the castles.

None of these theories is therefore practicable to all these representations, and there are particular cases for each of them. Some of the represented women are slim with a small breast, others are bigger and have an obvious sexual context, others else have striations reminding of marks or tattoos.

DISCUSSION PAPER: THE WELSH HERESY.

Mabinogi are no longer, alas, only romantic legends.

Don / Dôn. Welsh goddess-or-demoness or fairy. Wife of the giant Beli. Mother of Amaethon, of Gwydion, of Arianrhode, of Govannon and of Lludd. She is therefore the parent of the divine dynasty of the "children of Don,” struggling against the family of the giants known as the "children of Llyr.”

The watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness is also called Modron in the Welsh mabinogion (see the history of Culhwch and Olwen). Modron is the divine mother (mother-water), the daughter of Avalloc, or of the king of Avallach (Avalon?) in the Welsh Triads. She is similar to the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Matrona of the Continent, to the Irish goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), and probably forms the initial archetype of Morgan La Fey in the Arthurian legend. She is the mother of Mabon, whose complete name is Mabon ap Modron "Mabon, son of Modron.”

But that we have already highlighted it.

Editor’s note. This central great goddess-or-demoness has therefore so many different names that a wise precaution would be perhaps to designate her only by an acronym type W.G. M. G. (Watery great Mother-goddess-or-demoness) because the great central goddess-or-demoness is in reality an ennead (an ennead is the gathering of nine deities, organized into a hierarchy or supplementary).

Most ancient of these enneads is besides that of the Gallisenae. The first mention of their existence indeed dates back to a named Artemidorus (125 - 27 before our era.). According to Pomponius Mela (geographer of the 1st century), they are nine and have taken a vow of chastity. They have the gift of prophecy, the power to abate winds and storms, and to take the animal shape which they want.

“ In the Britannic Sea, opposite the coast of the Osismi, the isle of Sena belongs to a Celtic deity and is famous for its oracle, whose priestesses, sanctified by their perpetual virginity, are reportedly nine in number. They call the priestesses Gallizenae and think that because they have been endowed with unique powers, they stir up the seas and the winds by their magic charms, that they turn into whatever animals they want, that they cure what is considered incurable among other peoples, that they know and predict the future, but that it is not revealed except to sea voyagers and then only to those traveling to consult them.”

In the beginning of the 12th century, Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Vita Merlini, describes the island of Apples or Fortunate Isle (Avalon) lived by nine sisters, whose elder is called Morgan. Because Morgane has eight sisters, let us not forget it!

“The island of apples which men call “The Fortunate Isle” gets its name from the fact that it produces all things of itself; the fields there have no need of the plows of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides. Of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. There nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country. She who is first of them is more skilled in the healing art, and excels her sisters in the beauty of her person. Morgen is her name, and she has learned what useful properties all the herbs contain, so that she can cure sick bodies. She also knows an art by which to change her shape, and to cleave the air on new wings like Daedalus; when she wishes she is at Brest, Chartres, or Pavia, and when she will she slips down from the air onto your shores. And men say that she has taught mathematics to her sisters……Thither after the battle of Camlan we took the wounded Arthur, guided by Barinthus to whom the waters and the stars of heaven

256

were well known. With him steering the ship we arrived there with the prince, and Morgen received is with fitting honor, and in her chamber she placed the king on a golden bed and with her own hand she uncovered his honorable wound and gazed at it for a long time. At length she said that health could be restored to him if he stayed with her for a long time and made use of her healing art. Rejoicing, therefore, we entrusted the king to her and returning spread our sails to the favoring winds.”

Watch out! We want in no way to mean through that these two texts characterize and define exactly the W.G.M.G . We only want to say by using this metaphor that it happened the druids of the epoch convey the complexity of a poly-unity by using for this purpose the image of the ennead.

N.B. The whole being greater than the sum of the parts these three entities are found in power ten in this queen of Ireland.

LEARNED CONSEQUENCES IN TODAY'S SCIENCE.

Notice by Peter DeLaCrau found on a loose sheet and inserted in this place by his heirs.

An optical illusion created by Mother Nature: the Fata Morgana. The Fata Morgana is an optic phenomenon which results from a combination of mirages (disturbances of the rays of light during their passage across a temperature gradient in the atmosphere). The apparition of a Fata Morgana is apparently favored by the presence of islands, because earth and rocks change their temperature much faster as water. The ray trajectories are then unforeseen and interlaced in various ways. It is possible to get so exceptional combinations of the lower and upper mirages, where pictures at the same time right and overturned, pile up, while forming a vertical column.

This mirage is one of the most complex which are. The word of lateral mirage is also used to name it. This mirage shows forms comparable to cliffs, crystal palaces, or even temples. The vision conditions necessary for this type of mirage are sometimes gathered in the Gulf of Bothnia, between Sweden and Finland, or above the Baltic Sea, in spring, during thaw. The Fata Morgana is also visible in the polar regions and played many tricks to the explorers of the Far North. She is also found, rather often in the straits of Messina, between Italy and Sicily. The name of Fata Morgana was later given to all mirages having fabulous, strange or amazing forms.

257

TARAN/TORAN/TUIREANN.

(Toiraecus, Tueranneus, Tueraeus, in Spain.)

Irish mythology grants in this divine entity a separate place in the panth-eon.

In principle he should have the first place but what it is possible to determine, it is that in Ireland this is not the case.

Heresy? Let us say rather some centuries of separated evolution and of disintegration under the attacks of Christianity. The copyist monks did not only copy or copy out endlessly ancient legends, they burnt also a lot of them.

In the dodecahedron of Jung corresponds to the archetype number 12, that of the king.

It is nevertheless necessary to underline that in druidic analytical psychology nobody is a prisoner of a single archetype. You can very well be a king but also an excellent warrior.

Kings/queens are introverted and rather Cartesian, factual. They like rules, order and ethics. They like to take time to define the best strategy. The notion of justice is important to them, and they like to be seen as smart people. They are very good at identifying the flaws in a system, a creation or an ideology. Kings and Queens don't like the unexpected, and find it difficult to be spontaneous. Moreover, they can very easily come to critical or even value judgments about others. The pathology linked to someone who would be ONLY king/queen all the time would be narcissism (exaggerated self-esteem, vision of others as objects, etc.).

The Jungians are perfectly right to see that you can very well be a king but also be a warrior.

Warriors are precise people with strong determination. They are not afraid of conflict and are very good at "defending their territory." They like competition and challenges and are easily able to move things forward.

Like kings, they have a high moral sense with strong values, including a great sense of family.

Action-oriented, warriors do not like to waste too much time thinking, so they easily give in to impulsiveness and even aggression. Anything that closely or remotely resembles a feeling is viewed with suspicion by a warrior who sees these human sides as weaknesses.

The pathology linked to someone who is ONLY a warrior is psychopathy where the person commits serious impulsive acts without the slightest remorse. The warrior will become aggressive to scare you. Guilt is not a problem for warriors. He will deny everything and become angry.

And it is true that some of this is found in the personality of the first of the gods, but on a very symbolic level.

Tuireann (Old Irish: Tuirenn or Tuirill Biccreo) according to the Irish apocryphal texts at our disposal (principally the Aided Chloinne Tuireann) is presented to us as being the father of Credne, Luchta, and Cobannos.

His other sons (by Dana) are called in Gaelic language Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba. It is them who according to these apocryphal texts would have killed the father of Lug, and caused by this fact a terrible revenge from the latter.

Some passages of the Lebor Gabala Erenn nevertheless present us Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba as being the sons of Delbáeth Mac Ogma.

All that is quite complicated and proves that the philosophical and thoughtful paganism of the original panceltic myths had ended up degenerating under the repeated attacks of the Christian underculture of the epoch.

Taran/Toran/Tuireann was indeed another of the major figures of the druidic theology. He represented the part mind or menman of the Celtic gdonios (of the human being). He was therefore located at the junction or in the meeting between the (pure) soul and the inanimate matter. Pure soul and matter being generally but although paradoxically, linked with the feminine gender, the mind could therefore only be male for druids. Female + female when that is interpenetrated that produces masculine among Celts. The divine entity Taran/Toran/Tuireann was consequently regarded as male or masculine in the druidic Panth-eon.

258

The name of Tuireann refers to a proto-Indo-European root which produced the word thunder (cf current Gaelic tomach)

N.B. The become Christian Irish bards therefore ended in dealing with that no longer at all as timeless mythology but like genealogies similar to those of their sponsor owners.

IN GERMANIC LANDS THIS DIVINE ENTITY IS KNOWN AS DONAR OR THOR.

Thor is the son of the god Odin and of the goddess Jörd. It is the god of the flashes of lightning, thunder and rain. He represents the battle, strength and courage. Armed with his magical hammer called Mjollnir or Mjolmer, he defends men and other gods against monsters and giants. The majority of peoples in northern Europe use his root to designate the Thursday; Thurs-day (Thor's day)...

Just like Indra in India or Thor in the Germanic world, Taran/Toran/Tuireann (Toiraecus, Tueranneus, Tueraeus, in Spain) was seen as the one who triumphed over the malefic forces of chaos, most often personified by giants and snakes (and beside generally the bards amalgamated both characteristics, forces of rough nature was represented by anguipedic giants: what is called wyverns on the Continent, Fomore in Ireland). Taran/Toran/Tuireann is therefore, in their perspective, the one who maintains the physical universe in good state.

The name of Taran/Toran/Tuireann is found on several occasions in relatively varied forms in the inscriptions, Taranoou at Orgon, in the Bouches-du-Rhône , France; Taranucnus in Boeckingen and Godramstein (where he is compared with Ravinis) in Germany, Taranucnus at Budapest, in Hungary (where he is compared with Jupiter); Taranucus at Scardona, in Croatia (where he is compared with Jupiter); Taranis at Baudeced, in Belgium, and Taranuos on the territory of Amiens, in the Somme, in France. It also appears in the theonym Etirun mentioned by the Dindshenchas, but according to certain authors the genuine form of the name would be Taranus. From Celtic *toranos - lightning flash, Indo-European root *ten - which means “to thunder, to rumble.“ The stormy function appears clearly right from the beginning therefore, what explains why the Romans compared him very naturally with their Jupiter, he also a god-or-demon of storms and lightning. But Taran/Toran/Tuireann is also a god-or-demon of the sky, from where his link with the wheel symbol, archetypal sun symbol, just as much as the symbol of storm.

The origin of Taran/Toran/Tuireann is not less mixed than that of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness. The god-or-demon, such as he appears; also himself seems to be synthesis. The unity of Taran/Toran/Tuireann is therefore only a nominal unity, covering disparate traditions. The most striking representation of him people get is that of a thunder god or demon, leader of the atmospheric deities. He is particularly present in the mountainous regions where he is regarded as being the “sky god-or-demon “the one who rides the clouds “. He is “king of the sky, lord of the rain, and therefore master of the earth also “. This god-or-demon is in the beginning deprived of precise shapes and he is in general evoked by various symbols as wheel, S-scrolls, triskelion, or swastika.

From immemorial time, man was terrorized by lightning and thunder. A long time he attached these phenomena to a supernatural cause. Thus the lightning was linked to the anger of the god-or-demons, or to the notion of punishment of faults and sins. We find representations of them among all peoples and in all religions. As of the prehistoric era, cave paintings describe the lightning as a stone or an ax cast from the sky, destroying everything in its path. Among Greeks, the master of the god-or-demons was Zeus and his distinctive attribute was the lightning, symbol of his divinity. Among Romans, his equivalent was Jupiter, and in the former Germanic tribes, Thor with his hammer. The latter had a red beard , he shook it in his anger moments, and from where the lightning escaped then. In India the lightning god-or-demon was named Indra, in Egypt Seth; in China the deity who presided over the lightning mystery was Lei Tsu; and on the American continent, the Aztecs had the god or demon Tlaloc.

During the Middle Ages, a very old habit still consisted in carrying in one’s pocket, when weather was stormy , a stone of the lightning: a fulgurite (rock formed by the vitrification of siliceous grounds under the effect of the intense heat produced by the lightning current at the time of its impact on the ground).

259

You recited at the same time: “Stone, stone, preserve me from thunder, “or you say prayers to saints like St. Donatus, St Amabilis, even St Barbara.

We find this god-or-demon in Roman Britain and he matches exactly the Welsh (and probably Irish) god-or-demon Taran, father of a certain Glineu in the mabinogion (Glineu ap Taran, Glineu son of Taran) as the Scottish god-or-demon Taranaich.

He is known in Ireland under the name of Biccreo Delbaeth (Deluato) and he is also called Tuirell or Tuirill… in certain apocryphal texts. Delbaeth or Deluato means “the fire shaped “. For those who know what it means!

On the Continent, Julius Caesar allocates to him the empire of heaven. “They worship as their deity, Mercury in particular [….] Next to him they worship Apollo, and Mars, and Jupiter, and Minerva; respecting these deities, they have for the most part the same belief as other nations: that Apollo averts diseases, that Minerva imparts the invention of work and art, that Jupiter possesses the sovereignty of the heavenly powers; that Mars presides over wars“ (De Bello Gallico, VI, 17).

It is therefore the first of the Uranian or celestial god-or-demons. The commentators of Lucan themselves make him a master of heaven but also of war. “Praesidem belloreum et caelestium deorum maximun Taranin Iouem, adsuetum olim humanis placari capitibus, nuc uero gaudere pecorum “. “They hold Taranis Jupiter for the war guardian god and the greatest of sky gods, the habit was formerly to offer him the heads [of overcome warriors] now he is satisfied with cattle “ (Bernese Glosses or scholia on Lucan text.)

Mamertinus too, speaks about him, as follows.

“Besides having expelled the Titans once from their occupation of heaven and having engaged in war soon afterwards against the two-formed monsters (the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians in Ireland? Editor’s note) , governs with uninterrupted care his empire, peaceful though it is, revolves this enormous mass [or millstone] with tireless hand, and ever-watchful preserves the arrangement and succession of all things. For it is not true that he only bestirs himself on those occasions when he thunders and hurls lightning bolts, but, if he has laid to rest the turbulent manifestations of the elements, all the same he orders the Fates and exhales from his peaceful breast those breezes which glide silently along….… “(Panegyric of Maximian by Mamertinus).

Mamertinus was, of course, a collaborator of the occupant and a courtier of the worst species, but he was of Celtic origin. This text is therefore important, because it reflects well the fashion ideas in the circle of the successors of the druids or of the bards, the rhetoricians of the time, and it makes Taran/Toran/Tuireann well a sovereign, maintainer of the cosmic and moral laws of which the enemies are gigantic anguipedic wyverns (Titans for Greco-Romans, Andernas for continental Celts, Fomorians for Gaels).

Some people wanted, quite unnecessarily besides, to deny Taran/Toran/Tuireann any luminous or fulgurant characteristic . And it is exact indeed that his name evokes only thunder a priori, in a strict sense of the word (tanar-/taran-).

However, everything in his symbolic system (swastika, triskelion or spiral, and so on…) including his equating to Jupiter by interpretatio romana, nevertheless refers to this notion of fulgurant light, including the wheel besides, because wheel symbolizes the sun, but also the lightning. Let us remind here that the Cross of Taran/Toran/Tuireann is identical to the Lepontic rune of the gift from the god-or-demons (gebo), an X which indicates to us the four sun stations of the sunrise , but also of the sunset , at the time of the two solstices.

According to the great French archeologist J. - J. Hatt, the lightning would have been regarded by the former druids as an emanation of the celestial fire accumulated in the sun. And our author evokes, in support of his thesis, some coins on which appears a driver casting at the end of a twisting line a mallet, or a flag with visible diagonals (a labarum?). It would be then the myth of Taranis-Jupiter casting the lightning on the ground to fertilize it thus and to make it bear fruit. But our author also notes in addition that on other coins, just like on the cauldron of Gundestrup, Taran/Toran/Tuireann seems to fight against the earth or against chthonian deities. Ambivalence therefore of the topic of fire (in water) which can be, either beneficial, or destroying.

He is also equated with the weather, according to Mamertinus (he exhales from his peaceful breast those breezes which, etc.). If he is therefore a frightening and terrible god-or-demon, he is also the father of the tribe (teutanus), epithet people award him perhaps in a propitiatory intention, but which matches some legends about him. His control of sky and storms or thunderstorms (flash thunder

260

lightning: he can as well draw aside them as to unchain them), makes him a god-or-demon useful for agriculture. Those who are primarily or in a more circumstantial way, driven by negative feelings, can always call upon him, in order to damage harvests or to cause dryness, but he guarantees rather agricultural abundance. His heat and his strength feed and maintain all the beings.

A small bronze found in the Chatelet (Gourzon, French department of Haute-Marne) delivered us about him an astonishing image. This figuration represents a standing god-or-demon, looking noble, endowed with an abundant hair and a venerable beard, in whom we undoubtedly recognize Jupiter, but a Jupiter got up with quite a strange implement (therefore Taran/Toran/Tuireann in fact).

The character presses his left hand on a six-spoke wheel, while the right one holds up the classical thunderbolt. Most unexpected, it is that, on his right shoulder, there is a metal circle, in which are threaded, like keys in a ring, nine spiral shaped objects.

After years of discussions, today specialists agree to identify these mysterious spirals with flashes, of which they imitate the zigzag outline.

The nine spirals hanging from his shoulder as a quiver constitutes the stock of flashes the celestial god-or-demon stores for his immediate needs. A touching with naivety figure, which joins together the Roman symbol of the lightning as the non-Roman symbols of the spiral and of the wheel. Other figurations show the wheel of this Celtic Jupiter accosted by a third symbol, the “swastika “(crooked cross, kind of four-spoke wheels with stopped rim , of which the spokes are folded up at right angles in the direction of the apparent sun movement).

Directly or not, wheel is a symbol of the sun, either that it reminds through its shape the disc even of the star or the route it draws in the vastness of the sky, or that we regard it as the reduction of the solar quadriga. The wheel which is often combined with him must symbolize a chariot more difficult to represent. But in this last case, it was extremely suitable to evoke the terrifying noise the men perceive, when the divine driver makes heard the rumble of thunder. Let us remind that the wheel is also reproduced on the cauldron of Gundestrup. What is characteristic, it is that, unlike much of peoples from Indo-European origin, Celts appear to have been less struck or impressed by the light itself, than by the effects of the flash and the lightning. While the sky master is before all “the luminous one,” in the eyes of the Greeks, who give him the name of Zeus, or of the Romans, who call him Jupiter, and even in those of the Germanic people, who name him Tiwaz (Ziu in Old High German), the Celts, themselves, know only Taranis, whose name evokes thunder. But this one is always accompanied by the flash (loucetios) as well as by the lightning. Taran/Toran/Tuireann is therefore a trinity on his own (Flash-Thunder-Lightning).

Here what on his side the other great French specialist in these questions, Paul-Marie Duval, thinks.

Taran/Toran/Tuireann. This name designates in Celtic language the “thunder“ (Welsh taran) that evokes the symbolism of the wheel most probably. The great Indo-European sky god-or-demon, whose parallels match themselves from a people to the other, Greek, Roman, Celtic, is even figured in a military rider, holding the thunderbolt, sometimes the wheel [the columns of the riding god-or-demon flooring a monster with snake or fish tail (s), traditionally called “with a gigantic anguiped “]. The symbolism of these monuments is obviously of cosmic or metaphysical nature. The use even of the column, so particular to support the image of a god-or-demon, is intended to bring him closer to the heaven, his kingdom, from where it seems to overlook the world. These stone columns of the Gallo-Roman world are the precise successors to the bilios / Irminsul or to the totems (simulacra) of the time of independence. At the bottom of the sculptural group appear four varied god-or-demons (or six or eight), inferior to the master of the universe. This iconography expresses the triumph of the celestial light which sees all, over the underground and hidden forces (because the giant appears to go out from the ground and his serpentine nature emphasizes his chthonian nature) the day prevailing over the night, the pure forces over the impure forces, and even perhaps the eternal life on death.

The celestial and luminous nature of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, is particularly obvious in the case of the discovered column discovered in Cussy French department of the Côte-d’Or. The sun and the moon, figured in Cussy and elsewhere, define the theater of his activity: the sky. More than a pure and simple sun god-or-demon, he reigns over the whole of the great lights. The east-facing positioning of the god-or-demon in Cussy seems to mean the sun rises on his command. He is thus the god-or-demon of light, flash and storm. The column was a long time considered as a lighthouse, and the

261

capital known as of Auvenet moreover, was called “the lamp “. The popular name has to be understood in the figurative sense , it refers to the celestial light of which the god-or-demon is the personification. God-or-demon of clearness but also of life, the riding god-or-demon may lastly grant his support to late, by making them reach the eternal light of the hereafter. One often signaled family grave expressly placed in the immediate vicinity of the columns, what would make them what we call in the druidic cemeteries an equivalent of our medieval lanterns of the dead. But this funerary aspect of the riding god-or-demon is neither equally constant, nor equally essential, as his heavenly nature; it is an occasional aspect, it is nevertheless logical and deserves to be announced. This design of the celestial deity was materialized in the shape of monuments of very different types: dedications for Taran/Toran/Tuireann, altars dedicated to Jupiter, combined or not with the former local name of the indigenous god-or-demon; monuments showing only the attributes of the deity, thunderbolt and classical eagle , wheels, crooked crosses, spiral pointing out the sun and fulgurant nature of the god or demon; figurations of a generally anonymous “wheel” god-or-demon “ ; figurations of a rider at the top of a column and victorious of an anguipedic monster or, more simply, of a god-or-demon standing, dominating a pitiful anguiped. Anguiped wyverns being the traditional symbolic representations of Andernas on the Continent, of the Fomorians in Ireland.

Between all these types of representations, two undeniable characteristics establish a link, and show that it is , in all the cases, a same god-or-demon: the equating with Jupiter, demonstrated by an inscription, and the presence of the wheel. But the interpretation as Jupiter has only the value of a general indication, conferring on this deity the luminous nature and the power.

The detailed examination of the facts reveals infinitely more varied aptitudes, while the study of the columns makes it possible to suspect an original druidic mythology. The god-or-demon, for example, is often of a largely exceeding that of the anguiped height, whereas we could expect the contrary.

This inequality, of course, wanted, is an artistic process intended to make comprehensible the god-or-demon is higher in strength than his adversary, and will therefore triumph over his enemy.

The attitudes are not similar in detail. It occurs the god-or-demon simply steps over the monster.

Stretched out or knelt at his feet. Generally, the anguiped is figured in the features of a little character, standing upright, even knelt, leant against the left leg of the god-or-demon, which makes his hand weigh on the head of the overcome one, in a gesture of domination (not of protection, like people believed sometimes). The legs of the monster end in a snake, of which the head turns and tries to bite the leg of this druidic Jupiter.

The sculptural groups are not all as well preserved, nor also explicit, and it may be the overcome people is not always anguipedic. In very small number of specimens, it even seems to be replaced by a woman. A wyvern in a strict sense of the word therefore. The meaning of the horse, that of the anguipedic monster, were discussed interminably. It was thought that the horse could correspond to the clouds which support the god-or-demon in the heights of the atmosphere. What is in question, it is not the human war, so brilliantly it is led, because the struggle evoked in this way is infinitely more sublime and proceeds on a very other level: it is the antagonism of the forces which govern the world. These circumstances show rather clearly the basic nature of the anguiped. The monster is the antithesis of the rider who floors him; and since the god-or-demon is able to be defined, as we said it, we may suppose that the role of the monster consists in thwarting this action.

In another sculptural group, unearthed in 1964, the god-or-demon holds of the left arm, which hangs along the body, a four-spoke wheel , laid out in the shape of a cross pattee, which reminds the wheel very closely held by the riding god-or-demon discovered in Meaux. Moreover, the small character is reduced to a bearded and hairy human head, carved level with the ground, as if the monster had some difficulty to tear off from the ground; on this head the wheel is so to speak, imposed; gesture which conveys the victory of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, god-or-demon of the lightning.

Taran/Toran/Tuireann was also sometimes evoked for the cure of the diseases concerning the bodily sight. The reasoning of the patients is easy to understand: they called upon quite naturally, for the safeguard of the sight, the god-or-demon who personified light.

Fire symbolizes the transforming energy of the acts of Taran/Toran/Tuireann. The druidic tradition retained this fire symbolism as one of the most expressive ones of his action. To this sacred fire, it comes down to rule or to move the universe, because Taran/Toran/Tuireann is a god-or-demon assistant of the Fate (Tokade). With the Destiny and the W.G.M.G. He hastily to receive same worship and same honors. He is inseparable of them, but by honoring this sacred, life-giving and indivisible, trinity, the druids nevertheless still distinguish these three entities well.

Some people equate Taran/Toran/Tuireann, particularly because of his victorious nature, to the first of the Zoroastrian (Vohu Manah) archangels. That is not very probable.

262

What is certain, on the other hand, it is that Taran/Toran/Tuireann prepares men, and opens their mind, by fulgurant like thunderclaps strokes of genius (enlightenment). He also assists from our weakness by sometimes equipping us with the strength (light) of heroes, symbolized by the en laith lon laith in the Irish culture (represented on certain Armorican coins by a kind of mast or ray outgoing from the head appearing on them).

The god-or-demon of Moses sometimes appeared in a burning bush, well Taran/Toran/Tuireann, himself, a simple god-or-demon of the druids, appeared in an oak.

Maximus of Tyre, Dissertation XXXVIII:

The Celts venerate Jupiter, but the Celtic image of Zeus is a lofty oak.

Pliny, Natural history, XVI, 249-251. “Upon this occasion we must not omit to mention the admiration that is lavished upon this plant [mistletoe] by the continental Celts. The druids—for that is the name they give to their magicians— held nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree that bears it, supposing always that tree to be the [oak variety quercus] robur …. In fact, it is the notion with them that everything that grows on it has been sent immediately from heaven, and that the mistletoe upon it is a proof that the tree has been selected by the god himself.”

From where the worship of the Bilios / Irminsul at the Saxons. Even though we do not know much on its subject after all is said about it.

Irminsul (German Irminsaule, Old Saxon Irminsul: " big or powerful column ") was either a tree - more precisely an ash - or a sculpted totemic trunk , devoted to a (Teutonic) Saxon war deity , named simply Irmin. It was known at the ancient Saxons', at the end of the 8th century.

The monk Rudolf of Fulda († 865), to whom most complete description of Irminsul is owed, reports in the chapter 3 of his hagiography «miraculis sancti Alexandri»:

Truncum quoque ligni non parvae magnitudinis in altum erectum sub divo colebant, patria eum lingua Irminsul appellantes, quod Latine dicitur universalis columna, quasi sustinens omnia.

“They also worshipped the trunk of a tree of no small size, set upright under the open sky, calling it in their country's language the Irminsul, which translates into Latin as 'universal pillar,” as if supporting everything."

Taran / Toran / Tuireann was represented or by a totem or a totemic trunk called Bilios-or-Irminsul, a little similar to that of our Indian brothers in the coast of the North Pacific BUT IN MUCH SIMPLER AND WITH A DIFFERENT FUNCTIONALITY OR INTENTION. The bilios / Irminsul linked to the worship of Taran / Toran / Tuireann is in fact most often a simple tree trunk summarily lopped and planted in the soil (bilios= block), what the Romans called a simulacrum.

This Bilios / Irminsul should not therefore be mixed up with the world tree which is a cosmic symbol.

The notion of World Tree is an archetype referring rather, in some mythologies, to the existence of a cosmic tree linking up the different parts of the Universe - generally the celestial, terrestrial and underground worlds.

This notion appears thus at many Indo-European peoples, such Persians, Slavs and Germanic peoples. It takes a particularly successfully completed form in the Scandinavian religion, where the cosmic tree Yggdrasil (indeed an ash), of which the branches spread out in sky and roots led to the country of giants, to that of men and to Hell.

It is in this tree that Odin (Germanic Woden) as our Hesus Mars remained hanging nine days and nine nights, still according to the Scandinavian mythology and the Edda, by sacrificing himself to himself. He would have learned in it the secret of the runes and nevertheless would have come back from it alive.

The popularity of this myth among the ancient Saxons is demonstrated among the Anglo-Saxons of the Early Middle Ages, notably through many representations which mix Germanic myths and Christian religion and which link Odin / Woden (so-called Wotan) to Christ on the Cross (see notably the runic inscription which is on the Cross of Ruthwell, at least perhaps).

263

The Celtic version of this Indo-European god called Donar or Thor was often equated wrongly by Romans to Mars, but his most frequent equating makes him an equivalent of Jupiter, what shows well the defensive or offensive protection was only one of his functions and not the most important. Toran/Taran/Tuireann rules by definition over other god-or-demons but, although the master of the skies in the broadest sense of the word, and particularly of the elements, Taran/Toran/Tuireann is in fact an entity who does not take part in the daily life of men, but only in an exceptional way. He reigns, but does not control personally. A little as in certain countries having still monarchies (the United Kingdom, etc.). And besides the scarcity of the mistletoe…. of oak, is the illustration even of that. Just as the Fate (Tocade) does not create the world itself, but gives the care of it to Taran/Toran/Tuireann, who , from his part, is going to make the gods responsible for regulating the details, what concerns the relative one. De minimis not curat Taranis, could have said Virgil whose grandfather was a druid.

In order to make comprehensible this situation (a king who reigns but does not rule personally), paradoxical it is true, to their peoples, druids and bards worked out a certain number of speeches on this subject.

It is interesting to notice in this perspective that, if Taran/Toran/Tuireann is the first of the god-or-demons on the Continent, his role among Welshmen is infinitely more modest. He appears there as the father of a certain Glineu in the mabinogion (Glineu ap Taran: Glineu son of Taran) and in the epithet or the title ascribed to Pwyll: Pendaran (literally chief, pen, of the flash, daran).

In Ireland he almost disappeared, for the benefit of Lug and of a properly Irish god-or-demon, Dagda, who seems to have recovered certain functions of Taranis.

In other words, Irishmen made him a deus otiosus, by transferring most of his powers to one of his subordinates. We may bring closer to this idea the phenomenon of the “deus otiosus “ well attested in the Indo-European religions: for example Tyr among the Germanic people, god-or-demon perhaps sovereign in the beginning, but whose worship disappeared in aid of that of the “specialized spirits “ of the late Panth-eon or Pleroma.

The function of such a god-or-demon is usually to be the father or at least the ancestor of all the other god-or-demons, through the great mother-goddess-or-demoness, communal to all the religions.

The Irish heresy or downward slide, even the deviance, went so far as to make him a god-or-demon ousted by Lug and his, and reduced to a subordinate role, simple lord of the sidh in Ben Eadair. Irish name of the hill of Howth in the North-East of Dublin, formerly an island. On Ptolemy’s map, the island is called in Greek Edrou Heremos (Edri’s Desert).

Benn Eadair is regarded as the more eastern point of Ireland. Also known by the name of Dun Etair or fortress of Etar (the father of Etain??). The last king of the Fenians would have had here ships and Oscar his grandson would be buried there with his wife, still a certain Etain (in fact Aideen)!

In Ireland, Taran/Toran/Tuireann, but also Tuirenn, Turenn, Tuirill, even Biccreo, Picreo, Delbaeth… is therefore also known for one of his diseases, gone down in history in one of the variants of the legend telling the tragic destiny of his children.

“Once when Tuireann Biccreo Delbaeth was suffering a serious sickness and could not find a cure he went to Diancecht. Diancecht gave him a draft at Cnoc Uachtat Archae that caused him to vomit 3 times. The first time he threw up that produced Loch Uair, the second Loch Iairn and the third Loch Aininn.”

These extracts of the Irish apocryphal legend are hardly explicit: we have no serious indication about the disease of Tuireann (Taran/Toran), his cure, and the possible links of this disease with the adventures of the murder of Cian (Ceno) or of the search expiatory which followed it. Taran/Toran/Tuireann and Eithne/Etain appear here for the first time in the narrative. Taran/Toran/Tuireann gives pieces of advice and the poor Eithne deplores the misfortunes this crime will involve for her brothers.

THE FAMILY (OR THE AVATARS???) OF TORAN/TARAN/TUIREANN.

264

In Ireland Delbaeth (son of Net?) is known as the grandfather of Tuirill Biccreo in certain passages of the Lebar Gabala Erenn, but of other passages of this book make “Tuirill Biccreo “or “Tuirill Picreo “another of the names of Delbaeth, and give him for children Brian (Brenos) Iuchar and Iucharba. What would therefore equate him with Tuireann and consequently lastly with Taran/Toran.

The consort or spouse of Taran/Toran/Tuireann seems to be either Etanna (Etain), who represents the human soul/mind always torn in her choices, or the watery great-mother-goddess-or-demoness Danu.

As we have had the opportunity to say it, although the master of the skies in the broadest sense of the word and particularly of elements, Taran/Toran/Tuireann is an entity who takes part no longer in the daily life of the men. He reigns but does not control. As in the United Kingdom, we have we said. On the other hand, light or spirit of Taran/Toran/Tuireann continues to work in the history of the par excellence people of the god-or-demons (the Celtic hearted or minded people). And causes many heroes in it, by enlightening with its sacred inner fire some mere mortals that nothing, however, seems to predestine for such responsibilities.

To believe in Taran/Toran/Tuireann that means simply, to admit that the sacred inner fire can enlighten a man of its flashes of genius, or that the sacred fire of the hero can sometimes enlighten some exceptional beings.

As the existence even of the name of Taranucnus, which means born from Taran, proves it (CIL, T13, N° 6094) this god-or-demon was seen as being able to have children. But of whose god-or-demon it could be a question in this case, of that, nobody is very sure.

The Irishmen allocated to their Tuireann Biccreo Delbaeth 3 children named Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba. In old Celtic Brenos, Ivocaros and Ivocarbos. A kind of three-headed man there too in reality. Most intelligent was Brennos (Brian) and became in a way their king. For more details about him, to see above the sub-chapter concerning the history of the twelve god-or-demons, of Danu (bia).

In order to protect the cosmic and moral order evoked by Mamertinus. Considering the importance of this text, let us not hesitate here to again subject it to the sagacity our faithful readers.

“ Besides having expelled the Titans once from their occupation of heaven and having engaged in war soon afterwards against the two-formed monsters (the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians in Ireland? Editor’s note) , governs with uninterrupted care his empire, peaceful though it is, revolves this enormous mass [or millstone] with tireless hand, and ever-watchful preserves the arrangement and succession of all things. For it is not true that he only bestirs himself on those occasions when he thunders and hurls lightning bolts, but, if he has laid to rest the turbulent manifestations of the elements, all the same he orders the Fates and exhales from his peaceful breast those breezes which glide silently along….… “(Panegyric of Maximian by Mamertinus).

The role of Taran/Toran/Tuireann is therefore also to restore order and justice when they are threatened in a way or another, and to protect the cosmic and moral order when it is in danger, Taran/Toran/Tuireann may send on earth the most favorable for his intentions god-or-demon (avatar or child).

As we have had already the opportunity to say it, his worship disappeared, not during the theoretical and perhaps not easily applied, prohibition of druidism in the reign of the emperor Claudius, but at the time of the Christianization of the country, which began on the Continent in the 4th century with St. Martin and in Ireland in the 5th with St Patrick (because there have been already Christians in Ireland before St. Patrick in some harbors, of course. This first attempt at Christianization will be achieved besides truly only several centuries after, with the Celtic monks.

The Church had to resolve to Christianize Taran/Toran/Tuireann very superficially besides, by making him St. George, the dragon slayer. Various cities, however, kept the main thing of his legend. So in France, in Metz, people celebrated during the Middle Ages the defeat of the Graouilly, a dragon supposed to personify the overcome paganism but in reality a local variant of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent and Fomore in Ireland, traditional enemies of Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

265

ATTRIBUTES OF ALL THESE GODS.

Every god-or-demon had always several epithets or epicleses.

The Romans in this field have prepared the work and made the task easier for us. They indeed sought the Latin equivalents of the god-or-demons met by them in Celtic land , and systematically attached to them the attributes or the epicleses (epithets) found by them on the immense territory of the ex-Celtic empire of Ambicatus.

The Roman cultural imperialism, of course, initially imposed itself in its most brutal form: the pure and simple affixing of the name of the Greco-Roman deity , without indigenous religious reference, on the votive altar. But we also notes, on all these territories subjected to the Romanization, a form of syncretism or acculturation, for example when the name of the indigenous god-or-demon remains coupled with that of the Roman deity. Other forms of syncretism or of acculturation also developed, each one matching a different reaction of the individuals,facing the invasion and the installation in a strong position, of the Greco-Roman worships.

As we could see it all in the beginning of this opuscule intended for the druidism schoolboys, every divine entity can take five different forms (pempedulia), a little as a five-leaf clover (which is much rarer than that with four leaves).

The first is the higher shape of this god-or-demon, his normal form if we can say, invisible, and inaccessible to the naked eye.

The second of these levels is that of the hypostases constituent of this supreme form, related to his being itself (example the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit, among Christians, and yet it is the same god-or-demon).

The third level is that of the occasional embodiments (avatars), who are produced in a precise intention and can be total or partial. Example the hesus Cuchulainn in Ireland, who is an avatar of Lug, Manannan Mac Lir who is in reality an avatar of Belin/Belen being expressed in the Isle of Man (between Great Britain and Ireland), etc.

The fourth level is that of the presence of the god-or-demon in the human heart. Then ,everything is possible, of course.

The fifth and last level of existence of the deity finally is the shape in which man one can pay homage to him (arcana or simulacra), i.e., the statue the painting or the symbol, into which an artist introduced a reflection of his divinity.

It is not there the least difficulty of the druidism, and this five-leaf clover, much rarer than the four-leaf clover even than the vulgar shamrock of noibo Patrick in Ireland, partly also explains the long list of epithets or divine attributes which follows.

The theonyms (names of god-or-demons) are often in the facts, qualifiers being used to designate the same entity. Let us think of the pleiad of names being used to designate the Blessed Virgin of Christianity? Catholic Roman version; Our Lady of Vales and Mounts, of Wood and Meadows, Of Lakes and Rivers, etc. Or of the 99 names of Allah.

It is in fact here a euhemerization in the wrong ways (equating process) of older theonyms. Everybody knows also (or should know) the famous Jehovah Sabaoth (god-or-demon of the hosts) of the Jewish Bible. Well, just as Jews consider their god-or-demon in his warlike aspect, or in his father aspect, even in his son aspect among the Judeo-Christians, the druids too , sometimes designated a god-or-demon with one of his supposed attributes (Caturix = king of the fights, albiorix = king of the heaven, etc.).

Except for a difference, in the case of the druids, these epicleses or divine epithets did not involve the obligation to worship one god-or-demon (monolatry) or a divine trinity (like in the case of Christianity), but the existence of a holy poly-unit made up of many divine persons, these attributes or these epithets applying sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other, of these entities.

The purpose of this epithet or of this epiclesis was to specify the precise aspect of the deity to whom you referred. It could be of various types.

- Toponymic: according to the name of the place of worship where the sanctuary is established, and more particularly, according to the name of his Tribe-State of origin.

- Topographic: it specifies the natural framework of the worship.

- Useful : according to the specific action of the god-or-demon.

- Mythological: according to the myths related to the god-or-demon considered.

266

- Liturgical: it evokes a particular ritual.

The religious syncretism is therefore the result of the contact between the religious practices brought by the winners and the druidic religion. The Roman conqueror brings at the same time as his colonists, his merchants or his soldiers, his Panth-eon (pleroma); the first problem which installation is thus of knowing how will be made the meeting between the two.

Various levels of syncretism or acculturation.

The “Linguistic baptism “. A first stage is reached in the syncretism or acculturation with the simple writing down , engraved in the stone, of a theonym hitherto only evoked in words. All the druidic deities of whom we find trace on the altars belong to this phenomenon. Names of god-or-demons or of goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, can, moreover, be accompanied by a qualifier (sanctus, sacrum) or by the word deus. The words deus , sacrum, sanctus, are especially used by individuals presenting a rather strongly Romanized onomastics . These titles show a will of precision of the religious contents of the druidic deities being able to be badly understood by the Roman environment.

The Interpretation. The second level of the syncretism or acculturation joins to the name of the indigenous god-or-demon that of a Roman deity , then made the indigenous theonym disappear. Concretely, there is therefore association then fusion between a classical god-or-demon and an indigenous god-or-demon, according to the common points that the believers thought to detect between the two deities. It is the interpretatio.

This process can take several forms according to the level of equating between the two panth-eons: either the classical deity bears an indigenous nickname, or the name of the indigenous deity is replaced by the word deus, joined with the Roman theonym, or the name of the Roman deity appears alone: he completely absorbed the indigenous theonym. There exist some exceptions to this rule, the cases where it is the indigenous theonym which survived, alone. Example the worship of Lenus Mars in Germany.

Another example of interpretatio romana. Heracles was equated with several Celtic god-or-demons by reference to their bodily force. He was particularly brought closer to Ogmius. Lucian of Samosata (2nd century).

“Our Heracles is known among the Celts of the Continent under the local name of Ogmius; and the appearance he presents in their pictures is truly grotesque. They make him out as old can be, the few hairs he has left (he is quite bald in front) are dead white, and his skin is wrinkled and tanned as black as any old salt's. You would take him for some infernal deity, for Charon or Iapetus—anyone rather than Heracles. Such as he is, however, he has all the proper attributes of that god: the lion's-skin hangs over his shoulders, his right hand grasps the club, his left the strung bow, and a quiver is slung at his side; nothing is wanting to the Heraclean equipment “.

From a similar point of view, but this time in rural environment, we have the strange stone monuments in the shape of historied columns which we see dawning in the 2nd and the 3rd centuries between Meuse and Rhenish border.

Such statues were also found in Armorica at Corseul, Saint-Meloir-des-Bois, Plouaret ((Cotes-d’Armor), Briec, Landudal, Plomelin and Plobannalec (Finistere), but other statues of this type exist in Germany and Belgium, as we said it.

Archeologists call them, according to the carved group which tops them, “Jupiter column “or, considering rather the overcome than the winner, “with a gigantic anguiped “ i.e., whose body ends in the tail of a dragon or snake. We could not imagine more accomplished abstract of the beliefs and aspirations, to what implicit recollections of old Celtic gigantomachies,of which the Irish epic preserved the memory (Andernas renamed Fomore in this country), were perhaps added.

In the summit groups of our columns, the mount floors a with a hideous mask or suffering giant, whose body fends in the tail of a reptile, as the sign of a link with the hellish world, in which the forces of Depths even of Chaos lie?

The ensemble is made of elements which have each iconographic and stylistic model recognizable (like the pattern of the wheeled Jupiter, of the riding hero , frequent on the Rhenish steles; the decoration made of overlapping leaves or scales, engraved, of the columns of the funeral monuments; the former imagery of the gigantomachies in Pergamon… But the assembly, eminently syncretic, is of properly local inspiration, and we can follow the progression of the type, this time again, along the Eastern Marches , since the Eduan country (approximately, southernmost Burgundy) to the

267

Decumatian fields (outpost of the Limes, in current Bade-Wurtemberg). Judging by the preserved dedications, the initiative of the erection of these monuments generally comes down to private individuals.

Such a syncretism, in which cosmology, forces of good and evil, are combined, from at the same time eschatological and political point of view; in which deities from various sources are assembled and merge, characterizes a state where the polytheism had come to conceive only a profuse, universal, supernatural power, of which national and individual god-or-demons seemed only some aspects, some kinds of invocation epithets.

The majority of these nicknames, used in Celtic land, for the Roman god-or-demons, are of Celtic origin. We may wonder what their value is. This value is, of course, variable. Some of these nicknames are sometimes used as epithets, sometimes alone: Borvo, Grannus, Belenus, Segomo, Camulus, Belatucadrus, Nodons (Nodens or Nudens), Sulis, Belisama. In this case, it is probable these nicknames are the very names of the matching druidic deities. Sometimes the nickname has a local meaning. Arvernus: Arvernian, Cimbrianus: of Cimbria, Condates: of Conde Pœninus: of the Pennine Alps ; it is then probable that we deal with a Roman deity, locally worshipped. It remains the nicknames which have no local meaning and which are used only as epithets. Some of them may designate druidic deities whom people have probably equated with those of the Roman deities who had similar attributes.

“They worship as their deity, Mercury in particular, and have many statues of him, and regard him as the inventor of all arts, they consider him the guide of their journeys and marches, and believe him to have great influence over the acquisition of gain and mercantile transactions. Next to him they worship Apollo, and Mars, and Jupiter, and Minerva; respecting these deities, they have for the most part the same belief as other nations: that Apollo averts diseases, that Minerva imparts the invention of work and art, that Jupiter possesses the sovereignty of the heavenly powers; that Mars presides over wars [….] They assert that they are descended from Dis Pater, and say that this tradition has been handed down by the druids” (B.G. Book VI).

The study of the Romano-British inscriptions [RIB] therefore supplements and rectifies the text by Caesar. The Roman god-or-demons with whom the Celtic god-or-demons were equated are well Mercury, Mars, Apollo, Jupiter and Minerva. It would be necessary to perhaps to add Hercules and Silvanus to them. The name of Mercury is much less frequent in the inscriptions than that of Mars. Can we conclude from it that at the Romano-British time , the great god-or-demon of the Celts was, as at the time of the invasions, a Mars rather than Mercury?

We will be content with following the conclusions of the Roman or Romanized colonists in this field, from where the following regrouping, see list below.

TARAN/TORAN/TUIREANN (called Jupiter or IOM by Romans).

Accio. Adceneicus. Addus. Agganaicus.

Albiorix. King of the white world, king of the heavens. An epithet of Taran/Toran/Tuireann found in Vaison and Montsalier in the Alps. At Oulx in Italy, people, on the other hand, have associated this epiclesis with the Roman god-or-demon Apollo. It would be therefore an epithet fitting as well a powerful and strong god-or-demon as a god-or-demon of beauty or harmony.

Ambisagrus. Anvalonnacus (supreme, sovereign).Appenninus. Aramo. Arubianus. Assaecus (an epithet of the Roman god Jupiter in Lisbon). Baginatis. Brixianus. Bussumarus. Bussurigius. Cacus. Candamius. Candiedo. Cernenus. Cornutus. Digus. Eaecus. Erusenus. Geius. Halamardus. Karnuntinus. Ladicus. Latrobius. Poeninus. Reinimus. Saranicus. Taenos. Tamitenus. Tanarus. Tavianus. Teutanus. Uxellinus.

---------------- -------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------

LUG (called Mercury by Romans).

Abgatiacus. Adsmerius. Alannus. Alaunus. Alounis. Andescociuoucus. Arcecius.

Arciacon. The great supplier, the great tradesman. A divine attribute of Lug known by an inscription found in York.

DEO ARCIACON ET N AVGST MAT… VITALIS ORD ........

268

To the god-or-demon Arciacon and to the divine emperor Mat ..... Vitalis, Senior officer…

From the Celtic*kik-ako- (muscle) with the intensive prefix *ar put before.

Artaius, divine attribute of Lug symbolizing his warlike strength and fury or other characteristics. Arterancus. Atesmerius. Atesmertius. Aruernorix. Aruernus. Atepomarus. Biausius. Bigentius. Cambus. Canetonnensis. Channinus. Cimabrianus. Cimbrianus. Cimbrius. Cimiacinus. Cisonius/Cissonius. Clauariates. Colualis. Cosumis. Devoris. Dubnocaratiacus. Dumias. Dumiatis. Epadatextorix. Excingiorigiatis. Friausius. Gabrus. Gebrinius. Gebrinnius. Harcecius. Hranno. Ildanach (Gaelic word meaning “skilled in many arts “). Iouantucarus. Iuiacus. Lamhfhada (word meaning in Gaelic language “ long arm “). Limetus. Lonnansclech. Magniacus. Maicnia (word Gaelic word meaning “young warrior “). Matunus/Matutinus. Moccus. Naissatis. Oueniorix. Samildanach (Gaelic word meaning “skilled in many arts “). Senus. Solitumarus. Susurrius. Tourevus. Toutenus. Uassocaletis. Uellaunus. Uiducus. Uisucius. Uisugius.

------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- ----------------------------- ------

BELIN/BELEN (called Apollo by the Romans).

Albarinus.

Arecurius. The judge or the referee. Divine attribute known by an inscription discovered at Corstopitum, Corbridge, in the Northumberland.

DEO ARECVRIO APOLLINARIS CASSI...

To the god-or-demon Arecurius Apollo, Cassius… from the Celtic *are- (to stand in front of, to chair) and *corio- (clan or tribe) with the Latinized male suffix us.

Amarcolitanus.

Anextiomarus/Anextlomarus. The savior. Divine attribute known by an inscription on pottery discovered in a wreck found in the estuary of the Tyne close to South Shields. Seems to have been the offering that Roman legionaries coming from Strasbourg and en route to reinforce the troops standing guard on the Hadrian's Wall, envisaged leaving in a temple of the area. From the Celtic *an (a) - (intensive prefix), *exs- (out of), *ti- suffix and *maro- (great) Latinized in - us.

Atepomarus. Bassoledulitanus. Cobledulitavus. Cunomaglus (Nettleton Shrub in the Wiltshire). Demioncus. Gangarensis. Livicus. Matuicos. Magiorix. Manannan (from the Isle of Man). Mogounus. Moritasgus. Siannus. Toutiorix. Vindonnus/Vinotonus. Virotutis. Vorocius.

-------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------

NOADATUS/NODENS/NUDD/NUADA/LUDD (called Mars by Romans).

Alator. Albiorix. Armogios. Arvernus. Barrex.

Barrecis. From the Celtic barro, wooded top or height. Found in the name of the Irish tribe of the Ui Bairrche as in the different “Bar “ in France (Bar-le-Duc, Bar-sur-Aube).

Belado. Beladonnis.

Belatucadros. 28 inscriptions in the vicinity of the Hadrian's Wall, particularly in Cumberland and Westmorland.

Balatocadrus, Balatucadrus, Balaticaurus, Balatucairus, Baliticaurus, Belatucairus, Belatugagus, Belleticaurus, Blatucadrus and Blatucairus, are probably variants of the name which means something like “the one whom the death is fitting “ “the one who kills with elegance “. The altar dedicated to Noadatus known as Belatucadrus are in general very poor and the god-or-demon known as belatucadrus therefore seems to have been honored especially by the privates.

Bellodunnus.

Bolvinnus. The rampart. Divine attribute of the war god-or-demon. He was honored in Baugiacus today Bouhy in France, department of the Nievre, equally with a named dunatis. From the Celtic *balko- (strong) and *wi-na- (barrier, fence).

Borus. Britus. Bruatus. Budenicus. Buxenus. Cabetius. Caisivus. Cariecus. Cariociecus. Carrus. Caturix. Cemenelus. Cnabetius. Cicinus. Cocidius. Condatis. Coronacus. Corotiacus. Cososus. Cuntinus. Curmissus. Dinomogetimarus. Divanno. Dunatis. Exalbiovix.

Exsobinus. The one who inflicts wounds. Attribute of the war god-or-demon known by an inscription found at Virton in Belgium. From the Celtic nexso- (wound) and bi-na (to strike, to inflict).

269

Giarinus. Gradivus. Intarabus. Iovantucarus. Lacavos. Latobius. Lavictus. Lenumius. Lenus (tilenus). Leucetius. Loucetius. Leucimalacus. Leusdrinus. Medocius. Melovius. Magianus. Marimogius. Masuciacus. Mogetius. Mogons. Mullo. Nabelcus. Nobelius. Ocaere. Ocellus. Ollodagus. Olloudius. Randosatis. Riga.

Rigisamus. Most royal. Divine attribute of the war god-or-demon. Known by two inscriptions found, one at Bourges in The Cher in France, where he is equated with Mars by interpretatio romana, the second one at West Coker, in the Somerset [RIB 187].

DEO MARTI RIGISAMO, IVENTIVS SABINVS.

To the god-or-demon Martius Rigisamus, Juventius Sabinus.

From the Celtic *rig- (king) and *samo- (the most).

Rigonemetis. Divine attribute of the war god-or-demon known by an inscription discovered at Nettleham, in the Lincolnshire [RIB 245.b]

DEO MARTI RIGO NEMETI ET NVMINIBVS AVGVSTORVM Q NERAT.

To the god-or-demon Mars Rigonemetis and to the divine emperor, Quintus Neratius Proximus.

From the Celtic *rig- (king) and *nemeto- (sacred clearing).

Saccetius. Sediammus.

Segomo. From the Celtic *sego (s) - (strength/victory). Also known in France by inscriptions found at Nuits-Saint-Georges, in Côte-d’Or ; Arinthod, in the Jura, and in Lyon where he is equated with Mars by interpretatio romana. He is also honored at Culoz, in The Ain, under the name of Mars Segomo Dunatus. Seem linked members of the horse family. A statuette representing a horse was offered to him at Neuvy-en-Sullias in the Loiret in France. The name Nia Segamoin also shows his worship in Ireland.

Semnocosus. Sinatis. Smertatius. Smertrius. Sutugius. Tarbucelis. Thincsus.

Tilenus. An inscription found at Quintana del Marco, in Spain. From the Celtic - *ti and *li-n-a, the one who deals with wounds.

Tritullus. Tullinus. Vegnius. Vellaunus. Veracinius. Veradunus. Vernostonus. Vintius. Visucius. Volmio. Vorocius.

------------- ------------------- ------------------ ----------------------------- ---------------------------------------------- -------

CAMULUS SMERTRIUS (called Hercules by Romans).

Alabuandus. Andossus. Devsoniensis. Graius. Hveteris/Hvitiris/Vitris. Hunnus. Llunnus. Magisus. Magusanus. Mertronnus. Saegon. Saxanus. Toliandossus.

------------ ------------------------------ ------------------------------- ------------------------------ ---------------------- -------

BRIGIT (called Minerva by Romans).

Arnalia. Belisama (the very shining, the white Lady).

------------------------- --------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- ---------------- ------

HANDWRITTEN NOTES ON A LOOSE LEAF, BY PETER DELACRAU, AND FOUND BY HIS CHILDREN.

DIVINE EPITHETS OF THE IRISH TRADITION.

Boadach/Buadach. The victorious one. An epithet calling one of the kings of the Celtic heaven in the Irish deviation.

Delbaeth. An epithet of Taran/Toran/Tuireann. Old Celtic Deluato. Fire Shaped.

Eochaid: “The rider “. Another name of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt.

Ollathir: “Father of everybody “. Another name of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt. Old Celtic “ollater “.

Picreo or Biccreo. A synonym of Tuirill.

Tuirill. A synonym of Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

Ruad Rofessa. “The Red one master of the great science “. Another name of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt.

Trefuilngid Tre-Eochair. “Triple Bearer of the Triple Key “. An epithet of Lug or of Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

------------- ---------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- ----

270

As what regards the Portuguese or Spanish deities to consult…

Blazquez, J. M. 1962. Religiones primitivas de Hispania. Fuentes literarias y epigraficas. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.

Encarnacao, J. 1975. Divindades indigenas sob o dominio romano en Portugal. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda.

271

REMINDER ABOUT SOME THEONYMS

OF THE IRISH LITERATURE.

The without value or very muddled genealogies (somewhat similar to these of Jesus in Matthew and Luke), provided by Seathrún Céitinn (Geoffrey Keating), the Book of the taking of Ireland (Lebor Gabala Erenn) and some notations extracted from the manuscript of the battle in the plain with burial mounds (Cath Maige Tuireadh) say to us indeed in connection with this war god-or-demon , that he was a son of Andedeiwos, son of Ollodeiwos, son of Tatos. In other words, a son of Indui son of Alldui son of Tat: mac Indui/maic Alldui/maic Thait.

- Indui.

The first term, in, is an intensive prefix meaning something like great or higher.

Dui is a word resulting from the Brittonic language (Ivernian according to O'Rahilly) deiwos = god-or-demon. In Gaelic language, we would have had dia. See old Celtic andedeiwos.

- Alldui.

The first term, all, oll, expresses the notion of totality. Alldui is therefore the divinity in its totality ???

Dui is, likewise, a term resulting from the Brittonic (Ivernian according to O'Rahilly) deiwos = god-or-demon. See old Celtic ollodeiwos. In Gaelic, we would have had dia.

- Tat. Tat (in Gaelic language we would have had atir). It is a Brittonic word (Ivernian according to O'Rahilly) meaning “dad.” See old Celtic tatos.

Tat is therefore a primeval deity similar to the pro-father of the Eastern Gnostics. It even has to be synonymous with primeval eon.

As we already saw it higher, in the heresy which developed in Ireland (degeneration due to the increasing scarcity of the contacts or of the exchanges with the rest of the Celtic world) Neit or Neth was also an electreon considered or viewed as a simple war god-or-demon, ancestor of the children of the Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), and of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians in this deviation.

Irish mythology allocates a very many offspring indeed to him, but rather strangely we know very few things about him. Irish heresy (we want to say by there that it is a deviation a little advanced compared to the ancient continental druidism); allocates to him as Consort or shakti (Catu) Bodua (Bodb), Nemetona (Nemain in Ireland), and Fea, even the triple Morrigan herself. It is, of course, a mistake due to the degeneration of local druidism. Or then that would mean this eon was able to form pairs with divine emanations of lower rank as at the Gnostics… in the East.

Mankind and world don’t emerge in an absurd way and without explanation from the nothingness, ex nihilo the Christians say (in order to go back into one day?), because they are bearers of sense. The divine genealogies, muddled enough it is true, as we could see it, of the Irish Book of Conquests, are the distortion of a detailed explanation, by the primordial high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), of the cosmic process having led to the appearance of the life such as we know it today.

Let us take the case of the Irish genealogical continuation Ogma son of Elatha son of Delbaeth son of Neth.

The Elatha and Delbaeth of our manuscripts are a problem. Delbaeth (old Celtic Deluato) is a qualifying adjective often combined with Taran/Toran/Tuireann. But it is, either different characters having the same name, or different traditions concerning the same characters.

As for Neth, as we saw it above, it is an entity considered as a simple war god-or-demon; an ancestor of the children of the Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia) or Anu and of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians in the Irish heresy (a deviation compared to the base druidism).

This fragment of genealogy means perhaps simply originally : War and Magic (Ogmius) result from the scientific and technical power (Elatio), born from the undifferentiated shape (Deluato), itself resulting from the explosion of the opposites. Or, in opposite direction: Neth (the name of which means confrontation of the opposites) gives birth to Deluato (the undifferentiated form); who gives birth to Elatio know-how (very exactly art, capacity, knowledge or technique); who gives birth then to Ogmius the god-or-demon of war and magic, and so on.

This explanation is as good as another one ! (Most disconcerting in the case, it is that delbaeth or deluato is an epithet often linked with Taran/Toran/Tuireann.)

272

This reasoning of genealogical type (anthropomorphic, of course, but in a way definitely less advanced than in Christianity) was indeed current among the high-knowers called druids.

Nothing proves it better than this answer of the young Nede to his elder Ferchertne, in the colloquy of the two sages.

Poetry son of thought,

Thought son of meditation,

Meditation son of lore,

Lore son of inquiry,

Inquiry son of investigation,

Investigation son of great knowledge,

Great knowledge son of great sense,

Great sense son of understanding,

Understanding son of wisdom.

Wisdom son of the triple gods of Dana.

It would be as childish [what, however, become Christian Irishmen did. Editor’s note] to take all that literally, as to be unaware of the profound thought which is expressed in these fancies.

Any somewhat cultivated man (like the famous philosopher met by Lucian of Samosata in the surroundings of Massilia for example) knows what happened with Uranus and Kronos (castration and then exile).

What it is necessary to think of the Irish god-or-demons like Ceno/Cian (the distant ? See the relegation of Kronos by Zeus) Neth, Delbaeth, and so on, IS EVEN MORE RADICAL.

These god-or-demons are not genuine god-or-demons, they are only moments or stages of the process of procreation of the current world.

In any event, the genealogies of these god-or-demons, complex and often contradictory, are only a means of explaining them, so that the fact of their birth is conceivable by human intelligence. We refer, for comparison, to the explanation of the Vedic Aditya which is often proposed. With, moreover, the reminder of the paradoxical situation of the Virgin Mary, mother of the one who made her, in Christianity.

After Christianization, these images or these comparisons, developed to give an account in a very philosophical way, of the cosmic process having given rise to the current world, were victims of two very different phenomena, but both formidable.

1) They were taken literally, and the inherent in Christian subculture coarse anthropomorphism euhemerized left and right these high-level cosmogonic allegories (the Irishmen of the Middle Ages made them god-or-demons even some men).

2) They lost their original coherence by dint of being copied and again copied, and were located on wrong ontological levels.

It is therefore useless to want to reconstitute them in detail! What remains to us about it in the manuscripts is much too incoherent! What is previous (the genealogical sequence: Ogmius son of Elatio son of Deluato = Taranis, son of Neto), is for example a working hypothesis, and in any way a certainty.

All that we can do therefore , it is at least to try to find the spirit of them, in order to restore it to the men of today.

1. The entire universe oscillates between two opposite poles. The beings and the phenomena which are reproduced in the universe are multiple and complex aggregates of these contrary manifestations.

2. Beings and phenomena are various dynamic balances; nothing is stable neither finite in the universe, everything is moving ceaseless, because the polarization, source of the beings, is without beginning nor end.

3. The opposite poles attract each other.

4. Nothing is completely of a pole, everything is an aggregate of both in variable proportion.

5. Nothing is neutral. Polarization is ceaseless and universal.

273

6. The attraction force between two beings is depending on the difference between their charge of opposite actions (oxymoron).

7. The repulsion between two beings of the same charge is all the more intense as they are closer (Neto).

8. The opposites generate their opposites. Life comes from death, the day comes from the night.

“They assert that they are descended from Dis Pater 1) , and say that this tradition has been handed down by the druids. For that reason they establish the divisions of every season, not by the number of days, but of nights; and they compute birthdays and the beginnings of months and years in such an order that the day follows the night” (Caesar B.G. Book VI, XVIII).

To note finally! The Gnostics in the East knew on this level only the couples, or syzygies in the gnosis of Iranian origin (each god-or-demon has his consort); and these primeval couples of god-or-demons and of goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, form the Albio-bitus (pleroma wrongly in St Irenaeus ).

Without being unaware of the thing, the Gnostics in the West, or druids, themselves, who were better astronomers, also knew the syzygy with three elements or triad. Because in astronomy, a syzygy (from the Greek suzugia,conjunction, then late Latin syzygia) is a situation where three bodies are aligned. This word is generally used for the Sun, the Earth and the Moon or a planet. For example, the sun or moon eclipses are syzygies; but it is also spoken of syzygy to designate the new and full moons, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction and in opposition, although they are not aligned perfectly with the Earth.

As we can see it, the observation of nature played a great role in the development of the first druidic theological concepts. Another of the characteristics of the druidic thought is indeed its tendency, not to duplicate, but to triplicate straightforwardly the things. On the Continent, this way of seeing is illustrated by the impressing number of three-headed bodies found here and there. The characters of these triads are not fixed as regards the details, and the composition varies constantly; the three-headed god-or-demon himself who appears in a certain aspect on a monument is figured in a different way in another locality.

The three-faced monuments present sometimes three complete faces around the same block, sometimes a central face to which two halves of the face are juxtaposed, each one of the two central eyes making a pair with another eye located on the side. What is the case of the monument found in Rheims, for example.

The three headed monuments are subdivided in two series. The first figures a deity with three faces from the same neck and the second a deity whose central head is figured with two smaller heads stuck on a par with the ears, on an equal or different level.

It does not seem that there is a difference between the representations in their mythical design, at most a different approach in the execution of the monument.

It is impossible to say if the three-headed figure represents the same deity or if several different god-or-demons hide in the same representation, because the figure is sometimes beardless, sometimes bearded.

These elements we have just touched on make it possible to believe; whether it is through figured representations or through the Irish texts; in the existence, among the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), of a design whereby the same divine being could gather in his own person three different entities. Case for example of three sons of Tuireann (Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba) also known as the three god-or-demons of Dana.

Anecdotally , let us remind that the three-headed god-or-demon is also found in the Vedic India, as in the Christian art. The collegiate church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux, in Chalons-sur-Marne , has one of the most beautiful three-headed figures, on the inside wall of the northern chapel, close to the choir. To see it , it is necessary, after having walked along the ambulatory, to take a small passage deprived of light and, before arriving in the chapel, to look at the right side. The triple face is there, four eyes, three noses, three mouths. The cathedral of Bayeux too, in Normandy, has also, a very beautiful three –headed representation visible by everybody if people look at the triforium.

The three- headed god-or-demon himself seems a small-scale representation of triad. But what to say when one sees on the figured monuments the three-headed framed with two other god-or-demons? We can no longer here speak about triad, because the tripleness is no longer respected. In short, it is some shirk akhbar, some all-out shirk…

274

ABOVE THE GODS: THE CLOUDS AROUND THE MOUNTAINS,

THE SPHERE OF THE NUMINOUS ONE (in the non Jungian meaning of the word).

What characterizes the first of the higher plans resulting from this emanation, it is its very close proximity to the divine Big Whole or Pariollon. It is simply the non-ephemeral personification of one of the attributes of the divinity (father, son, and even spirit, are for example hypostases of the god or Demiurge of Christians).

This albiobitus is therefore inhabited by beings with body completely made of light and of purity. They are safe from every stain and have neither father in a strict sense of the word nor mother, because they match a degree of the being a little less primitive than that we are able to imagine.

The notion of Albiobitus is what, in our eyes of modern peoples, seems most absurd in the former druidism. It is often considered as some antics which have only a historical interest; however it played a great role in all the Western spirituality.

Rather than to criticize it by relegating it up in the air of a former hypothetical druidism, we will try here therefore to show the major reasons which led the former druids to defend such a seemingly strange theory.

Numen, pl. numina, is a Latin term meaning "divinity,” or "divine presence,” "divine will"

The numen is not personified (although it can be a personal attribute) and must therefore be distinguished from the deus (god).

The term was used in the imperial worship of the ancient Rome to refer to the "deity" or divine power of a living emperor; this allowed worshipping a living emperor without literally calling him a god.

In the history of religions, the term refers to a pre-animist phase; that is, a belief system inherited from an earlier era.

People religious but without much imagination, Romans had not personified their gods. The gods were “those who live up there.” The Romans designated them with a generic word: NUMINA, i.e.: “the powers.”

The NUMINA were to be “useful,” they protected the family and all the activities of the family life:

Saturn, Ops, and Janus, were originally some Numina.

The arrival of the Greek gods gave them a true personality and a history full of accounts which embellished the Roman mythology. Saturn became the owner of the sowers and of the seeds. Ops supported the harvests. Janus became the god of the favorable undertaking .

People very religious but endowed with a great imagination, the Celts quickly personified the majority of their numina inherited from the Neolithic prehistory and recognized a great importance to those who remained set against any anthropomorphism.

Equivalents in other religions.

Kami in Japanese Shinto.

Mana in Polynesia.

Shekhinah in Hebrew.

The numinous one has an objective reality and forms a force, an energy or a field, which imbues certain things and causes an evolution which touches - and attracts - certain aspects of Nature.

In practice, these are primary universal forces.

IN OTHER WORDS SOME EONS (from Celtic AIU = "long life" "century" "eternity") OR SOME PRE-GODS, AN ENNEAD OF PRE-GODS.

[Notebook partially damaged by moisture and found at the bottom of a cardboard box by the daughter of Peter DeLaCrau Millicent or his younger son Alex].

What the theory of Albiobitus comprises ? It is not difficult to sketch the broad outlines of it.

275

The ontological reasons to believe in the existence of the world of electreons For the former druids, the world in which we live, containing the objects we perceive, is therefore not the only world that exists. There exists a world of gods but there exists also an ideal world, separated from the tangible world in which we move, and even distinct from the world of gods which is only a pale imperfect reflection of . This ideal world (as the name suggests) is entirely composed of essential components of which even the most beautiful and most powerful of the gods are only very imperfect copies and that man can designate with various names (the Gnostic learned men in the East called them for example eons). They are different hypostases or electr-eons of the to be ONE emerged from the nothingness (to believe in the existence of these hypostases is, of course, some kufr even some big kufr in the eyes of Muslims).

Before crying incongruity, the belief in these free electr-eons is, of course, kufr akbar power 10 for the Muslim theologists; let us look into the reasoning after which the former druids considered to be necessary to work out this concept.

The tangible world in which we live is imperfect: if we think well, we will note for example that there does not exist in the world one true triangle (even a triangle drawn with a ruler is irregular, its sides are imperfect), nor two absolutely identical objects. In these conditions, how can we have the idea of triangle, since strictly speaking there is no triangle in the world? In the same way, how can we perceive the idea of equality, since all the objects we can see are unequal?

The only manner of giving an account of our mathematical knowledge, consists in saying that there exists a true triangle, a true equality (in another world, an ideal world) and that it is by the knowledge of these Ideas of these Electreons or these Eons that one can thereafter say of such or such object that it resembles a triangle, or that he is almost identical to another.

Let us take another example: we are surrounded by large numbers of beauties all different, some are big , the other small, in the flesh, made out wood, consisted of mountains, myriads of flowers, etc. ,… However, in spite of these differences, all are recognized “beautiful” by the human beings we are, proof that all these wonders are also, in a certain way, similar. It is of this essence of the beautiful, of what is good, of the good, of the fair, etc...of what there is identical in all the beauties, or goodness, or justices, that the former druids thought of by evoking this other world of the eons or electreons or ideals. All what exists in many specimens in our world (right acts, beautiful objects…) exist in a single, and perfect way in the ideal world of Albiobitus.

What characterizes the former druidism it is therefore the belief this “beauty in itself,” this essence of beauty, like much of other principles, exists truly in a separated world, independent of ours: the ideal world of the electreons, that the Easter Gnostic persons called themselves simply eons. But the former druids did not stop there, because for them the electreons were not isolated, they also kept relationship between them.

But look out, this ideal world is not the resultant of the activity of our mind nor of our reason. There existed before even the men were. It is well that which appears eccentric for we uns modern people (indeed, we think generally that what links, for example, the multiple tables that we see, it is what we call the table concept, and that this concept is the product of our intelligence which compares the tables, sees what there is identical in them…). For the druids, the tangible world (in which we live) and the world of electreons exist both and they are equally independent of our reason.

For the former druids, the first way of defining the Being, it was by distinguishing it from appearance and therefore from the feeling. Thus, it is not enough to see a mermaid or a pink elephant so that this pink elephant or this mermaid exists that they have consistence. If therefore the Being it is not what we see , what it can be in this case?

It seems that it is necessary, so that we have some being and not only some appearing, a certain stability, a certain perseverance in the Being. Thus, with what do we recognize the pink elephant is

276

only an illusion? So that it ends up disappearing, it doesn’t continue. The Being, it is therefore the stable one, the durable one, while what becomes, what changes is only appearing or having.

However in the world in which we live, everything changes , nothing remains identical with itself , so, from a rigorous point of view there should be no Being in this world besides.

Let us take another example in order to illustrate that: let us imagine the body of a certain animal; we say well that this animal is, and nevertheless, if we think well of that, at each second, this animal is no longer the same one, the cells that constitute its body die and are replaced, itself moves, changes… How can we say that there is here a Being, whereas there is no Being….no immutable Being ? All this, for the former druids was therefore not really some Being , because then there would be no difference between the being and the illusion or the appearance. All occurs as if, at every moment the being disappeared to become another one.

However, since we speak well of the being of things: it is that they have to hold their being from elsewhere , and this elsewhere, it is the ideal world. The druidic notion of electreon secures the stability of things, it is the shape, the essence of the thing which persists in it through change. So, if the example of the animal is taken again, it is seen that what makes we may speak about an animal, it is a certain shape, some relationship between the elements of the animal (cells, bodies) which do not change, while at the same time these elements are in perpetual change.

The perfect and immutable ideal world of electreons or eons, existed before the tangible world and even before the world of the gods; this one is an imperfect copy of it: where in the world of the Ideas exists only a perfect Idea of triangle (for example), there exists in the tangible world an infinity of particular triangles of which none exhausts the essence of the triangle. Consequently, how can we recognize the general idea of the triangle? We must well for that (since, as we saw it, the feeling is not enough) to have previously accessed in one way or another to the aforementioned ideal world.

Some Schools of the Former druidism used to explain metaphorically the conditions of accession of mankind to knowledge as well as the not less difficult handing over of this knowledge; the allegory of the drop of the soul out of the Albiobitus, to fall into the matter; others the theory of the metempsychosis or passage of the soul from a body into another one (example in Ireland with Fintan and Tuan mac Cairill).

The Greek philosopher Plato too used the allegory of the cave. In an underground cave shaped dwelling, men are chained. They never directly saw the day light , of which they know only the weak radiation which manages to penetrate to them. Of the things and of themselves, they know only the shadows projected on the walls of their cave by a fire kindled behind them. Of the sounds, they know only the echoes.

But let us notice here an important difference between the former druids and Plato. For the former druids, this Albio bitus or world of electreons was populated only with essential principles in limited numbers (example: the tangible world is divided between the opposites which constitute it, ago, nertio, adiantu, etc.); whereas for Plato it was infinite since also including the ideas of a chair of a table, etc.

This theory was especially very criticized with the rise of Christianity. The first Christians judged that it was too absurd to suppose the existence of another world, parallel to ours. In many respects this druidic theory of electreons seems strange and eccentric today, however, it inspired nevertheless many religious movements , or spiritual revivals.

It is perhaps in ethics and policy that this notion of Albiobitus or world of electreons (and in a general way the druidic spirituality) most badly become aged since Pelagius. Some people can indeed reproach it to be naïve to believe no one does evil voluntarily.

Remains to be seen now what an electreon or eon is exactly. We will get down to it , as best as possible and rather badly than well because there remain some bits or traces of this disappeared Weltanschauung.

The god or Demiurge Being One indeed includes the multiple and founds it. These divine hypostases or vyuha in Hinduism are as many facets of the powers of the Divine which is One. There exist

277

philosophical systems with 2 hypostases, 3 hypostases, 4, 5, 6, 7 (the heptad of the Sabians of Carrhae/ Harran or Zoroaster, etc.) For the record the hypostases of the Christian triad are the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit, some equal people in kind and being defined only by their relations with men.

Let us give again nevertheless here, as an indication and briefly, the list of these first powers which already had been clearly located by our ancestors. These electr-eons are ranked. There exist some great eons and small eons, according to their level of proximity to the origin of everything (but each one is a hypostasis of the life of the divine Abyss, a level going down or going up to it.

278

STUDY OF A PARTICULAR ELECTREON.

One of the most important electreons of the megalithic time. Aiu (Eternity bears time). The not limited by time and space Big Whole, gives itself to itself, through its own will, under its absolute power, the limited forms of time and space.

Duration or time is this, throughout what, the ex-istence left from the being, expiates. For Plotinus,the Time is produced by the Soul, and for Proclus, the Time is a hypostasis higher than the Soul.

The emanation rolls out indeed according to the spiral rhythms of the Time, from cosmic revolution into cosmic revolution. The ultimate principle from which all things are born, remains transcendent or immanent to this manifestation. From this point of view, it is possible to say that every existence is in Time, but that the Time itself is the fluctuation of a Reality which does not change and in which every existence remains located. Such is, quickly outlined, the mythical representation of the relations of time and aiu (of eternity) in the druidic thought.

As we have had the opportunity to say it on several occasions, myths compel themselves to grasp step by step the highest reality, within a setting of equivalences or identifications between microcosm and macrocosm. “Divinis humana licet componere.” “We may compare things human with divine .” Ausonius (in his small poem about the use of the word libra).

What we have just expounded of the philosophy of the druids still leaves much darkness in it. How to appreciate the true worth of their metaphors? How to interpret their symbols? How to follow the thread of their abstractions? How to exalt our imagination at the point to attain their?

Therefore let us be satisfied with that we know, and let us imagine correctly from what we have, in order not to regret what is missing for us.

Druidic legends therefore approached the topic of the time, even tried to figure it, to represent it, by means of various allegories. Here are some examples.

Immram Brain Maic Febail ocus a echtra andso sis (the voyage of Bran, son of Febal and his adventures).

Bran is the son of Febal, his name means “crow.” Whereas he rests outside his castle, he hears a strange song; of which the voice praises the delights of Emain Ablach to him, the land of the Apples (a symbol of aiu i.e., of eternity), an island in the middle of the ocean. Although it is surrounded by many people, he is the only one to hear the call of the messenger from the Other World. Not being able to resist the invitation, he gets a boat and leaves with “three times nine” traveling companions. On the sea, he is welcomed by Belinos Barinthus Manannan Mac Lir, the sovereign god-or-demon of the Sidh. The first island that they approach is occupied by people who do nothing but laugh, and do not pay any attention to them. One of the sailors lands, he is taken at once with a frantic laugh, and refuses to board again the ship. Lastly, they approach the Island of Women (Tir Na mBan), the queen launches a thread to Bran in order to pull the boat, and all disembark. The women are all young and splendid, each companion chooses one of them, the queen reserves Bran. There they live several “months” in a total happiness.

But nostalgia of the native land starts to hit the men and Nechtan, son of Collbran, decides Bran to go home. The queen sends a severe warning statement to them: they disregard it . But once arrived safe and sound , nobody will recognize them, and themselves recognize no longer somebody. Nechtan goes ashore, but is changed at once into a heap of ashes. Bran who understood will therefore put out to sea again for an endless voyage.

The account of this voyage is typical of a voyage in the Sidh: at the beginning there is the invitation of the fairy, then the marvelous stay in the Island of Women, who are not other than goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if it is preferred. On the island, time does not exist, or at least, the island is out of time for those who remain there. If Bran and his companions are not recognized on their return, and if Nechtan crumbles into dust while landing (it was the warning statement of the queen); it is that their stay lasted several centuries, and that they died for a long time. The return in the world of the men is accompanied by the influence of the time they had temporarily escaped.

279

It is not certain the learned men who transcribed again this tradition, handed down orally during centuries, really understood what was dealt in it . The druidic myth is a figuration in which the forces of Nature come forward, in their roll-out starting from the Origin of the procreation of the world. The druidic myth tells the expression of the aiu (of the eternity) in time. Of course, the problem this mythology makes to us, it is that it is placed especially on the level of the images and that its language is specific to a given culture. The philosopher would like, himself, to hear the language of the reason more than that of the myth. But can the intelligence,through the only way of the speculation, try to understand the relation of the aiu (of the eternity) to time?

It is perhaps in this direction it is necessary to seek to understand the words of Spinoza in his book entitled “Ethics”: “We feel and know that we are eternal “. Some specialists acknowledged themselves their perplexity in front of such an assertion! However, the text is rather clear, on the condition of finding again the pantheist feeling which supports . Spinoza presents the ultimate Reality under the name of Substance from which he makes the attributes which are the extension (the matter/matrona) and the thought, coming. Attributes rise from specific modes and Man takes part in it through his body and his mind, in a necessary way.

If the Substance which is God or the Demiurge, or the Nature, wraps the totality of what is, it wraps at the same time the duration, while remaining itself in on this side of the time. Through his body, the Man is taken in the duration. Through his thought the Man rises into the order of the essence, which lies in the Thought of God or of the Demiurge, what means that Man, in his meeting with the truth of what is, knows the eternal order of the things. It is in the very nature of the reason to know from the angle of the aiu (of the eternity), because to know, it is to know what is, such as it is from time immemorial. Our mind, by knowing in the eternal order of the things, experiments , in its rise above time, its participation in the aiu (in the eternity). We “feel and know that we are eternal ,” each time that by giving up to itself the time-flying, we rise into the eternal truth of the things. We feel then we take part in this eternity which is opened to us, because we are not only a perishable body, but also an essence in the infinite understanding of the divine Substance.

According to John Toland, the main representation of this primeval electr-eon (time) was a stone covered with gold surrounded by twelve other smaller stones covered with copper.

It is certain indeed that many megalithic monuments are in connection with the time which flies (solstices and equinoxes in Stonehenge for example).

Gaelic Mythology makes its worship dating back to the time of the Milesian king Eremon, but as the latter is proven to be mythical in the bad sense of the word, we are hardly further ahead for as much. It is difficult to have a precise idea of what in the beginning this important entity was, because the latter was even more demonized than the gigantic anguipedic wyvern man knows by the name of Fomore in Ireland, and of Andernas on the Continent. The Christians made this electreon (the time which flies) a monstrous power of darkness, often represented by a snake or a dragon. St. Patrick is supposed to have put an end to the human sacrifices in his honor.

According to a poem of the 12th century recorded in the Dindsenchas, a symbol or a representation of this electr-eon, was set up in the middle of the plain of prostrations called Mag Slecht. Tigernmas, the king of the area, would have perished with the three quarters of his people while being prostrating themselves in front of its statue one day of Samon (November 1st).

“Mag Slecht, whence was it named? Mag Slecht. ’Tis there was the king-idol of Erin, namely the Crom Cróich, and around him twelve idols made of stones but he was of gold. Until Patrick’s advent, he was the god of every folk that colonized Ireland. To him they used to offer the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan. ’Tis to him that Erin’s king, Tigernmas son of Follach, repaired on Hallontide, together with the men and women of Ireland, in order to adore him. And they all prostrated before him, so that the tops of their foreheads and the gristle of their noses and the caps of their knees and the ends of their elbows broke, and three fourths of the men of Erin perished at those prostrations. Whence Mag Slecht ‘Plain of Prostrations’ (Rennes Dindshenchas. Another version in the metrical Dindshenchas: poem or story 7).

The episode appears neither in the own writings of St. Patrick nor in the two biographies written by Muirchu and Tirechan in the 7th century. The earthly representation of this electr-eon appears under the name of Cenn Cruach in the tripartite life of St. Patrick written in the 9th century. St. Patrick raises

280

his crozier against it, the central standing stone falls face down, and the twelve other smaller stones around, sinks into the ground. The electr-eon thus represented appears to St. Patrick who curses it and says it to hell.

“There was an idol in Mag Slecht adorned with gold and silver, and twelve gods made of copper placed on this side and on that facing south. Kings and all people adorned this idol in which lurked a very bad demon who used to give answers to the people, wherefore they worshipped him as a god…….When St. Patrick saw the idol whose name is Guth Ard, and when he approached the idol, he raised his hand to place the “Staff of Jesus” on it. And it leaned over towards the sunset on its right side. The mark of the staff still remains in its left side, and yet the staff did not leave Patrick’s hand. Moreover, the earth swallowed the twelve other images up to their heads, which alone remain to be seen in memory of the miracle.The demon, indeed, who had lurked for a long time in the idol and deluded men, came forth at St. Patrick’s command. When the peoples with their king, Loegaire, saw him they were afraid,and asked St. Patrick to command the horrible monster to leave their presence. St. Patrick ordered him to depart into the abyss. Then all the peoples gave thanks to Almighty God who deigned to deliver them through St. Patrick from the power of darkness” .

Same childish account (to take a symbolic figuration of the time which flies unrelentingly, a zodiac, for a demon!) in the writings of Josselin in the 12th century (the life and acts of Saint Patrick chapter LVI), but here the electreon is called Cenncroithi, what is supposed to mean “chief of all the gods.”

People called Masraige the tribe living Magh Slecht in the days of St. Patrick. The name of Masraige means “King of the dead” and the name of the high king having introduced his worship into the island, Tigernmas, therefore means “Lord of the dead.”

According to the Gaelic heresy on this subject, St. Patrick would therefore have been in a way the new Taran/Toran/Tuireann flooring this gigantic anguiped (on this topic of the Gallo-Roman statuary, see what is previous). The Christian legend (how many lies in the Christian tradition!) explains to us indeed it is St. Patrick who put an end to the worship of Crom Cruach. but all seems to indicate

- firstly, that it was not the worship celebrated in the honor of a god or demon, but a megalithic monument linked with solstices and equinoxes;

- secondly, that this site had been left a long time before because quite previous to the Celts and therefore to the druids.

There exists another stone supposedly devoted to the worship of this god-or-demon on the territory of Drumcoo, in county Fermanagh. A walking man is carved on it and a statue representing it was perhaps also in Clogher, in county Tyrone (the standing stone of Kermand Kestach). According to John Toland, the bishopric of Clogher was named from this stone, covered with gold (Clogher meaning gilded stone) on which the aforementioned Kermand Kelstach stood, the main deity in Ulster, still according to him.

The stone of Crom was discovered in 1921, close to the stone circle of a nearby hillock where it had been buried. It had been broken before in several pieces. Once released then put back up, it appeared that it leaned on the left side, what explains perhaps also its name: Crom Cruaich, “the tilted one of the hillock.” The name of the representation of this pre-god can be interpreted in several ways indeed. Crom: the curved or the twisted one, cruach: bloody , or hillock.

The stone had been covered in the 1st century before our era with symbols of the civilization of La Tene of Waldalgesheim type. It was also a phallic symbol similar to the stone of Turoe in county Galway. Although very damaged the statue could be reconstituted. The stone was renamed stone of Killycluggin, from the name of the suburb where it was discovered, it is now in the museum of Cavan. A reproduction of it was installed at the edge of the road. Close to the hillock there is the church of Kilnavert, which was founded by St. Patrick in order to replace the worship of Crom. There is also a Tobar Padraig (well of St. Patrick) very close, as specified in the manuscripts.

Is it really possible that St. Patrick put an end to the use of this Neolithic monument by destroying its central figure, not with explosives as the Muslim Taliban did it for the statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, but with hammer or mallet as the Christian tradition affirms it?

281

What is certain, it is that it had to be reconstituted, because it was discovered broken into several pieces, undoubtedly using fire and strong crowbars.

According to Henry Lizeray, Croucacrumbas/Crom Cruach/Cromm Cruaich/Cenn Cruach/Cenncroithi. Crom Cróich, Cenn Cruach, Crom Cruagh, Crom Crooach, Crom Cruaidh, Ceancroitihi, Crom Dubh, Crom-cruaghair etc. etc.was an earthly and human representation of the time which flies.

Crom is the same deity as Saturn, Cronos in Greek [there it is obvious mistake of Henry Lizeray]. Caesar calls it Dis. The word Crom….. means curve and designates the circular revolution of the stars.

Bloody Crom , Cromdubh, Black Crom, Cenn Cruac, bloody Head, such were the names of the main idol worshipped in Ireland. This worship of the god of terror was celebrated in the Plain of prostrations (Mag Sleact) located in the current county Cavan, barony of Tullyhaw. The god was represented there with a gold or silver statue, surrounded by twelve bronze idols. This monument seems to have been the prototype of the cromlechs ( Crom’s stone) composed of a large flagstone (dolmen) always tilted towards the east, and placed in the middle of twelve stones laid out in a circle. The main festival in honor of Crom took place the day of Samon, corresponding to November first. The Sunday which is previous All Saints' day is still called by the Irishmen Black Crom Sunday….Solemnities of May and November are primitive institutions. In the spring, people offered in sacrifices to the god, i.e., to his priests, the first fruits and the first-born of the animals, according to the Dinnsenchus, quoted in the tripartite Life of St Patrick saint. On November, first of the dark months, when the productions of the ground were lacking, it was compensated by cattle culling or the hunting, began after the stripping of the forests.

However these explanations do not justify the nickname of terror god.

Crom is Cronos, i.e., the Time we have said. As religions are only symbols, people sacrificed victims to Crom by analogy with the Time which consumes everything, edax rerum.

Rather strangely many centuries later it is the writer Robert E. Howard who was most sensitive to this inexorable aspect of the eon in question.

Robert E. Howard indeed took as a starting point this electr-eon to create his character of Cromm. His “Cimmerian” (sic) Panth-eon , whose Crom is the supreme leader, is therefore mainly made up of dark and cruel god-or-demons, because the existence does not favors . It is cruel and seats about weak people, only who can fight deserves to live. This Howardian vision of Cromm Cruach is very fatalistic, but has the advantage of being simple. One of the main characteristics of the faith of this time, according to Robert E. Howard, is that it was completely deprived of adoration or servility. The men of this time, at least still according to Howard, believe in their god-or-demons, but do not worship . We are there the opposite extreme of the mass religions.

SILIUS ITALICUS. Book III.

The Celts who have added to their name that of the Hiberi also came.

To these men death in battle is glorious;

And they consider it a crime to burn the body of such a warrior;

For they believe that the soul/mind goes up to the gods in heaven,

If the body is devoured on the field by the hungry vulture.

The funerary habits of the Cimmerians by Robert E. Howard are therefore very simple and fast. The bodies of the warriors died in action are left where they fell and people deal only very simply with other corpses. Men and women are not worried with the body of the deceased persons in reality, since the soul/mind was gone elsewhere and that, according to them, the care brought to the corpse will have no effect on its state. They believe indeed that, in all the cases, the soul/minds travels to a gray, cold and misty kingdom in which the unhappy one will wander without joy for eternity. On this point therefore total dissension with the druidic beliefs! Except if we like to admit this relates only to the negligible minority of bacuceos remaining temporarily in such a kingdom, which looks rather Greek or Latin, before being again embodied on earth. Let us remind indeed that traditional druidic theology implies that everyone or almost is reincarnated after death in a heavenly hereafter , made out with endless joy and peace, that people call Mag Meld, Vindomagos, or differently.

The alive ones organize a wake for the deceased person where they drink in his honor , while pouring on the ground the bottom of their cup for him (libation).

282

Strength and will are the only gifts from Crom to the human beings. Apart from these characteristics, he offers nothing, and well badly inspired would be the one who would dare to claim another thing from him. Neither worship, nor priests, for a divine figure which nevertheless forms part of the everyday life of this tribe.

To appeal to Crom or to pray him is only the best means of making him angry well there (we find well here the traditional description of the genuine Crom Cruach), what a good Cimmerian avoids at all costs doing. To pray in this case is a form of weakness, and Crom does not tolerate the weak people, preferring them dead than begging. To help them consequently is therefore out of the question, rather to let them die since they do not deserve the strength and the will which were given to them.

The other deities of the Cimmerian pantheon according to Robert E. Howard are of the same quality, so dark and without pity, therefore people don’t venerate them more than their leader.

283

THE ELEMENTARY DYAD (OR TETRAD?).

Strabo, Geography IV, 4: “ They say that men's souls, and also the universe, are indestructible, although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them.”

For the Gnostics in the West called druids, there exists a “To be One ,” higher, completely immanent-transcendent, ineffable, beyond the language. The being, or the existence, is an attribute, and the One is beyond these attributes, since it is at their source. The One is not “any existing,” nor the sum of these results of the verb to exist, but is previous all the results of the verb to exist.

From the One the rest of the universe is emanated as a sequence of lower beings . If some druidic Schools could see starting from there hundreds of intermediate beings as emanations located between the One and the Mankind, the doctrines of other Schools, itself, is much simpler at the outset and perhaps inspired from their observation of what a piece of amber rubbed by fabric (it attracts straw stalks for example) produces.

Just like Buddhism and Brahmanism, some ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), indeed affirmed the eternity or the indestructibility of the elementary matters forming the universe, according to them, fire and water (symbols undoubtedly of the soul and of the matter); without intervention of the will nor of the power of a personal creator god-or-demon at the same time love justice and so on…

All that is improperly called Creation, the Macrocosm like the Microcosm, “the great Universe” and “the Small Universe,” results from the action of Elements working in the cosmic big cauldron. Every element conceals two polarities, one of positive or active nature and the other of negative or passive nature. The positive polarity is always constructive, creative and productive; the negative polarity is, on the contrary, destructuring and destroying. It is therefore necessary to always take account of these two fundamental properties existing in every object constituting our universe. Certain religions besides apparently allocated good or soul to the positive polarity and evil or matter to the negative polarity. In truth, good and evil, like the human being conceive them, do not exist. In the Universe, there are no good nor bad things, because everything was procreated according to immutable Laws, these of the fate or Tocade. The Universe is similar to a clock of which the parts are interdependent. A taghut idea of the worst kind for our Muslim brothers of course!

Even the notion of “Divinity,” the latter being perceived as a sublime Being , implies a fragmented vision of what it is in reality. It is therefore only through the knowledge of these laws that we can approach God or the Demiurge.

Among all the possible pairs of opposites, the syzygy fire and water seems to have particularly got the attention of the Gnostics in the West. The former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) appear to have indeed distinguished this dyad (Fire/Water) from the other electr-eons or hypostases evoked in this little summary of the druidic faith.

Perhaps because, for them, these two hypostases of the Being of the beings were already a part of the world of the downstairs, the world of the men. The quotation of Strabo on this subject in any event is ambiguous. “Men's souls, and also the universe, are indestructible, although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them” (Geography IV, 4).

For certain druids thus, the understandable or perceptible world was formed only with two following hypostases or substances.

Water. The primeval element combined with the matter is in general water. For this reason it was formerly claimed that the dry land floated on water. The design of the Gnostics called druids in the West : an earth floating, like a convex disc (a round shield with a boss ?) on water; and a spherical universe (cruinne *) filled with original matter, i.e., considered as a liquid mass, agrees with the concept of primeval water, divided into two distinct masses: upper water from which the rains come, and lower water on which the dry land floats, as well as a gigantic shield ( or an island).

The high-knowers of the former druidism were led to share this idea, because they had observed the wet one is the food of all the living beings, and that the heat itself comes from the wet one, or lives on it (the microbiological activity releases heat when it occurs in an isolated place, like a cluster of compost). However, that from which the things come is their principle. It is therefore from there in all likelihood that the West Gnostic sages drew these doctrines, and also from the fact that the germs of

284

the plants or of the vegetables , are wet by nature. Such was besides also the idea of the Egyptians (Nun) and of the Babylonians.

N.B. The reason for this preference for water comes consequently from the importance of this one in the growth and the nutrition of the living beings.

Fire (Aedos ?). Fire is, of course, the origin of Light. This is why, at the starting of the world, Fire and Light were among the first to come to the existence. Some Fire, following the example of water, lies in the whole universe, as well in the smallest grain of sand as in the visible but infinitely remote vastness; and one could not remain without the other, its opposite. These two Elements, Fire and Water, are the creating everything fundamental Energies. Consequently, in all the cases which arise to us, we must always consider these two Elements and their respective manifestation, like their internal and opposite polarities. Among Celts , druids believed therefore that any particular fire (i.e., having a single shape conditioned by its support) was only the manifestation of a cosmic primeval fire. That about which the famous remark of Strabo speaks: “Men's souls, and also the universe, are indestructible, although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them” (Geography IV, 4).

Fire is active and latent in all that was (pro) created. When a given fire dies out, for example that of the trinouxtion Samoni (os), it is not out nor destroyed therefore, but comes back into a non-manifested state. Fire does not appear only on our material level, but in all that was caused. The fundamental properties of Fire are Heat and Spreading.

A much more probable cosmogony is indeed provided to us by what the medieval Irish bards told in connection with the three waves of Ochain and of the shields. To answer the question that was posed, on this subject by Father Edmund Hogan in 1892, let us indicate that in our opinion this is a distant recollection of the ancient druidic design according to which the earth was similar to a convex shield floating on a primeval ocean: the three or nine waves (from where the image of the ram-headed gigantic horned snake enclosing the dry land with its coils). What affects the waves (the ram-headed snake) affects the dry land (the convex shield). A way perhaps of explaining the storms.

It will be perhaps also objected that what is certain, it is that for Dicuil in any case the earth was round as shows it the title even of the book by Dicuil devoted to this subject about 825: De mensura orbis terrae.

Perhaps! But would it be not a little too good to be true? It is true that the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism in 1900 shows well that certain pagan circles of the Antiquity had reached an amazing level of knowledge before the darkness of the medieval Christianity falls down on the West. The Antikythera mechanism proves indeed that the pre-Christian pagans had already reached a high level of scientific-philosophical comprehension of the world, before the triumph of the Judeo-Christian obscurantism (what an incredible intellectual regression) sends them back in the night of the Dark Ages (Middle Ages).

*Cruinne. Cruind. Crudnius. The term evokes the notion of roundness or sphere, but it is difficult to say if it should be really translated by “globe.” The meaning of “globe” supposed to this word (plural cruinnean is perhaps only an interpretation of the 10th century; date of the manuscript having this word in its text

We should not ask for a perfect logic from Celtic cosmogony, nor undoubtedly from any cosmogony.

!--------- ----------------------------- --------------------- ----------------------------!

From this elementary dyad the ancient druids very quickly deduced the existence of another one, the spirit and the matter, but not the matter in the ordinary meaning, the matter in the Platonic sense of prime matter. Plato is indeed the first to have explicitly formulated what was until then only an intuition before him among Hyperborean mystics like Abaris or Olenos : the existence of intelligible realities, both distinct from tangible things and related to them. Plato formalized this hypothesis in order to explain how this world, where everything keeps changing, nevertheless presents enough permanence and stability for man to be able to know it, to act in it and to talk about it. Convinced that this stability

285

and permanence could not be derived from the tangible one, Plato postulated that there was to be a reality of another kind that meets these requirements, and that explains why, in all this change, there is something that does not change.

—The awenyddio or soul of the world.

The differentiation in opposed, but complementary, Poles, contributing to a common work, in short to life (fire and water, soul and matter, male and female, etc.) of the original atomic One (of the oghamic point eabad Henry Lizeray would say); therefore seems to be the oldest discovery of the druidism. But on the moral level, once again, let us repeat it, that did not lead , in any way to an absolute dualism (Manicheism). That resulted in a relative and moderate dualism, compatible with the purest monism on the philosophical level (of the coincidence of the opposites).

Strabo: “Not only the druids, but others as well, say that men's souls, and also the universe, are indestructible” (Geography Book IV, chapter IV, section 4). Men’s souls are indestructible…men’s souls are indestructible….

The soul of the world or the universal soul is of the same nature as the individual anamone of each human being.

The Awenyddio or soul of the world is an entity, an electr- eon or a hypostasis from the first generation, causing every existence and moving all the living beings. The Awenyddio, it is the power of the soul lying at the same time in the infinity of Universe, and in the finiteness of Mankind ; while remaining inaccessible, it forms an integral part of the everyday life : active force, manifested awareness of the Big Whole it is present in everything and of each one of us, it is the link between macrocosm and microcosm. “Divinis humana licet componere.” “We may compare things human with divine .” Ausonius (eclogue on the use of the word libra).This large universal psychic reservoir, called awenyddio (to take over a Welsh term). Primarily seen as a primeval flame or a cosmic fire. Its origin, or its principle, was the intellectual fire. A perfect and absolutely pure fire. Source of all the beings, immaterial and material.

The immaterial beings form a world. The material ones form another one.

The first preserved the pure light of its origin; the second lost it. It is in darkness, and this darkness increases as the distance from the first principle becomes larger.

It is there, of course, a system of thought considered as completely taghut by the creationist monolatrous people .

— Universal matter. Matrona. Primarily seen like a paramount water.

The matter is in perpetual motion and unceasingly tends towards being spiritualized, becoming luminous and active.

Become more spiritual, active and luminous, it comes back to its source, the pure fire, where its imperfection disappears and where it enjoys a higher happiness. This idea was general; it was that of many ancient philosophers; and what is very remarkable, it is that it was adopted by the Christian theosophists. The disciples of Basilides, those of Valentine and all the other Gnostic Christians, drew there their emanation system, which enjoyed a great celebrity in the school of Alexandria.

Fire and light go always weakening. Where heat and light cease, start matter, darkness and evil, which Zoroaster makes the world of an entity that he calls Ahriman. The world of light and good being allocated d by him to an entity called Ahura Mazda. [The druidism does not go as far as there and leaves this dualism to the Judeo-Islamic-Christians].

286

THE ADIANTU (THE ATTRACTION OF OPPOSITES).

Heraclitus of Ephesus 6th century before our era: "Polemos pantôn mèn pater esti", war is the mother [father] of all things.

Divitiacus of Bibracta 1st century before our era: "desire (adiantu) is the father of all things".

This is another free electron of the Druidic metaphysics (one of the oldest laws of nature).

The initial split at the origin of everything appears in the couples of opposites: positive-negative, life-death, heat-cold, female-male, etc. That is also found in the phenomena of alternations: day and night, movement and rest, flow and backward flow…

These opposites can oppose (see what we said about the Celtic Ago in our previous notebooks). An opposition of the opposites being able to go until a war of the opposites theorized not by the druids who preferred it the adiantu but by Heraclitus (Polemos is the father of all things). Only a few fragments of the writings of this pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of the 6th century before our era remain and their interpretation is not self-evident. What does the above quote attributed to him really mean?

Since the mystery of life lies in a constant exchange, what is the nature of this exchange? The AGO, the struggle, the war. The universe is a struggle, justice is a conflict, such is the fundamental aspect of the cosmos. Everything is a clash of forces, and through this clash, through this struggle, things come into existence, but also maintain this existence. If harmony is present in the cosmos, it is because, in its process, the cosmos is war, tension, opposition, balance of the eternal opposites: the Ago created the world, the Ago is the world, the force by its violence maintains the world, the force will end the world and will recreate it eternally.

But the opposites can also coincide in unity, since they all come from one and the same being, which by separating from itself, unites with itself. Un pwngc rhyddyd, sef y bydd lie bo cydbwys pob gwrth". From all these oppositions is born the harmony of the world, which bursts before our eyes. There is

But the opposites are also gathered in the unit, since they come all from the same being, which while separating from itself, is joined with itself. Un pwngc rhyddyd, sef y bydd lie bo cydbwys pob gwrth ». From all these oppositions, is born the harmony of the world, which breaks out in our eyes. There exists a state of awareness in which life and death, reality and imagination, future and past, communicable one and incommunicable one, top and bottom, cease being sensed contradictorily. From where besides the lunisolar calendar of the high-knowers called druids and found in Coligny, which is typical of their thought.

Here indeed what we can understand from the lunisolar calendar of Coligny. Here what it is necessary to understand from all the descents of fire in water that druidic mythology evokes. It is necessary to grasp the harmonious fusion of both the principles attracted by a “love,” which is not yet “erotic,” in the lower levels of our world, since it is not yet question there of men and women; but “attractive” as the force which invites the atoms to combine between them.

From where in Celtic mythology, and in accordance with the lunisolar computus that is the calendar of Coligny therefore, the fact that the god-or-demons in what relates to them, have almost all a consort, a partner or a wife; and therefore go in couples, like Jehovah and his Ashera in the biblical Torah for example. The Universe was built on the opposition of forces which balanced reciprocally: soul and matter, fire and water, female and male, the sun and the moon…

The things are assemblies of contrary forces, and the world is an emulsion which unceasingly has to be shaken so that they appear there. Is this due to the fact that the Celts were formidable rhetors improving more than whoever the good speech art ? The fact remains that one of their ways of thinking was the oxymoron, i.e., the possibility of binding or of coupling opposites. Example the Gwenn ha Du (Breton flag).

In linguistics, oxymoron is a stylistic device where two words designating contradictory, or strongly contrasted, realities, are nevertheless combined by the syntax. While expressing what is inconceivable, the poet creates thus a new reality which causes an element of surprise.

If some oxymora were imagined to draw the attention of the listener (or of the reader today), others were developed by the rhetors or the druids to create a verbal category describing a reality difficult to conceive.

287

Every language, of course, has its antonyms but the Celtic languages seem to have developed particularly this aspect of the intra-human communication, without falling for all that into the simplistic Manicheism of the Judeo-Islamic-Christians.

The design of the world as resulting from the tension of opposite forces or principles (water and fire) structure consequently the whole druidic weltanschauung or thought. It is found besides, as we already have had the opportunity to see it, clearly expressed in the last part of the first of the bardic triads of Wales (perhaps the only one which is genuine) because the eon “God” is, of course, the fake due to a little too zealous Christian bard.

“ Tri un cyntefig y sydd, ag nis gellir amgen nag un o honynt, un Duw, un gwirionedd, ag un pwngc rhyddyd, sef y bydd lle bo cydbwys pob gwrth .”

“There are three primeval units, and more than one of each cannot exist ; one God, one truth and one point of freedom; i.e. (the point) where all opposites equiponderate.”

Repetere = ars docendi. There exists therefore according to the druids, in the universe opposite but supplementary forces, which express the APPARENT fundamental dichotomy of the world, and its balance (at least from a strictly human point of view). Fire and water, day and night, shadow and light, heat and cold, positive and negative, male and female.

This adiantu (Celtic word meaning desire) is a fundamental force from the cauldron or primeval chaos; which prevails over the world before even the appearance of the god-or-demons and of the men; and which, by carrying out the union and the complementarity of the dissimilar parts, makes it possible the universe to take shape.

Its cohesion power extends to everything that can exist: to god-or-demons, human beings, animals, plants, rocks, etc. In that respect, it is rather close to the physical forces which govern the cosmos, and has no possible anthropomorphic representation.

However, to give a sexed nature to the principle of motion of the matter by the soul, it is already in a way to anthropomorphize; to give an earthly nature making the worship possible.

Some druidic Schools therefore design the world or the divinity (pantheism) as polarized in two aspects, male and female, the female aspect being that which is active, that of the power in the everyday life: the Brigo. The physical cosmos is therefore sensed there as being the spreading of the female energy (the brigo) and the worship consists in handling this power.

But if it is legitimate to favor one of the both poles, mankind nevertheless should not go as far as to ignore the other, which always has a place in the “Big Whole” of the Pariollon.

We may so speak about two supplementary states, sexually opposite but both necessary, for the appearance of movement and energy.

The deification of the abstract concept therefore passes very often, by the attribution of a gender, male or female; and if the essence or the force (nertio) , even divine, is a thing, its concrete and daily activity, is another one.

A number of druidic goddess-or-demonesses or fairies have no really autonomous or independent personality, and are only consorts personifying female dynamic energy, or active principles, of the male deities of the druidic Panth-eon or pleroma (Brigo). It was to occur nevertheless in certain cases, the male principle having become almost what the specialists call a “deus otiosus,” an “idle” god-or-demon, above everything, not intervening directly in the human affairs, that in a way he left to his consort the care to get her hands dirty in the aforementioned affairs. If the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this term is preferred, in question, is defined still there, only compared to her husband, in certain mythical narratives it is often her who has the real power, case for example of the queen Medua/Medb whose name refers us even to the notion of ecstasy of power. We have the same thing in Hinduism with the goddess-or-demonesses or good fairies Saraswati (Brigid, culture and creativity according to the druids), Lakshmi (Rosemartha, prosperity as abundance, material comfort, according to the druids) or Kali (Catubodua, death and rebirth, still according to the druids).

288

The druidic deities are consequently often, in the dedications, grouped two by two, a god-or-demon and a goddess or demoness (or fairy). For example, Suqellus and Nantosuelta. We find, moreover, in the Romano-British or Gallo-Roman inscriptions, Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada/Lludd (equated to Mars by the Romans in Great Britain) combined with Nemetona, whose name points out that of Nemon, warrior fairy of the Irish epic Lug (called Mercury by the Romans) combined with Rosemartha, goddess-or-demoness or fairy whose name is, of course, Celtic, Borvo, the god-or-demon of Bourbonne-les-Bains, Bourbon-Lancy and Aix-les-Bains in Savoy, combined with Damona; Belin/Belen (called Apollo by the Romans) combined with Sirona; and so on.

But if practically each god-or-demon has an appointed wife, there also exists autonomous female deities like Epona. These goddess-or-demonesses or fairies take very many and specific forms according to the regions, because just like the higher Being, the Brigo or female energy has thousands of names…

THE PATH OF THE NAMNETES WOMEN.

The dagolitoi or believers of this kind of worship therefore design the divinity as polarized in two aspects, particularly male and female. The Bitus or Cosmos is sensed in it as the spreading of the energy in the matter and the worship consists in using this power.

The principle of the sympathetic magic or imitative magic is one of the oldest ideas which are. The laws of the sympathetic magic were described by Tylor (1871), Frazer (1890-1981) and Mauss (1902-1950). It is possible to divide them in two main categories:the laws of contagion or contact and the laws of similarity.

There existed therefore rites and practices which aim at concretely carrying out this unification by the codified performing of the sex act (because, of course, in Celtic paganism as in druidism no connotation of sin burdens with a debt the sexuality).

Strabo, Geography, Book IV, Chapter IV. 6. “There is a small island, not very far out to sea, situated off the outlet of the Liger River; and the island is inhabited by women of the Namnetes (in Greek Samnitôn], they are possessed by Dionysus and make this god propitious by appeasing him with mystic initiations as well as other sacred performances; no man sets foot on the island, although the women themselves, sailing from it, have intercourse with the men and then return”.

Paraphrase by Dionysius the Periegetes.

“Nearby there is another trail of small islands, here the women of the Amnites noblemen who dwell opposite possessed by enthusiasm celebrate the festivals in the honor of Bacchus crowned by bunches of ivy with black sheets

and the noise of their tumult rises distinctly in the night. On the banks of the Absinthian River in Thracia Bistonides call upon the resounding Iraphiotes with their children along Ganges with dark swirls, the Indians carry out their merry processions in the honor of noisy Dionysus: but it is with much more heat than the women in this place shout, “Evohe!”

N.B. It is about , in these rites,for the woman, realizing, experimenting or feeling thus, personally, deep within herself, the beatific action of the abstract, metaphysical and cosmological great principles. The woman brings into play (plays) with these concepts to carry them out on the physical level.

But if it is legitimate to favor one of the both poles in question, it is necessary never to go as far as being unaware of the other, which always has its place in the Big Whole.

This type of druidiaction (the path of the Namnetes) perhaps dating back to the Neolithic matriarchy, therefore also aims at the unification of the polarities on all the other levels and in all the other fields (principle of the sympathetic magic).

In its highest conception, this type of druidism, transcends consequently the surface oppositions between contemplation and action, rest and movement, asceticism and pleasure; and aims at joining together the two major poles, the soul and the matter which remain indissolubly joined in the Universal Including Everything.

This aspect of our druidry, although rare, strongly left its mark on Greeks and Romans *, in particular Strabo. It gave rise to multiple speculations, due to the fertile imagination of the men as soon as it is a question of mystery and secret. See the Eleusinian mysteries. See also on this subject the episode, more anecdotal it is true, of the adultery of the wife of Partholon.

289

In Ireland the sexual intercourse, which transcends the physical bodies to point out the primeval union of the soul energy in the everyday life (Brigo) and the mind (the god-or-demon), is symbolized by the Stone of Scone or of Fal which represents the male principle, and its base, which represents a vagina, matrix of life, which figures the energy running in Nature, the Brigo.

These stones, we find in large numbers in the Celtic, and in particular Irish, field (stones of Castlestrange, of Killycluggin-Turoe…) represent the union of the opposites emerged from the undifferentiated primeval vastness of the primordial cauldron ( the Pariollon or Par-God), but they have nothing obscene for the druidism: it is not a question of bodily sexuality, but rather of the intercourse of the cosmic order reproduced as by sympathetic nerve or imitative magic.

Every creation is regarded as procreation. The worship around these symbols that are the Stone of Scone, the stone of Fal, including the innumerable stones of Castlestrange or Turoe-Killycluggin we have just evoked, makes it possible to worship the invisible one through the visible one, and constitutes a link between the immanent and transcendent one.

* However already familiarized with this type of spirituality, see the bacchanalia scandal in -186.

290

DRUIDIC WELTANSCHAUUNG.

God or the Demiurge, even the Devil if using this word is preferred, is basically unknowable in his mystery we have said, but we can nevertheless know some modes of His being and of His acting.

All the civilizations and mythologies showed a particular interest for the phenomenon of twins. Whatever the forms in which they are imagined, perfectly symmetrical, or one dark and other luminous, one turned towards the heaven and the other towards the earth, one black and the other white, red or blue; the twin myth expresses at the same time an intervention of the hereafter and the duality of every being, or the dualism of its spiritual and material, diurnal and nocturnal, tendencies.

When they thus symbolize the inner oppositions of the Man and the combat he must fight to overcome them, they have a sacrificial meaning… but it happens that the twins are absolutely similar, double or copies the one of the another. They express then only the unity of a counterbalanced duality… the reducing of the multiple to the one. The dualism once overcome, the duality is nothing any more but an appearance.

The druidic myth of the twins symbolizes the relative dualism (the dialectics) dear to the former druids.

Astral and protective of seafaring God-or-demons, riders having admirers or believers among the young men, the divine twins enjoyed formerly an undeniable popularity at the druids and in their teaching.

Timaeus (quoted by Diodorus IV, 56,4), as of the – 3rd century, gives them the Ocean for their domain: the Celts who dwell along the ocean venerate the Dioscuri above any of the gods, since they have a tradition handed down from ancient times that these god-or-demons appeared among them coming from the ocean.

The Ocean for domain….He who says tradition says druids. It is there without any doubt the distant echo of a high-level druidic myth about the coincidence of opposites. Which matches only by far the Alci of the Celtic-Germanic tribe of the Naharvales (a tribe of Lugii in current Silesia) even the Efnisien and Nisien of the second branch of the Welsh Mabinogi.

In spite of its apparent complexity, the world which surrounds us is in reality kept going only by two forces, or rather by one force, but having a double polarity, like electricity.

All, in the universe, is moved by this fundamental force, this energy, which makes the electrons circulating in the atoms, the cells multiplying, the plants and the living beings growing; which keeps going the movement of wind and stars. We cannot see it or touch it; just like for electricity, we can only perceive its effects. In the human being, this force supports as well the functions of the body as these of the mind.

These universal laws are immanent, absolute and intangible, they do not let be distorted at the whim of our imaginations, whatever their motivations are.

The only Welsh triad philosophically valid is perhaps that of which the third clause is stated thus and which is the first “Un pwngc rhyddyd, sef y bydd lle bo cydbwys pob gwrth.”

There is always a freedom point; i.e. (a point) where the equiponderation of all the opposites is. Opposite but supplementary forces, which express the APPARENT fundamental dichotomy of the world, and its balance (at least from a strictly human point of view). Fire and water, day and night, shadow and light, male and female, heat and cold, positive and negative.

But this balance is never static, it always fluctuates between these two opposed, complementary and interdependent, forces, represented in the symbol of the “S” (the S-scrolls of Celtic art). One of the spirals represents the forces of the passive type: shadow, cold, depth, dampness, and so on; whereas the other represents these of the active type: light, heat, surface, dryness… All needs these two

291

forces. They are always in dynamic relation: when one grows, the other one decreases (principle of the communicating vessels).

It is the eternal fight between negentropy and entropy, “Nothing is destroyed, nothing is created, everything is changed.” The ordered one cannot exist without the disorder, every “structure” (negentropy) requires a huge wasting of energy (entropy). Thus the sun is the source (it makes it possible without being the origin of it) of the earthly life.

Expansion, structuring, change, all are vibration in the Bitus or Cosmos, “Nothing exists in itself,” all depends on all…

For ages, specialists fight to know if our universe is expanding indefinitely or if it will withdraw into itself at the end of its “expansion.” In fact, that has no importance for what worries us, according to the current “physical” theories. In a case it is emptied of its substance through “evaporation,” in the other it becomes again an ogham point (ea-badh) of space-time (lle bo cydbwys pob gwrth) .

Specialists speak in the study of the dynamic systems about disentropy. In such a system, a partial negentropy leads to a state of self-organization of a higher level through a percolation phenomenon.

The entropy is regarded in the second principle of thermodynamics as being spontaneously increasing in closed system. In this case , the notion of negentropy therefore is necessarily limited in time or in space or can be implemented only in an open system.

In all the natural cycles, each force succeeds the other as day follows night, action follows rest, breathing follows breathing out. Balance is never static, but dynamic.

Nothing is therefore rather this than that, but everything becomes so. The things are never completed, but are continuously caused by the forces which are exerted in the phenomena. The becoming is used as a link between phenomena.

The same idea is found among Greek philosophers. Fragments of Heraclitus, preserved by Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of all heresies, book IX.

AGO (old Irish ag, genitive aig).

The spirit of the typically Celtic prayer called “lorica” is also entirely based on this taste for the oppositions the former druids had and which made them able to complete or to close a list. Indeed, if the black is evoked, why not evoke the white, does not the movement also go with the stop, the up with the down? All that suggests the idea of totality indeed that nothing was forgotten nor cannot be forgotten, that all is taken into account.

The Celtic system of naming too is also largely organized besides in pairs of antonyms. This binary structuring often makes it possible to better determine the meaning of the elements of the compound proper nouns. Some examples according to Xavier Delamarre (Linguistic approach of the continental Old Celtic).

Young /Old.

Iouinco-rix “Young -King”. Seno-rix “Old- King”.

High/Low ( Above/Below).

Uxsa-canus “High-Reed.” Ande-canus “Low-Reed.”

Uxo-unna “Water-from-Above.” Ando-unna “Water-from- Below.”

Black/White/(Light/Dark).

Uindo-ridio- “White-rider” . Dobno-redo “Black-rider.”

Uindio-rix, Albio-rix. “King-of-Heaven”. Dubno-rix “King-of-Darkness”.

Argio-talus “White-Forehead” . Dubno-talus “Dark-Forehead.”

Uindiacos. Dumnacos.

Uindedo. Dumnedo.

Good/Bad.

Su-carus “Be-loved”. Du-carus “Un-loved”.

Su-ratus “Good-Grace”. Du-ratus “Bad-Grace”.

Su-uir (os) “Good-man”. Doiros (*Du-uiros) “Bad-Man”.

292

Su-leuia “Good-she-Driver”. Du-louius the “Bad-Guide? ”

Su-melo “Good-Gentleness”. Du-melus “Bad-Gentleness” (“Hypocritical”?)

Daco-toutus “Good-Left? ” Du-teutos “Bad-Left.”

Su-caelus “Good-sign”. Dus-celinatia “ill omen”.

Susus. Dusius?

From here/from elsewhere.

Nitio-broges “Fellow-countrymen”. Allo-broges “Foreigners.”

Eni-genos, Enignus“Native.” Egenus, eskenino- (celtib.) “Non-native, foreigner”.

Wandering, Nomadic/Settled.

Alauni “Wandering, Nomadic.” Anauni “Who remains, Settled.”

Friend/ Enemy.

Amantos/Namanto?

The first useful opposition (oxymoron or gwenn ha du) to express the feeling of humanity was undoubtedly the opposition friend/enemy; but it is necessary in druidic theology to distingish well between the war without hatred (ago, old Irish ag, genitive aig) and the attraction or the attachment without love of human nature (oxymoron). There was never among the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) rough dualism between Soul/Matter, Good/Evil, God/Devil, the matter (matrona) being able to be also at times creating matrix (even if it is especially of illusions).

As we have had the opportunity to see it higher, the only Welsh triad philosophically valid is perhaps that of which the third clause is stated thus and which is the first “Un pwngc rhyddyd, sef y bydd lie bo cydbwys pob gwrth.”

There is always a freedom point; i.e. (a point) where the equiponderation of all the opposites is. Opposite but complementary forces, which express the APPARENT fundamental dichotomy of the world, and its balance (at least from a strictly human point of view).

In other words, in spite of its apparent complexity, the world which surrounds us is in reality livened up only by two forces, or rather by one force, but having a double polarity, like electricity.

Neit or Neth is a figure little known of the Irish legends. Compared to Lug, Neto, Neith, Neit are a little what is, in Greece, Uranus for Zeus. He does not appear out he lists or the genealogical mentions (the Irish myth of origins crystallized around the name of the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu). But his anteriority, which is that of the original chaos-cauldron, explains this pre-god-or-demon, is also warlike.

The existence of this fight pre-god in the original panceltic panth-eon is attested by what Macrobius says in connection with a Celtiberian deity bearing the same name in the area of Cadiz. Saturnalia Book I, chapter XIX section 5. “

"The Accitani, a people of Spain, worship with the greatest respect a simulacrum of Mars which is adorned with rays, calling it Neton". He was also known of the Celtiberians since a Spanish city in Lusitania (still area of Cadiz) was dedicated to him (Netobriga). But is it possible to rely on the Roman interpretation of the facts of Celtic civilization?

Considering the weak consistency of such a deity at the mythological level (the Latin term used is the word simulacrum), it is better to regard him as a full deity, as a full god, but as a … simulacrum, numen, shekinah, mana, kami? Let's say electr-eon and let's stop talking about it.

Unless, of course, that it is again a local case of degeneration of the genuine druidic spirituality. But this electreon, not to say this god, was sufficiently known of the Celtiberians, so that a whole city in the south-west of Spain is devoted to him (Netobriga). It is true that Macrobius tends a little to mix everything! What is certain it is that a simulacrum is not a statue. Substitute would not be bad either.

To conclude about Neto/Neith let us say that struggle is generating powerful forces, which make it possible to Man to leave his mark in the universe, and that former druids had understood it well. From where their use of the word ago for designating this phenomenon.

293

In the heresy which developed in Ireland (degeneration due to the increasing scarcity of the contacts or of the exchanges with the rest of the Celtic world) Neit or Neth was therefore an electreon considered or seen as a simple war god-or-demon , son of a named Andedeiwos.

Therefore let us conclude about this Neto that it is , either a electr-eon, or a primeval deity cause at the same time of the air god-or-demons and of the underground god-or-demons in the Celtic world (Tribe of Danu-bia and Fomorians in Ireland).

Humanly speaking and from a strictly human point of view (is it possible to have another one??) a thing can exist only through its opposite. The not yet differentiated One is divided, to give rise to two opposite but supplementary forces.

Like already mentioned in this opuscule, but repetere = ars docendi, the same idea is found among Greek philosophers. Fragments of Heraclitus, preserved by Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of all heresies, book IX.

ETHICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE STRUGGLE OF OPPOSITES OR AGO.

What is contrary has also its utility, the sea is at the same time the most soiled and the purest water; drinking and salutary for fish, it is non-drinking and disastrous for men. Good and Evil are very one.

War is the mother and the queen of everything, it made certain people some gods, others some men, it made some of them slaves and others free men.

This world is the same one for everyone, none of the gods nor of the men made it, but it was, is and will be, always, an always living fire.

The harmony of the world is a harmony of the opposites, as in the case of a bow or a lyre. The opposites form only the same thing, from differences most beautiful harmony results which is, everything is born from these differences. Everything is tied together . If there were no sun, there were only night. The individual comes from the whole and the whole comes from the individual. The back and forth of the shuttle of craftsmen forms the same movement. To go down and to go up are the same thing. Beginning and end are one. Day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, abundances and the need, are one thing. Whole and part, agreement and disagreement, harmony and discord, likewise. The river in which we go down to swim is at the same time the same one and another one. The cold becomes hot, the heat, cold; the wet one becomes dry, and the dry one , wet. To be living or dead, waked up or sleeping, young or old, it is the same thing. These various states are only metamorphoses the one of the others. The Immortal ones are mortals, the mortals immortal, living in their death and dying in their life. Every emulsion breaks up if it is no longer shaken. It is in the change that is the rest.

Good and evil are identical. Facing the higher being everything is beautiful good and well, even if the men think that certain things are well and others bad.

It would not be a good thing that men have all they wish. Disease makes health pleasant and good; hunger fullness; tiredness rest.

The originality of Heraclitus, compared to the other physicists, lies in the fact that he seeks, behind the modifications of natural appearances, to grasp the cosmic unit resulting from their contradiction. The famous fragment : “ You cannot step into the same river twice.” Another fragment is also meaningful: “The opposition is useful , and from differences results the most beautiful harmony (or from discord come everything)”.

Heraclitus affirms therefore that the law of the replacement of the opposites is the condition of the becoming of things. Between opposites, there is a struggle leading to creation.

For Zoroaster, fire and light are always decreasing . Where heat and light cease, start matter, darkness and evil, with which Zoroaster makes the world of an entity that he calls Ahriman. The world of the light and of the good being allocated by him to an entity called Ahura Mazda. [The druidism does not go up to there and leaves this dualism to the Judeo-Islamic-Christians]. Unlike what ended up writing the become Christian Irishmen, genuine god-or-demons, in the strictest sense of the word, therefore begin on the levels below.

Strabo IV, 4 : “One day only fire and water will prevail !”

294

In the case of the former druids, the questioning and the empirical observations of the former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) about the world itself; made it possible to them to lay , as the foundation of this world, the clash of opposites, the universal movement and the eternal restarting of things, according to a cycle. If everything is opposed , love and hatred, war and peace, silence and words… the opposites, in their very opposition, nevertheless are embraced by unity: on the chessboard, the white pieces and the black pieces play the same game.

To say that everything goes thus continuously from an opposite to the other, it is to say that the ago or war (old Irish ag, genitive aig) is in a way the mother and the sovereign one of the universe; it is the logic of the things. What is separated is joined: everywhere there are opposed tensions, as in a bow or a lyre. The divine one is at the same time, day and night, spring and autumn, superabundance and starvation: it takes varied, even opposite,forms.

Conclusion. Although they are too often presented as some apologists of the “universal war,” the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) favor on the contrary the unity resulting from the opposites, to the detriment of their struggle.

295

THE LIFE (CELTIC BIVITONA).

The living being is a natural being which has in itself the principle of its vital movement. The definition of life according to Aristotle refers to the concept of movement. Life and movement are intimately linked, without, however, being simply identical. " All the things mentioned present a feature in which they differ from things which are not constituted by nature. Each of them has within itself a principle of motion and of stationariness (in respect of place, or of growth and decrease, or by way of alteration). On the other hand, a bed and a coat and anything else of that sort, qua receiving these designations i.e., in so far as they are products of art, have no innate impulse to change. But in so far as they happen to be composed of stone or of earth or of a mixture of the two, they do have such an impulse, and just to that extent which seems to indicate that nature is a source or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not in virtue of a concomitant attribute. "(Phys. II, 1).

Science did not reveal sufficiently its mysteries to be able to say to us what it is. The scientists cannot even agree to know if entities like the viruses, which multiply and mutate, are living or not. All that we really know about life, it is that it exists and appears as an energy.

Various cosmogonies mention the genesis of the world as resulting from a long and difficult division between two entities, or two antagonistic forces, which attract each other and which repulse each other. It is thanks to the presence of these two forces, of these two impulses, that the life is called for the being. Two opposite but complementary and fundamental forces, which clash permanently, and generate thus the balance of the universe. A balance, of course, precarious, but without which there would be neither life, neither death, neither action, nor passivity. There would be nothing. The universe would be motionless, not to say cataleptic.

The myths show how any world depends on the interaction of varied forces and polarities, whose balance or union maintains the life. What our Welsh friends call lle bo cydbwys pob gwrth. These forces or “polarities” are described various manners - fire and water, shade and light, female masculine and, force (repulsion) and feeling (attraction) - and, combined, they form the Whole.

Case for example of the cosmogony of our Germanic first cousins in north with their notion of Ginnungagap, and by the impressions of heat and cold which are distributed around this gap. In the west is Niflheim, world of the cold, ice, darkness and fogs, and in the east is Muspellheim, world of the heat, light and flames. These two worlds are separated by the giant crack that the Ginnungagap forms. The ice world and the molten lava world act one on the other and everything melts to produce the world.

The universal life comes therefore from an immortal and indestructible essence , which is it also as an unfathomable abyss (Bythos therefore in Irenaeus of Lyon). But it appeared initially in couples (syzygies in the writing by Irenaeus still), which were supplemented by a kind of cascading generation.

We know that energy can be neither created, nor destroyed, only changed. All that we really know about the life, it is that it began one day and that it continues. The life of the Earth, the life on Earth, began there are billion years. All that we observe which is alive is the continuation of the life that multiplies and divides permanently in new manifestations. For example, when an alive spermatozoon is joined with an alive ovum, they both cease existing as independent entities. They become a zygote; a new manifestation of the continuation of the life. It is not a new life, it is a fusion and a continuation of the life, which existed in the spermatozoon and the ovum; which existed in the organisms which produced these gametes; and so on, for billion years.

The Earth is living. We, the beings which are born from her and walk on her, are part of her and of her life. Our bodies are composed of the same minerals which constitute her body. In the same way, our mind and our soul are a part of her spirit and of her soul. The ground is a total living being, and we are a part of her total living being, just as the cells of our bodies are living parts of our living being. Her body is living in the same way that our bodies are living. Even the stones are living in the same way that the bones of our bodies are.

When our bodies cease functioning then start to break up, then it is we are dead. Rotting is the means used to reabsorb the minerals of our bodies, so that they can be re-used by other forms of life: as food

296

for bacteria, worms, insects, animals, plants, and so on. The vital energy of the body is thus “embodied again ” or changed into the vital energy of other beings.

N.B. The druids seem to have personified this mother-water (earth-mother for the Roman Tacitus) with the name of Nerthus but also to have duplicated this Nerthus in various hypostases all of female nature (the image was obvious): Rose-Martha the farmed land (Tailtiu in Ireland), but also some triads, some fairies of wood and forests, some rivers, etc.

297

THE FORCE (NERTIO OR BRIGO).

Other essential concept of the druidism. The first of the hypertheos super gods or pre-gods , of the druidic hyperworld or albiobitos, is perhaps quite simply the force or nertio. Called brigo (Irish bricht) in its individual application on the level of the results of the verb to be (the beings).

For better understanding what it is , let us reconsider the way in which the druidism conceives the life of the world.

The universe such as we sense it places itself at the same time in space and time. However, in the druidic conception of the world, time is not perceived in a linear way as in the Judeo-Islamic-Christian thought, but in a cyclic way. We may thus distinguish two phases which follow one another alternatively: a time of coming into the being of the verb to be and a time of destruction. When the coming into being is materialized, the universe is spread in its majesty starting from a mass of matter and energy (Nertio) which is not other than the rest of a preceding universe. At the end of times, when the wheel of the supreme fate has turned all the way round , the universe is reabsorbed little by little; while concentrating all its elements in a new rest, which in turn will be used as a basis for the procreation of another universe; and so on. In this two strokes cyclic movement, universe, although it changes its form, continues. There is neither true beginning nor absolute end; the creation, just like the destruction, is relative, and from a higher point of view, there is neither creation nor destruction. Here they agree with Heraclitus.

The Brigo plays a completely central role in the myths of procreation of the universe. Sometimes paramount, sometimes secondary, its role is indispensable: it makes possible the passage from the essence to the result of the verb to be, from the result of the verb to be to the result of the verb to have, from the concept to the materialization.

In some cosmogonic myths indeed, the original power is rather called Brigo or Nertio rather than Pariollon; thus using a female and non-neutral vocabulary, and consequently, making possible the equating of this power to a goddess-or-demoness , or a fairy if this term is preferred, and not to a god-or-demon.

What produced the worship of the universal Mother, the worship of the maternity of the matter/energy, of which all the beings and all the material phenomena are the children. This conception of the Brigo refers to the founding myths in which the Nertio is seen as the truly essential and indispensable, primeval, part, the only entity really worthy of worship, because it is it which generates the world.

If the Nertio personifies the maternal , gentle , protective and loving, energy, of the divine Mother, it also embodies the opposite aspect of it. Because the Nertio is a totality, a fullness having itself for this reason, some polarities which, if they seem to be opposed, are in reality completely supplementary. It has therefore a mysterious and terrifying dark face it is necessary for us to admit and accept, to even like as well as its luminous aspects: the Catubodua in her aspect Morrigani or Sheela Na gig.

Indeed, since all that is born has to die one day, and since the Nertio symbolizes the creating matter/energy, the impulse which makes it possible the life to appear; it is logical that its role is also combined , near or distant, with the sublimation of this manifestation: the death. The Nertio or Brigo then takes the shape of a cruel, bloody and without mercy, goddess-or-demoness: the Catubodua or the Morrigani, (whose animal is the crow… or the raven). Although frightening, we could notice this aspect remains very present in the Irish legends. These aspects of the female energy, which can seem monstrous for not informed people, are for the high-knowers called druids material to redeeming symbols, deprived of any personal aggressiveness. One cannot indeed dissociate the maternal, gentle and luminous aspects, of the Nertio, from her more frightening aspects. The creating matter/ energy is at the same time life and death, and Mankind must learn how to honor it or like it in these two cases.

the great mystics insist on the fact that we can finally know the Brigo only by experimenting it… However, if the Nertio has many ways to appear in this world, it is the only hostess: its characteristic is to overflow the individual who was locked up in mental reference marks, to surprise it where it does not expect it. The effect of the nertio cannot be reduced to more or less extraordinary events as visions, or ecstasies. It leads to much more: the emergence of a new state of consciousness, as if man saw the world for the very first time. It is very difficult to speak about the shock state of the individual soul taken by the Brigo, because it is an experiment which is well beyond the words and the descriptive concepts a person can provide. To speak about Brigo in these conditions, without to have

298

experimented it, is as to speak about an electric shock to people… who do not know electricity… In this state, the objective observer can only notice the things, without being able nor to want to call them. The marvelous ferment of the universal matter/ energy should be disturbed by no evaluation, by no prejudice.

The Nertio is venerated in peaceful forms just like in more destroying or frightening visions… Because the aspects of the Nertio are supplementary: it includes all the realities and all the abstractions. At the same time power and awareness, force and direction which orientates this force, it is a mediator, a relay between body and soul, Mankind and divine one. The soul can govern the body only with the assistance of the Nertio which lives it.

In this mediation between Mankind and what transcends it, we can distinguish three ways of being through which the Nertio appears according to the levels.

- Universal: the cosmic nertio, which moves and which directs the forces and the processes of the phenomenal world. In its external aspect, it appears then in the Nature of anything. The primeval nertio which stands above the worlds and is used as hyphen between Mankind and the non-manifested mystery of the higher being. On the cosmic level the nertio it is the energy, which makes move the things in nature.

- Individual: in the Gnosticism, this nertio or brigo is attached to the soul/mind , that psychics and pneumatics have.

- Transcendent or immanent: in this world of ignorance and of brutish louts, the world of the life and of the body, the Brigo supports us and leads us through the darkness towards our goal. Subjectively, on the microcosmic level, the Brigo it is the energy in us, in his double aspect: activity but also sufferings.

The Nertio (or Brigo), the cosmic energy, the creating energy, lies at the same time in the infinite one of the universe and the finiteness of Mankind; while remaining inaccessible, it is an integral part of the everyday life : active force, expressed awareness, Primeval Nature, it is present in everything thing and in each one of us, it is the link between macrocosm and microcosm. We have already said it but it is important to repeat it (repetere = ars docendi).

The wives of the god-or-demons of the druidic Panth-eon or pleroma, are some personifications of this primeval Energy represented in its various powers.

The nertio or the brio (Irish bricht) matches the potential or virtual energy the Hinduis call shakti and the Greek philosophers essence. Shekhinah or Sakinah would say perhaps Jews or Muslims. This brio or brigo is the “female” counterpart of a god (his consort), in fact, his power of changing/creating, without which he cannot act.

Behind each man who succeeds, there is a woman, it is said. Man may today interpret in various ways this joke. The most current interpretation is that which consists in seeing in it an evocation of the fact that, traditionally, in a couple, it is the woman, and initially the housewife, who sacrifices oneself more; at least who makes the most sacrifices, while being devoted to her husband and her children. Others see in this expression an allusion to the female share which can exist in every man.

The Irish term bricht, briocht, is the formation of a verbal noun on the stem brig- “to show, to express,” which is attached to the root *bherek- or *bh (e) regh- “to shine, or to light.”

The Italian musicological word “brio” (from the Provence language briu), and designating the brilliant and determined nature of a musical composition, or execution, is undoubtedly also a distant echo of this linguistic notion. If a man has some brio, then seek the woman who is behind him and who husbands him, who takes care of his stewardship issue, who advises him or who pushes him. Now perhaps.

In any event, the druids, apparently, had assumed this proverb since one of the characteristics of the religion of the Celts is the worship of deities seeming to live in a couple. It is there a singularly developed form of the humanization of the divine one…

There are purely indigenous couples: Suqellus and Nantosuelta, Bormo or Albius and Damona, Bormanus and Bormana, Ucuetis and Bergusia, Cicolluis and Litavis, Telo and Stanna, Luxovius and Bricta…

How these should couples have to be explained? It is absolutely not sure that it is always some spouses. Like in the case of Jehovah and of his Asherah in the Torah for example. It is more probable than the two deities are of comparable nature, therefore coming in the same field.

299

The difference between a god or demiurge and his brigo are the same one as between a fire and its power to burn, a word and its faculty to make sense. The union of the male god-or-demons (implementation, externalization) and of this universal and multiform Brigo (essence, potential or virtual energy) is the base of the life of our universe. In the ancient druidism, the characteristic of the binomial Brigo and male god-or-demons is to be a duality marrying itself to form one entity, the aware of itself being. This entity has two supplementary modes.

NOTICE ABOUT THE WOMANKIND.

The feeling that a fairy or a goddess-or-demoness is present in each woman is very largely widespread in Celtic lands. Under certain conditions, there can even be women making it possible to the human being to have an idea of the human soul. Case for example of Etanna in Ireland in the famous story of the nurture of the house of the two milk buckets (Altrom Tige Da Medar). Considering her purity and her beauty, she was almost regarded as sacred.

And considering the religious sensitivity of the heart and spirit minded Celts (admodum dedita religionibus Caesar notices) if the worst comes to the worst, every feminine Celtic word could become a goddess-or-demoness or a fairy, if it designated something beneficial (a force, a power, and this precisely because the nertio in the everyday life (brigo) it is the feminine.

Very feminist vision of the things therefore, the man can do nothing without the woman who is more than his well-earned rest, who is his force or his daily support, without which he would be nothing, or at least not much and not a long time. What some authors of Antiquity had sensed well in their way while speaking about the woman among Celts.

Ammianus Marcellinus (History. Book XV, chapter XII, 1): “A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single continental Celt if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong when she is in a mad rage; especially when, swelling her neck, gnashing her teeth, and brandishing her sallow arms of enormous size, she begins to strike blows mingled with kicks, as if they were so many missiles sent from the string of a catapult.”

And even if goddess-or-demonesses are some wives, they are not always mothers as it is the case of the human women: even Epona/Dechtire, mother of the little Hesus Cuchulainn, did not conceive him in a normal way: she conceived him by swallowing a butterfly fallen into her cup. Celtic mythology gives to the goddess-or-demonesses or the fairies the best part, even if it means to almost neglect in certain cases the matching god-or-demon. In druidism, female figures are not only very present, but also very popular among the believers.

However, if the list of the female divine names is rather long, we cannot therefore speak about an openly feminist mythology among the Celts. It is only much after the period of the beginnings that will be built , little by little, a mythology in which female personalities will be able to open out fully. They will then adopt the role of a daughter, wife, mother, and will grow in importance and autonomy. Although it occurs in some rare cases that goddess-or-demonesses are designated in an autonomous way, this apparent autonomy does not refer nevertheless a true independence: Danu (bia) for example exists only compared to the Tuatha De Danann whose she is the mother… and generally, the majority of the names of goddess-or-demoness or of fairy, are only anthropomorphic appellatives of natural phenomena…

What characterizes the Brigo, it is, on the one hand, the internalization movement, in order to reach the innermost , most sensitive , knowledge, of the beings, the taking into account of all the potential contained in the shadow. On the other hand, externalization movement to sign its presence and to put forward its person, to sparkle and to light up oneself , to express its nature in the light, in the knowledge of oneself as an object. It is the male deity who assumes this role.

When the binomial Brigo/god, falls into introversion, it is to show to its own awareness what it is (the verb to be) that is to say a being endowed with ways and means. When it lapses into extraversion, it is to express in its own eyes all that it has (the verb to have), i.e., a result of the verb to be endowed with power. The reflection of these two tendencies (To Be and To Have, the brigo and the god-or-demon) is found in the Celtic divine couples we know.

At all events, this parity men/women was undoubtedly only the application to the world of the god-or-demons, of a much more general druidic philosophical principle , that of the attraction or coincidence of the opposites.

300

The conjunction of the opposites (water/fire, emptiness/fullness, etc.), was, according to the former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), necessary for life or movement. And this, without any Manicheism, since, in their conception of this relative dualism, it was by no means question that one of the opposites finishes one day by winning over the other.

The proof is that, their end of the world to them, the West Gnostic sages called druids did not see it as resulting from the action of one element, but as resulting from the action combined of two traditionally contrary elements, fire and water. “They say that men’s souls and also the universe are indestructible, although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them ” (Strabo Geography IV, 4).

Just like the character of a man is his destiny or his horoscope, Nature has its own laws, and these laws are consequently its destiny (its dharma t Buddhists would say. Heraclitus was besides of the same opinion.

N.B. 1. The existence is empirical and does not make possible to know the beings: it is the field of the accidental and of the contingent one, of the multiple and of the irreducible otherness. Appearance seems like the opposite of the reality.

However, if such an explanation answers the questions that metaphysics can ask, it does not satisfy the religious conscientiousness which is filled with wonder in front of the harmony and beauty of the universal order. Man therefore needs a personalized figure to whom send his praises, his amazement and his gratitude.

Of a being, we can say that it is (the soul ), or what it has. What returns us to the two correlates, the essence energy force or the deep being, the brigo, and the existence or the to have, the male pole. In order to answer this requirement, the druidic cosmology therefore calls upon two fundamental ideas: the essence energy or force (nertio) and the manifested Existence (male god-or-demons).

The Brigo or Nertio is the druidic concept which designates the persistent reality of a being through the modifications of its accidents represented by the god-or-demon of male type. The druidic synthesis consequently endowed each god-or-demon with a female figure which symbolizes the virtual power of this god-or-demon.

This female aspect, this creative energy it is the Brigo (Irish bricht), the (conceptual) form which makes it possible to the being to be manifested, to be materialized.

N.B. 2.Even if it is generally the male aspect which is in the center of the myths relating to the druidic cosmogony, there exists some of them which seems “to forget” the role of the father which generates, to the only favor of the mother. The Brigo is in a way the great goddess-or-demoness of the omnipresent energy, which produces life and movement. The Brigo is to some extent the Divine Mother who gives birth to the world; and all the goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, are some daughters of this Brigo.

301

ALBIOBITOS.

We call Albiobitus the combination of these constants representing the forces necessary to the formation of the organized world which spouted out from the floods of the primeval cauldron previous to the existence of this first world.

The Neolithic druidism represents in a symbolic way each one of these big causal and immanent or transcendent energies working in our universe. The time which flies, for example. All these energies (conceived consequently such some pre-god-or-demons) are also various aspects of a universal substance.

For Zoroaster the eons assigned to this universe were a heptad representing Ahura Mazda, the “Lord Wisdom.” Each of its seven eons had a well-defined function in the divine mechanics. Below this heptad of eons was rolled out a whole hierarchy of god-or-demons, even of angels, with well distributed positive or negative missions. Same thing among the Sabians of Carrhae ( today Harran in Turkey). But why a heptad of god-or-demons and not twelve or fourteen as in the small previous catechism. It is up to our readers to see.

The albiobitus is the set formed by these electr-eons which spouted out from the frozen floods of the primeval ocean previous to the existence of the world such as we know it. These pre-deities of the Albiobitus are not preexistent, but they are not created either. The higher Being animates them or gives life to them because of its only existence. Through an implicit…..will verb or word (labarum *). Included initially in this shapeless and bodiless, non-world , these electr-eons or pre-deities of Albiobitus are our way to us of seeing and of designing the elements of the cauldron or cosmic chaos which was previous the organization of our world.

Only this hyperworld was organized by enough independent entities to be free (what is not the case of our world to us). The prefix “hypo” sometimes used when it is spoken about the eons, suggests well the idea that these electreons take up a lower level compared to the higher unit, which deserves thus well better its Greek name of Hypertheos, where we find the prefix “hyper” which means above. In this way, it is easier to distinguish this parallel universe , which is the bubbling Pariollon, therefore a super-god, from these hypostases which seem thus as some proto-gods. But what is Upper always transcends hypostases.

The fundamental discovery of primordial druids somewhere in Central Europe 3,500 years ago was that of determinism.

Determinism is admitting that events follow one after the other in Nature with the same necessity as the relations of cause and effects in logic. What occurs was to occur and could not be different. All that happens in the universe obeys a strict necessity. Contingency is an illusion due to human ignorance; in reality, the course of events in Nature is strictly determined.

We find again this position among former druids who, without being fatalistic, admit nevertheless the existence of Fate. This slight difference is subtle but important. Fate rules all that occurs in Nature: what comes from externality does not depend on us. What depends on us, it is to take things as they come, with a right attitude we can compare to a kind of love of Fate (amor fati Marcus Aurelius will say). But the acceptance of his destiny is not a resignation for as much, because it is the base of a right decision, based on the principle of reality. What the legend of Hesus Cuchulainn teaches, it is the renouncement to an immature, capricious and whimsical design of freedom. Action is up to us in this world. We must as a good charioteer firmly take up the reins of our will, but while accepting that the course of events is never up to us entirely; since former druids had turned “haphazardness “(sic) into a God-or-Demiurge. At least according to saint Columba of Iona and one of his loricae which speaks about it (to say that he is against):

“Our fortune does not depend on sneezing.

Nor on a bird on the point of a twig,

Nor on the trunk of a crooked tree,

Nor on a sordan ?????

I am not afraid of the voices of birds,

302

Nor of sneezing, nor of any charm ,

Nor of a child of chance, nor of a woman;

Na mac, na mana, na mnan,

My druid is Christ, the Son of God, etc.”

* Sordan = wind noise ? In the branches?

It is advisable to reconsider this central data of the druidic knowledge, and this more especially as it is far being always well realized or well understood today.

Muslim fatalism has often been badly understood. Now same thing for the Celtic-druidic fatalism. To love Fate, to love one’s destiny (Latin amor fati), it is not to be fatalistic in the passive or negative meaning of the word. In the countries of “Christian” culture indeed, the notion of fatalism quickly came to designate the defeatism or the pessimism of the one who, feeling to be with no hope of success, lets the Fate follow its course and gives up the combat, or leaves a delicate situation while giving up.

However the Fate according to druids , in the person of its god-or-demons, could be a savior Fate . SINCE IT WAS ITSELF ALSO VIROTUTIS, ANEXTIOMAROS, IOVANTUCAROS, DUNATIS, TOUTATIS, if about that, we believe the multiple divine epithets noticed here and there.

Universal interweaving of causes, the druidic notion of Tocade incorporates two types of causes indeed, “general” causes and “individual » causes.

General causes form the determinism and designate the whole of the extrinsic factors, circumstances and events which affect man: they represent the part of existence due to the Fate, the part of necessity to which he must resign himself . But if these external causes determine the human being to react, they do not determine the nature of his reaction which depends on intrinsic factors. Determinism runs up here against human freedom. The individual escapes the necessity as he reacts to the impulse of Fate according to his own nature. If I can modify nothing of the events which affect me, I remain, however, the master of the way in which I receive them and in which I react. The fate leaves to me the use of the main thing: the good use of my reason. The druidic design of Fate is individualized by the personality of each one. Far from doing violence to men, it supposes their spontaneousness: the Tocade does not determine the destiny of men independently of their nature.

The universality of Fate indeed does not exclude human action: it integrates it within its causality.

I have been criticized a lot for making my Fate or Tocade a simple equivalent of the Hindu or Buddhist Dharma. To have recreated the concept of Dharma under the name of Fate or Tocade.

This is inaccurate or is only very partially true.

My Fate or Tocade only corresponds to one of the multiple meanings of the dharma. The one who makes dharma a universal cosmic Order, an eternal Law, an eternal truth.

And especially not that which places it ontologically speaking before or above our Celtic equivalent of Brahman whatever the name under which it is designated because Druidism places its equivalent of Dharma below its equivalent of Brahman.

And the other meanings of this Hindu or Buddhist term have no place in the philosophical and thoughtful paganism of our Druidism.

Note also that the Buddhist dharmachakra corresponds more to the wheel or sun wheel than to our famous wheel of fortune or tarabara in Breton language or the tenth major arcana card of the tarot.

On the other hand, our idea of the fate is well in line with the concept of rta or rita in Sanskrit, since it is a concept closely linked to that of "truth,” and that in Rig-Veda the preservation of Cosmic order goes through the punishment of "liars.” Indeed, in Hinduism there is a close relationship between the Rita and the notion of Dharma as conformity to "cosmic" Order.

But while waiting for the blessed day of the return of the gods (or demons depending on the point of view) today overshadowed by the most individualistic materialism and victims of a certain occultation, of the disenchantment of the world, the individual development of the soul or anamone is announced by the life of Hesus Mars. There is neither hell nor eternal damnation since he triumphed over it with his etheric chariot (siabur charpat). This is the good news in the literal sense of the term in Celtic language: suscetlon.

* The labarum is therefore in a way the sign or messenger of the Fate. But it is necessary to be simplistic like a Jew a Christian or a Muslem to think that it is a command howled in an unknown human language !

303

THE PYRAMIDION.

(The totality of the powers located above the god-or-demons. Pleroma in the writings of St Irenaeus but wrongly).

Above and around the Fate or Tocade indeed, like clouds around the mountain summit, there was therefore according to the former druids a nebula of free electreons, the constants or dimensions which give senses to the phenomena and found them, thus taking part in all realities of the ordinary experiment. In the primary druidic design , these pre-god-or-demons, as metaphysical “principles” (eons) belong to the field of the infinite, and are not reducible to the finiteness. To bring back them to the human state amounts atrophying them.

These forces working in the cosmos or bitus form the higher level of the spiritual universe in which the god-or-demons (pleroma) live. We will not enlarge again on the nebulous cloud of these electr-eons, who are not god-or-demons in the strict sense of the word , but rather some concepts, or cosmic laws, first known dismemberment of the great law of life in the universe.

Let us give again nevertheless here, as an indication and briefly, the list of the concepts or entities which had been already clearly located by our spiritual ancestors for this reason.

- The universal soul, the universal large psychic reservoir, called awenyddio (to take over a Welsh word). Essentially seen like a primeval flame or a cosmic fire having a non-material nature.

- The primeval fire or physical heat.

- The Matter or stuff of universe.

- The oxymoron or confrontation of the opposites (Gwenn-ha-du).

The higher Being does not have a personality, and always remains completely unknowable. It is an unfathomable abyss. Its perfection and its fullness can nevertheless only be handed down to the other results of the action of the verb to be, through emanations. As we could see it, at this stage of the (pro) creation of the world there is only the chaos, or the large cauldron of the universal cosmic soup (the tohu wa bohu Bible says).

The powers or attributes of the being of beings which were before hiding in the unfathomable abyss, evolve out of it and become the principles of any later development of the existence; they take place in waves of successive emanations until they are completely far away from the initial divine purity, and more or less impregnated of matter.

The Albiobitus (or Pleroma in the Greek world but wrongfully we have said) is consisted of the Pariollon (Parinirvana for Buddhists), of the Law of the worlds or Fate called Tocade, and of the electr-eons even pre-god-or-demons which emanated firstly from it. This Albiobitus which is light opposes to the Anderodubno which is the spiritual Emptiness.

Above the god-or-demons in the usual meaning of the word, or around them like some clouds encircling the summit of a mountain, some large abstract forces liven up the world indeed. The albio-bitus or hyper world is a closed universe containing the Divine one by definition and other spiritual beings, moreover.

Albiobitus is, initially, the assembly of these ranked or supplementary, pre-deities, whose action gives an account of all the elementary forces in action in our universe.

They form an uninterrupted chain between God or the Demiurge and our world to us, that of mankind. They constitute the screen of our world and the Law which directs them and binds them is the law of the worlds, called Fate or Tocade.

304

As we could see it, at the beginning there is the absolute immanent Unity of the god or Demiurge, the principle of the existence, the light of the lights. This creating Unity, unfathomable for the human understanding, produces by emanation a spreading of being or life which, originating from the center to the circumference, goes while losing imperceptibly a part of its radiance and of its purity, as it moves away from its spring; to the borders of darkness in which it ends up being lost. So that its divergent rays, becoming less and less spiritual, and pushed back besides by darkness, are condensed while mingling with them, and by taking a material shape, form all the species of beings the World can contain. There is therefore between the higher Being and the Man, an incalculable chain of intermediate powers, of which the perfections decrease in proportion to their distance from the procreating principle. These emanations are projected in decreasing order.

It is a concept a little more refined than the concept of creation ex nihilo , maintained by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, who afflict God with the deliberations of a mind and with the actions of a will, similar to that of Man [it is true that the text of the genesis speaks more precisely about elohim, what a plural is, and not about God in the singular]. This Emanatio ex Deo, confirms on the contrary the absolute and immanent transcendence of the Par-God, making the cosmic roll-out a coincidence of his existence. These emanations affect himself in no way , not more than they decrease it. It is not divided into a multitude of lower beings, nor is parceled out. A little as the sun of which the light emanates without it is decreased for all that, or as a reflection, which decreases in no way the reflected object.

They are not personal creating god-or-demons in a stricter sense of the word. They are rather massive forms of life, some currents of energy. Some forces which form the upper clouds in the universe in which we live, i.e., the pleroma in the Greek meaning of the word or albiobitus. Here live entities in reality almost pure soul/minds or pure energies, indifferent to the lot of our Mankind, because too absorbed by the cosmic dialectics of their mutual interaction. These pre-deities have an extremely long lifespan (longer still than that of the other god-or-demons), but limited nevertheless to that of their world (our setlokenia).

The “super-god-or-demons” which compose this world are manifestations of the single divine one which is a metamorphic fusion of the soul and of the matter; an intimate and almost absolute union, in unthinkable shapes in any case, of the universal soul and of the matter.

The magi of Persians, who saw in these eons more or less perfect genies, gave them names relating to their perfections, and used these same names to evoke them. From there the magic of the Persians, that the Jews having received through cultural influence, during their Babylonian captivity, called Cabala.

Plato who some centuries later regarded these same beings, as ideas, sought to understand their nature, to subjugate them, by dialectics and the force of the thought. Synesius, who united the doctrines of Pythagoras to that of Plato, sometimes called God the Number of numbers, and sometimes the Idea of ideas. But not content with equating the beings of the heavenly hierarchy to ideas, numbers or principles of will, there were philosophers who preferred to designate them by the name of Words [labarum among the druids]. Plutarch writes for example somewhere that the words, the ideas, as well as the divine emanations, lie in the sky and in the stars. Philo gives in many places the name of word to angels and Clement of Alexandria reports the Valentinians often called thus their eons. N.B. In this system, the man like all the other beings of the visible world, are designated with the common noun of matter.

In experiments we comprehend these electr-eons especially first through our knowledge of ourselves: the Albiobitus (pleroma but wrongly in the writing of Saint Irenaeus) therefore describes itself to ourselves by ourselves.

In other words, a little as in quantum mechanics, the electr-eons depend on the beings which name them, such as these beings discover them and feel them in and by their own mode of being. This is why these divine attributes or epithets constitute the various levels or degrees of the to be.

CONCLUSION.

As we could see it in the previous part, the theology part, before the god-or-demons in the traditional meaning of the word, above the god-or-demons in the traditional meaning of the word, there exists a whole nimbus of constants working in the cosmos or bitus, formerly called eons. From the Celtic aiu, “vital force, life,” from where “lifespan,” then “eternity” finally “eternal substance emanated from the divine being and through which its action on the world is implemented.”

305

End of this short reminder on the druidic eons. For more details on these primeval divine emanations, the electr-eons (from Celtic aiu); which live in an area of heavenly light called Pleroma, located around the upper part of the world of the god-or-demons called Albio bitus, see our booklet on theology.

But strangely enough (it is difficult to describe oneself objectively), they are the Muslims who described best this main feature of our ancestral druidism: The Shirk (of the Mushrikin). In other words, the emanation of the eons then of THE god-or-demons or divine hypostases (vyuha in Hinduism) from the original One through the prerequisite of the Big Whole.

306

BETWEEN FATALISM AND DETERMINISM?

Above the god or demons or out of the way, a big abstract force governs the world. Fate, it is all the secondary causatIons in the universe (of the bitus). Fate providence or necessity is a meta-divine reservoir of impersonal powers to which even the gods or elohim are subjected. It is the Ahura Mazda or the Higher being of the druidic pantheon. Cf. also the El Elyon of the Bible in a way. We translate word Old Irish Tocade by this word, but in reality the Tokad was a completely different thing: at the same time cosmic law, poetic justice, providence. At the same time cosmic "order" and ritual or moral "order.’ The character of a man is his horoscope.

Among druids Fate is the force which shapes the matter, which permeates and which organizes the world from a systematic order.

The fate is the sequential cause of the beings which presides over the administration of the world. The fate is the eternal cause of things, through which passed facts happened, the present ones occur and the future ones will come. Nothing happening without cause, everything occurs therefore according to previous causes the chain of which constitutes the fate according to the druids. The same causes producing the same effects, nothing happens which was not necessary and which could not be predicted from time immemorial. The present state of the universe, the effect of its previous state, and the cause of the one which is going to follow.

The genuine druidic doctrine was always very clear on this subject. The Higher Being is implacable and impersonal (contrary to what Judeo-Islamic-Christians affirm) and nature forms a unified whole of which the beings always interact. This design of the fate is besides the exact equivalent of the Vedic "rita” or of the Buddhist " dharma.”

The only problem is: "how reconcile the implacable and impersonal nature of the Fate on the local or regional level of the things, and the phantasm that man has to be free?"

The answer is: “the human being is never completely free. But those whose determinism is more favorable can manage to enlarge their degree of autonomy.”

The supreme fate includes past with its consequences as well as the future; that is to say all potentialities or possible virtualities. Because it is necessary to stress this point, like the ancient druids had seen it very well, the general movement of the world, the internal movement of the Divine Big Whole, its Destiny therefore, goes from the non-being to the being, from the relative nothingness to the relative being. The relative nothingness is not the absolute nothingness, simply the state of what is not yet, but is going to be (cf. The Elements of Celtic cosmogony of the great Belgian academic Claude Sterckx and his notion of potential Life or of absolute virtuality, becoming existence).

N.B. Absolute Nothingness, itself, is not part of this boiling Cosmic Cauldron. But space and emptiness are nevertheless part of it, as elements of the physical universe.

In this sense the true higher god-or-demon of the druids, it is the Evolution, from where the symbol of the people half-man half-deer (that of the grand wizard chief of clan called Nemet - Cernunnos - in Ireland).

There was not absolute creation, there is not, on the one hand, a creator and on the other one a creation or some creatures, the physical World could not be distinct from the divinity of the Being, there is uninterrupted self-creation, everything is consubstantial in the cauldron of cosmic life. The material world in which we live, the world of the watery great mother-goddess-or-demoness, is one of the faces of this true par-god - that is the boiling cosmic cauldron, the other face being the universal soul.

The Cauldron of cosmic life is Everything. The Cauldron of cosmic life is everything, it means that it is the invisible and visible whole world or Bitus, that it is what is. What a tautology! That it is what is, what was, what will be. It contains everything that makes the world, because it takes all sorts to make a world .

But there is nevertheless a hierarchy in these manifestations of the invisible one. The first manifestations of the Being are bright and their conceptualization or their visualizing is practically unbearable. These are the eons (from Celtic aiu, time, eternity, vital force).

The last manifestations of the Being on the contrary, are not perceptible by mankind because here the being reaches its antipole, the level where it disappears. This level of non-presence of the being, of non-being, this is absolute darkness.

Between these two poles, Light and Darkness blend in various proportions. As the great French philosopher Pascal, saw it very well, the Gdonios, the Man, is both angel and animal. The one is

307

saved by his knowledge, the other one by his ignorance. Between the two, the human being or gdonios, is in litigation.

This concept, the druidic monism (philosophical and thoughtful monotheism), makes us able to understand there is absolutely nothing outside the supreme fate , even the evil which is only an extreme distance in comparison with the source of every light, a shadow zone.

Because of this distance, some god-or-demons initially light bearers too, become then dark handsome strangers (see the case of Elatio / Elatha in Gaelic mythology for example, or else that of Bregsos / Bres) because they receive and scatter across no longer divine light. Below (or even next to?) incorporeal spirits or spiritual energies, likely of apparitions our soul / mind transposes in glorious bodies (the bellissime higher god-or-demons) there is also preternatural energies more linked up with the material world and capable of being the support of advantageous OR baleful influences, therefore ambivalent in fact, and capable to do Evil as well Good, at least in our opinion of mere mortals.

Let us not forget either than some soul / minds forced to come down on earth, to be born again there instead to be reincarnated normally in a parallel world of heavenly nature, may on the contrary wander here and there all over the broader world (some dozens of cases each century).

It is then them the "demons" who beguile the men in every kind of way (see the notions of karmic bran and of bacuceus).

N.B. There is nevertheless today a druidic School attaching these "possession" phenomena (inverted commas are essential) to extreme cases of multiple personality disorders. Such disorders, though rare, were described since very ancient time, and then more particularly in the transition period between the 19th century and the 20th century, in the works of Peter Janet. The suffering patients show some personality alternations (or personality states), different, and can pass from one to another without being able to control it (a grown-up woman can for example speak suddenly with the voice of a five-year-old little girl and express herself as such, then "become" a fifty-year-old man, and so on) …Or then to hysteria phenomena, so female as masculine (Charcot).

The Celtic Jupiter (Taran / Torann / Tuireann) was often represented on a horseback flooring or subduing some anguipedic wyverns (the Andernas called Fomorians in Ireland). In the statuary, these monsters are the antithesis of the rider; and since the god-or-demon can be defined, we could not much move away from truth by ascribing to the anguiped some characteristics opposite to these of the god-or-demon. As well as we have already had the opportunity to say it, if the god-or-demon is above all Light and Prosperity, the anguiped (of the people of Andernas), is therefore a force of darkness. Since the god-or-demon sits in state in the heaven, the domain of the anguiped is underground. While the god-or-demon shows himself by granting the beneficial effect of water, the role of the monster consists in thwarting this action. In Celtic mythology the Anguipeds are therefore the chthonic and underground force or at least these of the uncontrolled natural elements. Some examples of gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorian in Ireland, and representing the forces of the wild nature of the type dusios, and others …

Balor (Balaros in old Celtic, Yspaddaden Penkawr in Wales), Ceithleann Craoisfhiaclach (the wife of Balor) in other words Catullina Crapouesclaca (?): "with sharp teeth,” Bres (Bregsos in old Celtic, a mixed -race from a child of the godess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia), and from a wyvern or anguiped ) Tethra (the master of the oceanic depths), Calatin and his children, etc., etc.

This book being principally a trial of (druidic) theology and not a book of (Celtic) demonology, we will say nothing more about the demons in the primary sense of the word ( evil forces out Mankind, out Nature but, however, having an objective existence), at the Celts (the analysis of this typically Judeo-Islamic-Christian notion will be the subject of another work).

As for the fate (tocade) the roots of which plunged so deeply into the druidism of the early epoch, it is therefore obvious that even before Romanization, its worship became weaker. It is hardly individually invoked from now on.

Originally besides, it was only the personification of a neutral Big Whole. In the myths of the early epoch, it played as the creator of the physical world. But the very fullness of the Big Whole from what it comes will prevent, later, that it is justly identified with this Big Whole in question.

The worship of the Tokad as such exists no longer therefore. In spite of its membership in the supreme triad of which traces are found almost everywhere , the Fate is no longer particularly worshipped. Not many sanctuaries are built for it; rare will be the records which are devoted to it. Perhaps that of Strabo.

308

“Some say the Callaicans have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the doors of their houses, and whole households dance in chorus and keep it up all night” (Strabo, Book III, Chapter IV, 16).

The fate is besides personified or represented in the druidic legends by an old king living withdrawn out of the world, on a mysterious island unquestionably corresponding to the technique known as imrama or voyages. Stupidly equated with Saturn or Cronos by the Graeco-Roman. As Fate of course, it is it who knows the future, and it is it people go visit to know it. As mentioned above it is hardly individually invoked from now on; it plays only a secondary role, probable consequence due to the fact that it had exhausted all its “human” possibilities in the previous epoch. It is most often replaced by triads of fairies of the type Matrae Matres or Matronae.

Here is the text of Plutarch in question. “The nature of the island is marvelous as is the softness of the circumambient air. Some when they intend to sail away are even hindered by the deity which presents itself to them as to intimates and friends and not in dreams only or by means of omens, but many also come upon the visions and the voices of daemons. For Saturn himself [ the Fate??????] sleeps confined in a deep cave of rock that shines like gold — the sleep that Jupiter [Taran/Toran/Tuireann] has contrived like a bond for him —, and birds flying in over the summit of the rock bring ambrosia to him, all the island is suffused with fragrance scattered from the rock as from a fountain; and those daemons mentioned before tend and serve Saturn [the Fate ?????] , having been his comrades what time he ruled as king over gods and men. Many things they do foretell of themselves, for they are oracular; but the prophecies that are greatest and of the greatest matters, they come down and report as dreams of the god” (Plutarch. De facie in orbe Lunae, 26).

In short, the Tokad is the procreator of the matter and of the universe, but it is the most abstract of the three god-or-demons of our supreme triad. It is a figure become very discreet in spite of its power. He keeps nevertheless a procreator function of a key importance. At the end of every cycle, it is itself which restarts the big clock of the Universe and the evolving process. Taran / Toran / Tuireann ensures the preservation of the material world when this one appears although delegating to his consort or ashera Danu the daily care of it, but when this one implodes (because one day only fire and water prevail according to the druids quoted by Strabo, Geography IV, 4) the Tokad or Fate keeps in its thought the diagram of the world ready to reappear during a new general procreation.

!----------------- ------------------------------ !

Edward John Gwynn published in 1910 a very interesting article on the idea of fate or Fate in Irish literature. From where from it emerges that Destiny, Providence or Necessity, is a meta-divine reservoir of impersonal powers to which even the gods are subjected.

The fate as a vague, impersonal notion (passive forms to take over the terminology of Gwynn) is present everywhere in oldest Irish literature . This subjacent idea that there exists a predetermined order of the world matched well indeed to the religious concepts of the authors of the time, in the sense that it well expressed the idea that the process of things is determined by a supernatural element external to the human being; but while remaining rather vague on the identity or exact outline of the aforementioned factor, what therefore made it possible any Christian to see there in fact behind, the hand of his almighty god, or to believe (like former druids) in the existence of a great cosmic law governing and the world of the gods and that of the men. What some call also poetic justice and others the Dharma.

The more precise idea of a divine entity external to the human being but intervening, in the process of his life, is more rarely in the Irish texts because it appears above all in fact in the translations or adaptations, in Middle Irish, of texts belonging to the classical literature, in particular Latin. It takes the well-known allegorical shape of the goddesses Parcae Moirae or Norns spinning the human destiny. And then it is often ascribed to pagans but not Irish, as if the pre-Christian peoples in Ireland had never had, they also, the feeling their life was predetermined by an unspecified cosmic order, was

309

determined by an external and somewhat mysterious supernatural force, ruling even beyond the gods.

N.B. On the same subject to see A.G. Van Hamel, “the conception of fate in early Teutonic and Celtic religions,” Tom Sjöblom, early Irish taboos, as well as Jacqueline Borsje: from chaos to enemy, encounters with monsters in early Irish texts (investigations related to the process of Christianization).

To return to Edward John Gwynn, the latter therefore distinguishes two categories or two different types of “fate” in the early Irish literature: the fate as a vague, impersonal notion, expressed by passive forms, well conveyed by the term destiny in fact, and the fate as a supernatural entity determining for example the process of one’s life and one’s end.

Gwynn was apparently especially interested in this second way of perceiving fate even if the first one involves also, of course, a certain type of religious or moral conceptions.

The notion of fate covers a vast semantic field from the idea of chance to that of predestination. The belief in fate can therefore be conveyed in various ways, from most instinctive feeling to most worked out one of the philosophical systems.

One of the best means of comprehending this notion of fate is therefore still indeed to somewhat study how the individuals supposed to have had premonitions or visions of the future (such as the ancient druids) are shown in the early Irish literature, and what are precisely the techniques which are ascribed to them.

Gwynn began his first study of the notion of fate with a purely lexical approach that then apparently he gave up because the Irish terms referring to the notion of fate he found in the dictionaries of the time conveyed hardly his notion of supernatural element external to the human being, or then were late terms, even not translating really this notion of fate as an acting power. Gwynn found indeed as term having really a report only the word “tru” which designates an unhappy man, a cursed man (old Celtic trougo, old French truand old English truand).

There, however, existed others which make it possible to determine well the Irish conception of the fate, or at least that the authors of the first Irish literature made for themselves.

I THE FATE AS A VAGUE AND IMPERSONAL NOTION.

The first group of references to the notion of fate is made up by the verbal forms tocaid or cinnid.

The first example appears in an incantation in old Irish, appearing in the codex of Saint Paul (Carinthia), a manuscript dating from the ninth century (Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus).

Adgúisiu fid nallabrach 7 arggathbrain etir tenid 7 fraig.

Adgúisiu na tri turcu tercu . tairi siabair mochondáil [con]ith 7 mlicht neich arindchuiriur.

ma rom thoicthersa inso rop ith 7 mlicht adcear manim rothcaither ropat choin altai 7 ois 7 imthecht slebe 7 oaic féne adcear.

Adgúisiu fid.. Adgúisiu na tri turcu tercu.

Adguisiu is the passive form of the present subjunctive (third person singular) of * tocaid and refers in fact to a divination on the technique of which we will return later on.

The second example is extracted from the text in old Irish entitled “the dream of Oengus” and dates from the 8th century.

Rotogad duit cairdes frie.Your destiny (rotogad) was to love her.

The third example is drawn from the second of the three stories composing the Tochmarc Etaine, a manuscript dating from the 9th century.

310

Is suachnid nor rodchadh Mo iccsa. It is obvious that my healing has not been destined.

The context seems to indicate that all this (the forgetting of the meeting which was to heal the bashful lover) is due to the god Medros/Midir.

The following example appears in the text entitled Baile in scail, a story of which the content is old Irish going back to the 9th century but rewritten during the 11th.

Ni dam rothocad a rad fritt, ol in drui. It is not to it belongs to enumerate them to you, said the druid.

N.B. This text is a good example of the way in which the notion of fate was received by the authors of this first Irish literature. The story being supposed to take place during the time of pre-Christian Ireland , the various protagonists of this story cannot therefore by definition adhere to the Christian vision of the world. There was nevertheless a visible addition, an interpolation due to the copyist monks, in order to Christianize it somewhat (a prophecy announcing the arrival of saint Patrick).

Another example of this impersonal and vague conception of the fate appears in the text in late old Irish entitled Scéla cano meic Gartnain. Of which Binchy makes the initial substrate going up to the second half of Ixth century, with rewriting at the time of Middle Irish.

Ma ra-tocad dam-sa, as mé do-méla(d) a n(d)-argat-sa. If that were intended to me, then I will know how to use this silver.

God as cause and origin of the cosmic order is incontestably the true meaning of the text entitled In Tenga Bithnua. In this text in old Irish dating from the 9th century, we also find such an impersonal conception of the fate (a passive form would say Gwynn).

Tipra Shion i tirib Ebra sund nocon rodcad ar in da fogbad nach baeth. Of the spring of Zion in the lands of the Hebrews, it is not destined that any fool should find it.

In the continuation of the same story an example of use of the verb cinnid appears.

Bés is ed ro-c[h]indead dun ar an oic . But of course, it is what was intended for us, said the warriors.

To note: the verbal form cinnid is replaced by the form tocaid in some manuscripts.

In the second version of the Compert Conchobuir, dated from the 10th or 11th century, the druid Catubatuos/Conchobar concludes his request to Queen Ness by the following sentence (it is the first of his three wishes):

Ar ris ed ro cinded dam, inillius frim, ol Cathbad. Because it is what was intended to me (to protect you???)

One finds there the same case in point as with the text entitled Baile in Scail. The content is undoubtedly pagan but typically Christian considerations are inserted there. He predicts the birth and the death of Cunocavaros/Conchobar but also specifies that they will match the birth and the death of Christ.

N.B. It goes without saying no one cannot say with certainty if the druid Catubatuos/Cathbad was quite able to predict future but apparently the first Christians of this country, as for them, believed it very strongly.

The vague notion of fate, such as it is expressed in these passive forms of the verb, therefore makes way without problems to Christian conceptions.

As we have had the opportunity to see it with the texts entitled. In Tenga Bithnua and Scéla Cano meic Gartnain, this pagan conception of the Fate could also be found in Christian or at least more Christianized texts.

Another occurrence for example is provided to us by the life of Adamnan, a text in Middle Irish (beginning of the period since dating from years 956 to 964).

Ma ro-m-thoiccthi écc i n(dh)I. If my destiny is to die in Iona.

311

The entity which decided this death is not mentioned but a Christian believer of the time could suppose that it was God.

Our last example will be an exception to the rule mentioned above, it is an active verbal form of cinnid, in an anecdote relating to saint Ciaran.

Rucad in dichennach la Ciarem co Cluain iar sain dia lessugud airet no chind¬fed dia a bethu. The headless man was then taken along by Ciaran to Clonmacnoise for his maintenance for as long as God would determine the length of his life to be (sic). Well-known topic of the cephalophoric saints.

It is besides the only example of an active verbal form of cinnid of which the subject is God explicitly.

In all the other examples in Old Irish or in Middle Irish we have, it is an impersonal verbal form.

Another way of expressing the notion of fate in Gaelic is the preposition i followed either by the verbal noun of cinnid, or by the verbal noun of tocaid, dan, tairngire or scoth, with often the preposition do, what one can translate by “it is intended to me to, “it is reserved to me to” and so on.

An example with the verb cinniud is provided to us by a poem of the text in late Middle Irish entitled Acallam na Senorach. Ata iI cinnedh dhamh dhul ann. It was intended to me to go there .

We find an example of the verbal noun of the verb tocaid in the Middle Irish of the Dindshenchas (12th century).

Innocht, ar Assal, mu brath, ità i tucthin mo marbath. This night, said Assal, will be that of my treason. My death is written.

Two other synonymous expressions appear in the text in Middle Irish of the Tochmarc Luaine 7 aided Athairne.

Ro bai I ndan 7 I tairngiri in aided ud diar mbreith do réir fhaistine in druad. That this death would make us die was written and decided, in accordance with the prophecy of the druid.

N.B. The somewhat extensive meaning the word tairngire makes that it can mean just as easily, that there exist individuals able to read in the future, that the belief in the magic power of the word (what is said is carried out, early or late: same principle as that of uncreated Quran in Islamic land).

Scoth is used only in narrations. For example, in the Scel Bailli Binnberlaig where a mysterious character plays the part of messenger or supernatural auxiliary of the fate, thus preventing two lovers from meeting again.

Ar ni fuil a scoth doib coristais a m-bethatd no nech dib d’faircsin aroili ina m-biu. Because it was not in their destiny to be joined together in this life nor even that one of them can meet again the other alive.

N.B. This construction: in = cinniud/tocad/dan/tairngire/scoth (+do) matched the impersonal notion of fate (according to Gwynn).

POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS, ADJECTIVES, ADVERBS AND NAMES IN COMBINATION WITH TERMS MEANING FATE.

This second category gathers the expressions meaning fate, combined with an adjective an adverb a possessive pronoun, a noun in the genitive or preceded by the preposition do.

In the subcategory including adjectives, we find expressions such as “truag in garg-dil rognid and for ingin ard-rig hErend. Sad was the destiny which was then reserved for the daughter of the king of the kings in Ireland.”

This example drawn from Dindshenchas shows that the notion of fate can be expressed by euphemisms even some understatements. This type of expression concerns the category of the impersonal conceptions of the fate: what is in store for somebody, one’s destiny, the whole qualified by an adjective.

Very similar are the formulations in which a possessive pronoun or a noun in the genitive is combined with a term meaning fate. An example drawn from the text in Middle Irish (first period) entitled Togail Na Tebe is.

312

Is truag am linde, ar se, an toicthi (in toicthe) Thiabanda. The fate of the Thebans he said, saddens us indeed.

An example of possessive pronoun with the verbal noun of tocaid is given to us in the Middle-Irish adaptation of Lucan’s Pharsalia .

Tallsat muinter Césair a céill annsin do conach catha tire, 7 is i comairle doronsat, a toicthi mara do innsaigid. Caesar’s people lost then any hope to win in the engagements on land, and this is the plan which they formed to try their luck at sea.

The Latin term thus translated is Fortuna but it is necessary to note that the author of this text (In cath catharda) uses the same verbal noun of tocaid to convey at the same time Fortuna and Fatum in spite of the difference in meaning. The word Fortune is equivalent to the concept of haphazardness (therefore the opposite of a destiny written in advance) whereas with the Fatum everything is written in advance on the contrary. At least in Latin.

N.B. It results from a variant of this idea that not only fate can determine what happens to somebody but that gods also have an influence on the process of his life. In a rather strange way, this idea is ascribed to non-Irish pagans, who apparently was therefore regarded by the authors of these texts as more pagan in the bad senses of the term than Irishmen placed in the same situation i.e., prechristian.

A Danish chief said indeed in the fragmentary annals of Ireland (Middle Irish):

biaidh do berad ar ndee 7 ar dtoicthe duin. We will have what will grant us our gods and our fate.

In the same way, according to the text in Middle Irish entitled “History of Philip and Alexander” the Persian emperor Darius owes his defeat to the decision of the gods like to his own fate.

III FATE AS AN ACTING SUBJECT.

As we have just seen it therefore, most of the examples referring to the concept of fate in the texts in old Irish or in Middle Irish, are examples of impersonal conception of fate (of passive forms Gwynn would say).

But there also exist some cases of references to fate in a more active form, with a subject. The fate with an F in capital letter in a way.

The first category of examples is provided to us by the translations or the adaptations in Gaelic of the Latin literature. We can read for example in the Togail na Tebe :

Acht chena is dimain duit-si sin, uair tainic crich tsaogail an gille sin, 7 ni fetann tiachtain ri toicthi. However that is used for nothing because the end of the lifetime of this man is come and he cannot fight with his fate.

This sentence is a very good example of fate understood as a supernatural force external to the man and from which one cannot flee, but placed in the mouth of non-Irish pagans. Besides the original text, the Thebaid by Statius uses the two concepts, the impersonal and neutral Fatum and the image of the goddesses of the destiny (Latin Fata) who are obviously a personification of it.

Second type of allusion to a more personal and more active notion of fate. In the text in old Irish of the prayer for long life (Cétnad n-aise), which dates from the 8th century, it is made reference to the 7 daughters of the sea who spin the life’s thread.

N.B. This allegory of the fate represented in the form of spinning goddesses has many parallels in the Indo-European world.

IV THE DIVINE ACTION OF THE FATE THROUGH THE SECONDARY CAUSATIONS THAT SWORDS ARE.

The Celtic sword is out of iron because the Celts control its metallurgy very well. This it is of a blameless quality and feared at the same time as admired by many peoples. It is more conceived to cut than to thrust .These swords are even imitated and exported in some Italic peoples.

313

Intellectuals supporting the love religion were not missing, of course, to think that Celts treated them as true idols while they were for them by definition only assistant helpers of the Fate ( of victory or of death) or some secondary causations.

TThe famous lorica or breastplate ascribed to St. Patrick warns for example against the assistant helpers of Evil that are the magic of women blacksmiths, and druids, of course.

The sword among Celts, just like among the Germanic people besides, appears to be regarded as the most important manifestation of the power of the terrible god the warriors called upon during fight.

The Quadi, Germanic people, having to conclude a treaty, draw their swords,Ammianus Marcellinus says, and swear on them, because they regard them as gods.

The Celts of the Continent joined together against Rome swear on their military standards brought together (Caesar. B.G. VII. 2).

The Englishmen after Culloden make the Scots swear an oath on their dirk.

A description of Ireland, written in 1600 and published in 1887 by Father Hogan, notes that the habit of the oath by the sword was still used in Ireland at the end of the sixteenth century (1598), and that then men allocated to the sword stuck in the ground a kind of divine nature.

The antiquity of the oath by the sword, in Ireland, is proven by a passage of the epic text heading Serglige Conculain, where we see Cuchulainn kept in his bed by a disease. This disease took him at the assembly of warriors which took place in Muirthemne from October 29th to November 3rd. The warriors came to praise their successes in the war there, and, as supporting documents, brought there the tongues of the enemies they had killed. Some of these warriors were insincerely and presented tongues of animals instead of tongues of men. But to know the truth and to foil the liars, people had found an infallible system. The warriors, before speaking and showing their trophies, were to swear on their sword to be veracious , and if they failed to fulfill their oath, their sword, replaced on their thigh, spoke to confound them. The Christian author of the drafting which reached us, and who probably wrote in the eleventh century, adds a gloss to this ancient account. The reason of this was, because demons were accustomed to manifest themselves to them from their arms and it was hence that their arms were sacred (comarchi).

The sword of the warrior, in the eyes of the Celt as of the Germanic one, has therefore something divine; it is it which decides on the lot of the warriors in the judicial duel, as in the war; it was regarded as the image even of the god of war.

314

SO ATHEISM, AGNOSTICISM, OR PANTHEISM???

What if there was a creation without a creator? Not an absolute beginning and an absolute end, but relative beginnings and ends, according to the great principle of conservation of mass/energy attributed to Lavoisier: "nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed"?

Didn't the Celts think that Mankind was born from an existing being called Dis pater by Romans and didn't the Druids say contrary to the Bible that day comes from night?

I say contrary to the Bible because if I believe its creation myth before the light is there was the night BUT NOTHING!THE NOTHINGNESS!

This notion of an absolute creation of our universe by an all-powerful God raises two problems which are so many aporias that Jewish Christian and Muslim theologies drags like a ball and a chain. The first is "Why did God create the world?"

The Sumerians answered (in the plural) that it was to be worshipped in prayer and to be offered sacrifices.

Christians more hypocritically answer "for love".

And the second aporia is, since these monolatrous mass religions have such an eschatology, why will God end this world one day?

in short: "why bring the world out of nothingness and then almost immediately send it back to nothingness (immediately because compared to eternity the life span of our universe according to their first generations... was to be relatively short)"?

Let us leave anthropomorphism to our biological or spiritual ancestors! The being of the beings is indifferent to all that, IT IS, period!

And such was perhaps the substance or the quintessence of the philosophy of Diviciacos of Bibracte, summarized by Strabo (who obviously did not understand anything): "souls and the universe are indestructible, but one day fire and water will prevail over them".

The idea of God that the monolatrous mass religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) have, is in any case the greatest common divisor of Mankind, so let's avoid involving him in our human affairs; God is indeed an unknown that makes any equation impossible to solve

The key words of the old druid in the Marseilles forest were perhaps but before they were invented of course, panentheism pantheism atheism agnosticism! (the old druid of the forest near Marseilles quoth, according to Lucan of the Pharsalia....or Lucian....of Samosata) because it is necessary to know how to speak to the Greeks in Greek.

God-or-Devil is fundamentally unknowable in his mystery we have said and even repeated, but it is nevertheless possible to know some modalities of His being and of His acting. These ways and means, they are the god-or-demons of the druidic panth-eon or angelology. All the mass religions in the world have their pantheon or their angelology, including the Zoroastrianism or the Judaism (supreme god-or-demon, god-or-demons, angels, jinns, saints or marabouts ). This set varies considerably from a culture to the other one. But whatever their shape, human, animal or hybrid,is, god-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses,show many communal points. They are often specialized in a domain, as war or agriculture. Or then they watch over a region in the world, even over individuals especially. They act in general as the human beings, but on a different scale. Like them, they experiment love, friendship, conflicts, jealousy. The case of the entity called Lucifer or Iblis, in the Judeo-Islamic-Christianity, is exemplary in this respect.

The number of the druidic god-or-demons is practically infinite: specialized or not, great god-or-demons, small god-or-demons, subordinate god-or-demons, demi–god-or-demons, foreign god-or-

315

demons. …But if the religious polytheism of druidism gives us a very big list of deities to be invoked during the ceremonies, these deities are especially masculine deities. These god-or-demons assume cosmic functions similar to these of the heads of the family in the earthly world.

The world of the god-or-demons being supposed to be the reflection of the human world and of its social life, these god-or-demons therefore had to have wives and from time to time indeed, the sculptor gives us indications about the consorts of some druidic god-or-demons (but some of them nevertheless do not have an official wife).

The country was progressively unified by Indo-Europeans, Ligures first, then Celtic, but every region, every valley, every village, continued honoring its own god-or-demons, and if, over the centuries, new beliefs appeared, the ancient stayed most often. The religion previous the ancient Great Celtica honored, since the prehistory, hundreds of god-or-demons. As the Empire of Ambicatus was formed of different tribes or communities; each continued venerating its own entities. With the local god-or-demons, linked to a city or to a province, some cosmic Indo-European god-or-demons mingled, that is to say deified natural elements: Sky, Earth, the underground world, the Sun, the Moon, the Ocean, as well as functional deities of the druidic dodecahedron (the twelve). These played a leading role within a very religious people (admodum dedita religionibus, Caesar notices) who expected their intervention in the daily life.

Druidism has a considerable number of deities with comforting, smiling, aspects (virotutis, iovantucarus, anextiomarus,dunatis, mopatis, contrebis) or on the contrary warlike, even terrible (the Catubodua), each of them being linked to customs or particular functions.

According to the religious leaning to which you belong, you may indeed imagine the deities in very various ways. You can for example imagine gentle deities, when you develop, or when you want to develop, in yourself, or in the others, qualities which come under method, reason, harmony; therefore friendship or commiseration after all is said and done (see our essay on the ethics and the moral code).

Some are deities of the type savior god-or-demon (anextiomarus, iovantucarus, or virotoutis etc.) whose worship aims at moving all obstacles aside.

It is also possible to call upon deities with more warrior aspect to symbolize the struggle to be led, against the enemies able to attack one’s people or one’s tribe, or against the injustice of which friends are victims, even in a more subtle way against the disturbing elements of every sort and kind which may affect the life of our world or ours, and notably the social life (in the mythology of Ireland for example, the uprising against the usurper Bres, who, although having the youthful beauty and the favor of the women, overtaxes the people, and will be therefore the cause of the second battle in the Plain of standing stones or burial mounds).

There are also deities of plenty , whose implementation aims at making possible the wealth.

The personality of every druidic god-or-demon is very jungian. There is no monolithic deity. The characteristics of every god-or-demon are besides sometimes contradictory. It is, however, possible to differentiate at the origin two large families: the nature god-or-demons, atmospheric and especially underground , the celestial or functional god-or-demons, detached from any link with the natural elements out Mankind.

What the subsequent evolution, deviant besides not to say heretic, changed into gods, supposed to be only beneficent, the men of Danu (bia) known as Tuatha De Danann in Ireland, and in demons in principle only maleficent (the gigantic anguiped wyverns called Andernas on the Continent e Fomore in Ireland) although the original reality was, of course, infinitely less simplistic.

Or into god-or-demons rival but having the same characteristics (the rivalry of the children of the goddess-or-demoness , or fairy it is preferred, Don, and of the children of Llyr, in the Welsh heresy).

In short, let us repeat it once again, the god-or-demons of paganism are, like Christ or the Messiah of the Jews, some beings capable of emotions, anger, fright, pity. In short, they resemble ordinary human beings,like the Christ and the Messiah, except that they are immortal and have preternatural powers exceeding these of simple Mankind. They personify the force of human nature or the elements.

With druidism, it is therefore possible to use all possible and imaginable energies, some are considered as good, others as bad, but it is possible to change every energy, whatever it is, in beneficent force (Sunaritu). This design of the divinity or this visualizing , makes us able to change the

316

elements which are at work. The nature of the god-or-demon does not change, what changes, they are the factors taken into account, the purposes and the intentions.

APPENDIX No. 1.

THE STONE BIBLE.

There exists a stone a bible, still ignored, the Alpine rock engravings. The knowledge of the religions which did not have the writing to immortalize themselves is made possible only by the detailed but also statistical study, of the artistic representations which reached us. Detailed but also statistical, because if it is, of course, necessary to examine carefully each subject to try to extract the most of information from it, we can progress in their comprehension only by the comparative study of the subjects; subjects which can belong to various sites, various civilizations, various times. Thus, because or thanks to this at the same time microscopic and macroscopic study; we can without risking “chasing one’s tail “to seek to interpret rock representations on the basis of what we know already, even if it means to specify our knowledge dynamically if it is necessary.

At the north of the plain of the Po in Italy, the Camonica Valley preserved to us thousands of scenes and engraved figures being ranging from the Neolithic era to the Metal age. The figurative subjects are numerous and make it possible to know some usual activities of the farmers of then: houses,carts, swing plows, weapons, tools, animals (canidae, cervidae), land registers (with fields, ways), scenes of deer hunting, fight, etc.

We find there the first known representation of the great druidic god-or-demon called Hornunnos, as well as of the horned snake. Not far, strange cave paintings also describe us quite strange characters, as wrapped up with space suits or diving suits, and some mysterious objects in the sky. As regards the space suits or diving suits, there have to be an explanation (ritual clothes???)

The Valley of Wonders, as for it, is near the Roya Valley and of the Tende Pass. It is located 2300 m above the sea level and has a harsh climate where the legendary violence of the storms which break out on the mount Bego which overlooks it is perhaps related to the nature of its basement rich in iron ore. The mount Bego was perhaps a former sacred mountain, because what is certain, it is that from time immemorial this valley seems to have impressed the local populations. This fear or this respect reappears in the toponymy of the places. Valley of Wonders, mount Bego (that which dominates), Valmasque (Masca = witch), summit of the devil…

What strikes the visitor of the Valley of Wonders, it is the many horned figures we meet and which constitute in fact the large majority of the engravings. Such worship, we saw it, is characteristic of the primitive agricultural civilizations, and it was undoubtedly handed down over time. We can therefore deduce from it that the people responsible for the outline of these figures was especially an agricultural (or stock breeder) people and not a hunter people.

Specialists count currently more than one hundred thousand engravings distributed in the Valley of Wonders and the valley of Fontanalba. These engravings were carried out by pointillism , and appear in rather clear gray-green on the pink patina. In the current state of research, the place of the engraved rocks seems to be due only randomly. With regard to engravings themselves, it is possible to classify them in four groups of iconographic patterns.

- Animals.

- Weapons.

- Anthropomorphic figures.

- Geometrical figures.

Animals.

The group is primarily represented by the horn-shaped or horned figures, which represent the large majority of the engraved figures. Their dimensions vary ad infinitum, and some are even used as frames for more complex patterns : Wizard, Christ, some mesh shaped structures (from the Latin reticulum = net) … It is about certain that these figures represent bulls and oxen in vertical projection; in this regard several harnesses representing these forms with a swing plow are spread on the site. The sacred value of this sign, in agreement with the myth of the bull, is highlighted by the many times when it is used; as its combination with very particular even single anthropomorphic figures, such as the tribe chief and the wizard.

Weapons.

317

This group including at the same time engravings representing weapons (daggers, swords, halberds…) and tools (scythe, sickles…), is an extremely invaluable tool, and the one which is at our disposal to date the engravings.

Anthropomorphic figures.

We may distinguish in this group two subgroups made up of the “small characters “and of the “great figures “. The small characters are most numerous and appear, either isolated in the position of the orant or in relation with other engravings as in the case of teams. Rarer and often single, the great figures appear more complex and more meaningful, although their sense is still hidden to us. Their workmanship is remarkable and their sites seem to have been selected carefully. We often finds, as frame patterns or associated patterns, horned figures who “sanctify “ in a way the subject represented.

Geometrical figures.

We arranged in this category various figures of very different aspects and among which are distinguished the figures called “mesh shaped “. It will be noticed that there exists, more down in the valley, enormous structures of dry stone walls which point out the drawing of some mesh shaped figures; we may also suppose that certain figures could be used for the development of a land register by representing fields, houses… Lastly, we find signs the meaning of which is completely unknown for us in the context:circles, concentric circles, points, rectangles…

The dating of the engravings, as we have already signaled it, is based on the study of the weapons and of the tools represented. The older figures (topographical, mesh shaped) date back to the late Neolithic era (2nd half of the 4th thousand years before our era), the weapons (daggers and halberds) date back to the Chalcolithic era (2nd thousand years before our era) and the early Bronze Age (- 2200 to - 1800 before our era).

STELE I OF THE VALLEY OF WONDERS: primeval couple or first divine generation.

The scene is let be interpreted itself as one of the traditional representations of the primordial couple, formed by the Father-Sky and the Mother-Earth.Three iconographic elements suggest the achievement of their union: the ladder or the two ladders combined with the image of the Sky, the raised arms of the Earth, and finally the two parallel daggers between the two divine figures. The first Indo-European texts make it possible to go further in this decoding.

The nine lines or steps of this scale diagram could incarnate the nine stages or “worlds “which, according to a common Indo-European belief, separated the Sky from the Earth… “into heaven, with nine steps ladder “a Hittite ritual says.

The common Indo-European celestial deity, Dyeu, literally the “Luminous Sky “whose writings keep some recollections, is defined in the Indian Vedas as “Father Sky “. He also appears there in the binomial “Sky and Earth “. The decoding of this scene reflects, like a mirror, an ideological and graphic prototype of the Indo-European Panth-eon or pleroma. The one who is behind the first divine function, or more exactly, behind its binary concept embodied by a double deity: the two cosmic entities: Sky and Earth , Uranus and Gaia.

There was then (at least according to what certain authors say, about these first proto-Indo-European priests in the Middle East) separation between the Sky and the Earth.

Stage difficult to conceptualize for these pre-druidic priests, who saw that as the result of the action of a separating principle. Was this separating principle then felt as being of male nature or female nature?

If we refer to the scene of the Last Judgment painted by Canavesio in the nave of the chapel of Our Lady of the Fountains (still!) close to La Brigue too; a heraldic wyvern with multiple mouths along her belly swallowing each one at the same time the small body of a child; among the Proto-Celts, this wyvern (this separating principle) was perceived as being of female nature.

The matter separating from the soul by slow condensation on itself? The matter becoming aware of itself? The mind becoming aware of itself thanks to the appearance of the matter? It does not matter!

STELE II OF THE VALLEY OF WONDERS (that makes think of the mysterious goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, being reproduced on the cauldron of Gundestrup. The dagger and the raising of her hands are missing, but, on the other hand, the necklace around the neck appears well there. Editor’s note).

The initial procreating couple whose union, essential in the beginning, becomes a danger after that, because from their ceaseless embrace results a messy procreation.

318

The lower level is used as support for the second divine generation, the one who then will perform the act of separation between its parents. The removal of the Sky and of the Earth will put an end to a “perilous procreation “and will make possible the emergence of a new world, peopled with divine and human beings. From this separation symbolized by a wyvern devouring her children is born another divine generation.

STELE III OF THE VALLEY OF WONDERS.

The third stele also takes place in this t naturalist and mythological context. Its site and its orientation comprise already a message. Located on the lowest level and from which a transhumance path is released , connecting it with the two upper floors, its engraving should normally report the episode of the third divine generation; the one who will be concerned with the creation of a new world, in which the mortals take part . But, in addition to the level, its position at the edge of a running water, symbol by definition of the Principle of every Life in the Indo-European traditions, and many others, is not less eloquent. A position which, in the middle of this chaos of rock blocks, seems studied all the more subtly as it offers, at the period when snows found, a perfect cosmogonic staging evoking the birth of the successive Universes starting from Water. The composition of this scene, by far the most complex and richest in messages, joined from the start these material data.

RETURN TO JUNG (archetype of the ruler).

Designed in two symmetrical parts, as the two others, it shows a structure at the same time more refined but also more rigorous with, firstly the three vertically aligned daggers which separate its two zones while suggesting the existence of two different fields. Dexter, we find, here also, an imposing anthropomorphic figure who shows, in turn, an original iconography, whose only his feet directed towards the interior constitute a feature communal to the divine or priestly effigies. It is consequently a new deity whose image was conceived according to his own personality; which is indicated from the start by his penis and three stylized drawings of bucranium, which form partly his body and the features of his face. A dagger, with a long and fine blade, is driven in his head: it occupies a position similar to that of the drawing which is next to the aureole of the sun and thus indicates the same function. Lastly, the god-or-demon has his arms spread , as well as his hands opened , his left inch pointing upwards and his right inch downwards.

These drawings reveal unambiguously the attributes of the storm god-or-demon which represent, in the most various panth-eons or pleromae, the bio-cosmic aspects of this god-or-demon. Master of weather has, for his main weapon the lightning, generally figured in the shape of a javelin. On the cosmic level, he fights demons and dragons which incarnate evil, and thus causes the battle which is the storm. Consequently , he becomes master of rains and bad weather, and so grants, on the earthly level, fertility as well as prosperity. For this reason, the bull is his sacred animal even , if necessary, his hypostasis among the human beings.

Under these conditions therefore, we find on our engraving the two basic iconographic elements relating to this god-or-demon: the very lengthened dagger symbolizes the lightning, whereas the stylized bucrania evoke the dispenser of natural wealth. Under an appearance, at first sight different, the figurine of the warrior god-or-demon of Enkomi (Cyprus, 13th 12th century before our era), with his head gear provided with horns and casting a javelin, shows more than one analogy with the drawing of the Mount Bego. The representation of the Storm god-or-demon on this stele supplements, and definitively confirms the assumption of a cosmogonic account in images. In the mythical framework, the storm god-or-demon is well the god-or-demon of the third divine generation, as well as the winner, of this cosmic fight. To him comes down the task to put in order the physical universe, so that from this order a next world emerges, peopled with god-or-demons and men. Over this world, he will reign as an absolute monarch. Justice master who distributes with fairness the roles between all; guarantor of order and balance, he will thus ensure the continuity of this new world. Do the two arms of our effigy, symmetrically isolated and its two inches pointing, one upwards, and the other downwards; have for a goal to evoke this concept of equality and balance, concept that a scale will symbolize thereafter?

The drawings which accompany the divine effigy convey, each one in its way, an aspect of this mythical account. The two closest groups reveal, through the different diagrams, an analogous lay out and message. There are initially the two identical daggers which are opposed by their pommels in a vertical alignment which is used at the same time to dissociate the two zones of the stele. Their blades, pointed respectively upwards and downwards , complete this idea of opposition, by suggesting a movement in space, even shift.

The two outlines of the second group, less distinct at first sight, present in reality diagrams current since the paleolithic time of the phallus and of the vulva: just as the daggers, the two genitals are opposed, by their upper parts. Under these conditions, our two groups would translate two parts of the

319

same message. Message which concerns, likely, the two principal phenomena on which depend the universal order and, through it, life or survival. As Dumezil had already seen it , an “abusive fruitfulness “and a “disordered procreation “form in these removal myths the two major threats for the maintenance of this so desired order. To preserve the distance wanted between Sky and Earth, after having separated them, constitutes thereby one of the constant worries of the human beings. As much as of an ordered fruitfulness, the sovereign of the new world will have to take care of a controlled sexuality, represented here by means of the two genders which are opposed. The opposition of the two daggers on our engraving fits consequently into a whole series of more elaborate scenes, aiming at conveying the same idea of the cosmic balance. As parallels, we may quote the image of the two ox-headed monsters which keep the distance between Sky and Earth, carved on the rock wall of the Hittite monument in Yazilikaya (13th century); and especially the very beautiful relief on the Hittite monument of Eflatun Pinar too, which emerges from running waters. Here perhaps the true meaning of the only fear which people traditionally allocate to the Celts, in order to more or less make fun about it: that sky falls on their head. The ambassadors of the Danubian Celts of the time have indeed, in the 4th century before our era, answered Alexander who asked them what they feared more: “Nobody; we fear one thing, it is that the sky falls on us “(Strabo VII, 3,8).

On the sinistral part of this composition, the figure of man, small and realistic, appears symmetrically with his imposing divine effigy.

It is consequently the domain reserved to the mortals, who will live from now on in narrow partnership with their god-or-demons. This proximity of men and of god-or-demons, is an idea that we will find again indeed in the druidism. To live a peaceful and happy existence on the “feeding glebe “ mankind has therefore especially “to keep the respect due to Immortals“ to reverence the god-or-demons, stipulates precisely the most famous of the genuine druidic triads, which was preserved to us by Diogenes Laertius.

A commitment that conveys unambiguously the prayer’s position of this effigy. The drawing, realistic this time, of a senester bucranium ,form with the man the same composition as we see on the Sacred way. Here, like in Fontanalba, it embodies the agropastoral activity and, thereby, the close association between man and animal. Does a ladder engraved between the human figure and the bucranium, express the link between the domains of god-or-demons and of men, even their indivisible nature, while suggesting the long cadastral survey of a land register?

A great but more abstract diagram tops the composition relating to the human beings: on this flagstone, like further, along the torrent (processional way) it shows a dagger which penetrates a circular space. It has to be an essential symbolism conveying perhaps the coexistence of two worlds.

The symmetry and harmony in the general concept of this scene reflect, in turn, the organization of the new world, based on balance, reciprocity, other great topic of druidic ethics, in a word on universal order. Of this result of his victory, the storm god-or-demon will take care as an absolute master. His effigy, as well as the drawings which surround him, so rudimentary they are, express in a way as eloquent as the texts, his qualities of a rainmaker, dispenser of natural wealth and, on the social level, dispenser of justice.

Quite before Teilhard de Chardin and his allusions to the conflict between servants of the earth and servants of the heaven (in the future of Man. The possible bases of a universal human creed) the pre-druidic priests of the Valley of Wonders had therefore already reached this notion of God-or-Demon of the Heaven and of the Earth, at least according to various authors.

These metaphysical designs, of course, passed then in the druidic thought…….

The most characteristic group is perhaps the anonymous couple whose worship had as a center the country of the Eduans. In the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this term is preferred, it is allowed to recognize the Mother-Earth, i.e., the old deity of prehistoric times, whose first images appear in the caves of the valley of the Petit-Morin. Her partner can be only a father….. God-or-demon.

But all this is still reasonably obscure whereas Greek and Roman panth-eons too are clearly established, and that their anthropomorphism makes them easily accessible to us. Each god-or-demon, each goddess-or-demoness, each fairy, has a precise genealogy, clear attributions, and a history lengthily described by various authors.

320

Let us remind about this subject that the various divine genealogies of the Irish documentation are incoherent, and owe without any doubt more to the fertile imagination of the Christianized bards than to the thorough reflection, even picturesque, of the genuine pagan high-knowers.

Here some works in which we can draw here and there more or less contradictory elements of filiation.

Peter Berresford Ellis, The Chronicles of the Celts. Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., New York, 1999.

T. W. Rolleston, Celtic Myths and Legends. Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1990.

Charles Squire, Celtic Myth and Legend, Poetry and Romance. Newcastle Publishing Co. Inc., 1975.

Nothing like it thus at the ancient continental druids. There is not, for example, a sun god-or-demon, but several deities attached to the light or the sun. No mother-goddess-or-demoness, but SOME representations and some faces of the mother-goddess-or-demoness. No god-or-demon of medicine but some god-or-demons who can cure this or that disease, no god-or-demon of war but some god-or-demons who can intervene in the event of war.Caesar tried, of course, to equate the druidic god-or-demons with the Roman god-or-demons, but his attempt lacks in coherence: there is, for example, no equivalent for Juno or Saturn.

Moreover, in Gaul and Great Britain, after the Roman conquest, druidism was prohibited, as of the reign of Claudius (around 45 of our era). The druidism god-or-demons continued to be venerated, but in a human appearance they did not have previously, and, moreover, often with the name of a Roman equivalent (interpretatio romana).

Then Christianity came, religion which was characterized by the fact that it refused all the other worships. When it becomes, in 392 the single allowed religion, the god-or-demons and the goddess-or-demonesses disappear officially, even if many ancient beliefs survive. Ireland, as for her, rocked massively, in Christianity, during the 5th century.

Our challenge here will be therefore to describe the Panth-eon or pleroma of god-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, who are the members of a world, a time and a way of thinking, very different of ours today.

Other difficulties. The majority of the studies currently produced on the druidic religion follow the framework worked out by George Dumezil in this field, that of the functional tripartition. George Dumezil, born on March 4, 1898, died on October 11, 1986, is indeed a French philologist and academician having influenced much our knowledge of the Indo-European societies or religions.

By comparing the old myths of many Indo-European peoples, in the text (he knew approximately thirty languages), George Dumezil showed that they obeyed identical narrative structures; that these myths conveyed a vision of the society organized in three functions. The function of the sacredness or of the law; the warlike function; the production function. These three functions are found as well in mythology, in the founding accounts of the ancient Rome, as in social institutions (priests or Indian castes for example). This tripartition is found in the vocabulary, the social organization and the legendary corpus of all the Indo-European peoples. We have , for example, the medieval society divided into oratores (those who pray, the clergy), bellatores (those who fight, the nobility) and laboratores (those who work, the third estate). The Indian society is divided into Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and two other productive castes. In the great epic poem of the Mahabharata, each hero acts according to the trifunctional pattern, according to the nature and the place of the god-or-demon whose he is the representative.

For Dumezil, Indo-European civilization therefore obeys “the tripartite ideology “ i.e., all the social and religious activities are distributed according to these three functions. The sacred function (the priest or the sacred king), the warlike function (the warrior), the feeding function (craftsmen, tradesmen, farmers). And this tripartition is found in the social field (orders, castes), in the political organization, and determines even a kind of organization into a hierarchy inside the cosmos (sky, earth, water, wind) making it possible to understand certain myths sometimes muddled.

On the other hand, and it is there that we will separate from this great French researcher: with regard to the Celtic society, all does not obey in this way this iron law, and there exist many unclassifiable facts, we cannot reduce to this organization.

John Brough highlighted the limits of the work of Dumezil well, by showing that the alleged original values of the Indo-European civilization, were also found , for example, in the Bible. However the latter

321

text is nevertheless the part of a very another civilization, the Semitic civilization, related to another family of languages (Hebrew, Arabic).

We will therefore frequently refer in what will follow to this trifunctionality highlighted by Dumezil, but with the largest caution, and in what regards the druidic Panth-eon , we will adopt even straightforwardly some other criteria, especially jungian.

For a simple reason. It is that in reality , as we have already said and repeated it, every druidic god-or-demon, is more or less the hypostasis of a kind of holy poly-unity; a little in the way the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Christian Trinity.

It is consequently normal that, in a polytheist system, each god-or-demon has two aspects: one specialized in a preferred field (wind, sea, thunder, harvest, love, war, etc.) the other universal one. Because all these god-or-demons are only the comprehensible image of the same universal and incomprehensible divine power. The Hindu religion explains it extremely well. A too restrictive specialization would be a negation of his divine quality.

322

APPENDIX No. 2.

CELTIC GODS IN IRELAND.

Many Irish medieval manuscripts deal with the gods or demons of the Irish Pantheon or pleroma . It is difficult to make a synthesis of them so much they vary and are even sometimes contradictory on certain points.

The two first attempt at synthesis are nevertheless that tried by Seathrún Céitinn (Geoffrey Keating, 1569-1644. Section XI and XII of his history of Ireland) and Micheál Ó Cléirigh (Michael O'Clery, 1590-1643).

None of these attempts being in itself scientifically sufficient, we will thus quote as an example the last, while supposing that his author (Micheál Ó Cléirigh, 1631) had been best placed of all, being youngest, to take account of the former writings and to take a little distance compared to their hare-brained ideas.

The first known distribution of this last attempt at synthesis that we will call “pre-modern” in one of the great modern languages in the current world was that carried out by O'Dwyer and Henry Lizeray in 1884 (the Book of the invasions of Ireland).

Here are some extracts (Leabhar Gabahála Book of the Conquests of Ireland MS. 23K32, Recension of Mícheál Ó Cléirigh).

OF THE CONQUEST OF THE TUATHA DE DANANN.

OF THE ADVENTURES OF IOBATH, SON OF BEOTHACH. SON OF IARBANEL, SON OF NEIMHEDH AND OF HIS TROOP, FROM THE TIME WHEN THEY LEFT IRELAND AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF CONAINN'S TOWER, TILL THEY RETURNED AS THE TUATHA DE DANANN TO IRELAND, AGAINST THE FIR BOLG.

OF THE NUMBER OF THEIR KINGS,OF THE LENGTH OF THEIR REIGNS, AND OF THEIR DEED,

IS RELATED FURTHER, TOGETHER WITH THE GENEALOGY OF SOME OF THEM

From Adam till the Tuatha De Danann took Ireland, 3303 years.

From the Flood till the Tuatha, De Danann came, 1061 years.

As for Iobath son of Beothach, son of Iarbanel, son of Neimhedh, after his leaving Ireland with his people after the destruction of Conainn’s before described, they settled in the northern islands of Greece. They learned druidry and many various arts in the islands where they were, among other things sorcery, magic, enchantments and every sort of gentilism in general, till they were knowing, learned, and very clever in the branches thereof. They were called Tuatha De ; that is, they considered their men of learning to be gods, and their husbandmen non-gods, so much was their power in every art and every druidic occultism besides. Thence came the name, which is Tuatha De, to them.

These were the cities where they were being instructed ; Falias, Gorias, Finias, and Murias. They had an instructor of learning in each one of these cities. These are their names; Morfesa in Falias, Esras in Gorias, Usicias in Finnias, and Semias who was in Muirias. From Failias was brought the Lia Fail, which Lugh had in Temair ; this is what used to scream under every king who took the sovereignty of Ireland, from the time of Lugh Lamfhada to the time of the birth of Christ, and it has never screamed thereafter under any king from that out ; for it was a demon that had entrance into it, and the powers of every idol ceased in the time of the birth of the Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary. From that Lia Fail Ireland is called Island of Destiny, as Cinaeth O'Hartacain proves, having said :

The stone on which my heels stand,

323

From it is named Island of Destiny ;

Between two strands of a mighty flood,

Ireland altogether is called the Plain of Fal.

From Gorias was brought the spear that Lugh had ; no battle was maintained against him who had it in his hand. From Finias was brought the sword of Nuadha ; none used to escape who was wounded by it. From Muirias was brought the cauldron of the Dagda ; none came from it unsatisfied.

After they completed their learning, they went among the Hathanensin and the Felistinu, so that they dwelt between them. Now there arose battles and fighting between those races after that, so that they were malicious and evil-disposed one to the other. Many battles were fought between them on both sides, and it is against the Hathanensin they used to be won, till all their warriors save a little remnant were exhausted.

Then the Tuatha De join in friendship with the Hathanensin, so that they formed through druidry demon-spirits in the bodies of the soldiers of the Hathanensin who were slain, so that they were fit for battle ; so that they used to encounter them [the Félistinu ] again. The Felistinu thought it immensely astonishing to see the men they used to slay fighting with them the day after. They related that to their druids. Their elder gave them advice, saying, "Take," said he, "pegs of hazel or of quicken to the battle on the morrow ; and if yours be the victory, thrust the pins in the backs of the necks of the men who shall be slain tomorrow ; and if they be demons, heaps of worms will be made of them."

They do so. The Felistinu are victorious, and they thrust the pegs in the backs of the necks of the warriors they slew, and they were worms on the morrow. Thence the strength of the Hathanensin is humbled, and the Felistinu were powerful. Then they remember their hostility and unfriendliness against the Tuatha De, so that this is what they resolved, to assemble to attack them to revenge their spite against them.

When the Tuatha De knew that, they went in flight before the Felistinu till they received patrimony and land in Dobar and Iardobar in the north of Albania. Seven years were they in that place. Nuadha being prince over them. This was the counsel decided by them at the end of that time, to attack Ireland.

When they arrived at this resolution, they set out on the sea ; and their adventures thereon are not related till they took harbor in the coast of Ireland ; a Monday in the Calends of May particularly. They bum their boats and ships . Thereafter they make a great darkness around them, till they reached the mountain of Conmaicne Rein in Connacht without the Fir Bolg perceiving it.

So after that the battle of Magh Tuiredh of Cong was fought in Conmaicne of the Great Forest in Connacht between them. He who was king of the Fir Bolg then was the Eochaidh son of Erc we have mentioned above. Tailltiu, daughter of Maghmor king of Spain, was the wife of that Eochaid ; and Nuadha, son of Eochaidh, son of Eadarlamh, was king over the Tuatha De. They were a long time fighting that battle, so that it was won at last against the Fir Bolg, and the rout was pressed northward, and eleven hundred of them were slaughtered, from Magh Tuiredh till they reached the strand of Eothaile.

The Tuatha De were pressing upon the Fir Bolg till they came on King Eochaid, son of Erc, in the place we have mentioned, so that he fell at the hands of the three sons of Neimhedh, son of Badrae, namely, Ceasarb, Luamh, and Luachra. Even the Tuatha De were slain and cut off to a great extent, and they lost their king Nuadha in the joining of the battle, after his arm was hewn from his shoulder. Afterwards Diancecht, the leech, and Creidhne the wright, set on him a silver arm, with vitality in every finger and every joint of it. But Miach, son of Diancecht, lops the silver arm from him after a while, and puts joint to joint, and sinew to sinew, and heals it in thrice nine days ; and Diancecht his father was envious of him. For this cause he used to be called Nuadha "Silverarm."

As for Tailltiu, daughter of Maghmor, king of Spain, wife of Eochaidh son of Erc, queen of the Fir Bolg, she wedded Eochaidh the Rough son of Dui the Blind of the Tuatha De ; and Tailltiu comes after the fighting of that battle of Magh Tuiredh in the forest of Chuan ; and the wood was cleared at her command, so that it was a clovery plain before the end of a year, and she inhabited it afterwards. And Cian son of Diancecht (Scal the Dumb is another name of that Cian) gave his son, named Lugh, son of Eithne daughter of Balor, to Tailltiu for fosterage….

324

Her mourning games used to be performed each year by Lugh and by the kings after him ; a fortnight before the fair of August , and a fortnight after. The Lughnasad i.-e Lugh’s fair : nasad is an assembly) is the commemoration or memorial of Tailtiu’s death.

The Fir Bolg were all slaughtered in that battle as we have said, save a few ; and those of them who survived fled before the Tuatha De into the outermost isles and islets of the sea, so that they dwelt in them after that.

* The Athenians or an Athenian settlement and the Philistines.

OF THE GENEALOGY OF SOME OF THE TUATHA DE.

The children of Elathan, son of Dealbaoth, son of Néd, son of Iondae, son of Alldae, son of Tai, son of Tabam, son of Enna, son of Baath, son of Iobath, son of Beothach, son of Iarbanel the Prophet, son of Neimhedh, son of Agnoman, were Bres, Elloith, Daghda, Dealbaeth, and Oghma.

Ere, Fodla, and Banba, the three daughters of Fiachna, son of Dealbaeth, son of Oghma, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaeth.

Fea and Neman, the two daughters of Elcmar of the Brugh, son of Dealbaeth, son of Elathan ; wives of Néd, son of Iondae, from whom Ailech Néid is named.

Badb, Macha, and Moir-Rigan, the three daughters of Dealbaeth, son of Néd, son of Ionda. Ernbas, daughter of Eatarlamh, son of Ordan, son of Iondae, son of Alldae, was the mother of all those women. Mor-Riogan * had another name, Ana ; from her are named the Paps of Anann in East Luachair.

Dona, daughter of Dealbaeth, son of Oghma, son of Ealathan, was the mother of Brian, Iucharba, and Iuchar, and they are called the three gods of Dona ; from them is named the people of the goddess ; for people of the goddess was their name till those arrived among them, and People of the goddess Dona was their name afterwards.

Goibniu the smith, Luichne the carpenter, Creidhne the wright, Diancecht the leech, were sons of Easarg the Speckled, son of Néd, son of Iondae.

Oenghus, that is "the young son," son of the Daghda, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaeth, son of Néd. Lugh, son of Cian, son of Diancecht ; Cridhenbel, Bruidhne (that is "his mouth was in his bosom"), and Casmael, the three satirists. Bechaille and Dinann, the two she-lords.

Eadan the poetess, daughter of Diancecht, son of Easarg, the Speckled son of Néd. Cairpre, the poet, son of Tuar, son of Tuirell, son of Cat Conaitchenn, son of Ordan, son of Iondae, son of Alldae. Eden, the poetess, was the mother of that Cairbre. The three sons of Cermad of the honey mouth , son of Daghda, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaeth, Dermitt, Ermit, and Aedh were their names.

* The great queen.

Of them spoke Eochaid Ua Floind :

A long poem follows which said the same thing roughly speaking as what is previous but in more complicated.

OF THE KINGS OF THE TUATHA DÉ DANANN, OF THEIR HISTORY, OF THE LENGTH OF THEIR REIGNS. AND OF THEIR DEATHS, THIS IS RELATED.

325

Bres, son of Ealathan, son of Ned, son of Ciolcach, son of Plosg, son of Liparn, son of Golam, son of Largadh, son of Mercell, son of Salt Clarach, son of Starn of the Teeth, son of Sipurn, son of Sadal, son of Ucatt, son of Effec, son of Pelest, son of Fedel, son of Cush, son of Cham, son of Noe ; Seven years was he in the kingdom of Ireland till the arm of Nuadha was healed, after it was cut from him in the first battle of Magh Tuiredh as we have related. And in right of his mother. Ere, daughter of Dealbaoth, the Tuath De yielded the kingdom to Bres, so long as the arm of Nuadha was a-healing. Then Bres died in the Carn of Ua Neid.He was buried in the Carn, so that from him it was named. It is, however, an opinion of other historians, as is clear in the Dindsenchas of the same carn, that the father of Bres was of the Tuatha De Danann themselves — that is, Bres, son of Elathan, son of Dealbaeth, son of Néd, son of Iondae, son of Tai, son of Tabam, son of Enna, son of Baath, son of Ibath, son of Beothach, son of Iarbanel the Prophet, son of Neimhedh, son of Agnamon, etc.

Nuadha Silver-arm, son of Eachtach, son of Eatarlamh, son of Ordan, son of Iondae, son of Alldae, son of Tai, son of Tabarn, son of Enna, son of Baath, son of Ibath, son of Beothach, son of Iarbanel the Prophet, son of Neimhedh ; twenty years was he in the kingdom, till he fell at the hand of Balor of the Mighty Blows, in the battle of Magh Tuiredh of the Fomhoire. The world was 3330 years old.

Lugh Lamhfhada son of Cian, son of Diancecht, son of Easarg, the speckled, son of Néd, son of Iondae, son of Alldae; forty years till he fell at the hands of Mac Cuill in Caen-Druim. The world was 3340 years old.

Eochaid the great patriarch , whose name was the Daghda, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaeth, son of Néd, son of Iondae ; fourscore years till he died in the Brugh of the deadly darts of the cast that Cethlenn shot at him in the first battle of Magh Turedh. The world was 3450 years old.

Dealbaeth, son of Oghma Sun-face, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaeth, son of Néd, son of Iondae ; ten years till he fell by the hand of his own son, namely, Fiacha, son of Dealbaeth. The world was 3460 years old.

Fiacha son of Dealbaeth, son of Oghma ; ten years till he fell by the hand of Eoghan of Inbher. The world was 3470 years old.

Ermit, that is the son of the hazel tree, Dermit, that is the son of the plow, Aedh, that is the son of the sun *, the three sons of Cermatt Honey-mouth , son of the Daghda, son of Elathan ; thirty years till they fell in the battle of Tailltiu at the hands of the sons of Mil, as is related below. The world was 3500 years old.

Ethor, Tethor, and Cetheor were three other names of the children of Cermatt. Now the son of the hazel tree was named thus, because the hazel was his god, Ethor his name, Banba his wife ; the son of the sun was named so because the sun was his god, Cethor his name, Eriu his wife ; the son of the plow was named so because the plowshare was his god, Tethor his name, Fodla his wife.

* Mac Cuill, mac Cecht, mac Greine.

Follows a very short poem absent from the manuscript MS. 23K32 of the Irish Academy but present in that of the Trinity College; taking up again same information.

Manannan, son of Elloth, son of Elathan, son of Dealbaoth, son of Néd ; Gaer and Oirbsiu are two other names of the same Manannan, and from him is named Loch Oirbsen ; and when his grave was dug it is there the lake burst out, so that from him it is named.

THE GENEALOGY OF SOME OF THE TUATHA DE DANANN FURTHER.

Miodhar of Bri Leith, son of Ionda, son of Echtach, son of Eatarlamh, son of Ordan, son of Iondae, son of Alldae.

326

Caicher and Nechtan, the two sons of Namha, son of Eochaid the Rough, son of Dui the Dark, son of Breas, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaoth, son of Néd, son of Iondae, son of Alldae, son of Tai, son of Tabharn.

Bodb of the Sidh of Feimhen, son of Eochaid the Rough, son of Dui the Dark, son of Breas, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaeth.

Siughmall, son of Cairbre the Crooked, son of Ealcmar, son of Dealbaoth, son of Oghma, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaoith, son of Néd.

Aoi, son of Ollamh, son of Oghma, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaeth, son of Néd.

The six sons of Dealbaeth, son of Oghma, son of Ealathan, son of Dealbaoth, were Fiachna, Ollamh, Ionda, Brian, Iucharba, and Iuchar. The last three are the three gods of Danu, as we have said. Dealbaeth.

Oenghus, that is, the Young Son and Aedh the Beautiful, and Cermat honey mouth , the three sons of the Daghda, son of Elathan. The children of Diancecht, son of Easarg the Speckled, are Cu, Cethen, Cen, Miach, Ciach ; Eatan the priestess, mother of Coirbre ; Armed the she-leech ; they are the two daughters of Diancecht. Brigit the poetess, daughter of the Daghda.

Boind the daughter of Dealbaeth, son of Oghma, son of Ealathan. Abhcan, son of Biccfealmhas, son of Cu, son of Diancecht, poet of Lugh, son of Ethliu. Én, son of Biccén, son of Starn, son of Edleo, son of Alldae, son of Tai, son of Tabarn, etc.

Every secret of art, every subtlety of knowledge, and every diligence of healing that exists, from the Tuatha De Danann had their origin. And although the Faith came, these arts were not driven out, for they are good.

Of the kings of the Tuatha De Danann was this said ; Tanaidhe O'Maoil-Chonaire composed it :

The Tuatha De Danann ….people of the flesh and blood of Adam.

Of the deaths of the Tuatha De Danann as Flann the monk composed it :

Edleo, son of Alldae of the troops,

The first man of the Tuatha De Danann

Who fell in green Ireland,

By the hand of Nerchu, grandson of Semeon.

Fell Ernbas, high her valor,

Fiacha, Echtach, Edarghal,

Tuirell Biccreo of the steading of Breg,

In the first battle of Magh Tuiredh.

Elloth of the valor fell,

The great fierce father of Manannan,

And Donann of perfect combats,

By De Domnann of the Fomhoire.

Cethin and Cu died

Of horror on the heights of Celtra ;

Cian far from his house they slew

Brian, Iucharba, and Iuchar.

etc., etc.This poem embroiders abundantly on facts apparently known of everybody in Ireland, at the time.

THE OCCUPATION OF THE CHILDREN OF MIL.

327

This chapter heading is not in the MS.

From Adam till the sons of Mil took Ireland, 3500 years.

From the flood till the sons of Mil came to Ireland, 1258 years.

Noe divided the world into three parts between his sons Sem, Cham, Japheth. Sem over the middle of Asia, from the River Euphrates to the eastern shore of the world ; Cham over Africa and the southern half of Asia ; Japheth over the north half of Asia and all Europe.

Japheth, son of Noe, son of Lamech, son of Mathusalem, son of Enoch, son of Jared, son of Mahalaleel, son of Cainan, son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam. Now Japheth, these are his children : Gomer, Magog, Thiras, Javan, Mesech, Madai, and Tubal.

As for Magog, second son of Japheth…….

328

APPENDIX No. 3.

DIFFICULTIES OF THE TRADITIONAL IRISH DIVINE GENEALOGIES.

Meaning of the acronyms.

AIT = Ancient Irish Tales. Tom P. Cross and Clark Harris Slover.

CML = Celtic Myth and Legend. Michael Dixon-Kennedy.

DCM = Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. James MacKillop.

AIMC = An Irish Myth Concordance . Mike Nichols. It is about the index of the places and sites mentioned in the first part of the book by Isabella Augusta-Gregory (1852-1932).

CML = Celtic Myth and Legend, Poetry and Romance. Charles Squire.

--------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eithne, Daughter of Balor, a king of the people of the Andernas called Fomorians in Ireland.

DCM page 155 makes her the mother (by Elatha, a Fomorian king ) of the Dagda and of Ogmios.

In addition also known as a son of the Dagda.

DCM page 155 makes her also the mother of several other children (by Ceno/Cian).

------------------- ----------- ------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------------------------- -

Would be brothers according to one of the versions of the Irish Book of conquests (DCM page 228).

The Dagda.

Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada/Lludd of the silver hand (in addition known as son of the Dagda).

Credne (in addition known as son of Esarg according to DCM page 228).

Luchta (in addition known as son of Luachad or Esarg).

--------- --------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------- -----

Neto/Neit war “god.”

Neit generates (according to DCM page 228) Esarg.

Who generates in turn according to DCM page 228: Gobannus (in addition known as son of Tuirbe Tragmar).

Credne. In addition known as brother of the Dagda, Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada/Lludd.

Luchta (in addition known as son of Luachad or brother of the Dagda, Credne and Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada/Lludd, by not specified parents).

Diancecht (in addition known as son of the Dagda).

Spouse: Bodua and/or Nemetona (Badb and Nemain). Both are the same divine person according to DCM page 303.

---------- ------------ -------------------- ---------------------------- ----------------------------------------- -------------- ---- -

Grandchildren of Neit.

Balor (grandson of Neit according to DCM page 228). Spouse: Cathleann (in certain texts this Cathleann indeed answers Balor that Lug is “the son of one of our daughters “. AIT page 52. The daughter in question is Etanna/Eithne. See Ceno/Cian).

Would have had twelve sons according to AIT page 53. Of whom Bregsos/Bres, in addition known as son of Elatha and Eriu. Father of some god-or-demons or goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, by

329

Brigindo/Brigitte. Eab. Grandson of Neto according to AIT page 52. Senchab. Grandson of Neto according to AIT page 52.

----------------- ------------------- --------------- -------------------------------------- ------------------------------------ ----- -

The Dagda.

Sometimes regarded as a son of Eithne/Etanna.

Sometimes regarded as a son of Neto/Neit.

Generates with not specified women.

- Aedh Minbhrec (= Aedh according to AIMC).

- Ainge (daughter of the Dagda according to CML page 18, AIMC, as DCM page 111).

- Bodb the red (son of the Dagda according to CML page 56, CML page 100, DCM page 111).

This Bodb the red would have generated according to AIMC. Aedh, Angus, Artrach, Aodh Aithfhiosach, Fergus Fithchiollach. As (according to DCM page 42) Doirend (a girl), Mesca (a girl), Sadv the mother of Ossian, Scathniamh (fairy or goddess having a love story with Caoilte/Caletios according to AIMC).

- Cermait according to DCM page 111 (Cermait with the mouth from where honey runs, son of the Dagda according to AIMC). Cermat has three sons who share the throne of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy, Danu (bia), in the days of the Gaëls according to AIMC.

Mac Cecht according to AIMC, as CML pages 205-206 (wife Fodla/Votala).

Mac Cuill according to AIMC as CML page 206 (wife Banba/Banva/Banuta).

Mac Greine according to AIMC as CML page 206 (wife Eirin/Eriu).

Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Considering the innumerable contradictions of the heresy concocted in Ireland as regards divine genealogy, and this without any doubt because of the fertile imagination of the royal or seigneurial bards, eager to flatter their master; or because of the awkwardnesses of the Christian copyist monks; it is now become impossible to manage to develop a single or unified genealogy, of these various entities.

There exist indeed three big families of possible genealogies.

The first big family of possible genealogies is that which attaches a prominent importance to the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer this word, Danu (bia) or Anu/Ana.

The second big family of possible genealogies is that which attaches a prominent importance to Ethniu and which makes the seven main Irish gods, Dagda, Nuada, Diancecht, Goibniu, Credne, Luchta, Lug, some children of this Ethniu.

The third big family of possible genealogies is that which makes the children of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia) and the Fomorians (Andernas on the Continent) some cousins resulting from the same origin: an entity or an electreon called Alldui. The first term, all, oll, expresses the notion of totality. Alldui or Ollodeiwos is therefore the divinity in its totality, or the deity of the whole. This ollodeiwos himself being known , as we will see it, son of Tat, which means quite simply “Father “. In Gaelic language , we would have had “atir“. It has to be therefore a Brittonic word (Ivernian according to O'Rahilly). Tat (os) is consequently a primeval deity (an electreon?) analog with the pro-father of the Eastern Gnostics. And this Tat (os) himself is regarded as being the son of Tabarn, son of Enna, son of Iobath, son of Beothach, son of Iarbonel, son finally of the Nemet Hornunnos.

What is perhaps here a little forced connection. We nevertheless have the impression that they are two different series, that which goes from the Nemet Hornunnos to Tabarn being one; and that which starts from Tatos to go to Neto etc. through Indui and Alldui, being another one (perhaps fir bolg).

N.B. The genealogies without value or muddled enough of the Irish Lebor na Gabala ,report to us , in connection with the war eon called Net, that he is a son of Indui, son of Alldui, son of Tat: mac Indui/maic Alldui/maic Thait.

Dui is a word resulting from Brittonic language (Ivernian according to O'Rahilly) meaning deiwos = god (in Gaelic language, there would have been dia.) And “in “a prefix resulting from the Brittonic “ande“ meaning perhaps lower, who comes just in lower part.

330

APPENDIX No. 4.

IRISH ROLL OF THE VARIOUS DIVINE KINGS HAVING RULED OVER THE COUNTRY ACCORDING TO THE GAELIC HERESY.

First line of dates: chronology drawn from THE Annals of the Four Masters.

Second line of dates: chronology drawn from Keating (Foras Feasa ar Eirinn).

To note: in this Irish “cosmogony” the men (Fir Bolg Gauls) are previous to the gods (the Tuatha De Danann). The thing is singular enough to be underlined.

Fir Bolg or Gallic kings of the kings.

- 1934 - 1897.

- 1514 - 1477.

Slaine.

- 1934 - 1933.

- 1514 - 1513.

Rudraige.

- 1933 - 1931.

- 1513 - 1511.

Gann and Genann.

- 1931 - 1927.

- 1511 - 1507.

Sengann.

- 1927 - 1922.

- 1507 - 1502.

Fiacha Cennfinnán.

- 1922 - 1917.

- 1502 - 1497.

Rinnal.

- 1917 - 1911.

- 1497 - 1491.

Fodbgen.

- 1911 - 1907.

- 1491 - 1487.

Eochaid mac Eirc.

- 1907 - 1897.

- 1487 - 1477.

Kings of the kings, of the tribe of the goddess-or-demoness or fairy Danu (bia). There exists very little information about their reigns in the islands north of the World. As regards the Irish period to see below.

- 1897 - 1700.

- 1477 - 1287.

Bres.

- 1897 - 1890.

331

- 1477 - 1470.

Nuada.

- 1890 - 1870.

- 1470 - 1447.

Lug.

- 1870 - 1830.

- 1447 - 1407.

Eochaid Ollathair.

- 1830 - 1750.

- 1407 - 1337.

Delbáeth.

- 1750 - 1740.

- 1337 - 1327.

Fiachna.

- 1740 - 1730.

- 1327 - 1317.

Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht and Mac Greine.

- 1730 - 1700.

- 1317 - 1287.

Bodb the red, son of the Dagda.

- 1700 + 250?

- 1287 + 250?

Finvarra, Fine Bheara or Fionnbharr.

+ 250 to our days.

Commentaries.

The supreme sovereignty of Ireland is a literary construction of the Middle Ages. The conventional list of the “ard ri Erenn “or “kings of the kings of Ireland “ borrows as much from mythology and legend, than from History. This therefore has any historical value in a stricter sense of the term. The dates are for example completely whimsical, and all are calculated according to the theoretical creation date of the Earth or of the Universe according to the Bible i.-e. on October 22nd - 4004 at 9:00 o’clock according to James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland.

The Fir Bolg are Gallic invaders having occupied Ireland before the rise to power of the Gaëls and they are without any doubt behind all the legends surrounding the Andernas called Fomorians ( former fir bolg gods demonized by the Gaëls). As for the Milesians or sons of Mil , ancestors of Gaëls, they are mythical peoples in the bad sense of the word, mentioned lastly in the Lebor Gabála Erenn.

King Finvarra, also called Finvara, Finn Bheara, Finbeara or Fionnbharr, is an inveterate player and a seducer, according to the Irish legends which speak about him.

May the old republican or democrat who I am, be allowed here to think that, since the 18th century at least, in our country, we design no longer the ideal society as a monarchy, but as united “sidhs“ inhabited by free citizens and that therefore since the occultation or the concealment of these gods in another world parallel with ours, all are equal. “

“Cativolcus, king of one half of the Eburones, who had entered the design together with Ambiorix, since, being now worn out by age, he was unable to endure the fatigue either of war or flight, having cursed Ambiorix…”

The Eburones therefore had two kings. Did they divide the territory in the way of these Irish kinglets who reigned only on some counties? Or is there in Caesar an inaccuracy, and did have these two princes , while reigning on the same territory, different attributions? Or even did they reign alternatively, each one for a given period? Mythical Ireland provides at least an example of each of the two systems.

In the legend of the she warrior Macha, three kings reign in turn each one for seven years over Ulster: Aed Ruad, Dithorba, and Cimbaeth. The good performance of the change in power is ensured by a treaty that seven druids, seven poets and seven chiefs, guarantee.

In the legend of Mongan, two kings reign at the same time on Ulster, Fiacha Find (the White) and Fiacha Dub (the black).

But it is true that for the heresy worked out in Ireland currently reigns, over the men of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if using this word is preferred, Danu (bia), the deity called Finvarra or Fionnbharr.

332

APPENDIX No. 5.

PROUD LORDS OF THE SIDH.

As we could see it higher, in Ireland the memory of a number of god-or-demons remains, whose Lug is not necessarily the most important. One of the poems of the Irish book of conquests , compiled in the Book of Leinster 1) evokes indeed in its lines , a whole series of deities : Bres 2) Dagda, Delbaeth, Ogma, Eriu, Banba, Fotla, Fea, Neman, Danann/Danand, Badb, Macha , Morrigu, Ernmas, Goibniu, Luichtne, Creidne, Dian Cecht, Mac ind Oc, Lug, Cridinbel, Bruinde, Be Chuille, Casmael, Coirpre, Etan, Cermat, Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht, Mac Greine.

But the author of the quatrains in question (a certain Eochu??) pays special attention, of course, to adding (end of paragraph 64), that if he praises or commemorates all these names, that does not mean for all that he worships them. The case is frequent in the Irish literature, from where its somewhat heretic nature. The Tuatha De Danann are often well identified as being gods, but they are often also, either demonized, or euhemerized, by the copyist monks having transcribed gain all these legends. The best evidence of this is that after their more or less voluntary, occultation or retirement following their defeat against the human beings in the battle for the Talantio (for the possession of the farmed land: Gaelic Tailtiu), or following the Christianization, the Irish legends make them live under the ground as aes sidhe or banshees 3), even when they are of nature more celestial than underground. We could not imagine more radical demonization! The goddess-or-demonesses were changed into simple banshees! Bravo Messrs. monks!

This process of demonization was completed besides in 2001 with their connection to the topic of the wild hunting carried out by the music group Celtic black metal, known as Aes Dana.

The proud lords of the Sidhe

Dressed with dried blood

Mingle with the mentally insane people

In an obscene dance

Their hoarse cry excites the animal

Which pull them a little further.

Move away, mortal

From the wild hunting

Let your eyes not meet

The glance of the lords elves

Who, soiled by mud and excrement

Follow the madman of the forest.

Turn away , mortal

From the wild hunting

For fear your reason

Follows the procession

And joins the ground.

Move away

Because all accompany the hart

Nobody who saw it

Remained far behind 4).

1. Book of Leinster. R1 recension.

333

2. In fact, it is not a man of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), but of one of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns we call Andernas on the Continent and Fomorians in Ireland.

3. Banshee. See Bean Sidhe. Literally, “a woman from the hills” because of the attachment of the ancient Celtic god-or-demons to the world of the underground elementals. Popularly known as Banshee, a kind of goddess or fairy who cries when death approaches.

4. It goes without saying it is not a question here to stigmatize this French musical group. Peter DeLaCrau likes much on the contrary their spectacles that he recommends to all sincere celticists. They have the virtue to express one of the many but equally legitimate designs of Celtism reminding him of his youth. When for example he unloaded in Paris in 1977. A little in the way of an American in Paris (1952, his year of birth) but in the genre fantastic horror film, not in the genre comedy.

334

AFTERWORD IN THE WAY OF JOHN TOLAND.

Pseudo-druids with fabulous initiatory derivation (the famous and indescribable or hilarious perennial tradition) having multiplied since some time; it appeared us necessary to put at the disposal of each and everyone, these few notes, hastily written, one evening of November, in order to give our readers the desire to know more about true druidism.

This work claims to be honest but in no way neutral. It was given itself for an aim to defend or clear the cluto (fame) of this admirable ancient religion.

Nothing replaces personal meditation, including about obscure or incomprehensible lays strewing these books, and which have been inserted intentionally, in order to force you to reflect, to find your own way. These books are not dogmas to be followed blindly and literally. As you know, we must beware as it was the plague, of the letter. The letter kills, only spirit vivifies.

Nothing replaces either personal experience, and it’s by following the way that we find the way. Therefore rely only on your own strength in this Search for the Grail. What matters is the attitude to be adopted in life and not the details of the dogma. Druidism is less important than druidiaction (John-P. MARTIN).

These few leaves scribbled in a hurry are nevertheless in no way THE BOOKS TO READ ON THIS MATTER, they are only a faint gleam of them.

The only druidic library worthy of the name is not in fact composed of only 12 (or 27) books, but of several hundred books.

The few booklets forming this mini-library are not themselves an increase of knowledge on the subject, and are only some handbooks intended for the schoolchildren of druidism.

These simplified summaries intended for the elementary courses of druidism will be replaced by courses of a somewhat higher level, for those who really want to study it in a more relevant way.

This small library is consequently a first attempt to adapt (intended for young adults) the various reflections about the druidic knowledge and truth, to which the last results of the new secularism, positive and open-minded, worldwide, being established, have led.

Unlike Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which swarm, concerning the higher Being, with childish anthropomorphism taken literally (fundamentalism known as integrism in the Catholic world); our druidism too, on the other hand, will use only very little of them, and will stick in this field, to the absolute minimum.

But in order to talk about God or the Devil we shall be quite also obliged to use a basic language, and therefore a more or less important amount of this anthropomorphism. Or then it would be necessary to completely give up discussing it.

This first shelf of our future library consecrated to the subject, aims to show precisely the harmonious authenticity of the neo-druidic will and knowledge. To show at which point its current major theses have deep roots because the reflection about Mythologies, it’s our Bible to us. The adaptations of this brief talk required by the differences of culture, age, spiritual maturity, social status, etc. will be to do with the concerned druids (veledae and others?)

Note, however. Important! What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are not (higgledy-piggledy).

A divine revelation. A (still also divine) law. A (non-religious or secular) law. A (scientific) law. A dogma. An order.

335

What I search most to share is a state of mind, nothing more. As our old master had very well said one day : "OUR CIVILIZATION HAS NO CHOICE: IT WILL BE CELTISM OR IT WILL BE DEATH” (Peter Lance).

What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are.

Some dream. An adventure. A journey. An escape. A revolt cry against the moral and physical ugliness of this society. An attempt to reach the universal by starting from the individual. A challenge. An obstacle fecund to overcome . An incentive to think. A guide for action. A map. A plan. A compass. A pole star or morning star up there in the mountain. A fire overnight in a glade?

What the man who had collected the core of this library, Peter DeLaCrau, is not.

- A god.

- A half god.

- A quarter of God.

- A saint.

- A philosopher (recognized, official, and authorized or licensed, as those who talk a lot in television. Except, of course, by taking the word in its original meaning, which is that of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge.

What he is: a man, and nothing of what is human therefore is unknown to him. Peter DeLaCrau has no superhuman or exceptional power. Nothing of what he said wrote or did could have timeless value. At the best he hopes that his extreme clearness about our society and its dominant ideology (see its official philosophers, its journalists, its mass media and the politically correct of its right-thinking people, at least about what is considered to be the main thing); as well his non-conformism, and his outspokenness, combined with a solid contrariness (which also earned to him for that matter a lot of troubles or affronts); can be useful.

The present small library for beginners “contains the dose of humanity required by the current state of civilization” (Henry Lizeray). However it’s only a gathering of materials waiting for the ad hoc architect or mason.

A whole series of booklets increasing our knowledge of these basic elements will be published soon. This different presentation of the druidic knowledge will preserve nevertheless the unity as well as the harmony which can exist between these various statements of the same philosophical and well-considered paganism : spirituality worthy of our day, spirituality for our days.

Case of translations into foreign languages (Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, etc.)

The misspellings, the grammatical mistakes, the inadequacies of style, as well as in the writing of the proper nouns perhaps and, of course, the Gallicisms due to forty years of life in France, may be corrected. Any other improvement of the text may also be brought if necessary (by adding, deleting, or changing, details); Peter DeLaCrau having always regretted not being able to reach perfection in this field.

But on condition that neither alteration nor betrayal, in a way or another, is brought to the thought of the author of this reasoned compilation. Every illustration without a caption can be changed. New illustrations can be brought.

But illustrations having a caption must be only improved (by the substitution of a good photograph to a bad sketch, for example?)

It goes without saying that the coordinator of this rapid and summary reasoned compilation , Peter DeLaCrau, does not maintain to have invented (or discovered) himself, all what is previous; that he does not claim in any way that it is the result of his personal researches (on the ground or in libraries).

What s previous is indeed essentially resulting from the excellent works or websites referenced in bibliography and whose direct consultation is strongly recommended.

We will never insist enough on our will not be the men of one book (the Book), but from at least twelve, like Ireland’s Fenians, for obvious reasons of open-mindedness, truth being our only religion.

Once again, let us repeat; the coordinator of the writing down of these few notes hastily thrown on paper, by no means claims to have spent his life in the dust of libraries; or in the field, in the mud of

336

the rescue archaeology excavations; in order to unearth unpublished pieces of evidence about the past of Ireland (or of Wales or of East Indies or of China).

THEREFORE PETER DELACRAU DOES NOT WANT TO BE CONSIDERED, IN ANY WAY, AS THE AUTHOR OF THE FOREGOING TEXTS.

HE TRIES BY NO MEANS TO ASCRIBE HIMSELF THE CREDIT OF THEM. He is only the editor or the compiler of them. They are, for the most part, documents broadcast on the web, with a few exceptions.

ON THE OTHER HAND, HE DEMANDS ALL THEIR FAULTS AND ALL THEIR INSUFFICIENCIES.

Peter DeLaCrau claims only one thing, the mistakes, errors, or various imperfections, of this book. He alone is to be blamed in this case. But he trusts his contemporaries (human nature being what it is) for vigorously pointing out to him.

Note found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them into this place.

I immediately confess in order to make the work of my judges easier that men like me were Christian in Rome under Nero, pagan in Jerusalem, sorcerers in Salem, English heretics, Irish Catholics, and today racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, person, while waiting to be tomorrow kufar or again Christian the beastliest antichrist of all the apocalypses, etc. In short as you will have understood it, I am for nothingness death disease suffering …… By respect for Mankind , in order to save time, and not to make it waste time, I will make easier the work of those who make absolutely a point of being on the right side of the fence while fighting (heroically of course) in order to save the world of my claws (my ideas or my inclinations, my tendencies).

To these courageous and implacable detractors, of whom the profundity of reflection worthy of that of a marquis of Vauvenargues equals only the extent of the general knowledge, worthy of Pico della Mirandola I say…

Now take a sheet of paper, a word processing if you prefer, put by order of importance 20 characteristics which seem to you most serious, most odious, most hateful, in the history of Mankind, since the prehistoric men and Nebuchadnezzar, according to you….AND CONSIDER THAT I AM THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF YOU BECAUSE I HAVE THEM ALL!

Scapegoats are always needed! A heretic in the Middle Ages, a witch in Salem in the 17th century, a racist in the 20th century, an alien lizard in the 21st century, I am the man you will like to hate in order to feel a better person (a smart and nice person).

I am, as you will and in the order of importance you want: an atheist, a satanist, a stupid person, with Down’s syndrome, brutish, homosexual, deviant, homophobic, communist, Nazi, sexist, a philatelist, a pathological liar, robber, smug, psychopath, a falsely modest monster of hubris, and what do I still know, it is up to you to see according to the current fashion.

Here, I cannot better do (in helping you to save the world).

[Unlike my despisers who are all good persons, the salt of the earth, i.e., young or modern and dynamic, courageous, positive, kind, intelligent, educated, or at least who know; showing much hindsight in their thoroughgoing meditation on the trends of History; and on the moral or ethical level: generous, altruistic, but poor of course (it is their only vice) because giving all to others; moreover deeply respectful of the will of God and of the Constitution …

As for me I am a stiff old reactionary, sheepish, disconnected from his time, paranoid, schizophrenic, incoherent, capricious, never satisfied, a villain, stupid, having never studied or at least being unaware of everything about the subject in question; accustomed to rash judgments based on prejudices without any reflection; selfish and wealthy; a fiend of the Devil, inherently Nazi-Bolshevist or Stalinist-Hitlerian. Hitlerian Trotskyist they said when I was young. In short a psychopathic murderer as soon as the breakfast… what enables me therefore to think what I want, my critics also besides, and to try to make everybody know it even no-one in particular].

Signed: the coordinator of the works, Peter DeLaCrau known as Hesunertus, a researcher in druidism.

A man to whom nothing human was foreign. An unemployed worker, post office worker, divorcee, homeless person, vagrant, taxpayer, citizen, and a cuckolded elector... In short one of the 9 billion human beings having been in transit aboard this spaceship therefore. Born on planet Earth, January 13, 1952.

337

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE BROAD OUTLINES.

As regards the bibliography of details see appendix of the last lesson because, as Henry Lizeray says it so well, traditions that must be interpreted. It is there the whole difference which exists between former druidism and neo-druidism.

Lebar Gabala or The Book of Invasions. Paris 1884 (William O'Dwyer)

Base of the druidic Church. The restored druidism. Henry Lizeray, Paris, 1885.

National traditions rediscovered. Paris 1892.

Aesus or the secret doctrines of the druids. Paris 1902.

Ogmius or Orpheus. Paris 1903.

CONTENTS.

Prolog Page 004

The various shapes the gods or demons can take in the eyes of the human beings Page 005

The Minor or andedioi gods and the worships of dulia Page 010

The Indigitamenta of druidism Page 019

Celtic indiges able to inflect the Almighty Fate Page 021

Second list of the indiges gods of druidism Page 037

Third list (divine epithets or hypostases) Page 050

Notice on the Welsh heresy Page 054

Notice on the Celtiberian heresy Page 058

Notice on the various forms of worship on this level Page 059

Notice on the angels or the she messengers from the Other World in the Celtic tradition Page 062

Divine figures being the subject of worship of hyperdulia Page 065

Short reminder on the virginal or divine conceptions among Celts Page 066

Hornunnos Page 069

Our Lady with the unicorn: the eponas Page 075

A little terminology now: Mariccus the hero prophet and demigod Page 084

Notices and various remarks Page 088

Hesus//Cuchulainn Page 090

Continental documentation Page 110

Main stages of the life of the great Hesus Mars Page 119

New considerations about the sacrifice of the great Hesus embodied in Culann's hound Page 127

Plea for a reconciliation with our brothers the gods or demons Page 128

The true uxedioi and the worships of latria Page 133

The sacred dodecahedron according to Julius Caesar Page 137

The sacred dodecahedron according to the druids Page 139

The twelve alveoli of the divine hive Page 144

Belin/Belen and the deities of the type Belin (us) Page146

The surgeon god of healers and witches: Deinocacectis/Diancecht Page 163

Camulus Smertrius Page 166

338

Noadatus/Nodens/Nuada/Nudd Page 169

Medros/Midir/Medyr Page 175

Cobannus/Gobannus Page 179

The three headed god called Brenus/Brian Page 184

The god of love and youth Mabon/Maponos/Oengus Page 188

The god of psychological warfare Ogmius Page 194

The god of techniques trade and business Lug/Lugos Page 199

The myth of the god giant Page 207

The Santa Claus god, Suqellus/Dagda/Gurgunt Page 208

The ideal woman Brigantia/Brigindo/Brigit Page 216

Conclusion Page 221

Foundations of the supreme Trinity Page 222

The watery great mother Goddess Page 223

The man-eating bitch Medua/Medb Page 243

Catubodua/Morrigani/Nemain Page 247

Catubodua/Morrigani/Nemain (again) Page 252

Taran/Toran/Tuireann Page 257

Attributes of all these gods Page 265

Reminder about some theonyms of the Irish literature Page 271

Above the gods Page 274

Study of a particular electreon Page 278

The elementary dyad (or tetrad) Page 283

The adiantu (attraction of opposites) Page 286

Druidic weltanschauung Page 290

The life Page 295

The force Page 297

L’albiobitos Page 301

The pyramidion. Page 303

Between fatalism and determinism Page 306

So atheism agnosticism panentheism or pantheism? Page 314

Appendix No. 1 : The Stone Bible Page 316

Appendix No. 2 : Celtic gods in Ireland Page 322

Appendix No. 3 : Difficulties of the traditional Irish divine genealogies Page 328

Appendix No. 4 : Irish roll of the various divine kings having reigned over the country Page 330

Appendix No. 5 : Proud lords from the sidh. Page 332

Afterword in the way of John Toland Page 334

Bibliography of the broad outlines Page 337

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

1 Quotations from the ancient authors speaking about Celts or druids.

2. Various preliminary general information about Celts.

3. History of the pact with gods volume 1.

4. Druidism Bible: history of the pact with gods volume 2.

5. History of the peace with gods volume 3.

6. History of the peace with gods volume 4.

7. History of the peace with gods volume 5.

8. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 1.

9. Irish apocryphal texts.

10. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 2.

11. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 3.

12. The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 1 (druidic mythology).

339

13. The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 2 (druidic mythology).

14. The hundred ways of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 3 (druidic mythology).

15. The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 1.

16. The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 2.

17. The druidic pleroma: angels jinns or demons volume 1.

18. The druidic pleroma angels jinns or demons volume 2

19. Mystagogy or sacred theater of ancients Celts.

20. Celtic poems.

21. The genius of the Celtic paganism volume 1.

22. The Roland’s complex .

23. At the base of the lantern of the dead.

24. The secrets of the old druid of the Menapian forest.

25. The genius of Celtic paganism volume 2 (liberty reciprocity simplicity).

26. Rhetoric : the treason of intellectuals.

27. Small dictionary of druidic theology volume 1.

28. From the ancient philosophers to the Irish druid.

29. Judaism Christianity and Islam: first part.

30. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 1.

31. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 2.

32. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 3.

33. Third part volume 1: what is Islam? Short historical review of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

34. Third part volume 2: What is Islam? First approaches to the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

35. Third part volume 3: What is Islam? The true 5 pillars of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

36. Third part volume 4: What is Islam? Sounding the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

37. Couiro anmenion or small dictionary of druidic theology volume 2.

340

Peter DeLaCrau. Born on January 13rd, 1952, in St. Louis (Missouri) from a family of woodsmen or Canadian trappers who had left Prairie du Rocher (or Fort de Chartres in Illinois) in 1765. Peter DeLaCrau is thus born the same year as the Howard Hawks film entitled “the Big Sky”. Consequently father of French origin, mother of Irish origin: half Irish half French. Married to Mary-Helen ROBERTS on March 12th, 1988, in Paris-Aubervilliers (French department of Seine-Saint-Denis). Hence 3 children. John Wolf born May 11th, 1989. Alex born April 10th, 1990. Millicent born August 31st, 1993. Deceased on September 28th, 2012, in La Rochelle (France).

Peter DELACRAU is not a philosopher by profession, except taking this term in its original meaning of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge. And he is neither a god neither a demigod nor the messenger of any god or demigod (and of course not a messiah).

But he has become in a few years one of the most lucid and of the most critical observers of the French neo-druidic or neo-pagan world.

He was also some time assistant-treasurer of a rather traditionalist French druidic group of which he could get archives and texts or publications.

But his constant criticism both domestic and foreign French policy, and his political positions (on the end of his life he had become an admirer of Howard Zinn Paul Krugman Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore); had earned him moreover some vexations on behalf of the French authorities which did everything, including in his professional or private life, in the last years of his life, to silence him.

Peter DeLaCrau has apparently completely missed the return to the home country of his distant ancestors.

It is true unfortunately that France today is no longer the France of Louis XIV or of Lafayette or even of Napoleon (which has really been a great nation in those days).

Peter DeLaCrau having spent most of his life (the last one) in France, of which he became one of the best specialists,

even one of the rare thoroughgoing observers of the contemporary French society quite simply; his three children, John-Wolf, Alex and Millicent (of Cuers: French Riviera) pray his readers to excuse the countless misspellings or grammatical errors that pepper his writings. At the end of his life, Peter DeLaCrau mixed a little both languages (English but also French).

Those were therefore the notes found on the hard disk of the computer of our father, or in his papers.

Our father has of course left us a considerable work, nobody will say otherwise, but some of the words frequently coming from his pen, now and then are not always very clear. After many consultations between us, at any rate, above what we have been able to understand of them.

Signed: the three children of Peter DeLaCrau: John-Wolf, Alex and Millicent. Of Cuers.