WHAT WE ARE?

CERTAINLY NOT CHARLIE!

We are not Charlie, Sorry for our Parisian friends and their email of January 10, 2015. We are John Toland. And also a little Isaac Bonewits. And also a little Tadhg MacCrossan…… whose basic research made druidiactio progress in the United States; even if this author places himself more on the strictly historical level than on the religious level strictly speaking, at times. We are indebted to him for a good part of our current terminology.

Some of the articles collected in this work were somewhat outdated since and there is here or there obsolete paragraphs. For example, the list of the works of which the reading is recommended. Such as it is this collection constitutes nevertheless a single and irreplaceable document on the evolution of modern druidism and this is why, at the request of many friends, we decided to publish it again.

As agnostic atheistic or pantheistic defense lawyers, what a triad, of John Toland, Sinn Fein appointed, what we can say is this. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, our spirituality or our religious philosophy to us is called druidism (its name in Old Celtic was DRUIDIACTIO. Irish Druidecht. Dru-wis meaning great knowledge.).

What links us between us even with what transcends us (religion) does not depend on the birth and on the life or on the death of a man, so much extraordinary he was as our great hero (the hesus Cuchulainn), it is based on the contrary to the teaching of sages who existed, who still exist, or who will exist.

Let us repeat it once again, because repetere = ars docendi, but there is no taqiyya from us (in true religion there is no constraint) our religious practices are not based on the existence of a historical character having had formerly or at one time a given or precise life. It rises from the teaching of a crowd of sage having recognized some aspects or certain facets of the Longtime Truth i.e., the Divinity of the World. The wisdom, it is the discovery of this Divine which is in us and around us through the observation of the world and of his one’s nature. And it is always a true quest for the grail to discover it! The higher being par excellence has no shape, he can,in the eyes of the men, take the shape most adapted to their nature. The gods are therefore in a way the only true historically attested shape of God. None is God single-handed, as opposed to what Jews, Christians and Muslims with their Allah (with the god-or-demon of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) affirm a little quickly or a little lightly.

These sages taught us how to pray the higher god by definition in his multiple shapes, the gods.

The main gods of our religion are Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Danu/Anu, Lug, Hesus, the rigantona Epona, and many others, known or less known.

In our religion to have good knowledge is paramount. It is rightly that Islam does not regard us as members of the people of the book, because we are like the Fenians of former times,some men and women OF MORE THAN ONE BOOK (12 among the Fenians, a number symbol of a whole library).

Knowledge enables us to follow the archetypal druidic path . We always have to go the straight and narrow of the best route which leads to the Divinity, i.e., the whole of the values which make us a Man.

Our religion is therefore still ongoing (contrary with the others), because not based on the happy, or unhappy life, of such or such great prophet or demigod, but on the study of the Divine one which is, itself, eternal. It is it only which founds our religion.

N.B. Our spirituality can be shared by everybody, everywhere and in any time (since it is universal), but actually, historically speaking, only the spirit minded Celts have in their time, formerly, accepted the duties which resulted from this.

Its cantelon (its profession of faith) can be summarized with the few lines below.

There is a higher Being at the same time immanent and transcendent

Who impregnates or underlies the Bitus or the universe.

A reality beyond all illusions

A unity beyond all diversities

An immutable truth beyond all appearances

Which surrounds us and makes us live.

Among Christians or Muslims, it is called God or Allah and the victorious warrior Mahomet is his prophet. This higher Being or Being of the beings is at the same time procreating, bearing and destroying of the Bitus or Universe. The Universe born from the nothingness * exists in him and disappears in him.

Notes of the author: this small presentation text is inspired by the great Hinduist periodical of sacred theater SANGAM.

* A nothingness designed as non-existence and not as emptiness or nothing.

And now what is the difference between our study group and the others? Here is the difference between our study group and our theater company (from sacred theater to kathakali or kutiyatta).

As we already have had the opportunity to write it, in our group study and general knowledge have a paramount importance.

Caesar. B.G. VI, 14: “They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many elements respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods.”

The manifestations of the Divinity one which is around us do not need us to tell stories on their subject. We will never be able to understand the philosophical ways followed by our predecessors the former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) if we fall into kindness towards the romantic phantasms. Even if these phantasms can be “politically” correct and in conformity with the dominant ideology of the moment (because there is always a dominant ideology, even among those who believe or claim to be “free”); or satisfactory as regards affect.

This is why among us no tall tales about the universal matriarchy, the perennial Tradition, the construction of Stonehenge by druidic magic or Masters come from Atlantis.

We content ourselves to study, including critically, the beliefs of the time when the druidic practices described by Urard Mac Coise in the conclusion of his story about the plundering of the castle of Maelmilscothach were still in force in Ireland, that is to say in the 10th century .

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.We do not try to hide, by an artificial whitewashing, the occasional cruelty of our predecessors, but we do not exaggerate it either and we compare it with others to relativize it.

We use archeology, the true one, the real history, authentic mythology. If the progress of the historical research contradicts one day some of our ideas, then we will modify them consequently.

In our community, we also believe that esthetics and art are important. We are not iconoclasts. The manifestations of the Divine one are entitled to the best of we can produce. We think that a good formation, allied with the exercise of the functions of a true clergy (to meet the need to mark the various key periods of the life of a human being, from his birth to his death), is a vital thing for every healthy and in full growth community. We therefore try in this intention to set up a whole training program of the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), as difficult as what was already made in this field by the mass religions, but superior in results.

Unlike many communities, we do not have “instantaneous” initiations.

We do not make think either that every dagolitos or believer of our spiritual family is destined to be a member its clergy. We think on the contrary that the majority of our dagolitoi (believers) has to remain secular.

We expect from each one however that he honors the gods and the goddesses, or fairies if this term is preferred, in one’s way. To grow in spirituality is not reserved for the only clergy!

Every human being needs to understand nature, his and that of the Divine one.

Of course we also think that the liturgical power involves solid studies or thorough research (in history and mythology), an achieved art, a really skilled and disinterested clergy, volunteers ready, eager to channel all these divine energies in man , and able to do it; all that is necessary to the life of the powerful religious ceremonies we so hopelessly need to connect the men to the divine one which surrounds them and therefore between them.

This insistence on the best as an objective makes us at the same time single and discussed. Even if some people maintain that such an insistence is not democratic, we continue to believe that the divine immanence which pervades us does that each and everyone has in oneself something in what he excels. It is enough to come into contact with the adequate divine figures deep down in our heart , and to channel their creative capacity.

Our motto: “To grow as quickly as the oak” reminds of the fact that any search for the perfection takes time.

Second dogma of our group: the fallibility of the Primate who is only a man. Nobody among us, not even the first among us, has the answer to everything. We maintain by no means to have collected a “genuine” uninterrupted tradition come from the past, we have even very serious doubts in connection with the people or with the groups making think such a thing, explicitly or implicitly.

This makes us freer, in particular to move inside our structures, by adapting our topics of reflection to the needs of the time or of the generations to come.

We are thus ready to carry out all the corrections necessary, and even to go into reverse in some cases (what we already did more once).

Every member has the right and the duty to take part in this process of permanent evolution, in this spiritual adventure. The neopagans need worships in which they can be in communion, pieces of advice, spiritual care.

This dream, this ideal, is very different from that of the majority of the current groups which prefer to function in small not open-minded, from another era, circles.

However we, we have something single and marvelous to share with all the other men.

If we can attract to us as a magnet, enough volunteers ready to devote their free time, their energy or some money, for these objectives, then our dream will be able to be fulfilled. Become actors of your future.

We can still enchant the world again. If this dream challenges you somewhere deep inside you, then share it with us, with your friends, with your family. To be a member of our community means to support thoroughly this work, this walk in the direction of our dream. Together we can fulfill out. But it is necessary to us for that “plotters” or “conspirators,” in larger number.

THIS IN WHAT WE BELIEVE.

There are many denominations (or “traditions”) different inside the neo-druidic community. We share with the majority of the other neopagan traditions the following beliefs.

But as the great Celtic lord named Indutiomarus formerly declared (quoted by Cicero in his pro M. Fonteio Oratio): “To believe is a thing, to know is another one.”

We believe therefore, but while admitting the POSITIVE aspects of science or technology.

We believe that the divinity is at the same time immanent (internal) and transcendent (external).

The Divine one can appear in every oghamic point (eabad) of space and time (Welsh lle bo cydbwys pob gwrth), including in each human being (inspiration, divine fury, and others).

We believe the Divinity can appear as well in a male shape as in a female shape, and that the word “goddess” or “fairy” has as much value than the term “god.” Men and women are spiritually equal, and the attitudes, values or roles known as “female” or “male,” are equally important.

We believe in a great multiplicity of possible manifestation of the Divine one (we swim in an ocean of divinity) of which the majority (some people even say all) are worthy of respect or confidence and deserve worship 1). The most various beliefs as for their nature exist. We believe that it is necessary to have love and respect for Nature, to accept us ourselves as integral part of this nature, and not to want us its “Masters.” We believe that the monolatrous religious organization, the mass religions, the

Messiahs and other popes, prophets, or supergurus, slow down the spiritual evolution of Mankind instead of speeding it up. We believe that the religions must have a minimum of dogmas and a maximum of pluralism or flexibility.

The neopagan druidism we practice is an organic religion. Like any living organism, it will grow, evolve, and produce new branches; as the years pass. In this field we have already said it, our motto is: “To grow as quickly as the oak” .

We believe that ethics or deontology have to be based on the will not to harm others a priori, the concern for the common good, the mutual respect.

It is necessary to reconcile the need for autonomy and personal development as well as the need for paying attention to the impact that each one of our actions can have on the life and the wellbeing of the others. The lowest level of the pyramid of Maslow is a fact , it will be crazy to ignore it, especially when you are a ruling politician. but we also believe that Man is made to live an existence filled with friendship, love, pleasure, beauty but also with greatness. The majority as of ours like good food, drinks (without excess with some exceptions), music, certain songs or certain art works, not forgetting the afternoon nap, idleness, leisure.

Our gods being perfectly able to defend themselves their honor (how could a simple mortal offend a deity?) we therefore have no nee to punish anyone for “blasphemy” or “heresy.”

We believe that with a sufficient formation, the required art and discipline, as well as the suitable intentions; the mind or the heart of Man is perfectly able to achieve the majority of the “miracles” he needs.

How much wells, schools or community clinics, could we build with what cost all the weapons (tanks, bombs, etc.) which end each day in smoke in the hands of our friends or our enemies (they are often the same ones besides). What madness!

We believe the Man is able to solve his current, individual or collective problems, and to build a better world.

This vision, utopian, of course, but moderated by a solid common sense nevertheless, guides us in the way of the sustainable degrowth and of the individual or collective balance. “ Un pwngc rhyddyd, sef y bydd lie bo cydbwys pob gwrth.”

Magic and miracles depend on the conception we have of our natural gifts (natural or granted by the gods).

Rites and rituals are also an art. Our celebrations pertaining to worship evolved according to research intended to make them more satisfactory on the intellectual level, more beautiful on the artistic level, more powerful on the spiritual level; and finally most operative possible in our hearts, our minds, or our bodies 2).

We think it is important to celebrate the solar, lunar, cycles, and all the other cycles of life.

These cycles are some facts communal to the whole Mankind , just like the various ceremonies known under the name of “rites of passage”: birth, puberty, engagement or marriage, taking orders, death…

These various rites and ritual help us to locate us in space and time.

We believe in a kind of afterlife, based on the traditional model of the spiritualities previous the advent of mass religions : rest and recovery in a “Land of Youth” before passage to a higher stage, the dissolution of our identity in the Big Whole called Pariollon 3).

We believe Man can go very far in the achievement of his evolution and of his personal balance, thanks to the carefully controlled alteration of his “normal” states of consciousness.

For that, we use at the same time the former and modern methods of concentration, meditation, or ecstasy. We believe the interdependence of everybody obliges us to serve the Community.

Some people among us therefore are activists in parties, social welfare, ecological or charitable associations, whereas others prefer to work for the public good by only spiritual means. Besides many among us manage at once these two ver sacrum (fights).

We believe finally that if we claim to achieve these goals, we must already ourselves practice what we preach. The neo-druidism like any other spirituality has to be a lifestyle (that of the sustainable degrowth for example), not simply a weekly or monthly social function.

We must therefore endeavor to put our daily life in conformity with the truths (with the faith) we proclaim urbi et orbi 4).

According to our friend I. BONEWITS: AR NDRAIOCHT FEIN. Adaptation Peter DeLaCrau.

EDITOR’S NOTES .

1. Most important of all these aspects of the divinity, the one we worship without naming it, a little like in the case of the El Elyon of the Bible, being, of course, the higher Being transcending and synthesizing them all. We believe therefore in one God (one God et not one Demiurge), in several persons or hypostases (3, 5,15, 20, etc.): in short the gods and the goddesses, or fairies if this word is preferred, with a small letter. What some persons among us designate by the complicated name of “holy poly-unity.”

2. We should not forget the teaching of our old Master to all, John Toland. The druidism should not be another superstition more, it has to be compatible with the scientific mind. Reason is a “goddess” too (one more) who also has to have her worship.

3.There also exists other assumptions in connection with the life after the life. The spiritualistic assumption is only one among others. In our group, the question was still not decided.

4.i.e. particularly not to lie*, not to slander, not to defame, not to cheat, not to steal or usurp; not initiative harming others whereas he did you nothing; to respect one’s word and his comrades, not to leave them alone in the difficulties or the ordeals ; by giving up them at the critical times, and so on. What is far from being always the case in the current neo-druidic circles of influence , alas!

SINN FEIN! (End of our plea.)

We agree with only two types of taqiyya or kirman). The strictly defensive taqiyya (in the event of persecution, serious risks for his life or for his legitimately acquired goods). The taqiyya in the event of war. But on the condition of regarding it as a simple tactic war having nothing to do with the gods or the religion. God is great enough not to need resorting to the lie even through a simple kirman in order to defend himself or to triumph. We therefore condemn categorically every taqiyya only intended to extend the influence or the scope of application of his religion. This would be in the person of his co-religionists.

SHORT HISTORY OF DRUIDISM AND OF THE OLLOTOUTA.

PREHISTORY.

Main reference marks.

Sciences and philosophy of the islands in Hyperborea or North of the World (mythical enough). Thule, Abalum (confusion due to Pliny?) Ogygia (mix-up due to O'Flaherty) and Gorre. A recollection of the northern origins of one of the two components of the Indo-European civilization?

The former traditional Druidism and its strictly historical records. The last druid of the Court of the high king of Ireland Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill (O'Neill) king of Ailech from 943 to 980 and Ard ri Erenn from 956 to 980 (died Christian after having been baptized).

At least it is what we can deduce from the existence still at the time, in the repertory of the great Irish “poets,” of the imbas forosnai of the teinm loida and of the dichetal do chennaib, however, prohibited by St Patrick (cf. the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach by Errard Mac Coisé, a poet having lived in the 10th century).

On the death of the last of these great druids therefore , his persecuted disciples cross the sea to take refuge opposite in Wales, where many Irishmen are already settled (on the side of the Snowdon mounts in particular). At least perhaps! The last pagan kingdom in Great Britain seems rather to have been that of the youth of Merlin, the kingdom of Galloway ruled by a certain Gwenddolau defeated in 573 at the battle of Arfderydd. The end of a world!

Various authors whose V. Kruta think that Ordovices and Silures of the future Wales future dissented rather quickly after a short period of Roman occupation in the days of the emperor Claudius; so that their submission to the Roman administration was never well established.

Let us not forget that they had always been in a way the base camp of the druidic and Celtic resistance; since it is in their country that was the great international center druidic of Mona (Anglesey) whose population was displaced by Suetonius Paulinus in 58 of our era.

After the Roman rout, the Irishmen founded many kingdoms in Venedotia (Gwynnedd) and Dervetia (Dyfed) between 250 and 550.

This presence is demonstrated in archeology by oghamic inscriptions.

The Gaelic language was therefore established here and there in the future Wales but this Irish contribution ended in the 9th century after the fall of Dublin in front of the Viking armies.

The Irish kingdoms then were assimilated little by little, by the “Combroges” in other words by the Cymri (Welshmen).

Period also known as decline period of the druidism, characterized by the loss of awareness and the crumbling, or fragmentation through amalgamations, with all kinds of other foreign, in particular Christian, traditions.

The distant heirs, hybrid and bastard, to the former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), knew even no longer that while writing this or that, they carry on fragments of ancient pagan traditions. They were Christian and proud to be so. To mix Bible and pieces of the Celtic mosaic was their daily bread.

Clearing or grove Cor Emrys in Wales then Clearing or grove Mount Haemus in Oxford (John Aubrey)?????? Some circles of dead poets or of enlightened connoisseurs rather than another thing perhaps.To what point these high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) of the Middle Ages were the heirs to their homonyms of the days of the great free and independent Celtica?

Two examples to answer this question.

First example.

A child resembles his parents. A granddaughter resembles her grandmother. A great-grandson can also still resemble his grandmother, but what a difference there can be between the two! The great-grandmother was small, brown, brown-eyed *, the great-grandson, as for him, is tall , fair-haired, blue-eyed. He can even not to speak the same language or to have a slightly different skin color. And let us not speak about the illegitimate births. In this case, he bears even no longer the name of his ancestor and, however, he is nevertheless the heir to him.

* A female octoroon for example because anti racists always forget that 7 of the 8 grandparents of an octoroon were white non-existing. What a strange democracy! And that the creole is a non-existing

white, French or Spanish (born in the colonies. From Spanish Criollo). Octoroon famous in France: Alexandre Dumas Fils. The lady of the camellias.

Second example.

There exists in France a really singular pilgrimage, that of the Gipsies to the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.

In the beginning the pilgrimage of the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer was a druidic pilgrimage. Is the Catholic priest who celebrates today the mass of this pilgrimage for the Gipsies of the whole world, aware to act thus as a successor of the ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) of the days of Boadicea ?

Of course not!

He acts as a successor of his ancestors the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), but he is not aware of that, he is a good Christian.

The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) of the 16th century are therefore in a way orphans or abandoned children in the search for their missing parents. Druidicist is besides a word which would be perhaps more right than that of druid to designate our spiritual ancestors of this time; but this handful of druidicists, by its love of druidism, gradually succeeded in approaching it; by gathering about it increasingly precise knowledge, and by freeing themselves little by little from the ambient Christian religiosity of the time.

HERE TO WHAT POINT THE DRUIDS OF THE 16TH CENTURY (AND OF THE 21st ) ARE DESCENDED FROM THE DRUIDS OF 2150 YEARS AGO.

NEW DRUIDS.

In 1716 Pierre des Maizeaux (French Huguenot writer exiled in London, disciple of Pierre Bayle, author, translator or editor of many works) made it possible to save what remained druidism from the decline, by publishing the complete works of his friend John Toland (1670 - 1722) in this field.

The life having gradually moved away John Toland from his original Catholicism, this genuine Irish had begun to gather patiently and little by little various pieces of this puzzle; hidden here and there in the stories and legends of Ireland, in the books of history, the writings of the Greek authors of Antiquity; (from where the famous “ eubages,” which is in reality only a typically “Greek” distortion of the word “vate” after a whole cascade of transcriptions); in certain traditions of popular Christianity, and so on.

This reform in extremis of the druidism developed initially primarily in the adopted country of John Toland (with the Druid Order founded in 1717).

It is particularly to John Toland , made famous by Pierre des Maizeaux that we owe therefore our rational and positive approach of the problem of the initiations. Because, let us remind it, as showed well to us, definitively, John Toland, initiation awards no mysterious or supernatural magic power. You leave an initiation exactly as you had entered it. You are after an initiation exactly in the same state as two minutes before.

Initiation has only three purposes.

1. To test the characters and the qualities (bodily and mental health, etc.) to see whether they are sufficient (we would say medical examination or tests today).

2. To check knowledge, up to what point the given teaching was remembered (we would speak today about mastery of philosophy).

3.To give an opportunity to reflect about the major problems of every life (sense of the death, commitment, to where we can go…?)

What the Christians call a retreat if our memory serves us well.

And that’s all!

There is nothing magic, mysterious, or supernatural, in all that. Let us repeat it with John Toland!

John Toland, born Catholic, having lived as a freethinker like Pierre des Maizeaux *, died as a true druid, a druid conscious of being such since he refused the assistance of the Christian ministers of religion according to his friend Pierre des Maizeaux.

QUESTION: HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION?

HOW MANY DRUIDICISTS ARE THERE IN THE WORLD?

The double membership is a well-known historical phenomenon o which paganism in general and Druidism in particular lend themselves particularly well. It is only a problem when one of the religions

involved is an intolerant monolatry. There is a problem only when one of the religions involved is an intolerant (pleonasm my spellchecker says) monolatry.

Since polytheism is by definition tolerant, not exclusive, and also by definition admitting the validity of all kinds of other warships, contrary to the monolatries characteristic of current mass religions, no other worship, no other god (agnostos theos/sive deus sive dea) could completely dislike true druidicist. The real druidicist always strives on the contrary to the most complete irenicism towards other cults. This attitude of intellectual openness, comparable to open secularism in political matters, often leads to a kind of double membership with regard to the basic druidicist. This is what John Toland very precisely advocated for his pantheists (in his pantheisticon) besides, but for other reasons it is true (the fear of persecution).

The current number of druidicists is therefore difficult to determine because of the well-known historical phenomenon of double membership, which lends itself particularly well to paganism in general and particularly druidism. There is a problem only when one of the religions in question is an exclusive monolatry.

As I see that you do not understand or that you are pretending, I will give you some examples.

-Free double membership. Some Jews of the 1st century of our era were also Christian. History books call them Judeo-Christians.

-Forced double membership (under penalty of exile). Some 16th century Spanish Jews, the Marranos, were both Jewish (secretly at home) and Catholic (on Sunday at mass).

-“Forced” double membership. Islam allows its followers to display all outward signs of dominant religious conformity if they have reason to fear for their lives. This is the principle known as taqiyya (suras 3.28,16.106). Historically especially practiced by the Shiites living under Sunni domination but Sunnis can also have recourse to it as in the case of the Moriscos still in Spain. Arthur de Gobineau, in 1865, in his work Religions and philosophies, seems to be one of the first Western authors to describe the principle of this religious concealment.

-Half-free double membership. Many 11th-century Icelanders were officially Christians in their foreign relations or in their dealings with foreign countries, but remained pagan privately or in their homes (decision of the godi Thorgeir Thorkelsson).

-Completely free double membership.

The cohabitation of Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan since the 8th century is an excellent example of this double observance still observable today, and it even has a name: shinbutsu shugo. According to the circumstances, the average Japanese is either Buddhist or Shintoist. In fact, most Japanese celebrate weddings and births following Shinto rites and funerals following Buddhist rites. In Japan many Buddhist temples have a space dedicated to kami within their walls, when the kami are not themselves considered as emanations of the different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

-Double membership totally free. Some current druidicists but there is no name in old Celtic to designate this kind ofwithin their walls, when the kami are not themselves considered as emanations of the different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

-Double membership totally free. Some current druidicists but there is no name in old Celtic to designate this kind of religious practice. Of course!

* About the philosophical opinions of Pierre des Maizeaux we know few things in reality, except that he seems to agree with the philosophical deist or free thinker current since 1699 and that in 1700 his writing audacities frightened. Jacques BERNARD who suppressed his reports in the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres ).

NOTICES ABOUT THE RITUALS.

“Man cannot live by bread alone , he also lives by rituals! ” “The deepest instinct, perhaps, of the Celtic races, it is their desire to fathom the unknown” (Ernest Renan).

It is not us who, overnight , will give, instantaneously, or through correspondence, the solution to the great mysteries of the Life or of the Divinity.

The druidic Ollotouta not being a secret society or a society with mysteries, but an association having a history, some goals, some persons in charge, we can say here a few words of them.

It goes without saying the druidic Ollotouta does not claim and has never claimed to take advantage of any direct derivation from the former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht). We leave this deception to others. Historically speaking, such a direct derivation would be impossible. After the Roman conquest, the genuine druidism degenerated quickly then, finally, merged in medieval Christianity.

The battle of Arfderydd, where the Christians (Gwrgi and Peredur, sons of Eliffer) of Rhydderch Hael (Ryderc, Ryderch, Rodarcus, Roderc, Rederech, Ridiarcus) king of Rheged and of the Strathclyde (main town Alclut , currently Dumbarton); massacred the last pagans of Gwenddolau son of Ceidio, prince of Longtown in the Cumberland, and patron of Merlin, in 573; indeed was the death knell for the last druids independent from Christianity , in this part of the world.

It is therefore necessary to have the integrity to admit that there was a hiatus, a break irreconcilable with an intact spiritual heritage. Rather than to cling on a hypothetical derivation from a druid to a druid, since the time of great free and independent Celtica until today, it is better to simply suppose a succession of disappearances/revivals. Disappearance each time a druid would die or that a group of pagan was denounced to the ruling Christians (the emperor or the St. Martin of all kinds)… revival each time a simple dagolitos picked up the torch and organized again ceremonies of the kind eisteddfodau (equated, of course, with “sabbats”) according to his memories or these of his close relations.

No written document was discovered, giving a report on the druidic doctrines, making it possible to suppose in a certain way the basic philosophical line of the religious beliefs of the Celtic societies. The famous bardic triads of the island of [Great] Britain are a forgery due to Edward Williams known as Iolo Morgannwg. Some people point out that the insular Celts profited from an appreciably different situation, in spite of a Roman occupation of the country, for three centuries, but limited in space, since excluding the north of Scotland and Ireland.

Specialists underlined the relative youth of certain texts and showed that the used symbolic system during various ceremonies was without ancient historical precedent, proved. What to say indeed of the anachronism consisting in holding up the sword of Arthur, more or less discussed character, but, in any case younger of at least five centuries, in the best of the assumptions, regarding the ritual of Antiquity?

Arthur would have been born around 470/475 and would be originating in Wales, or the west of England, or still the south of Scotland (Arthwys mab Mar ?); but the exact site of his court, known under the name of Camelot, remains a mystery. He would have repelled the invasion of Saxon in the beginning of the 6th century although he was never crowned king. Indeed, the chronicle by Nennius (9th century) designates him only as being a dux bellorum (war leader) fighting “with the Breton kings.” And the medieval Welsh texts never give him the title of king, but call him Amerauder (“emperor”). Some specialists make him a romanized great landowner having formed as it was then usual at the time, his own troop of buccellarii (etymologically : cookie eaters. Designates the member of a private militia fed by his master with a bread of best quality. At the end of the 6th century, soldiers in the personal service of a general, gathered in a specific corps). Then having come to the assistance of the Breton kings against the Saxons. As of the 4th century indeed, the corps of buccellarii were mainly made up of cavalrymen.

THEIR HISTORY IN GREAT BRITAIN.

It is only around 1861 that the Welsh bard William ab Ithel (1811-1862) published, in English language, the translation of the theological triads of the book of bardism (Barddas); a counterfeit gathering various totally made up forgeries due to the hand of the forger of genius who was Edward

Williams, born in 1747 in the Glamorganshire, died in 1826. Bricklayer, he is, under the name of Iolo Morgannwg, the true founder of the current Gorsedd Beird Ynis Prydain.

According to certain specialists, this work would find its source, not in the Historical Triads, dating back the 12th and 13th centuries, thoroughly studied by Rachel Bromwich but in the compilation of Asian philosophical systems. The language use for these theological triads is anyway that of the 18th century, but it is true that certain words which were used in this text arose from the old Welsh. The joined together materials would have been gathered by the collecting copyist Edward Davydd of Margam (at Raglan), and, still according to the same philologists, in a time not going back beyond the middle of the 16th century.

According to Iolo Morgannwg, they would have been the precepts of ancient druidic wisdom. Actually, nothing comes in support of this thesis, and various concrete points refute it inside the collection.

Moreover various Welsh words used by Morgannwg Williams are stamped with religious contents in conformity with the Welsh Methodist terminology, what he didn’t realize it seems. In any event, the writing down of the true Welsh triads, works of the copyist monks in Llancarvan; as Rachel Bromwich showed it, had already been the opportunity , for the latter, to deeply deteriorate the spirit and even the letter of what appeared to them to have been the bases of a concurrent religion.

The hermeticism of some expressions comes besides, it seems, from an erroneous translation, considering the evolution of the language and the deep ignorance of the ancient soul, or of intellectual mechanism which resulted from it.

Ten centuries, at best, separates the designers and the scribes! To form an opinion, it is only to observe the extraordinary evolution of a language and of the ways of seeing or of perceiving the life in fifty small years. The French nation, which has been a great nation, for example committed suicide in fifty years according to the Parisian chronicler Eric Zemmour. Our personal opinion being that it experimented its apogee indubitably between 1914 and 1962. Or 1970.

After too many people came there after having asked not what they could do for France but after having asked what France could do for them. In short, some Kennedy BUT IN THE WRONG WAY! To profit from her and not out of love for the France of Napoleon Lafayette or Joan of Arc, of her language (of her languages, moreover, if we consider that Occitan and Catalan are part of the same Gallo-Romance ensemble, to which we can add Breton as for the root Gallo of the Gallo-Romance) of her cheeses ((365 according to chapter 97 Book XI in the Natural History by Pliny), her Cockerel cooked in beer, her regional costumes, her history finally (which did not start in 1789 NOR IN 1848 NOR WITH YOU DEAR READERS) but in 486 at Soissons with Clovis (and the end of the Roman Gaul of Syagrius).

NB. As for the regional languages which also make up the richness of the French cultural heritage, you must add Corsica (Oh the Muvrini) the Franco-Provencal in Lyons in Savoy or Switzerland, and finally Alsace in terms of culinary heritage (sauerkraut, flammekueche, wines), architectural (her half-timbered houses), clothing (FEMALE Alsatian costume).

The genuine Welsh Triads ( Welsh Trioedd Ynys Prydein, what means literally “Triads of the island of [Great] Britain”), are a group of texts appearing in medieval manuscripts, in which are preserved fragments of the former Welsh culture relating to the Mabinogion, to the heroes of legends like Culhwch and Olwen, as to the old genealogies, or the traditions concerning historical characters like Macsen Wledig, Vortigern, etc. They are lists of characters grouped by three according to a common characteristic (example the three fair princes of the island of Britain: Owain mab Urien, Rhun mab Maelgwn, Rhufawn mab Dewrarth Wledig, the Radiant).

According to Rachel Bromwich these triads in their current form date back at the latest to the 9th century, but their origin could date back to the 6th-7th century. It seems these triads were born among Welsh poets of the time as a mnemotechnical process (a regrouping by topic) to remind of the historical and semi-historical accounts or the traditional stories. The triad is sometimes followed by a text detailing them or developing their legend.

The oldest collection appears in the MS No. 16 of the Peniarth collection , preserved today in the National Library of Wales (Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru). Specialists make it dating back to the third quarter of the 13th century and it contains 46 of the 86 triads published by Rachel Bromwich (on a total of 96).

Another manuscript of the collection coming from Peniarth is the No. 45 (written about 1275). It contains particularly the White Book of Rhydderch (Welsh : Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) as well as the Red book of Hergest (Welsh : Llyfr Coch Hergest). The story Culhwch ac Olwen comprises thus several other triads.

The triads 70 to 80 come from the MS No. 47 of the Peniarth collection, the 81 to 86 from Peniarth 50.

As for the triads 87 to 96, they consist of a mixture of additions which appear for the first time in one or the other of the late manuscripts.

Iolo Morganwg rewrote at the end of the 18th century several of the old triads in an evolved form, with the insertion of new material.

THEIR HISTORY ON THE OLD CONTINENT.

My surprise was big while disembarking a little as an American, in Paris, in 1977, to discover that there also existed in the spot an active "druidic" movement .

In 1885 the Russian Henry Lizeray indeed took control of the work of Toland translated by Pierre des Maizeaux, of Lamartine, and of all the other Celtomaniacs of the time; by structuring this revival movement, up to that point passably diffuse, not to say muddled by “baptizing” it Druidic and National Church. The death of Henry Lizeray shattered all these efforts and the movement was quickly disaggregated.

A majority like Phileas Lebesgue for example, continued nevertheless to work here and there, in a disorganized manner, but still wholly in keeping with the action of Henry Lizeray. Others, on the other hand, moved away very quickly from the spirit of his work, and founded a multitude of groves which had hardly only the name druidic.

Their list is long.

In the case of Phileas Lebesgue for example, it was the BARDIC College of Gauls (in 1933), ancestor of the current College of the druids, bards and ovates of Gauls (publication: Ar Gael) in spite of the irregular or in doubtful conditions, replacement, by Paul Bouchet.

What is possible, all not having been lost, it is to carry out a rebuilding of the ancient religious druidism, while adapting it to the modern world. Even if there had not been Romans and Christians, the druids in lineal inheritance would nevertheless have been very different from those of the time of the great free and independent Celtica of Ambicatus.

Who, for example, could support without laughing that the Christian priest of today has exactly and on everything the same ideas as the first apostles of the rabbi Jesus the Nazorean, if the latter , moreover, existed really?

A Christianity which today uses at least five different languages: Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and vernacular language (amen, alleluia, Kyrie eleison, and so on).

This is quite normal besides! Two thousand years passed since, languages changed, empires collapsed (Roman, Turkish,Inca… and the French nation of Lafayette itself is no longer; which, however, has been a great nation). Science and technology changed… everything evolved! Even the average size of individuals.

New dominant ideologies replaced the old ones. Because there is always a dominant ideology somewhere , even and especially in the head of the intellectuals who believe (or claim?) to be free mind. Is not Pierre des Maizeaux who wants!

The movement started with what it is agreed to call Celtomania: from the forgeries of the Italian Giovanni Nanni alias Annius of Viterbo published in Rome in 1497 (he claims to be based on fragments of a priest of Belus called Orosius) to the Astree of Honore d'Urfe through…

Amadis (last born of the Breton cycle published in 1508).

Jean Lemaire de Belges (illustrations of Troy 1509).

Guillaume Postel (History Since the Flood 1552).

Jean Picard, of Toutry (De prisca 1556).

Guillaume du Bellay (Epitome of the Antiquity 1556).

Pierre Ramus (Liber de moribus veterum 1559).

Francis Hotman (his book published in Geneva in 1573 and dedicated to the Prince Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, duke of Bavaria).

Etienne Forcadel (De imperio and philosophia 1579).

Pierre de Ronsard (Discourse on the equity 1584).

Noel Taillepied (History of the State and Republic of druids 1585).

Not forgetting the fairy tales by Mrs. De Murat and Mlle Lheritier, Paul Pezron (see his Antiquities of 1706, Dom Jacques Martin (the Religion 1727), Abbe Jean-Baptiste Dubos ( A critical history of the establishment of the French monarchy 1734).

Etc., etc., etc.

Since the 16th century, i.e., since the printed diffusion of the Bible, Christianity discovers little by little the Judaism or the Old Testament and returns there. Well, our Old Testament to us in fact in this process, they are… the History books.

Some traces of the religious mentality of our ancestors could survive to us, as well in folklore as archeology or History (not forgetting its auxiliary sciences, toponymy etymology, and so on).

Compared to what remains to be discovered, the total of information collected in connection with this ancient civilization, remains weak, and this, in spite of remarkable work of scholarship, such as those of Stuart Piggott, Kenneth Jackson, Nora K. Chadwick…

This gap does not prevent some authors besides from abundantly publishing on the question, whereas they do not have even the basic references. The true neo-druids, themselves, show much more humility and, consequently, seriousness, in their statements.

The total return, by reconstruction, to the former druidism, is an impossibility, a mind dead end . The only problem is that of knowing in all that, what should to be kept, what should be rejected, what should be adapted. To sort, such is the true problem of current neo-druidism.

We do not affirm that our group is ancient or dates back to the former druidism by uninterrupted even secret, derivation. We believe nevertheless in its value and its interest. It goes without saying that the rituals reconstructed by the study of our “archives” (notes of the 18th century, history books of the 17th or 21st , reports of the elders of the various previous attempts, folklore…) present only a symbolic value; and that they do not claim in any way to reproduce something having really existed in this way, in every detail. It is simply a question of honoring again , by a certain number of gestures, words, and attitudes, the historical antique spiritual inheritance of the peoples of this disappeared Atlantis of our distant ancestors.

The rituals which follow are the result of a long history, because druidism did not stop at once beneath the walls of Alesia on the Continent or with St. Patrick in Ireland. Two thousand years of more or less underground evolution, since the end of the Celtic independence, but to our time.

Certain rituals disappeared completely, or became obsolete. The elude (excommunication, cf Irish eludach) rituals, for example. According to Caesar (BG. Book VI, chapter 13) it was in any event to be very rare.

“If anyone, either in a private or public capacity, has not submitted to their decision, they interdict him from the sacrifices. This among them is the heaviest punishment. Those who have been thus interdicted [from the sacrifices] are esteemed in the number of the impious and the criminal: all shun them, and avoid their society and conversation, lest they receive some evil from their contact; nor is justice administered to them when seeking it, nor is any dignity bestowed on them.”

Only the ritual of elude lifting (of excommunication lifting ) reached us, with great difficulty besides.

It is supposed that the ritual of elute was to resemble approximately that of the execrations of which we found the tablets.

New ritual ones, on the other hand, were worked out little by little to answer unknown problems, two thousand years ago, but which, considering the circumstances, ended up arising more and more; the conversion rituals for example, which were copied from the naming ceremonies.

Naturally, as everyone shared our faith, two thousand years ago, the problem of the conversions did not arise.

It is around the year 1000 and in Wales that this difficulty had to arise. Several centuries of theological or symbolic trial and mistake were needed for finally being able to answer it in a satisfactory way.

This new ritual, borrowed obviously from the new religions of then, was incorporated into the various naming ceremonies which existed already. The other rituals finally survived to us, but deeply reworked in various circumstances over the centuries and enriched by later contributions, more recent of several hundred years; from where various anachronisms obviously intended to answer these new challenges caused by the cohabitation with the Christian totalitarianism. Middle Ages and 18th century therefore were periods of intense creation in the field of the rituals. The informed eye therefore will locate quickly in our rituals, what does not date back La Tene, two thousand five hundred years ago, but these periods. The contributions of the 20th century also are betrayed generally by their too great historical quality. If there had been only the tradition, there would have been much more contradictions or fuzziness. They are in reality probably hypercorrections of Celticist historians, in love with our cause, introduced by them into our handbooks (auraicept) to replace in them obscure or become misunderstood passages.

The vocabulary too, reflects the various layers of evolution over the centuries well (free and independent Celtica, Roman conquest, Christian Middle Ages, nationalist, atheistic or of leftist 19th century).

The starting vocabulary is, of course, the Old Celtic.

The Roman conquest and the ousting of the Celtic language by Latin earned us, of course, a massive and sudden burst of Latin words, to replace the Celtic terms become obsolete. The translation of the poems from the Celtic language to Latin then from Latin to vernacular language is besides the explanation of many oddities or awkwardnesses of some of our rituals.

There was either mistranslation, or bad translation, or shift in meaning.

Let us take an example to illustrate our remark.

Our rituals often speaks about Usher, Investigator or Inquisitor.

You may, of course, find contestable the use of these terms, of Latin origin, like most of our vocabulary besides.

In Ireland, our texts speak rather about dorsaide (Dorosaiiados in Old Celtic) i.e., literally “gatekeeper druid.” The expression is not very good either! It is a kind of usher charged with informing the king about those who come at home. This type of druid was the person in charge of the gates of the fortress and it fell on to him, not to act, but to inform the king about all those who, high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), warriors or craftsmen, wanted to enter his home.

The king was equipped with a silver arm and his usher only had one eye, informs us the introduction of the Gaelic story entitled “the fate of the Children of Tuireann” (Oidhe Chloinne Tuireann) where we thus find the old Indo-European topic of the one-eyed and of the one-armed man.

In the Gaelic story of the Intoxication of the Ulaid (Mesca Ulad), these ushers, who are two, are called Crom Deroil and Crom Darail, they were some disciples of the druid Cathbad/Catubatuos.

The gatekeeper, Gaelic dorsaide, are thus, but in a much worthier way, the Celtic equivalent of the Latin nomenclator, this secretary with the infallible memory who, on the public way, whispered to the rich Roman patrician the names he could have forgotten. The difference is in the level of the function: the dorsaide is a druid whereas the nomenclator is a slave.

Let us leave the society of the kings and of the secular world for that of the druids and of the sacred one. In the ceremonies of the Confluence in Lugdunum (Lugh’s hill), the druid fulfilling the role of investigating gatekeeper was called Inquisitor in Latin. Romans having been apparently more sensitive to his aspect “usher responsible for getting information” than to his function “herald responsible for announcing.” At the time of the devoted ceremonies, in Lyon’s peninsula, at the confluence of the Rhone and of the Saone River, this herald-inquisitor-gatekeeper-usher-nomenclator (in short, Gaelic dorsaide) officiated on behalf of two other druids called arca and judex in Latin.

The reform worked out at the end of the 18th century earned us the massive intrusion of Gaelic terms or references and even of passages entirely written in this language. The Gaelic language was in fashion in the 18th century (see the Ossian of Mcpherson).These in fact relatively isolated elements in our ritual are easily locatable.

The result of all that, of this whole history, it is that we can find in the same ritual some Old Celtic vocabulary dating back to La Tene; Latin words, words or passages in Gaelic languages or in other Celtic languages; even some notions and problems much more modern dating back to the 19th century.

These texts are therefore in fact, as we saw it previously, a compilation of our records (handwritten notices of the last century, books of history of the 16th century, folklore, remarks from celtizing experts in linguistics, and others).

Reminder. The rituals that we have reached us mutilated, distorted, christianized. It is therefore necessary to improve them. ALL THE PEOPLE HAVING REMARKS TO EXPRESS IN CONNECTION WITH THE RITUALS REPORTED HEREAFTER ARE INVITED TO CONTACT THE DRUIDIC OLLOTOUTA TO SIGNAL WHAT IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO ADD , WHAT IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO WITHDRAW, WHAT IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO CHANGE, AND HOW.

Text crossed out, erased, text, found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau in one of the books of his library.

PARTICULAR CASE: THE OATH OF THE ATECTOS 1).

(From tectos roof. Person who lives under the same roof).

To do sworn or signed today by every adult person non-member of the Community of believers, but settled or working in a way or another within it (more or less a long time), especially when this person is a member of the people of one Book, and when he is monolatrous, or if it is more than a simple agnostic, an activist godless, aggressive and proselyte. N.B. If the Breton ancestors of the Welshmen of today had been as careful with respect to the first Roman tradesmen or to their first Saxon allies ; they would not have needed then a Cadwallader or an Arthur, even a Merlin, to save their (national) soul-mind.

I swear by the god or the gods that my people worship, on the angels or the jins who guard my person, or on my honor if I am atheistic, what follows.

No constraint as regards religion! The religious tolerance is to make so that, on this earth, and during the time that we will live on it, even if don’t agree about what there is in the heaven - if there is a god, several or which – we are not forced to make it a hell.

We must on the contrary try to live together most intelligently possible, and for this reason it is necessary that each one makes efforts.

Although remaining always absolutely free to believe what I want (freedom of thought as well as of opinion) and at home to have privately the religious practices I want between agreeing adults; I commit to respect the spirituality or the public rituals of the members of the human community having agreed to keep me, to welcome me, to help me, to lodge me.

I commit to do nothing to develop on them an influence or to incite them to change their opinion in this field, neither criticism neither pressure nor coercion.

In order to express a minimum of gratitude towards the members of the community in question and to thank them for having allowed me to remain on their premises in correct conditions of life, not profiting from all the civil rights of the citizen of this country, but of all the human rights in general; I commit, in the only order to try to learn how to know them,to listen or to read at least 2 times each month their message as their teaching; and, although being absolutely free deep down in my heart to continue to believe what I want without changing my opinion in this field; I commit to express in these circumstances, by courtesy, the largest respect towards their spirituality or their rites.

Every truth in fact is relative, because it always forms part of a broader truth; because the discovery or the brain which produced it is itself limited, because of the fragmentary or depending on the ones on the others, nature, of the aspects with which it deals, of the tools it uses, as well as because of its own subjectivity. Since it is only the product of an uninterrupted since million years evolution. All these contingencies prevent it in particular, while at the same time it reaches a certain maturity today, to claim infallibility. But the mistake is the shortest way which leads to the scientific truth, because the scientific truth as the philosopher said it, “is only a mistake which was corrected.”

An education worthy of this name must therefore teach the existence of multiple relative religious truths, because they are true only in the eyes of those who believe in them and the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth!

I therefore commit to bring up my children in this spirit of tolerance, no constraint as regards religion, to bring up them in the respect as in the comprehension of the spirituality or of the external demonstrations of the others, and in particular of those who became my hosts and my guards by definition; their State being intended to ensure peace for all its citizens and even for the foreign non-citizens living on its land, in compliance with its laws.

So that my children too may , in t turn thank the community which guards us, accepts us, lodges us or welcomes us, in a temporary, or unlimited way; I commit to incite my children to cherish and honor these ritual like a man can like his (new) homeland. No more no less!

In order to help the community in question and to thank it for his assistance, I commit to help it the best I can if necessary; for example, by taking part possibly in its defense, without being forced to do it for as much, or by accepting the tasks people will like to entrust to me in exchange.

Done in …on….

Signature.

1) On the linguistic level, to respect the grammar of the ancient Celt, we will distinguish.

Atectai: non-druidicist subjects, or citizens, when you speak about them as a community, of the remotest past or of the Antiquity. Atectos/a: when you speak about one of its members. Atectioi when there are several of them.

VENIAL CEREMONIES

(PRIVATE OR FAMILY RITUALS).

“The 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).

In our conception to uns, of the spirituality, unlike some others, the sacredness merges with the daily acts, and each act - even tiniest - can overflow with meaning. It is nevertheless certain gestures it is good to know, because they exist. They are the various key periods which mark the life of every true Celtic hearted or minded person ( let us not be stupidly racist) from his birth to his passage in the other world parallel to ours that we call commonly today Heaven. Some rituals relating to the stages of our life, and making it possible or emphasizing the integration of the individuals into a group such as the family, an age group, etc.

These acts are not necessary, because only sincerity is important in the eyes of our gods and goddesses, or fairies if this word is preferred, but they make possible to the one who practice them a greater harmony and a better communion with the higher forces which determine us.

Thus let us begin with the beginning, but let us not forget this. As we have had the opportunity to say it, we must in no way make the former druidism an absolute. It was not an end in itself. It did nothing but show the various possible ways to reach the divine one. Well, in the same way we must not make the rituals an absolute, they are only a means of helping to live, a means which has to be one day passed by a direct meeting with the divine one.

In the Irish druidic tradition, man was to cross six crucial stages in his life. These six periods or six columns of the life were the following ones.

Reconstructed Old Celtic Gaelic.

1.Noidenotaxeto Nàidendacht: earliest childhood of the infant.

2.Mapotaxeto Macdacht: childhood itself.

3.Geistlaxeto Gillacht: adolescence.

4.Ogiolagiato Hoclachus: youth (the young adulthood).

5.Senodageto Sendacht: the mature age.

6.Diexbliniceto Diblidecht: old age.

What is obvious, it is that, in the other peoples of the area at that time, the newborn was regarded as a true human being only starting from a certain age,when he was two or three years old perhaps. The age when he could start to speak. The proof: we find very few skeletons younger in the official cemeteries or necropolises. To give a name to the child become older as in the case of Lleu Llaw Gyffes in Wales (4th branch of the mabinogi) seems therefore to have been the first stage of the recognition as a full human being. We find some of them besides starting from this age in the cemeteries, with a certain number of jewels having, of course, an apotropaic value (amber necklaces, and others).

The purpose of the marriage was not the pleasure, its main object was not the union of two beings(why only two besides and not three or four or more like at the ancient Bretons according to Caesar, Book V chapter 14?) who enjoyed being together or went well together and therefore wanted to go into partnership in order to share the joys even possibly the sorrows, of the life.I fear that all that is only middle-class man sophisms of a sorcerer's apprentice , very indicative of the little in-depth intelligence of the intellectuals who control us, and which can also be noticed in other fields.

It is necessary for example to have the skimped mind of a Sulpician small middle-class man to believe that the marriage was instituted in the societies of Homo sapiens in order to allow human beings who love themselves to live together….

The absence of marriage never prevented human beings who love each other to live together if they really want it (once become adults). Moreover why to limit oneself to two persons only ? Polygamy, polygyny, polyandry, it belongs to each one to see BETWEEN AGREEING ADULTS (the only true

problem they are the children who could be born from these unions, and it is one of the main reasons besides perhaps having presided over the institution of the marriage all around the world).

This importance of the traditional family in the druidic spirituality is found besides in the famous formula of the High-Land’s oath, at least in the part which states to finish the sad destiny which will await the one who will not respect it. “

May I be cursed in my undertakings, family and property; may I never see my wife and children, father, mother, or relation; may I be killed in battle as a coward and lie without worthy of the name burial , in a strange land, far from the graves of my forefathers and kindred. May all this come across me if I break my oath.”

Distant echo of the famous and fatal oath sworn by the Celtic cavalry beneath the walls of Alesia. Caesar. Book VII, chapter 67: “The cavalry unanimously shout out, "That they ought to bind themselves by a most sacred oath, that he should not be received under a roof, nor have access to his children, parents, or wife, who shall …..”

The Greeks had not been mistaken there either who knew and the official marriages (of convenience ) and the semi-official marriages.

Now, of course, nothing prevents from combining business with pleasure, and to have both (natural love or marital love). It is besides rather imprudent to marry somebody for whom you have no minimal attraction and against your liking. It is rather advised to be at least attracted by him in a way or another.

The Celtic marriage was based on the philosophical principle of the attraction of the opposites (adiantu)

But as for us we do not implement the often practiced never admitted principle, being able to be stated as follows: “no freedom for the enemies of freedom,” because in this field as in many others we are rather of the opinion of the great French philosopher that was Voltaire who said “I disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.” We are thus not of those who refuse the difference quite to the contrary since we accept even those who refuse the difference, those who are heterophobic, for example……..

Let us say to conclude that the ideal it is not the love marriage, that the ideal it is not either the marriage of convenience, that the ideal it is the LOVE AND CONVENIENCE MARRIAGE OR CONVERSELY. A little like as regards religion besides, the alliance of the FAITH AND OF THE REASON. The faith enlightened by the Reason (see Christianity not mysterious by the Anglo-Irish high druid John Toland).

In the Greek Tribe-States, many religious practices were related to the home or the household.

The goal of the marriage, in the eyes of the traditional Celtic religion and of the secular laws, was therefore less pointless and much more serious, it was, by linking two beings in the same domestic worship, to give birth to a third one, ready to continue the worship of the gods especially honored in the family.Worships are indeed celebrated for the most venerated at home gods : their number varies according to the areas, even the individuals.

Some rituals accompany the great landmarks of the life: birth (amphidromia), wedding, death.

The gods in question are linked with all these events by prayers, offerings or sacrifices, organized around the altar which is devoted to them in the house.

These family traditions also have social functions; they incorporate the newcomers into the household, define the place of each one within the home and strengthen the solidarity of the group.

These rituals are open to women: they play an essential religious part there, particularly around maternity, marriage, welcoming in the home, reflection of their social role.

The various domestic worships remain, however, under the authority of the household head. For example, in the ritual of the amphidromia which accompanies the birth of a child, it is the father who carries the child around the altar , thus giving him his legitimacy and his social recognition within the family.

A model of white terra cotta figurine from the Allier (France) tends towards proving that the Celts also practiced this rite. The statuette in question, a kind of“Christmas crib figure of Provence,” represents a woman carrying on a cushion apparently, a naked male child and holding in her right hand a globe, symbol of power. Her knee bent indicates that this woman walks. The clothing she wears are of Greek type and dates back to the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 3rd century before our era. She is indeed covered with a long tunic, the chiton, with over a large rectangle of fabric, the himation, making possible folds of the fabric. The knot known as of Herakles which decorates her chest is that the Greek woman wore the day of her wedding , in order to get healthy and strong children. But this statuette does not date back to the 3rd century before our era and was not discovered in Greece; it belongs to a very appreciated of the Celtic natives series in the 2nd century of our era. Were there therefore matrons who, covered with a fitting dress, officiated at each birth by following such a ritual?

This white terra cotta model of figurine lets us suppose that.

The destiny of a human being is played out indeed a few days hardly after his birth. It is the moment besides that in the legends the fairies godmothers or madonnas and child (mopates) choose generally to determine the destiny of the infants of which they have the responsibility. Because all occurs indeed sometimes in the life as if certain infants had received that day a true rain of gifts (Old Norse gaefa) or curses (Old Irish gaesa).

The arrival of a child in a Celtic-minded family was therefore signaled by a similar tradition. The birth itself established indeed only the blood relationships; the public recognition constituted the moral and religious bond. It took place little time after the birth [ the ninth day in Rome, the tenth in Greece, the twelfth or the tenth in India].

This day, the parents invited the family, some witnesses, and offered a sacrifice to the gods.The child was presented to the good fairies of the family; the father carried it in his arms and went several times around the family altar (3 times???). What therefore involved an ad hoc lay out of the rooms in the house.

This small circumambulation (doisil, deiseil, deiseal in Ireland; for comparison in the tawaf performed around the Kaaba in Mecca, there are of them 7) around the altar dedicated to the most honored gods of the family, had a double purpose ; firstly, to purify the child; i.e., to wash him from the stain to which he had been subjected according to the suppositions of the Ancients, only because of the pregnancy, with water in which vervain had soaked (Pliny, Natural history, XXV, 106-107); then to introduce him into the family worship. As from this moment, the child was allowed in this kind of secret society or small church which people one called venia: the family. He practiced its rituals, he was ready to say its prayers; he honored its ancestors , and later would become himself an ancestor honored by it.

EDITOR’S NOTE. LET US BE CLEAR!

Nobody knows how many days after the birth such a ceremony (amphidromia) took place among Celts. What we know of Celtic Antiquity shows us only the extreme concern of assigning to the legitimate child a more than symbolic value; by subjecting it, a few days after its birth, to a ceremony which offered to the father to recognize it, to place it in the space of the home from which it resulted; and to accept it in this domestic space by laying down it in the cradle from where it would be then “raised” in all the meaning of the word. All what we also know, it is that they performed in addition or instead of the lustration with water in which vervain had soaked (Pliny, Natural history, XXV, 106-107), a variant of the ritual consisting in baptizing (beforehand?) the child in the water of a large river of a river or of a spring; in order to purify it or more exactly to make its purity be recognized or to make it perish. Such is indeed the only explanation of the names of men like Rhenogenus; the Celt Viridomaros was known besides as “Son of the Rhine” according to Propertius. According to Amadeus THIERRY (History, second part, chapter first, quoting the emperor Julian the Apostate), in Belgium the Rhine was concretely worshipped, and it is this god (like the Boyne in Ireland) who tested the fidelity of the wives. When a husband from which the wife came to be confined, had some reasons

to doubt his paternity, he took the newborn child, placed it on a board, and exposed it to the current of the river. If the board and its invaluable burden survived freely (like Sargon or Moses), the test was considered favorable.

The ritual inspired besides to an unknown Greek poet these some lines of verse which deserve to find a place here.

“The brave Celts test their children in the jealous Rhine, and none regards himself as being the child's father until he sees it washed by that venerated river. At once, when the babe has glided from its mother's lap and sheds its first tears, the father himself lifts it up and places it on his shield, caring nothing for its suffering for he does not feel for it like a father until he sees it judged by the bath in the river, the test of conjugal fidelity.The mother, suffering new pangs added to those of childbirth, even though she knows him to be the child's true father, waits in fear and trembling the pronouncement of the river” (GREEK ANTHOLOGY. According to the palatine MS published by Friedrich Christian Jacobs. DESCRIPTIVE EPIGRAMS. Nº 125).

We find besides also in Aristotle Politics VII, 2,5; an evocation of these two types of ceremony for the new-born babies. “ It is customary with many of the barbarians either to dip their children in rivers when the water is cold [second type of ritual]; either to clothe them very slightly [first type of ritual, that which is practiced at home ], as among the Celts.”

To conclude the last word comes down nevertheless to the mother who murmurs in the right ear of the infant the name that the family chose for him as well as the name of the deities of the family.

For this primitive baptism, the ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), substituted little by little that which appears below and we await now for the age of reason of the child (seven years) to proceed to a confirmation of this first amphidromia or naming ceremony.

Among ancient Celts the custom in fact was to add to the individual name or first name a patronymic or matronymic name pointing out that of one’s father or mother. Generally, people confined themselves to substitute for the flexional ending of the paternal (or maternal) name the ending genus, gnus, cnus. As in the Irish inscriptions in oghamic characters where we find for example the patronyms Coima-gni or Corba-gni (in the genitive).

Anman esti anmon: the name, it is the soul! Below a short list of some first names (formerly besides they were just names quite simply) for such a ceremony. Of course, such a list is far from being complete, the ideal would be that there are 365 of them. Everyone is therefore invited to rack one’s brains to supplement it.

Female first names

Aemer Aileenn Alaisia Aoife Amber Arian-Rod Aufania Banuta Brangaine Brigit Britannia Bronwen Cassidy Celtine Cordelia Corentina Damona Dana Derbfogail Derbforgail Dervoguilla Deirdre Dorine/Daireann Dub-lacha Eeve Emir Enid Eponine Erin Etainne Fedelma Fiona Fionnuala Gaefa Gaelica Glenda Guinevere Gwendoline Gwenn Gwenthyd Hypatia Hyperoche Iseult Iona Jennifer Joyce Kelly Chiomara Laodice Leslie Liban Macha Malvina Meredith Meryl Mirene Mireann/Muireann Môna Morgan Muirgen (January 27th) Muriel Nabia Noreia Norica Nehalennia Niniann Olwenn Rose-Martha Sabrina Samara Sadv Shannon Sue-Elev Sylevia Sorcha Tara Ulidia Veleda Yvette.

Male first names

Abaris Aed Albioric Amyntas Angus Arar Ardan Argantonius Armel Arar Arthur Baile Barry Bob-Derg Brandon Brendan Briac Brian Bricius Camulogenus Cary Cesard Chero (Ceraunus) Combutis Conan Coran Corentinus Craig Deiotarus Dermot Eburovic Eogan Erec Eric (for a posthumous son) Ferdead Fergus Fiannamail Finn Finnbar Forgall Gaileoin Gawain Gildas Gilla Glenn Golven Gwenn Hoel Ibar/Ivor Irvin Joyce Kevin Kiaran Lailoken Lancelot Leary Leo Leonorius Lesly Luwarn Logan Lugaid Luernius Mael Malcolm Maclow Maine Mariccus Marvin Maugan Meredith Merlin Meryl Morann Morgan Nate Neil Nolan Olen Orestorius Ortiagon Oscar Ossian Owen Ronan Ryan Scott Sullivan Tibato Tristan Virgil Yvain Yvo.

ANMENACTON *. CONFIRMATION OF THE AMPHIDROMIA OR NAMING CEREMONY.

(As from the age when the boy or the girl is seven years old only, since it is when they were 7 years old that our great heroes - Cuchulainn, Curoi, etc. - took up arms . In any event that also corresponds to the age of reason , so… We speak about anmenacton for children, but the word anuanacton is used when they are adults).

Leaving aside the infancy , the first stages of the life (age columns called Mapotaxeto and Geistlaxeto in Old Celtic) inserted indeed the individual in a society of which the essential characteristic was that it was immersed permanently in the sacred. All the writers of Antiquity indeed agree to recognize the extreme religiosity of the Celts. To the well-known account by Caesar who reports that the Celts are a people very devoted to the religious practices (admodum dedita religionibus), it is indeed necessary to add these of Titus-Livius 1) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2).

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

‘They differ in this from almost all other nations, that they do not permit their children to approach them openly until they are grown up so as to be able to bear the service of war; and they regard it as indecorous for a son of boyish age to stand in the public in the presence of his father” (Caesar, B.G.Book VI, chapter 18).

The age of reason being reached when the boy or the girl is seven years old, the neo-druidism envisages consequently a second amphidromia or naming ceremony, confirming the first, at this moment of the life of its dagolitoi (believers), for the host family or the feeding parents possible (godfather and godmother?) chosen by the biological parents for simple adoption (altram/altrom) in case of misfortune.

Seven years old is the age besides when Gaston Phebus considered that you could become a page. But it goes without saying it was, of course, to exist formerly something before as we could see it.

In the Vedic religion, this ceremony corresponds to the upanayana. The upanayana is the most important ritual of the life of the male Aryan, it informs the seven-year-old child that he is now useful for the society, that he forms part of it fully.

It is then necessary to choose for the young person a couple of feeding parents (muimme and aite) being able to be a second family for him if necessary.

The purpose of this tradition was indeed to offer to the child a second family, ready to protect it if the need were felt some. Because among the Celts the cohesion of the clan was always strengthened by the custom consisting in sending a child, even if it were not an orphan, in the home of a distant relative , of an ally or vassal; so that he raises it and educates it as his own son or his own daughter, so as to develop a feeling of loyalty to the clan as strong as blood relationship.

The one who crossed this ritual is regarded as “twice born” or “born again” (an ategnatus in Celtic language ) but this second gestation before new birth is of a spiritual nature.

The anmanacton, or anuanacton * on the Continent, is incontestably the oldest of our rituals. It is always preferable indeed that the first priestly class gives some rules to the second, that of the warriors, even to the third one , the producing class. That it imposes on them rules of life respectful of nature and of others , in short some bits of deontology. This naming ceremony is therefore the opportunity for the officiating druid to venture, in connection with the future of the child, one or more gaesa, having at least morally to lead its destiny. People call that today some good pieces of advice.

We use for that as for the lustrations following the birth (amphidromia) , water in which some vervain soaked (Pliny, Natural history, XXV, 106-107) but in Celtic land every (not polluted of course) river can

symbolize the water mother (Matra/Matrona) whose simple contact washes of all the stains. As in the case of the famous Irish river known as the Boinne certain thermal springs were even supposed to punish the perjurers or the disloyal persons according to the Panegyric of Constantine XXI-XXII.

“Rightly, therefore, have you honored those most venerable shrines with such great treasures that they do not miss their old ones, any longer. Now may all the temples be seen to beckon you to them, and particularly our Apollo, whose boiling waters punish perjuries which ought to be especially hateful to you.

Immortal gods, when will you grant that day on which this most manifestly present god, with peace reigning everywhere, may visit those groves of Apollo as well, both sacred shrines and steaming mouths of springs? Their bubbling waters cloudy with gentle warmth seem to wish to smile, Constantine, at your gaze, and to insert themselves within your Iips.

You will, of course, marvel at that seat of your divinity too, and its waters warmed without any trace of soil on fire, which has no bitterness of taste or exhalation, but a purity of draft and smell such as you find in icy springs. And there you will grant favors, and establish privileges, and at last restore my homeland because of your veneration of that very spot”…………….

Today the ceremony can take place in open air or inside depending on the season. The Irish legends designate then this kind of place with the word “grianon” we would especially not translate by “bower” or “solarium” like people do it still too often, alas. The term grianan designates any place built or not, well sunny, located in theory on a height. See the famous Grianan of Aileach. If such a prestigious place is inaccessible, the ceremony can then proceed in any other place with good lighting; if possible then in a building or a large room of the basilica plan, i.e., in a meeting room made up of a nave finished by a half-circle shaped apse, where sat, of course, formerly, some magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course). and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore not catacombs).

For the necessary liquid element ,big river, little river, brook, well, spring can be replaced by a lake, a pond, or a water point located inside or not far from there; even a bascauda (barrel) filled with water in which vervain soaked according to the richness of the family.

Note.

Necessary props or hiera.

Water in which vervain soaked or will soak. Possibly a bascauda (a barrel). A vervain branch. A wooden mallet. Apples or hazel nuts. 2 large white fabrics. A tablet out of birch bark birch. Like those discovered near Gilgit in Pakistan in 1931 or in Novgorod in 1951 for the most recent, or even among the Ojibwe Indians (mide-wiigwaas). A cup?

The officiating druid may also be assisted at least by an ambact, who can be, of course, a dignitary of the community, but also a simple voluntary dagolitos (believer). This ambact has as a function to give to the officiating druid, when it is necessary, the needed objects, or to hold them one moment for him, or to take them back from him in order to disburden even to clear him so that he is free to move. This ambact must be therefore just beside the officiating druid to be at his disposal.

AND NOW LET US HAND OVER TO SHAKESPEARE !

The officiating druid tries as much as possible to be in the east, facing the west, the lay ambact assisting him on his right, but facing slightly to the south, the child and his being as for them in the west and regarding the east.

The parents or the adults introducing the child (“the father and mother through “altromage”) begin by speaking thus to the druid who will officiate.

“O Lord of three keys 3), we show this child to the community of the dagolitoi (believer) present here so that our brethren and sisters take it as one of theirs, so that country-women and country-men , men and women of our community, accept it as a child of the people, of the gods.”

The officiating druid then recites the following lay for the child.

I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a young and pretty princess called Celtine. She was of unusual stature and far excelled in beauty all the other maidens in the country. But she, because of her strength of body and marvelous comeliness, was so haughty that she kept refusing every man who wooed her in marriage, since she believed that no one of the wooers was worthy of her.

Now one day she caught sight of a young and handsome giant who was striding along the country. It was Ogmius who, after having taken the cattle of Geryones from Erythea and overcome the cruel tyrant Tauriscus, was visiting the country of Bretannus.

Celtine fell in love with Ogmius and hid away the cattle, refusing to give them back to him unless he would first ask for her hand in marriage. Our hero was very anxious to bring the heifers safe home, but he was far more struck by the exceeding beauty of the princess, and consented to her wishes. He founded therefore in the place the city of Alesia and, when the time had come round, a son called Keltus was born to them, who far surpassed all the youths in quality of spirit and strength of body. 4)

When he had attained to man's estate and had succeeded to the throne of his fathers, he accomplished great feats in war and subdued a large part of the neighboring territory. Become renowned for his bravery, he called his subjects Celts after himself, and these in turn gave their name to the great free and independent Celtica.

Before leaving, Ogmius dispensed to him the following pieces of advice.

I am Trefuilngid Tre Eochair. If I generated you, it is because gods need men. Such is our law! And you are our only hope for that, because all the other races on the Earth refused us, because all the other nations on the Earth refused to speak the same language as us, because all the other people of the Earth refused to honor us. If you accept this quest for the grail, then we will enter into an alliance with you. The cauldron here will be the sign and the pledge of this caratrad, but our contract will be your blood,your soul.

We will be with you for ever, and we will multiply your descendant like the grains of sand in the sea, the stars in the sky, the dewdrops in May, the snowflakes in winter, the hailstones during a storm; more numerous still than the leaves in a forest, the yellow corn ears in the plain, the blades of grass under the feet of the horses one day of summer in the large plain or than the waves of the sea, when there is a storm.

Order your children, and their clan after them, never to lose their soul, because only soul can achieve the destiny of this world. Such is my teaching, such is our law. And this law is harsh, but it is the law! ”

Keltus accepted this pact with the gods. Trefuilngid Tre Eochair put in his hand five magic seeds to sow, some seeds of the tree of life, some seeds of the world tree. Our 5 totems. The billet of ash in Dathi our Yggdrasil to us. The billet of yew in Mugna. The billet of oak in Uxonabelcon our Irminsul to us beloved by the lady of the lake Nerthus. The billet of ash in Tortu. The billet of yew in Ross.

Coic crand sin. Eo Rosa, ibar é. Sairtuath co Druim Bairr dorochair, ut Druim Suithe cecinit: Eo Rosa, roth ruirech recht flatha, fuaim tuinni, dech duilib, diriuch dronchrand, dia dronbalc.

[Translator's note out of the recitation. Current Irish legends make the Mugna tree an oak, but the term in our records (eo) is categorical, it means yew. There was to be confusion in the oral handover].

sublime secrets of nature, and sought to explain them to their followers. Their minds were elevated by investigations into secret and sublime matters, and from the contempt which they slightly entertained for human affairs they pronounced the souls immortal….

The druid officiating continues…

To be a true pagan hearted and minded Celt is to belong to a people of priests (each pagan is to oneself his own priest in front of the altar of the gods and of the ancestors in the privacy of his home) homophonous with gods, to a sacred nation whose children have duties, moral laws or gessa, extremely constraining.”

Are the parents quite aware of the challenge which awaits for this young wild boar in the large forest of the life if he wants to live his paganism fully?

The parents or the adults showing the child (biological parents and the possible host parents) answer then: “ We are perfectly aware of that and we want it for him (or for her) as we wanted that for us before him! Nert dee agus andee. Awen!”

The officiating druid resumes.

Our lord took up arms in Muirthemne when he was just 7 years old and he died when he was 27, but remains eternally young in our hearts. We do not require this child that he does as much but don’t forget that for two thousand years and even more, our marriage of faith and reason, of the faith enlightened by the reason, is persecuted.

Remember that true-hearted and minded Celtst were always obliged to defend themselves. Caesar Augustus prohibited the religion druidarum. Caesar Tiberius published a decree against our high-knowers“ and all that tribe of vates and physicians ” as he said. The emperor Claudius prohibited the practice of our religion.

Once again therefore we ask it to you, are you quite aware of the destiny this young wild boar will have in the large forest of the life will have, if he wants to live his paganism fully?

The officiating druid still.

The people of one book, the parabolani disciples of the Nazorean rabbi Jesus, like the roughneck Pannonian soldier called Martin or the bishop of Braga, then assaulted even martyred our old druids, or burned our sisters on the pretext of sorcery. Then they usurped our ancient worship places, our pilgrimages, our gods and our festivals. And the monolatrous people or the God’s fanatics of today dream only of completing this civilization genocide. Let us think a little of what they inflict in the other end of the world to our Parsi or Zoroastrian or Yazidi brethren, as to the last pagans in Pakistan: the Kafir Kalashs.

Once again therefore we ask it to you, are you quite aware of the destiny this young wild boar will have in the large forest of the life will have, if he wants to live his paganism fully?

On a sign of the officiating druid, the ambact gives him then the mallet of Sucellus, and the druid who officiates strikes with it symbolically or not the water point or the bascauda (the barrel containing the liquid element having to be used), then he recites the lay of Ausonius:

“Iaccitos te!

Hail Sky our father,

Father of all true Celts!

Iaccitos te!

Hail Danu our mother,

Mother of all true Celts

Hail, fountain of source unknown,

Holy, gracious, unfailing,

Crystal-clear, azure, deep, murmurous, limpid and shady!

Iaccitos te!

Hail, genie of our city,

Of whom we may drink health-giving drafts,

Named by the Celts Divona,

A fountain added to the roll divine!”

The officiating druid throws then some berries apples or hazel nuts in the liquid having to be used for the lustration.

If the layout of the place makes it possible, the officiating druid then goes three times around 5) the liquid element which will be used for the lustration, or the bascauda (of the barrel), sunwise.

If necessary i.e., if the liquid element which will be used for the lustration is not easy to reach (sacred spring located in the bush, etc.); the ambact draws then symbolically inside and fills from it a cup he makes available to the officiating druid.

The officiating druid bites his thumb lengthily like Vindos/Finn then orders: “FOTHRUCAD! ”

The child is then plunged in water, in milk or ale possibly, if the ceremony takes place indoors and if the parents are able to afford that, three times, by the godfather or the godmother, for the ritual lustration which is a body purification and a symbol of spiritual fruitfulness.

If the child is too tall,his face will be plunged into it or he will be simply sprinkled with lustral liquid by the officiating druid who will use for that a branch of vervain on the Continent, of the branch of a hazel tree or of a walnut tree in Ireland (olive branch called Trefuilngid Tre Eochair craeb in Gaelic language); because the lustration can also be symbolic. The child after that is wiped if it is necessary by using a thin white cloth, he will wear then another one on his shoulders during the whole rest of the ceremony.

From where the remark of Aristotle (Politics VII, 2,5) who understood nothing from it “For which reason it is customary with many of the barbarians either to dip their children in rivers when the water is cold; either to clothe them very slightly, as among the Celts”

The officiating druid adds then…

Oian oianau ! Small young wild boar

Run to the apple tree

Run to the oak tree

The old wild boar will teach you a lesson!

May you throughout your life

Honor the gods, to be brave and do nothing despicable

And to have in turn many children

Many tall and strong sons

Intelligent and hard-working

Many good-looking daughters

Intelligent and courageous.

Why would you be not called N ? (ategnatus name or initiatory designation taken on by the parents.)

The godfather and godmother chosen to be possibly the host family agree by pronouncing the following ritual formula…

“Whatever the name he will have, it will be good if it is that of a true-hearted and minded Celt ! ”

The druid officiating then concludes the anmenacton * by the words hereafter…

“N. (first name, name, date and birthplace).

Son (or daughter) of N. (usual mother designation) and of N. (usual father designation if possible).

You are from now on an ategnatus I give you the name and the geis of N. (name or designation taken up by the parents) 6°.

By Ogmius and the hesus Cuchulainn, be from now one of our people, the predestined to the divinity people , the people of the gods! Nert dee agus andee. And may the force be with you! Sunartiu! ”

The officiating druid give back the child to the parents or to the close relations, he annotates the official register of the ategnati by using the Lepontic runes or any other alphabet of his choice, Greek or Latin, etc.); then gives the tablet or the bark recording all this to the parents, and the festivities may begin. People may “kill the pig,” strike up various barditi ( the barditus of the faithfulness song or the barditus of the wine of the C’hallaoued.Specification from a Parisian pen-friend).

In addition to its formal characteristics and the share of symbolism it conveys, the functions the meal fulfills also make it possible to regard it as a ritual. Through meal, a group passes on something about itself: its life philosophy, its attitude towards the others… It is also an opportunity to clink glasses in the original meaning of the term i.e., to toast the honor of the gods before proceeding to a libation in the sacred meaning of the word.

In Europe, people generally clink glasses of alcohol (beer, wine, cider, etc.) however you may do in the same way with a glass of non-alcoholic drink. To toast and to clink glasses then is also the opportunity to prove to the other (the former enemy or the future family) the drink is not poisoned, by drinking it the first. What consecrates then the reconciliations, the reunion.

But the habit is also marked by the union of the word and of the gesture, of the speech and of the bump. Man clinks his glass with that of his neighbor, as if he wanted a little liquid to be exchanged between the glasses.

To drink a toast for somebody , to celebrate a success or to emphasize a particular event conveys several information; in addition to the simple pleasure of raising one’s glass, of clinking glasses with the other present people, to tell the story about the celebrated person, to taste the served drinks and the appetizers which accompany it. A certain view of the life is thus shared. It is the identity of the group or of the family which is thus revealed. The dietary habits are markers of the ethnic, religious and community membership, as of the social status.

EXAMPLES OF TOAST FORMULAS.

The bard (presiding over the banquet).

I raise my glass to the TRUTH, to the FREEDOM, to the REASON, triple desire of the wise persons.

ANSWER OF THE OTHER GUESTS.

Now and forever!

THE BARDITUS OF THE FAITHFULNESS SONG.

We do not carry a treasure, We carry our dead king. On wave-tossed frail skiffs We go northward to Avalon.

Over there word and honor are still worth: It is over there we will bury our king, In a coffin dug out in an oak trunk. Men with a vile soul Having scepter and cross Imposed in our cities The disavowal of the Law. But so that always on Earth A pole star remains Throughout the centuries camp The men of our moral fiber. Faithful to the voices of the soul Of the wood, rock and blood Faithful to the true flame Faithful to their children. When the lark sang in the forgotten furrow, They joined the party Of the sword and of the knight. Mass slaves Flouted the Reason, Nailed the wisdom bird On the doors of their houses. They burned our witches They soiled our children But the choir of proud souls Triumphed over the giants. So that the gold of the landscape Answers the gold of the setting sun. We will sleep out in the open Under the stars which take care of our destinies We will hoist the main sail Towards the remote shores. From age to age, we will pay The tribute of our blood

N.B. Tune and music are these of a hunting fanfare of 1723, the Aria Sancti Huberti or Aria Bon Repos, which we owe to the count Francis-Antony of Sporck (a Czech man mad about hunting horn); in the honor of the emperor Charles VI. This work had much success in its time since Gottfried Benjamin Hancke (Auf zur fröhlichen jagen) and even Johann Sebastian Bach were partially inspired

by it. Two centuries later it was also very prized in the Nazi circles of the first half of the 20th century but with other words. The words of the original text do not have anything to do with it either (La biche campagnarde nous fait doubler nos pas et d’autres betes encore que Mireau n’entend pas ). What proves that what remains stable in this kind of creation and which captivates they are the tune and the music, since spoken words always fly away, according to the dominant ideologies of the time. The same mishap occurred besides with the words of the blue Danube. What is important therefore it is the spirit. The words, we may what we want with them. A French scout choir of Catholic Counter-Reformation has even seen fit recently to reverse some of the verses of the faithfulness song having reached their ears (the mass slaves become for example in it the enemies of the mass).

As for the following song, it is still worse, one of my Parisian pen-friends signals to me it is purely and simply anti-French racism. Much more than a simple French bashing , a true call for murder! Is this possible ?

THE GWIN AR C’HALLAOUED OR SWORD SONG.

This song is generally known under the title “ Gwin ar C’hallaoued,” but the title of Sword Song or Sword Dance has to be preferred instead of it; even if the farming of the vine was practiced well before Roman colonization, because it is by no means a drinking song initially. According to the studies of the Breton historian Theodore Hersart de la Villemarqué, who quotes it in his Barzaz-Breiz, the Gwin ar C’hallaoued led the Breton warriors to the fight in the 6th century. The sources of the Early Middle Ages confirm it with Gregory of Tours in his Historia Francorum (History of the Franks). The latter indeed in several circumstances complains about the incursions into the areas of Rennes and Nantes of the troops of a Breton war leader named Waroc; particularly interested in the white wine of their soils. We may then imagine the armies facing each other before the rush. In the space which still separates them, the hero dressed with his more handsome war ornaments comes, according to the tradition, and challenges, in single combat, the champion of the opposing side. By setting forth, he intones the Sword Song while his companions sing together , and mark time by striking their shields with their swords in order to encourage him.

If it is wanted it is sung according to the ancient use, the leader (of the attacking troops) launches the verse which is song together by the troop and linked without timeouts with the chorus.

Gwell eo gwin gwenn bar

Na mouar !

Gwell eo gwin gwenn bar.

Diskan.

Tan ! Tan ! Dir ! Oh Dir ! Tan ! Tan ! Dir ha tan !

Tann ! Tann ! Tir ! Ha tonn ! Tonn ! Tann ! Tir ha tir ha tann !

Gwell eo gwin nevez

Oh ! Na mez ;

Gwell eo gwin nevez.

Gwell eo gwin a lufr

Oh ! Na kufr ;

Gwell eo gwin a lufr.

Gwell eo gwin ar Gall

Nag aval ;

Gwell eo gwin ar Gall.

Gwin gwenn ha goad ruz

Ha goad druz ;

Gwin gwenn ha goad ruz.

Goad ruz ha gwin gwenn

Eunn aouen !

Goad ruz ha gwin gwenn.

Goad ar C'hallaoued

Eo a red ;

Goad ar C'hallaoued.

Goad ha gwin eviz

Er gwall vriz ;

Goad ha gwin eviz.

Gwin ha goad a vev

Neb a ev ;

Gwin ha goad e vev.

Goad, gwin ha korol

D'id, Heol !

Goad, gwin ha korol.

Ha korol ha kan,

Kan, ha kann !

Ha korol ha kan.

……………………..

Korol ar c'hleze,

Enn eze ;

Korol ar c'hleze.

Diskan.

Kann ar c'hleze goue

Ar Roue.

Kann ar c'hleze goue.

Diskan.

Kleze ! Roue braz

Ar stourmeaz !

Kleze ! Roue braz !

Diskan.

Kaneveden gen

War da benn ! 7)

Kaneveden gen !

What produces roughly .....

Better is white grape wine

Than blackberry wine;

Better is white grape wine.

Chorus.

Fire! Fire! Steel! O Steel! Fire! Fire! Fire and steel!

Oak! Oak! Earth ! O Waves! Waves! Earth and earth and oak!

Better is new wine

Than mead;

Better is new wine.

Better is bright wine

Than cervoise beer;

Better is bright wine.

Better is wine from Gauls

Than from apples;

Better is wine from Gauls.

White wine and red blood,

And thick blood;

White wine and red blood.

Red blood and white wine,

A river!

Red blood and white wine!

It is the blood of the Gauls

Which runs;

The blood of the Gauls.

I drank blood and wine

In the hard fray;

I drank blood and wine.

Wine and blood feed

Who drinks some of it;

Wine and blood feed.

Blood and wine and dance,

For you, Sun!

Blood and wine and dance.

Dance and song,

Song and battle!

And dance and song!

Below what seems to us to be another version or another song.

Sword dance,

In a circle;

Sword dance

Chorus.

Battle where the wild sword

Is King;

Battle of the wild sword.

Chorus.

O sword! O great King

Of the battle field!

O sword! O great King!

Chorus

The rainbow shine

On your forehead 7)

The rainbow shine!

* Small terminological specification. We speak about anmenacton for children, but the word anuanacton is used when they are adults.

1)Titus-Livius, Book V, 46,3. Either the Celts were stupefied at his extraordinary boldness, or else they were restrained by more or less religious feelings, for as a nation they are by no means inattentive to the claims of religion.”

2)Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book VII 70,3 to 4: “No lapse of time has thus far induced either the Egyptians, the Libyans, the Celts, the Scythians, the Indians, or any other barbarian nation whatever to forget or transgress anything relating to the rites of their gods.”

3) Gaelic Trefuilngid Tre Eochair.

4) We find this distorted mythical topic in the Greek authors like Parthenios of Nicaea or Diodorus of Sicily.

Parthenius of Nicaea: Love Stories XXX.

Celtine: “Hercules, it is told, after he had taken the cattle of Geryones from Erythea, was wandering through the country of the Celts and came to the house of Bretannus, who had a daughter called Celtine. Celtine fell in love with Hercules and hid away the cattle, refusing to give them back to him unless he would first content her. Hercules was indeed very anxious to bring the heifers safe home, but he was far more struck by the girl’s exceeding beauty, and consented to her wishes; and then, when the time had come round, a son called Celtus was born to them, from whom the Celtic race derived their name”.

Diodorus of Sicily, the Library of History, V, 24.

“Since we have set forth the facts concerning the islands which lie in the western regions, we consider that it will not be foreign to our purpose to discuss briefly the tribes of Europe which lie near them and which we failed to mention in our former books. Now Celtica was ruled in ancient times, so we are told, by a renowned man who had a daughter who was of unusual stature and far excelled in beauty all the other maidens. But she, because of her strength of body and marvelous comeliness, was so haughty that she kept refusing every man who wooed her in marriage, since she believed that no one of her wooers was worthy of her. Now in the course of his campaign against the Geryones, Heracles visited Celtica and founded there the city of Alesia; the maiden, on seeing Heracles, wondered at his prowess and his bodily superiority and accepted his embraces with all eagerness, her parents having given their consent. From this union she bore to Heracles a son named Galates, who far surpassed all the youths of the tribe in quality of spirit and strength of body. And when he had attained to man's estate and had succeeded to the throne of his fathers, he subdued a large part of the neighboring territory and accomplished great feats in war. Becoming renowned for his bravery, he called his subjects Galatians after himself, and these in turn gave their name to all of Galatia.”

5) Deiseil, deiseal. A little as in the pre-Muslim ritual of the tawaf around the Kaaba in Mecca.

6) In order to help, here some examples extracted from the work of David Rankine.

Bear. Power, inner force, play.

Bull. Courage, prosperity, abundance.

Butterfly. The symbolism of the butterfly is that of the soul removed from its corporeal cover.

Crow. Discovering of oneself, creativity, intelligence.

Deer. Doe. Kindness, innocence, sixth senses.

Dog. Faithfulness, guard, heroism.

Dragon or griffin. Knowledge, growth, regeneration.

Duck. The duck is never mentioned in the Irish, Welsh , mythological or epic, texts. It was mixed up with the swan, from which it differs nevertheless, would it be only by the size and the color. We find nevertheless ducks represented on archeological artifacts of the time of La Tene. We are therefore disposed to produce, of these images existing in the Celtic world, an interpretation similar to that of the swan.

Eagle. Respect, creativity, care, health.

Ermine. Symbolizes the warlike virgins. See weasel.

Fox. Intelligence, diplomacy, patience.

Goose. Messenger of the Other World. Swan and goose are used as body cover by the angels of the female gender came from the country of gods (the Celts therefore allocate to it divinatory powers).

Hawk. Long-term view, dignity.

Horse. Power, freedom, movement.

Lark. The golden mean between men and gods.

Otter. Symbolize the end of a time cycle.

Ram. Imagination, beginning again.

Raven. Moral resources, personal changes.

Salmon. Wisdom, regeneration, duration.

Snake. Protection, fertility, wisdom, molting and rebirth.

Stag. Hart. Independence, balance, pride.

Swan. The swan is a royal symbol, but it is also a symbol of purity, light and femininity (among the Celts). It is linked with. On the Continent, and even in the islands, the swan is often mixed up with the crane, on the one hand, and with the goose, on the other hand.

Tortoise. * Creation, interconnection.

Wild boar or pig. The consumption of its meat at the time of the festival of the trinouxtion samoni (ios) or All Souls' Day, is supposed to get a long life if it is not immortality. On the ensigns of the warriors, the wild boar, moreover, is supposed to secure their protection.

Wolf. Team spirit, family spirit, protection.

There exists of course a host of other enthralling animals, quite worthy to inspire you: bison, aurochs, lynx, etc., etc. For any information: www.davidrankineart.com -.(that way, that will make the parents a little working).

* Testudo hermanni Testudo graeca and European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis).

7) Perhaps an allusion to the light of the heroes, lon gaile, luan laith or lon laith in Gaelic language. Even en gaile (bird of valor?) An equivalent of the Zoroastrian xvarnah making the bodies belissama (for the female gender, which would then give us belissamos for the male bodies).

VIROLAXTON OR DUBBING (around fourteen years old) *

* It is besides the age when Gaston Phoebus considered that a boy could become a “vassaletos.”

What we can deduce from the story of Lleu Llaw Gyffes in Wales (4th branch of the mabinogi) it is that it had to exist other rites of passage for the boys; and particularly an initiation to the use of arms. This arises also obviously from the legend of the hesus Cuchulainn ( his arms training in Scotland in the castle of Scathache).

“He proclaims an armed council, this according to the custom of the Celts in the commencement of war, at which, by a common law, all the youth were wont to assemble in arms, and whoever of them comes last, is killed in the sight of the whole assembly, after being racked with every torture ” (Caesar . B.G. Book V, 56).

The declaration of war according to Caesar therefore caused some killings coming more within the human sacrifice than within capital punishment and constituted an exception to the general rule of life safeguarding life enacted by the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht).

This extremely ritualized concilium armatum (gaisata datla in Celtic language?), had probably of the council only the name. It was more a ritual with a human sacrifice than another thing. Caesar describes it in an exceptional way in his work. It is one of the very rare descriptions of ethnographic nature apart from the digression in the Book VI. It has the advantage also of putting in direct relationship a religious practice (a ritual) with dated events.

These warrior assemblies were these where the warrior attired himself in all his arms, indicating his hierarchical rank and demonstrating his glorious past. If some of them were opened to the whole of the combatants, all social origins taken together, the greatest possible number were reserved to the chiefs and were held in the secrecy, besides as Caesar suggests it in several circumstances.

These assemblies, whether they were only civilian or military, were never held without some decorum. At the time of the general conspiracy of 52 before our era, the chiefs of tribe-states meet at the Carnutes, probably in one of their sanctuaries. There they swear oaths on the ensigns joined together in a stack, what is, Caesar notes, “more eorum gravissime caerimonia,” in other words, the most serious ceremony [and most far-reaching consequences] from the religious point of view.

The killing in question was, of course, a human sacrifice, and this quotation by Caesar therefore proves that with regard to the Celtic “sacred ” wars (ver sacrum), people always began with a sacrifice of this kind.

Unlike what the Roman conqueror suggests , this ritual is old, in any case previous to the 1st century, and it is revealing. Its meaning is perfectly comprehensible. It acts, in the most solemn form, to notify all the participants that, from now on, their life belongs no longer to them ; that it is in the hands of a fate which will leave them living or which will make them some dead destined to a heroic Eden. The one who tried to withdraw from the collective duty must not only die, but he has to do it slowly, in degrading treatments and in the sight of everybody; so that his death appears the reversed image reversed of the warrior, fast, in full glory. The general draft nevertheless became a sacred duty only in the event of defensive war or of self-defense, of oneself or of friends (ver sacrum).

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

Caesar. B.G. VI, 18. “They do not permit their children to approach them openly until they are grown up so as to be able to bear the service of war and they regard it as indecorous for a son of boyish age to stand in the public in the presence of his father.”

As we already have had the opportunity to notice it, leaving aside the infancy , the first stages of the life (age columns called Mapotaxeto and Geistlaxeto in Old Celtic) inserted indeed the individual in a society of which the essential characteristic was that it was immersed permanently in the sacredness.

The strong point of it was the dubbing or handing-over the arms around fourteen years old (2 X 7 years), which located the individual in the tradition of his clan. The dubbing was the first true initiation of every young minded or hearted Celt. It was a rite of passage into adulthood ( young adult age, don’t speak about the case of Cuchulain for whom it was when he was 7 years sold).).

The dubbing or virolaxton is the druidic ceremony through which a boy (or a girl also now) confirms personally the vow of the pagan baptism received when he was a child. The young man (or the maiden) commits from now on to shape the acts of his life, as well private as public, to the golden rules of the knighthood of the Round Table 1). He or Her swears an oath of faithfulness to the druidic community, and to its Primate inter pares.

Each one therefore must, for the circumstance, learn the rudiments of the tradition, even to study the primer (auraicept) of the adequate oral literature we have said.

The animal figures hold a great place in the Celtic symbolism. The wild boar, the bull, the horse, we find on the coins of the majority of the tribes-states, particularly on the coins of the Bituriges; certain birds, certain trees, certain plants, were national and religious symbols. They became coinage types , military ensigns; they were carried out in the battles; they were venerated, people worshipped in them a source of agricultural or forest richness, of public prosperity. Many ancient Celts bore consequently names evoking of animals: Matugenos, Boduognatos, Deiotaros, Brannogenos, Tarbelli…

If such is one’s desire, each one therefore may also, following the example of these glorious ancestors, choose as initiatory name a name in connection with an animal or a plant, different from that he will have received during the previous naming ceremony.

Here some small pieces of advice to find such a name. Lie down, close your eyes, and imagine that you are in a green forest, letting the sun rays penetrating. You walk straight ahead by going out in the forest. You come close to a high stone drawn up vertically and you hear noises all around you: they are the songs of the birds. At the same time as you listen to them, you whirl on yourself. A small path appears to you, you decide to follow it. You have the feeling to go ahead without your feet touch the ground and more and more quickly. You arrive in a clearing where the grasses are tall, and in front of you, there is the wood edge. You are far and you have difficulty to distinguish, but you nevertheless see something which moves in the thickets. A fuzzy form approaches you and you see it now very clearly: it is your totem animal.

In order to help, here some examples extracted from the work of David Rankine.

Bear. Power, inner force, play.

Bull. Courage, prosperity, abundance.

Butterfly. The symbolism of the butterfly is that of the soul removed from its corporeal cover.

Crow. Discovering of oneself, creativity, intelligence.

Deer. Doe. Kindness, innocence, sixth senses.

Dog. Faithfulness, guard, heroism.

Dragon or griffin. Knowledge, growth, regeneration.

Eagle. Respect, creativity, care, health.

Ermine. Symbolizes the warlike virgins. See weasel.

Fox. Intelligence, diplomacy, patience.

Goose. Messenger of the Other World. Swan and goose are used as body cover by the angels of the female gender came from the country of gods (the Celts therefore allocate to it divinatory powers).

Hawk. Long-term view, dignity.

Horse. Power, freedom, movement.

Lark. The golden mean between men and gods.

Otter. Symbolize the end of a time cycle.

Ram. Imagination, beginning again.

Raven. Moral resources, personal changes.

Salmon. Wisdom, regeneration, duration.

Snake. Protection, fertility, wisdom, molting and rebirth.

Stag. Hart. Independence, balance, pride.

Tortoise. * Creation, interconnection.

Wolf. Team spirit, family spirit, protection.

There exists, of course, a host of other enthralling animals, quite worthy to inspire you: bison, aurochs, lynx, etc., etc. For any information: www.davidrankineart.com.

It is strongly advised to choose an initiatory name in Old Celtic , or in one of the Celtic languages formerly spoken on the territory where you live; or in one of the modern neo-Celtic languages, if you remain on a territory where they are still practiced. Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Brittany, Isle of Man and Cornwall (Cornish).

This initiatory name is not necessarily a name of animal totem, it can for example be that of a more or less known personality (to avoid nevertheless those who are too much known, that could be embarrassing : in other words no Boudicca or Calgacus among us. This, of course, has nothing to do with his positions about the family **).

As of the dubbing ceremony , a young celticist can carry a knife, a dirk or a kidney dagger 2) in his belt ( among the Sikhs, this Masonic dagger is called a kirpan). And a girl a triple key or a bunch of three keys. *** At least during the the time of the ceremony.

There still, the parents should not be visible at this moment theoretically and only the possible host family (godfather or godmother) was to be present.

* Testudo hermanni Testudo graeca and European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis).

** "Nature has willed that every man's children and kindred should be his dearest objects. Yet these are torn from us by conscriptions to be slaves elsewhere. Our wives and our sisters, even though they may escape violation from the enemy, are dishonored under the names of friendship and hospitality…. they make a solitude and call it peace )”.

*** The three keys of Trefuilngid Tre Eochair of course.

The initiation to martial arts of our gentle lord of Muirtheme took place in a kind of Celtic Montsalvatge called grianon. Here in what terms it is described in our oral literature.

“So was that sunny citadel: with seven huge doors, to it, and seven windows between every two of the doors, and seven rooms between every two windows, and thrice fifty girls in each of those rooms, with purple mantles and blue. And there were thrice fifty like-aged boys, and thrice fifty great-deeded boys, and thrice fifty champions, hardy and bold, opposite each of those doors, outside and inside, learning valor and feats of knighthood at Scathache.”

But it is not always possible obviously to have at hand such a Monsalvatge for a dubbing ceremony.

AND THERE AGAIN LET US HAND OVER TO SHAKESPEARE.

If the ceremony is to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or laid out. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with an equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a rood screen. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light passing as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” suffix of feminine adjective.

Or then, it has to be a plan of the Pantheon type i.e., a large rotunda, separated as regards the inside, by a kind of choir; preceded by a large rectangular room (pronaos) with a transitional building matching the portico of the old with a palisade of Celtic sanctuaries; or the triumphal gate marking the entrance of the cemetery of the Breton parish closes; even the portal of certain Romanesque churches. At the end of the 11th century indeed, the carved decoration took place on the frontage of churches, in order to announce symbolically the passage of the secular world to the sacred enclosure. People will bring consequently much care to the ornamentation of the main frontage which acquires thus an unknown hitherto characteristic of monumentality. The artists do not have yet, of course, all the wanted experience in the handling of the chisel. They give to faces strange expressions, with bulging eyes, arched eyebrows. The characters have often false proportions, stiff attitudes. If they are plants or animals which are used as ornamentation patterns for the moldings, the capitals, we find again there the Celtic influence in the distortion of reality to come up at fantastic types, very far away from nature: these extraordinary representations, ewes, woman-headed quadrupeds, dragons, chimeras , adopted by the first Christian artists, had ended up meeting the popular beliefs 3).

The ceremony varies according to whether the person who must to be dubbed is a girl or a young man. It is necessary therefore to be organized accordingly.

Necessary props or hiera : a wood block . A sword. Kind medieval or more ancient. A knife, a dirk or a kidney dagger (a Masonic dagger called kirpan among our friends Sikhs).

Blades with two edges. Have to be, of course, not sharpened (like the Masonic swords or dagger). The sword symbolizes the fair struggle that the celtizer must, like the king Noadatus/Nuada/Nodens, fight without respite for Justice and Truth. The sheath knife with a fixed blade, with the three functions of a tool, weapon and male ornament, was the weapon of the man who was not rich enough to buy a sword, but a weapon with which he could legitimately defend his honor.

A white shirt. A green scarf. A triple key or three keys to be worn on one’s belt.

The future dubbed one or the future damsel must, first of all, begin by washing oneself carefully by having a complete bath in a wooden vat (bascauda).

Girls and boys must cut their hair (in theory for the first time), to dedicate them to the gods by making them burn, for example in a cupel placed on the family altar devoted to the gods and the ancestors (butsudan among our Buddhist friends). They spend then the night which is previous the ceremony in prayer, in the company of their godfather and godmother , therefore dressed with a white shirt.

Prayers for the return of King Ambicatus, the king of the world, the perpetual king (for the return of Arthur if you are in Great Britain or in Armorica). In all the cases also for the return of the Grail.

When the day comes, the future squire or the future damsel gets dressed with a white cape marked with a red cross of Suqellus, on the hood or between the shoulders (a red X: the labaron).

The members of the sodality, after having put on their ceremonial dress in an adapted place, for example a sacristy of the type sacrarium 4) begin with coming processionally to form the sacred circle; either it is outside in the middle of the country around a simulacrum (a tree, a totem?) or of a central point carefully selected for this purpose in the countryside, or inside a sanctuary around its

cella, or inside a temple in its cella, even inside a semicircle shaped apse if the plan is of the basilica type.

With by order of seniority priestesses and high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) leading the procession, then the gutuaters or gutumaters with in their middle the inquisiting usher and his voulge 5), lastly the veledae.

The procession comes if possible from the east a to the place selected and marked in its center either by a stone altar dominating a sacrifice pit, if the ritual takes place inside a building, or by a simulacrum as we have said it; i.e., a tree or a totem, in the west of which was arranged if necessary a small rustic altar kind barrel intended to support the knife or the dagger , as well as the keys or the green scarf which will be used; if the ritual takes place outdoors, the cortege performs three circuits (three large circumambulations) at a good distance of the altar or of the simulacrum (deisil, deiseil, deiseal in Ireland… for comparison, in the tawaf carried out around the Kaaba in Mecca, there are seven circuits around the simulacrum).

The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) position themselves to the east facing the west, the gutuaters/gutumaters to the north facing the south, the vates to the west facing the east, the veledae to the south facing the north.

The officiating druid too, arrives then also from the east, followed by the person who has to be dubbed, accompanied by his. A sword at his side 6), he enters the circle and goes straightly to the simulacrum or the altar then turns three times around it sunwise (clockwise: small circumambulation of the type deisil, deiseil, deiseal). He focuses one moment facing the east, his hands raised towards the sky, and the vate acting as inquisiting usher indicates to the person who will be dubbed; and who stayed behind, outside the circle formed by the vates, the veledae, the gutuaters/gutumaters and the others high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht); to approach.

Now let’s give the floor to the immortal author of Cymbeline (1611).

The young boy or girl who had remained outside, approaches and shakes some bells kind jingle bells or cowbells placed at one’s disposal.

“Where is the one who dares to face us? ” asks then the officiating druid.

“Here,” the young boy or girl answers.

The vate acting as inquisiting usher then takes the candidate with his left hand to bring him in front of the officiating druid.

“What is your name, say it to me so that I can know it ,” the officiating druid continues.

“I am the Celt N (name of the pagan baptism or initiatory name of the candidate) son (or a daughter) of… (name of the mother or father), who tries to find one’s path.”

Where can we find the pendragon Ambicatus Artorius, he is sought everywhere in vain? ”7)

The officiating druid : “And yet he did not die. He is always well alive and he will come back one day. King of the kings formerly, he will be imperator again, one day, before nothing is as good as a good king .”

The candidate asks: “Who are you, O high-knower , to answer me thus? ”

The officiating druid…

“I come from a distant country where there is neither age, neither decline, neither darkness, neither desire, neither jealousy, nor hatred. I come from the island which produces everything by itself, an island called Avalon. There, there is no crop, except that of which nature takes care itself. In it the earth generates everything itself like grass.”

The candidate: “It is not so among us , O great high-knower! ”

The officiating druid.

Our Lord Gawain son of the queen Anna of Orcadia took up arms when he was just 7 years old and he died when he was 25 years.

We expect from you as many feats as these of our lord Gawain. We do not expect from you as much of power than him. We do not expect from you, you become sole master and lord of the castle of the dead queens.

But you will have from now on to face constantly most powerful and more tempting of the adversaries having ever lived at the court of Arthur, the dressed in green ; since unlike his name, it is not in a high desert that he lives BUT IN THE HEART OF EVERY MAN. Because Evil has no external objective existence in the universe if it is not in man himself. The greatest of the ver sacrum, the ver sacrum with

a capital letter, is that which it is initially necessary to win over oneself. The other ver sacrum are only ruins of the soul if they have not been preceded by this one…

Here what our tradition teaches us. A long time ago, very long time ago, a great monarch named Ambicatus Pendragon. When he was ruling the country had such an abundance of harvests and men, that it was hard to control this multitude. He sent the son of his sister in sacred spring throughout the wide world, and even Rome was taken on this opportunity. The temple of its Jupiter having, however, survived, the Roman soul could nevertheless seize the control of anything in the world. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the name of empire; they make solitude and call it peace. But the fire which devastates Rome today is the sign of the anger of the gods.

The officiating druid, while indicating the dagger or the knife: “Here a blade come from the country of the lakes and which will return into the lake one day. Swear on this sword…

Alternative in the event of female dubbing: “Here is the triple key that our noble lord Trefuilngid Tre Eochair left us. Swear on this key…”

to shape from now on the acts of your life as well private as public to the golden rules of the Round Table, to remain faithful to our community as to its Primate inter pares, and to defend our Faith.

The young man or girl answers while raising the right hand , the three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger ), and takes the following swear.

HIGHLAND OATH.

I swear on this sword [on this triple key ]

Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

By the gods my nation worship,

The heaven above our heads

The sun and the moon

The earth beneath our feet

The sea all around us

To shape from now on the acts of my life as well private as public to the golden rules of the Round Table, to remain faithful to our community as to its Primate inter pares, and to defend our Faith.

If I do not

May the sky with its showers of stars fall on my head.

May the ground where we are camped crumbles in a big quake.

May the sea with its blue waves comes over our lands and forests.

May I find no longer asylum somewhere,

May I never see my wife [my husband] and children, father, mother, or relation

May I be cursed in all my undertakings, family and property;

May I die as a coward in battle and lie without worthy of the name burial, in a strange land,

Far from the graves of my forefathers and kindred?

Yes, may all this come across me if I break my oath.

The officiating druid

“You seem anxious my child, but you must not, because it is not to die for one’s faith which is most difficult, it is to live for it! ”

One of the initiatory rites most usually used then was what was called in Old Irish the briamon smethraige. The high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) put his left hand on the right shoulder of the person across from him , and took his left ear with his right hand 8) before pronouncing the appropriate geis.

The young boy or girl puts then one’s head on the altar (on a wood block if the ceremony takes place outdoors) and the officiating druid feigns then thrice to cut it with his sword 9); then he tells him…

“And now, get up, because of all the inhabitants of this country, you are well the best as regards the senses of courtesy and honor; and the prize of such courage, you only deserve it.”

The druid officiating gives then…

- To the young boy his knife (dagger at the Freemasons kirpan among the Sikhs),

- To the girl the keys 10).

The future squire must seize the gladivo (knife or dagger) and turn its tip upwards by holding it with his two hands.

The future damsel must seize the key then to turn its bit upwards by holding it with her two hands.

The officiating druid then puts a green scarf around the neck of the young boy or girl then he puts his left hand on the shoulder of the young boy or girl and takes his or her left ear with his right hand 8), while saying to him or to her what follows.

“Celt N. (initiatory name provided by the young boy or girl) from now on you are ordained squire (or damsel) !

You are now a member of the flower of our Community! Leave to the quest for your grail! ”

The officiating druid undoes the sacred circle by traveling it in a reverse way, from the inside. It may be broken then and the bagpipes begin to play. The officiating druid gives the bark tablet recording all that in Lepontic runes to the recipient then writes down this virolaxton or Celtic dubbing on the register.

A cupbearer (or a conhospita) offers to the new squire (or to the new damsel ) either some ale or mead, drawn from a barrel with a set with gold skull.

People may “kill the pig,” strike up various barditi, the barditus of the faithfulness song or the barditus of the wine of the C’hallaoued (see the anuanacton, the naming ceremony).

In theory the places are reserved to the participants in this banquet according to a precise etiquette, and not left to chance.

Formerly the lord organized then a festival in his castle, to which his vassals were invited. The place of each one in the celicnon was signaled by a shield beforehand fixed on the wall.

Today a simple card with one’s name posed on the (round in the case of a celicnon) table, may be enough, of course, but to decorate with shields bearing coats of arms the walls of the hall in question is still an idea.

Some suggestions of formulas to raise one’s glass to the health of such or such thing or person now.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

I raise my glass to the great men and great women of the past, for the uprightness of their actions and precepts.

ANSWER OF THE OTHER GUESTS.

In order to benefit from their example and their doctrines!

The bard (president) of the banquet.

I raise my glass in the honor of… name left to the judgment of the bard of the banquet.

**** Among the Celts and the Germanic peoples the sword appears to be regarded as the most important manifestation of the power of the god whom the warriors called upon. The most undeniable historical example of this tradition that 1000 years later the frightening fighters of the High-Lands in Scotland still followed is in the commentaries of Julius-Caesar. Book VII, chapter 67: “The cavalry unanimously shout out, "That they ought to bind themselves by a most sacred oath, that he should not be received under a roof, nor have access to his children, parents, or wife, who will …..”

1) Which are opposite these of the men in power in France since 2007: lies, rapacity, cynicism, exaggerated selfishness, spinelessness, lack of scruples, no dignity, no sense of honor…

2) “Here how the Celts eat…” They cut it off with a small sword which they have in a case fixed at the sheath of their battle sword ” (Posidonius.Histories. Book XXIII).

3)Progress of the sculpture, in the 12th century, will be nevertheless extremely fast. We can realize; by the figures which decorate the portal Saint-Anne of Notre-Dame de Paris, by these of the central door; the level of originality reached by the artists. The expression of the heads is individualized, the workmanship is softened, the work of the chisel is varied, according to whether it is a question of dealing with the nude or with the drapery; the style is filled with nobility. The monumental sculpture never has more character but during this period of the Romanesque art.

4) For the public worships in Rome, we may remind what was said about the sacrarium of Mars on the Palatine Hill where the ancilia were locked up, and of that of the Regia, where the hastae martiae as well as the lituus of Romulus were preserved.

5) This substantive can also be regarded as feminine. The voulge can be replaced today by a pruning knife of vine growers, a kind of knife in the shape of a small billhook, the southernmost Celts not having awaited for the Romans to discover the vine. The archeological excavations carried out in 1992 close to Paris (in Bobigny) showed besides that the ancient Celts also knew the folding knife kind pocket knife or penknife.

Cf for example the folding pruning knife No. 10 SF of the famous trade mark Opinel . Blade stainless steel 10 cm long. Handle in varnished beech. A gardener tool ideal to trim shrubs, to graft or to make an incision in fruit trees.

But of course, the voulge can always have its original dimensions, i.e., to be at least long as a Swiss halberd.

6) The ancient druids had perfectly the right to carry arms. The Aeduan Divitiacus ordered even during some time a cavalry corps.

7) In Great Britain or in Brittany, you may refer to the king of Bretons known under the name of Arthur.

8) The briamon smethraige is a rite difficult to understand. Here how the Cormac’s glossary defines it. Briamon smethraige .i. ainm nemtheossa dogniat filid imnech ada toing. melid smitt induine iter a dá ṁer 7 doécci induine imandeni nemthess. fir inson amail asfria induine anechtair ata inballso isfriadóini anectair ata induineseo.

“The filid seizes with his thumb and his forefinger the concerned person, by the lobe of his ear, and the person on whom is accomplished this rite dies…” the glossary of Cormac therefore sees in it the cause of an immediate bodily and real death of the individual affected. But, as notices it judiciously the great Breton celtologist Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h, it remains to know if Cormac does not have in fact fantasized his description of the briamon smethraige, like that of the glam dicinn. So that people have no longer the idea to perform it.

Our author is right to be rather dubitative on this subject, because the truth appears just after: it is not a real but symbolic death.

“As the ear is on a man outside, so is the man on whom this operation is performed outside mankind.”

Outside mankind, yes, but outside ORDINARY mankind. He became a member of the community of the comrunos (initiates).

In any event does all depend in this case on the translation which is made of this sentence, which is not easy to understand (a means of coercion? A seizure by an usher?

In another vein, Napoleon was at least accustomed to grip the ear of his old soldiers at the time of the bivouacs….

9) In Gawain and the green knight, blood really runs at the time of the third blow of the sword. The way of the quest for the grail goes through the renunciation symbolized by the beheading. Any freeing can be only death to oneself (of the anaon) at least partial, to reach a life completely oriented towards the divinity, dedicated to the contemplation of the grail. The suffering would have no sense in itself if it did not urge to seek with as much ardor the freeing of one’s bonds by the union of the anamone and of the universal Including Everything. As one day a famous poet said it: “You ask what is the divine one ( the Grail)? It is your own anamon, but inside everything .”

The neo-druidism therefore introduces us into this paradox of the union between the self of the individual anaons and the very absolute one of the universal Being. It is a mystery of death and resurrection.

We uns we were baptized of the pagan baptism in the name of gods, it is in reality in the blood of the grail [Sangreal in the Middle Ages] that we were plunged.

If by this baptism in the blood of the Grail, that men go through death with the assistance of the psychopompous god-or-demons ( benevolent or peaceful our Buddhist friends say) ; it is that they too will end up living also, with them “in the large plain where the Grail sits on its rock shining like gold.” Because as each one knows, the god-or-demons never die really, death has no longer power over them since their banquet of eternity with the magic pigs of Gobannus.

By taking part actively in the druidiactio of our time, or by being an active member of such or such a local community; the druidicist can be ready as from here below for one’s future liberation in the universal Big Whole (Pariollon). The former druids had fit symbolically into the human reality of their time the requirements and the conditions of this liberation.

10) The key is a general-purpose symbol but it is also a symbol of royalty or control. Life of St Winwaloe by Albert Le Grand (1636 or 1637). “After having appointed Corentin bishop and lord of Quimper, King Gradlon moved his court in a big city near the sea, between the cape of Fontenoy (former name of the pointe du Raz) and the farthest point of the Crozon Peninsula. This city was called Is…

Winwaloe was often going to visit the king in his superb city, where he preached against the abominations which were made in this town, completely immersed in luxury, vices and vanity…

God revealed to him one day the right punishment he wanted to inflict on it as well as the time for the retribution. He went therefore to warn the prince about that immediately: Sir, let us leave this place as soon as possible, because the anger of God will overpower it…

Gradlon made his luggage prepared at once and, after having made put in a safe place what he had dearest, got on a horse at once with his officers as his servants, then ran away out the city. Hardly had he crossed its gates that a violent storm rose, with such impetuous winds that the sea; throwing itself out of its ordinary limits and leaping on this wretched city; drowned several thousands of persons; the main cause of which people allocated to Dahut, impudic daughter of the good king; who herself perishes in this abyss and failed to also cause its ruin. Because the history ensures that she had taken from her father THE KEY WHICH HE HAD AROUND HIS NECK AS SYMBOL OF ROYALTY.”

ENGAGEMENT, MARRIAGES, AND OTHER UNIONS 1).

Unions were predominantly patrilocal or virilocal among the Celts of antiquity, where patriarchy prevailed, as it did among all Indo-Europeans.

The less wealthy or less powerful party therefore needed public recognition that there had been agreement between the two families or clans. The payment of the covicis (old Irish coibche) had this function, it noticed the agreement between the two families and was therefore due in the case of any union approved by the wife’s parents or more generally by the society.

In principle, it was paid to the father of the bride, the only "owner" of the girl until then, or to one of his representatives, PUBLICALLY.

N.B. That, it was what was backed by the former druidism.

Nothing prevents contemporary Celtic minded women or men from preferring a neolocal marriage: the couple will settle wherever they like, regardless of any previous family considerations.

The ancient Irish law, BUT IT CAN BE SUPPOSED THAT IT WAS SAME ELSEWHERE IN THE CELTIC WORLD, distinguished several types of union between a man and a woman according to the respective contributions of the spouses.

Lanamnas for ferthinchur: "union with a (implicitly superior) contribution of the husband".

Lanamnas for banthinchur: "union with a (implicitly superior) contribution of the wife".

Lanamnas for comthinchur : " union with equal contribution ".

The most respectable form of marriage was one in which wife and husband were of equal rank and wealth. This was the normal form of marriage for the nobility (air túise). Women in this category were called cémuinter, meaning "lady of the house" or "head of the family," although the term could also apply to the husband. In these marriages, the wife contributed one-third to one-half of the couple's assets. That is to say that by "feminism" (ladies first) society considered that if the wife's wealth was at least one third of the husband's (APPROXIMATELY) then it could be assumed that there was equality.

This ancient flexibility attested in the assessment of wealth allows today's druids to admit that the couple chose to live according to the formula of lamanas for comthinchur even if it does not correspond to the strict reality of the figures. It is up to the future spouses to see .

BANNS?

The civil marriage is today, in many countries, preceded by a publication of banns, the reason for that is simple, it acts to inform the whole society that a new social unit will in this way appear in the tribe, that it will have a legal existence (lanamnus comthinchuir), the marriage being initially and primarily a contract of mutual assistance and exchange of services or benefits including broader sexual ones ( principles of oxymoron or adiantu ) concluded between a man and a woman, for the greater good of the children.

Now it seems well that it was the same thing formerly among our ancestors, the marriages were never secret but concluded openly. The inscription on a tile discovered in 1997 in Chateaubleau in Ile de France region proves it.

Here is the text,

NEMMALIIUMI BENI UELONNA INCOROBOUIDA

........

MIO SETINGI PAPISSOREI BELADDUSETE METINGISE

SETINGI BELADDUSETE REGARI SE IEXSTUMI SENDI

What we can translate thus.

I speak about a remarkable woman provided with cattle.

.......

For me, these two there, Papissoreis and Beliaddusete will marry themselves:

Will become married ? Beliaddusete agree, tell it to me today 2).

As we have had the opportunity to see it in the speech of the Caledonian chief Calgacus, the traditional family was very important in the primitive druidic spirituality. “"Nature has willed that every man's children and kindred should be his dearest objects.”

This importance of the traditional family in druidic spirituality is found besides in the famous oath formula of the High-Lands, at least in the part which states to finish the sad destiny which will await for the one who will not respect it. “May I be cursed in all my undertakings, family and property; may I never see my wife [my husband] and children, father, mother, or relation; may I die as a coward in battle and lie without worthy of the name burial, in a strange land, far from the graves of my forefathers and kindred. Yes, may all this come across me if I break my oath.”

As the divorce by mutual consent or in the event of adultery 3) was allowed among ancient Celts, a marriage was in a sense always a trial marriage in the beginning. The husband is regarded as a simple boyfriend during this period and the wife as a simple partner, ben urnadma in Gaelic language, literally “woman rented for a year.” If the couple are still together a year and one day after their union was made public, their marriage is considered for a permanent one, at least as long as a separation from bed and board, and from property, even a divorce opening the way to a second marriage, was not enacted by the civil authorities, and the ben urnadna becomes a legitimate wife then (cét munter or cét muinter). But this druidic marriage become official is not an insoluble sacrament, of course, since it is a simple blessing having the gods for witnesses. There exists an undeniable example in any case where the deity seems as called to witness of a Celtic marriage. In the story by Plutarch indeed, the famous Camma hands the cup to her suitor, as to call the gods to witness the union which is going to be.

N.B. Except contrary will, recorded beforehand in front of witnesses the cét munter or the cet muinter (lawful wife) is regarded as comtincur 4) automatically by the druids of today. And the marriage regarded as “lanamas comthinchuir “.

For the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), the second most important threshold in the life is therefore the marriage which, in the former Celtic rite, could be concluded only when twenty one years old (3 X 7 years) for the husband. This marriage makes jointly responsible for a new legal unit in the society (lanamnus comticur, household for the economists), but also for all the pertaining to worship acts related to home . It is therefore with this union of a man and a woman that the 4th great stage of the life begins (age column called Ogiolagiato in old Celtic).

In the ancient Celtic world, the marriage was basically a purchase, the purchase of a woman by a man. In Ireland for example, the women were even more or less to be bought to the father (payment of a coïbche whose bride kept only a portion).

On the Continent, it was somewhat different. Caesar B.G. VI, 19. “Whatever sums of money the husbands have received in the name of dowry from their wives, making an estimate of it, they add the same amount out of their own estates. An account is kept of all this money conjointly, and the profits are laid by, whichever of them shall have survived [the other]; to that one the portion of both reverts together with the profits of the previous time .”

Translation? The dower formed by the husband was not left to his discretion but was to have the same importance as the dowry of the bride. Practical consequence: in the event of widowhood or of separation the wife kept the whole (tinnscra) for herself, namely twice the amount of the initial dowry. Plus the results or the interests of these “savings.” The rest being perhaps divided among the children in the event of death.

N.B. True druids of today do not require preliminary conversion to their religion in order to bless the union of one of their believers; only a cooling-off period of three years instead of one. Just to be sure of the seriousness of the feeling of the future couple and of the force of their attachment to the other.

CEREMONY ITSELF.

If the ceremony has to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to

be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or arranged. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” suffix of feminine adjective.

Let’s forget Shakespeare and now give the floor to Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory, the founder of the national theater of Ireland in 1899.

Necessary props or hiera .

The groom.

The bride. In all her finery and especially a pouch (for the tinnscra), not forgetting the necklace (torc) around her neck.

On a plate:

- Two symbolic coins, possibly different, in order to distinguish the coibche well from the tinnscra.

- Two rings. Of which one possibly signet ring shaped, decorated with a coin.

- Brazier fire dogs or andirons.

- A table covered with a white tablecloth. With the wedding presents above it, or at least something representing them.

- A cup filled with milk and honey.

- A memorandum for the text of the prayers to be recited.

Tradition also involving , as we have just seen it, that there is then a new home created, it is necessary consequently beforehand to prepare a fire in this intention. For example, a brazier on the altar in the premises where this ceremony has to take place, or in front. If the ceremony takes place outdoors, the fire may be lit on fire dogs or andirons on the floor if the weather is favorable and all the precautions being taken in addition to prevent that fire is communicated in the vicinity.

The wedding presents constitute or represent the dowry of each one of the future spouses, a symbol of their savings, also having to be displayed on a table covered with a white tablecloth, in full view of everybody. This table can be very simple and very rustic: a wood barrel put upright for example and covered with a large handkerchief.

Two “witnesses,” called naidm (one for the groom, one for the bride) are necessary.

N.B. In fact the naidm is more than a simple witness, the naidm it is every person entitled to speak in the name of the bride and groom, for example the father of the bride, the mother of the groom…

Everyone being gathered, the officiating druid is placed in front of the fire, facing the east, his back turned towards the west.

He focuses a few moments, with his palms raised towards the heaven, then he calls his ambact who comes to be placed on his right with his materials, if it is not already done, the fire then having to be just behind them.

The officiating druid indicates the bride to come towards him.

The bride or the future spouse, in all her finery, approach then in first, accompanied by her naidm, her family, and her friends. She stops halfway of the officiating druid.

On her left a small table covered with a white tablecloth with a cup filled with mead and milk.

Then comes the groom as his naidm, his family, and his friends.

The bride or the future spouse takes the cup in her left hand which is that of the heart, and leaves to her meeting 5). She drinks a little of the blend of mead and milk and then hands the cup that the

groom takes with his right hand before drinking from it too. Then he puts down the cup having been used by him, on the table located on his side.

Then both move slowly towards the altar and the officiating druid….

It is usual in such circumstances that the druid bless this union by pronouncing a few words for the future spouses. But what to say or to read as it happens? Here anyway what Plutarch wrote about this subject one day.

“ It is certain that the love of virtuous women does not decay with the wrinkles that appear upon their faces, but remains and endures to their graves and monuments. Then again, we shall find thousands of men and women conjoined in wedlock, who have reciprocally and inviolably observed a total community of affection and loyalty to the end of their lives. I shall instance only one example, which happened in our time, during the reign of Caesar Vespasian….

Julius, who was the first that occasioned the revolt in Celtica, among many other confederates in the rebellion, had one Sabinus, a young gentleman of no mean spirit, and for fame and riches inferior to none. But having undertaken a very difficult enterprise, they miscarried; and therefore expecting nothing but death by the hand of justice, some of them killed themselves, others made their escapes as well as they could. As for Sabinus, he had all the opportunities that could be to save himself by flying to the barbarians; but he had married a lady, the best of women, which they called by the name of Eponina. This woman it was not in his power to leave, neither could he carry her conveniently along with him. Having therefore in the country certain vaults or cellars underground, where he had hidden his treasures and movables of greatest value, which were only known to two of his freed bondmen, Sabinus dismissed all the rest of his servants, as if he had intended to poison himself. And taking along with him his two faithful and trusty servants, he hid himself in one of the vaults, and sent another of his enfranchised attendants, whose name was Martalius, to tell his wife that her husband had poisoned himself and that the house and his corpse were both burned together, designing by the lamentation and unfeigned grief of his wife, to make the report of his death the more easily believed, which fell out according to his wish. For Eponina so soon as she heard the news, threw herself upon the floor, and continued for three days together without meat or drink, making the most bitter outcries, and bewailing her loss with all the marks of a real and unfeigned anguish. Which Sabinus understanding, and fearing her sorrow might prevail with her to lay violent hands upon herself, he ordered the same Martalius to tell her that he was yet alive and lay hidden in such a place; however, that she should for a while continue her mourning, and be sure so to counterfeit her grief that she should not be discovered. And indeed in all other things the lady acted her part so well, and managed her passion to that degree, that no woman could do it better. But having still a longing desire to see her husband, she went to him in the night and returned so privately that nobody took any notice of her. And thus she continued keeping him company for seven months together that it might be said, to differ very little from living in hell itself.

Only between whiles she went to the city, and there showed herself in public to several ladies, her friends and familiar acquaintance. But that which was the most incredible of all things, she so ordered her business that none of the ladies perceived her being with child, though she bathed at the same time with them. For such is the nature of that ointment wherewith the women anoint their hair to make it of a red-golden color, that by its fatness and oleosity (its oiliness) it plumps and swells up the flesh of the body, bringing it up to an embonpoint. So that the lady, no less liberal of her ointment than diligent to chafe and rub her body limb by limb, by the rising and swelling of her flesh in every part, well calculated, concealed the swelling of her belly. And when she came to be delivered, she endured the pains of her childbearing alone by herself, like a lioness, hiding herself in her den with her husband; and there, as I may say, she bred up in private her two male whelps. For at that time she was delivered of two boys, of which there was one who was slain in Egypt; the other, whose name was also Sabinus, was but very lately with us at Delphi. For this reason Caesar put the lady to death; but dearly paid for the murder, by the utter extirpation of his whole posterity, which in a short time after was utterly cut off from the face of the earth. For during his whole reign, there was not a more cruel and savage act committed; neither was there any other spectacle which, in all probability, the gods and daemons more detested, or any from which they more turned away their eyes in abomination of the sight. Finally, Eponina abated the compassion of the spectators by the stoutness of her behavior and the grandeur of her utterance, than which there was nothing that more exasperated Vespasian; when, despairing of her husband’s pardon, she did as it were challenge the emperor to exchange her life for his, telling him even so that she accounted it a far greater pleasure to live in darkness underground as she had done, than to reign in splendor like him” 6).

In short, Tacitus says about the Germanic people can also be applied to the Celts. “The laws of matrimony are severely observed there; for in the whole of their manners is aught more praiseworthy than this: for they are almost the only men contented with one wife, excepting a very few among them; men of dignity who marry several wives, from no wantonness or lubricity, but courted for the luster of their family into many alliances.”

The officiating druid pauses then adds: May the enemy clans move forward! ”

The parents of the bride must then gather behind her father or her naidm (witness).

And the parents of the groom similarly have to gather behind the future husband.

The officiating druid speaks to the father or to the witness authorized to speak in the name of the family of the bride or of the future wife (naidm) then asks…

“Clan N. (Name of the bride), do you agree to take as ally the clan N. (Name of the groom) present here , and to grant to its members the assistance of your forces for better or for worse, abundance and poverty, disease and good health; until death and even beyond?

Answer of the naidm authorized to speak in the name of the family of the bride or future spouse (it may be her father quite simply): while raising the right hand , the three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger ), and takes the following oito.

" Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

By the gods my nation worship,

The heaven above our heads

The sun and the moon

The earth beneath our feet

The sea all around us

I swear it.

May the sky with its showers of stars fall on my head

May the ground where are camped crumbles in a big quake

May the sea with its blue waves comes over our lands and forests

If we break this oath.”

“Clan N. (Name of the groom), do you agree you to take as ally the clan N. (Name of the bride) present here, and to grant to its members the assistance of your forces for better or for worse, abundance and poverty, disease and good health; until death and even beyond?

Answer of the naidm authorized to speak in the name of the family of the groom or of the future husband (it may be his mother quite simply): while raising the right hand the three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger), the naim takes the following oito.

" Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

By the gods my nation worship,

The heaven above our heads

The sun and the moon

The earth beneath our feet

The sea all around us

I swear it.

May the sky with its showers of stars fall on my head

May the ground where are camped crumbles in a big quake

May the sea with its blue waves comes over our lands and forests

If we break this oath.”

If the future wife is still of childbearing age to procreate the officiating druid speaks again while telling in this way the future spouses:

“ My children, now I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a young and pretty princess called Celtine. She was of unusual stature and far excelled in beauty all the other maidens in the

country. But she, because of her strength of body and marvelous comeliness, was so haughty that she kept refusing every man who wooed her in marriage, since she believed that no one of the wooers was worthy of her.

My children, know well that we uns the high-knowers of the druidiaction we will be always there to help you in the long voyage you will undertake both and we will bless your descendant like the grains of sand in the sea, the stars in the sky, the dewdrops in May, the snowflakes in winter, the hailstones during a storm; more numerous still than the leaves in a forest, the yellow corn ears in the plain, the blades of grass under the feet of the horses one day of summer in the large plain or than the waves of the sea, when there is a storm. Because in our veins to uns, hearted and minded Celtes, runs the blood of the gods, we speak the same language as them, we are homophonon with them.”7)

“Still some stories and legends for children about the semi-divine origins of the Celts or the fact that the Celts are a people predestined to fidelity, you will say.Perhaps! But what we want to notify to you thereby, we uns high-knowers of the druidiaction, it is that the marriage is a contract which is to be respected. Among us, every year the goods belonging to each one are reckoned, but the acquisitions which result from that belong to both. If the wife has a fortune larger than that of her husband, she must keep the management of it. If the wife has the same fortune than her husband or about, it will be necessary to manage or to make everything productive jointly. Because if in a year and a day you are always happy together , so your union could be regarded as definitive but if in the years which follow the gods want you to take again your freedom, then it will be necessary that each one of you can find again one’s own goods of before the wedding.

The wife will take again her paraphernalia, the husband his goods to him, and it will be necessary to divide these which will have been acquired during the marriage, equitably. If one among you wants to take again one’s freedom for other reasons, he or her will have to pay to the other a compensation. He or her will have to give back the paraphernalia and the pieces of furniture, the jewels, the valuables and the grounds, which belonged exclusively to the other before the marriage, as well as the totality of the tinnscra or dower which will have been made up in the event of possible widowhood. Such is also the contract which will bind you to gods. Do you swear to respect it? ”

Then bride and groom answer together while raising their right hand with the three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger), and while reciting or repeating the following oito.

" Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

By the gods my nation worship,

The heaven above our heads

The sun and the moon

The earth beneath our feet

The sea all around us

I swear it.

May the sky with its showers of stars fall on my head

May the ground where are camped crumbles in a big quake

May the sea with its blue waves comes over our lands and forests

If we break this oath.”

The officiating druid continues…

My children, let us pray !

Spirits of health and souls of the Celts

Help us, guide us, advise us,

So that from our combined efforts

A homeland as a light in the night reappears

In which will live eternally

The soul of our ancestors

And of the Celtic hearted and minded people

Under the protection of our gods

May the force be with you

Nert dee agus andee.

Sunartiu!

“Celtic hearted and minded man N. ( civil first name and family name of the groom) do you want assuredly to take as legitimate spouse the Celtic-hearted and minded woman N. (civil first name and family name of the bride) present here? ”

“Yes, I do, the groom answers! ”

The officiating druid turns then towards the bride : Celtic-hearted and minded woman N. (civil first name and family name of the bride) do you agree to take as legitimate husband the Celtic-hearted and minded man N.( civil first name and family name of the groom ) present here?

- Yes, I do the bride answers! ”

The officiating druid asks the future wife (the case of same-sex marriages was not foreseen).

Which marriage settlement do you choose?

The future wife.

"We choose the lanamas for comthinchur.

"We choose the Lanamnas for banthinchur: "union with a contribution of the wife".

"We choose the Lanamnas for ferthinchur: "union with a contribution of the husband".

The officiating druid links then with the following ritual formula:

“De druadh mu dhe tar gac ndé

A deue druuidion, moie deue tares qaqon deuon

A deue druuidion, moie deue tares papon deuon .”

May this union be blessed ! May it be happy and fertile! May you have many beautiful, intelligent and hard-working children, hubris of their father and pride of their mother! Here all the evil that we uns high-knowers we wish to you since the blood of a god runs in our veins. 8)

And now seal your union!

The groom or the future spouse then has to take the coin then symbolizing the tinnscra from the plate handed by the ambact; and gives it to his future wife while pronouncing the following formula: “The price of honor! ” 9). The bride then puts it into her pouch. Then he takes the second coin (which may be different from the first) and gives it to the father of the bride this time, or to a male witness of the bride in the event of absence of this one while pronouncing the following formula: “The price of the coibche! ”

The giving of this second coin to the father of the bride or to her male witness (naidm) involves obviously that this one stands just beside the officiating druid, in front of the groom.

The bride must have with her, or to wear, in addition to the pouch , an object symbolizing her fidelity; in other words, a bronze silver even gold torc or necklace, which she takes off from her neck and then puts around that of her future husband 10) while reciting or reading the following formula (the cor bél or “saying from the lips”).

COR BÉL.

When Manannan the great

Takes me in his home

I was a partner of him worthy

A wristband of doubly tested gold I still have

He gave to me as the price of my honor and of my first blushes.

If, among the women who near me abide,

There is one who is vexing, whose love thou dost hide;

Now say to me who she is

And I will bring her to thy side.

Answer of the groom.

Whoever repeats the story of Etanna of Finn-Magh during his wedding:

Will have the best wife and good children 11).

Long ago did my affection for you begin ,

And it holds me, more near than my skin,

And the earth into four it can shake,

Can reach up to the heights of the sky

And a neck with its might it can break,

Nor from fight with a specter would fly.

The officiating druid begins again: “You can now exchange your rings.”

The groom slips the ring onto the finger of his wife.

The bride slips the other ring onto the finger of her husband. Unlike what happens in the Christian rite, in the Celtic rite this ring may be a signet ring and be decorated with a silver or gold coin for example.

These exchanges once finished the officiating druid speaks again.

And now you can kiss the bride!

The couple complies and they kiss each other as it should be.

The officiating druid adds then…

May the goddess or good fairy Nehalennia may bless this union and may everybody take note of the bonds which link from now on this man and this woman. May the frail skiff of their couple can be shaken by the waves of the life without never sinking. Fluctuat nec mergitur. 12)

And now let us pray.

It is not hard.

Respondit 9) Nede.

O gods of Dana

Give me wisdom

With wisdom understanding,

With understanding great-sense

With great-sense great knowledge,

With great knowledge investigation

With investigation inquiry

With inquiry learning

With learning meditation

With meditation the scrutiny of everything

With the scrutiny of everything the poetry of life.

Nert dé agus andé. Awen!

The officiating druid writes down in Lepontic runes or any other alphabet of his choice, Greek or Latin, etc. the contract, which has to be confirmed in a year and a day, on the register…

Lanamnas for ferthinchur: "union with a (implicitly superior) contribution of the husband".

Lanamnas for banthinchur: "union with a (implicitly superior) contribution of the wife".

Lanamas for comthinchur.

… and the festivities may begin. People may “kill the pig,” strike up the barditus of the faithfulness song or the barditus of the wine of the C’hallaoued (see the anuanacton, the naming ceremony). Ale and mead may be freely distributed from their barrels. People dance around the fire lit outside if there is one and they may have fun in leaping over it, the young groom in first possibly.

1)The trial marriage besides remained legal in Scotland until 1939. It was a witnessed engagement allowing to live together as husband and wife during a year and a day. Past this time if the man and the woman continued to live together, then they were regarded as indeed married.

2) This text is difficult to understand. It is perhaps also a public (or not very discrete) proposal.

3) The famous counter-example of the Irish druid Dubthach (the father of St Brigit of Kildare) seems to indicate that the wife also had the right to divorce in the event of adultery and to leave with her dower ( tinnscra) in this case.

4) Comtincur: equal in right. Like Queen Medb compared to her husband Ailill in Ireland, for example. Notice. The woman is, of course, biologically intended to be a mother and there exists a female condition (her nature), but the status of the sole or covert woman does not therefore have to be lower or more limited. The woman is not the equal of a man as regards the bodily strength , but she is its equal in rights and dignities.

5) The topic of the sharing of the cup is undoubtedly old since we already find it in the account of the foundation of Marseilles with Gyptis and Protis.

6) According to certain authors, Eponina would have been converted to Christianity. What is completely false, of course. The Christians tend a little to see Christians everywhere except where they were (Hitler, Stalin). Cf also Plutarch: On the bravery of women. Particularly the example of the Galatian Deirdre that were the beautiful Khiomara, wife of the king Ortiagon (just like Deirdre indeed, the wife of Ortiagon too had sworn not to know simultaneously more than two men in her life); as well as the pure and gentle Camma, priestess in Ankara.

The unfortunate had taken for refuge and consolation the worship of Artemis as a woman devoted to this goddess [or more exactly to the Celtic fairy hidden behind this name]; but, after being obliged by her family to marry the murderer of her first husband, she poured poison in the cup of their marriage and died by dragging the latter in her death.

Her last words were these: “I call you to witness, O goddess most revered that for the sake of this day I have lived on after the murder of Sinatus, and during all that time I have derived no comfort from life save only the hope of justice; and now that justice is mine, I go down to my husband….."

Then she embraced the altar and died there in front of the stupefied crowd.

Such conceptions of fidelity until death astonished the ancient world (and even the medieval one if the legend of Deirdre is not older).

7) Greek word used for the first time by Diodorus of Sicily (Book V, chapter 31).

8) Diodorus of Sicily, the library of history , V, 24. “ From this union she bore to Heracles a son named Galates, who far surpassed all the youths of the tribe in quality of spirit and strength of body. And when he had attained to man's estate and had succeeded to the throne of his fathers, he subdued a large part of the neighboring territory and accomplished great feats in war. Becoming renowned for his bravery, he called his subjects Galatians after himself, and these in turn gave their name to all of Galatia.”

9) This symbolic coin may be a reproduction of an ancient Celtic coin or a true dollar (or a true euro, and so on).

This torque, like the wedding gown of the other traditions, will be useful only once, and will have to be then carefully put away. Just like bonds having been used for the marriage.

10) This torc, like the wedding dress of the other traditions, will be used only once, and will have to be then carefully put away because it is no longer a part of the daily accessories daily of the Celtic warrior of today, unlike the cellphone.

11) We find the same idea at the end of the Irish legend entitled “the nurture of the house of the two milk buckets” (altrom tige da medar, version V). St. Patrick is supposed there to have said: “I will attach these blessings to the story of Eithne. If you repeat, etc.”

12) The Gaelic manuscripts in Ireland are accustomed to this kind of reflection in Latin.

THE CHAIN OF LIFE.

It is emphasized in various Indo-European traditions (we will see after more precisely the case of the Celts) that man, after death, was reputed a happy and divine being (meldus) , but on the condition that the living continued to offer him the funeral repasts. If these atebertas or offerings ceased, the dead ancestor fell to the rank of an unhappy and malevolent demon. For when these ancient generations began to picture a future life to themselves, they had not dreamed of rewards and punishments; they imagined that the happiness of the dead depended not upon the life led in this state of existence, but upon the way in which their descendants treated them. Every father, therefore, expected of his posterity that series of funeral repasts which was to assure to his manes repose and happiness. From it followed, in the first place, this rule, that every family must perpetuate itself forever.

It was necessary to the dead that the descendants should not die out. In the tomb where they lived this was the only inquietude which they experienced. Their only thought, their only interest, was, that there should be a man of their blood to carry them atebertas (offerings) at the tomb. The Hindu, too, believed that the dead continually repeated, “May there be born in our line sons who shall bring us rice, milk, and honey.” The Hindu also had this saying: “The extinction of a family causes the ruin of the religion of this family; the ancestors, deprived of the atebertas or offering of cakes, fall into the abode of the unhappy.

The men of Italy and Greece long held to the same notions. If they have not left us in their writings an opinion so clearly expressed as in the old books of the East, their laws, at least, remain to attest their ancient opinions. At Athens the law made it the duty of the first magistrate of the city to see that no family should become extinct. In the same way, the Roman law made provision that no family should fail and become extinct. We read in the discourse of an Athenian orator, “There is no man who, knowing that he must die, is so careless about himself as to wish to leave his family without descendants: for then there would be no one to render him that worship that is due to the dead.”

Every one, therefore, had an interest in leaving a son after him, convinced that his immortal happiness depended upon it. It was even a duty towards those ancestors whose happiness could last no longer than the family lasted. The Laws of Manu call the oldest son, “the one who is begotten for the accomplishment of a duty.”

FIRST EDITOR’S NOTE. It goes without saying such sexism is unacceptable today. The daughters are, as much as the sons, able to ensure the duty of remembrance towards the departed ancestors. Moreover the druids never believed that the late ones could live after their death a lot as dismal as that of the manes among the Greeks or Romans. End of the note of the editor.

Here we touch upon one of the most remarkable characteristics of the ancient family. The religion that had founded it required that it should never perish. When a family becomes extinct, worship dies out. We must take these families at a time before the belief had yet been altered. Each one of them possessed a religion and gods, a precious trust, over which it was required to watch. The greatest misfortune that its piety had to fear was that its line of descendants might cease and come to an end for then its religion would disappear from the earth, its fire would be extinguished,

and the whole series of its dead would fall into oblivion and eternal misery. The great interest of human life was to continue the descent, in order to continue the worship.

In view of these opinions, celibacy was a grave impiety and a misfortune; an impiety, because one who did not marry put the happiness of the manes of the family in peril; a misfortune, because he himself would receive no worship after his death and could not know “what the manes enjoyed.” Both for himself and for his ancestors was a sort of damnation.

We can easily believe that in the absence of laws such a belief would long be sufficient to prevent celibacy. But it appears, moreover, that, as soon as there were laws, they pronounced celibacy to be wrong, and a punishable offense. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who had searched the ancient annals of Rome, asserts that he had seen old law which required young people to marry. Cicero's treatise on the laws —a treatise which almost always reproduces, under a philosophic form, the ancient laws of Rome — contains a law which forbids celibacy. At Sparta, the legislation of Lycurgus deprived the man who

did not marry of all the rights of citizenship. We know from many anecdotes, that when celibacy ceased to be forbidden by laws, usage still forbade it. Finally, it appears from a passage of Pollux, that in many Greek cities the law punished celibacy as a crime. This was in accordance with the ancient belief: man did not belong to himself; he belonged to the family. He was one member in a series, and the series must not stop with him.

SECOND EDITOR’S NOTE. It goes without saying this condemnation of the celibacy is completely unfamiliar to our mentality of today, the only thing which is important is the handover of the life, the only thing which is important is the handing down of the torch of the life. End of the editor’s note.

The birth of a daughter did not fulfill the object of the marriage; indeed, the daughter could not continue the worship, for the reason that on the day of her marriage she renounced the family and worship of her father, and belonged to the family and religion of her husband. The family, like the worship, was continued only by the males — a capital fact, the consequences of which we shall see farther on.

But to beget a son is not sufficient. The son who is to perpetuate the domestic religion must be the fruit of a religious marriage. The bastard, the natural son, he whom the Greeks called nothos, and the Romans spurius, could not perform the part which religion assigned to the son. In fact, the tie of blood did not of itself alone constitute the family; the tie of a common worship had to be added. Now, the son born of a woman who had not been associated in the worship of the husband by the ceremony of marriage could not himself take any part in the worship. He had no right to offer the funeral repast, and the family was not perpetuated for him. We shall see, farther on, that for the same reason he did not have the right of inheritance.

Marriage, then, was obligatory. Its aim was not pleasure; its principal object was not the union of two beings who were pleased with each other, and who wished to be united through the pleasures and the trials of life. The effect of marriage, in the eyes of religion and of the laws, was the union of two beings in the same domestic worship, in order to produce from them a third who would be qualified to continue the worship. But we have already said that it seems to us.

This marriage having been contracted only to perpetuate the family, it seemed just that it should be broken if the wife was sterile. The right of divorce, in this case, always existed among the ancients; it is even possible that divorce was an obligation. In India religion proscribed that the sterile woman should be replaced by another at the end of eight years. That the duty was the same in Greece and Rome, there is no formal text to prove. Still Herodotus mentions two kings of Sparta who were constrained to repudiate their wives on account of sterility. As to Rome, everyone knows the history of Carvilius Ruga, whose divorce is the first of which the Roman annals make mention. “Carvilius Ruga,” says Aulus Gellius, “a man of rank, separated from his wife by divorce because he could not have children by her. He loved her tenderly, and had no reason to complain of her conduct; but he sacrificed his love to the sanctity of his oath, because he had sworn (in the formula of marriage) that he took her to wife in order to have children.” Religion demanded that the family should never become extinct; all affection and all natural right had to give way before this absolute rule. If the sterility of a marriage was due to the husband, it was no less necessary that the family should be continued. In that case, a brother or some other relative of the husband had to be substituted in his place. The child born of such a connection was held to be the son of the husband, and continued his worship. Such were the rules among the ancient Hindus. We find them again in the laws of Athens, and in those of Sparta. So powerful was the empire of this religion! So much did religious duty surpass all others! For a still stronger reason, ancient laws prescribed the marriage of the widow, when she had had no children, with the nearest relative of her husband. The son born of such a union was reputed to be the son of the deceased. It was, therefore, the son who was looked for, and who was necessary; he it was whom the family, the ancestors, and the sacred fire demanded. “Through him, ”according to the old laws of the Hindus, “a father pays the debt due to the manes of his ancestors, and assures immortality to himself.” This son was not less precious in the eyes of the Greeks; for later he was to perform the sacrifices, offer the funeral repast, and preserve by his worship the domestic religion. In accordance with this idea, old Aeschylus calls the son (Orestes) the savior of the paternal hearth ."

THIRD EDITOR’S NOTE. These observations of Fustel de Coulanges on the ancient city express especially the Indo-European point of view on the question. But the Indo-Europeans being implanted thereafter in Western Europe, moderated this patriarchate in contact with the peoples they met.

It is nevertheless quite sad to see the worship of the ancestors remaining only in the communities of the Far East in the form of small family altar called kamidana or butsudan. But this Shintoist altar is not only a place where to pay homage to one’s ancestors. On the altar is represented the Mount Meru (the

mountain which is in the center of Buddhist cosmology) and it is in the center of the altar that they put down the main image. In the same way as a temple’s Dharma Hall in a temple, the butsudan or Buddha altar is the temple in the middle of the home.

Below what could be a Celtic-Druidic minded family altar. A kind of small triptych shaped cupboard with two doors , rather deep. Containing at the back a statuette representing the goddess Epona goddess full front between two horses, sitting on a chariot like a black Madonna.

Or containing a statuette of Hornunnos a little similar to the votive stele in Rheims.

Or housing the three Bethen carved in the image of the votive stele in Vertault or of the matrones in Bonn and elsewhere in Germany.

Etc.etc. They are here only some examples, the list is far from being complete.

Topped by a statuette representing Taran/Toran/Tuireann represented as a Jupiter of the columns with a gigantic anguiped (before being placed above this cupboard in the circumstance, this reproduction is put away inside).

On the left door an illustration in color showing Ogmius within a framework which ends in an arc of a circle, on the right door the same kind of framework with the genie of Lugdunum inside (cf. coins of Clodius Albinus 196-197). Or others, of course, according to each his own (Suqellus, the Venus sheltering her five children: to see the terra cotta figurines of the Allier).

The lower part of this pertaining to worship cupboard is equipped with three drawers in which you can put away the torcs or the amber necklaces to wear on the occasion of each prayer, the dodecahedrons furnished with wax lights having to be used precisely as candles, the means of lighting them, the cup or small dish intended to collect the offerings, the result of the genealogical research of the family, etc.

After each use the statuette which represents Jupiter Taran/Toran/Tuireann with an anguiped has to be carefully put away in the aforementioned shelter or Epona’s creche.

THE CONSOLAMENTUM OR FIRE TEST.

The Celtic extreme unction was basically speaking in the beginning an ultimate attempt to cure the patient or the casualty. Done with the means of the ancient medicine i.e., with methods having nothing to do with these to which we are accustomed today, and to be honest it is therefore better to regard from now on as purely symbolic. It is better to stick to the medicine of the hospitals for the rest. The druid of today is only a doctor of the soul/mind of the individuals or of the peoples, and absolutely no longer a doctor of the bodies. There exist excellent specialists for that nowadays. The distant heirs to the surgeon or herbalist warlike druids (liaig or lucterius).

Consolament or baptism of fire is today the moral and spiritual even mental comfort, brought by the vates (or the high-knowers of the druidiaction) to the seriously sick or wounded people, in short in danger of one’s life. This ritual, of course, can take place anywhere, at any moment, according to the state of the patient or of the casualty.

Let’s play the Shakespeare a bit again (the one who wrote King Lear for example, even if he is quite mythical).

Necessary props or hiera.

Mistletoe. Wooden mallet . Various texts (lorica by Gildas and so on…)

The vate has to be a person knowing very well human psychology and have been trained for a long time to hypnosis. The practice of hypnosis dates back perhaps to the prehistoric shamans, but it is generally admitted that its history begins in the 18th century with Francis Antony Mesmer.

In order to hypnotize the casualty or the patient and thus to prevent him from suffering, each high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) or vate, may have his methods. There are no good or bad techniques, simply solutions adapted to the psychology of the person to hypnotize. Sometimes it will be necessary to use a a little directive method, sometimes a more progressive action. Most judicious is always to use the human physiological “truths” to lead to hypnosis. An example; the breathing.

“Your breathing is peaceful, you observe its race which slows down, which becomes deeper as you relax.”

This assertion of a vate come to the bedside of a patient or a casualty, doing nothing but describing a real physiological fact; the patient or the casualty concerned can therefore only believe in the truth of this assertion. He becomes in this way more cooperating, and enters a state of hypnosis quickly. The vate has to be attentive to the signs which appear during this phase of the process. The palpitation of the eyelids for example, or a become more frequent deglutition. It is then advisable to include a remark of this kind in the leading phase. “Your eyelids palpitate, you feel a more frequent need to swallow your saliva…”

More generally, it is advisable “to surprise” the analytical and rational mind of the patient or of the casualty, in order to gradually decrease the resistance he can oppose.

Specialists call that “confusion techniques.” Example; you ask a person to think of his right foot, then very quickly of his left hand, then very quickly still of the color of the eyes of his mother, and so on. His coherent mind is then quickly overloaded, therefore prefers to take refuge in the relaxation that you propose to him in addition. The relation with the officiating vate is therefore paramount. This one has to “follow” his patient with more the great attention. It is necessary to know in this case, by a preliminary dialog, all the preferences, or the rejections, of the person in question; in order to use these elements during the induction and during all the hypnosis session.

The high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) or the vate called for his bedside starts while coming by putting some mistletoe , a little like flowers in provided vases, near the patient.

In the event of a question from the patient on this subject, to answer for example that the mistletoe has, of course, little odor but that “according to the old dictionaries of the 18th century that I consulted it is good against epilepsy apoplexy lethargy paralysis vertigo and I forget, of course, some of them…” 1).

Then he HAS THE SICK OR WOUNDED PERSON RECITE or begins to recite himself if this is not possible, what follows.

Prayers 2) to the Earth that the old pagan ones pronounced ritually when they wanted to cure.

Prayer to Danu.

Goddess revered, of all nature Mother,

Engendering all things and re-engendering them from the same womb,

Because you only do supply each species with living force,

You divine controller of sky and sea and of all things

You do bestow life nourishment with never-failing faithfulness,

And, when our breath has gone, in you we find our refuge.

So, whatsoever you bestow, all falls back to you.

Deservedly art thou called Mother of Gods,

You are the Mighty Being and you are the queen of divinities, O Goddess;

I adore and your Godhead I invoke,

Graciously vouchsafe me this which I ask of thee.

Give ear to me, I pray, and favor my undertakings.

This which I seek of you, Mighty Goddess Danu, vouchsafe to me willingly.

All herbs soever which your majesty engenders,

For health's sake you bestow upon every race.

Entrust to me now this healing virtue of thine:

Let healing come with your powers:

Whatsoever I do in consonance therewith, let it have a favorable issue

Let Your Majesty vouchsafe to me what I ask of you in prayer.

Goddess I adore!

Prayer to all herbs.

With all you potent herbs do I now intercede;

And to your majesty make my appeal:

You were engendered by Mother Earth,

And given for a gift to all.

On you she has conferred the healing

So that to all mankind you may be time and again an aid most serviceable.

This in suppliant wise I implore and entreat,

Hither, hither swiftly come with all your potency,

Forasmuch as the very one who gave you birth has granted me leave to gather you

He also to whom the healing art is entrusted has given his authorization.

As far as your potency now extends,

Vouchsafe sound healing for health's sake.

Bestow on me, I pray, favor by your potency,

That in all things, whatsoever I do according to your will,

You may have favorite issues and most speedy result.

That I may ever be allowed, with the favor of her majesty, to gather you.

And I shall return thanks through the name of the Mother who ordained your birth.

Unconquerable guardian.

Defend me on every side by your power.

Defend all limbs of my body,

With your safe shield protecting each.

Skull, head, hair and eyes,

Forehead, tongue, teeth and their covering,

Neck, breast, side.

For the crown of my head with its hair,

Be you the helmet of salvation on the head;

For forehead, eyes, brain,

Nose, lip, face, temple,

Beard, eyebrows, ears,

Cheeks, lower cheeks, nostrils,

For the pupils, eyelashes, eyelids,

Chin, breathing, jaws,

For teeth, tongue, mouth, throat,

Uvula, windpipe, bottom of the tongue, nape.

Lord be you safest breastplate

For my limbs, for my entrails,

That you may thrust back from me

The invisible nails of stakes, which enemies fashion.

Cover, therefore, Lord Gobannus, with strong corslet,

Along with shoulder blades, shoulders and arms.

Cover elbows with elbow joints

And hands,fists, palms, fingers with their nails.

Cover backbone and ribs with their joints,

Hind parts, back, nerves and bones.

Cover surface, blood and kidneys,

Haunches, buttocks with the thighs.

Cover legs, calves, thighs,

knee-caps, hocks and knees.

Cover ankles, shins and heels,

Feet with the rests of the soles.

Cover the branches that grow 10 together,

With the toes with the nails 10.

Cover chest, its join, the breastbone,

Paps, stomach, navel.

Cover belly, reins, genitals,

And paunch, and vital parts also of the heart.

Cover the triangular liver and fat,

Spleen and armpits.

Cover stomach, chest with the lungs,

Veins, sinews, gall-bladder.

Cover flesh, groin with the inner parts,

Spleen with the winding intestines.

Cover bladder, fat

And all the numberless orders of joints.

Cover hairs, and the rest of my limbs,

Whose names may be, I have passed by.

Cover me all in all with my five senses,

And with the ten doors formed for me,

So that, from my soles to the top of the head,

In no member, without within, may I be sick;

That, from my body, life be not cast out

Nert dee agus andee.May the force be with me

Sunartiu.

Other possible prayer.

Tessurc marb bíu

I save the dead-alive

From wounds ,

From the sudden tumor

May it not be an enduring tumor,

I smite sickness,

I vanquish blood

I invoke the remedy which Belin/Belen/Belenos left with his household.

Nothing is higher than heaven,

Nothing is deeper than the sea

By the righteous anger of Cuchulainn before the stone of Fal

And by the holy words that Hesus spoke

From His Pillar Stone in Muirthemne

Delg díuscoilt crú

The thorn of shedding blood

I strike a blow on it

Which makes it spring out,

Which makes it spring forward,

Which drives it out.

Very sharp is Gobannus’ goad

Let Gobannus’ goad go out before!

Very sharp is Gobannus’ science,

May Gobannus’ science be with you

Sunartiu !

Other possible prayer.

Translation, K. Meyer, 1914.

May Fer-Fio's cry protect me upon the road,

As I make my circuit of the Plain of Life.

O you the seven daughters of the sea 3),

Who shape the threads of long-lived children.

Three deaths be taken from me,

Three ages be given to me,

May I not be molested on my journey

In my radiant breastplate without stain.

May my name not be pledged in vain;

May I have long life;

May death not come to me until I am old.

O you my Silver handed Champion 4),

Who has not died and will not die;

May time be granted to me

Of the quality of white bronze

May my form be exalted,

May my law be ennobled,

May my strength be increased,

May my tomb not be readied,

May I not die on my journey,

May my return be ensured to me.

May the two-headed serpent not attack me 5),

May no thief attack me,

Nor a company of warriors.

May I have increase of time

O you Senach 6) of the seven ages,

Whom fairy women reared

On the breasts of good fortune.

May my seven candles not be quenched.

I am an invincible fortress,

I am an immovable rock,

I am a precious stone,

I am the symbol of seven treasures.

May I be the man of hundreds of years,

Each hundred in its proper time.

I summon my good fortune to me.

Nert dé agus andé. Awen!

If the situation seems desperate, the officiating druid or vate tries to make the patient or the casualty drinking a tonic , for example some vervain in a small bottle, or some mistletoe in decoction… If impossible or forbidden , then the vate takes some mistletoe put it on the stomach of the patient or of the casualty, then closes his hands on it.

The vate turns to the east, sunwise, for a quiet prayer, his hands raised towards the heaven, then comes back to his former place, while continuing to swivel in the same direction. Then he makes the patient or the casualty embracing the wooden mallet of Suqellus then recites or reads the following text aloud to the Celtic hearted or minded person in difficulty (for the others , suitable terms like Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Amitabha 7) or the Heaven, etc., etc.) will be used.

The divine one which is in us and who is at the same time our father and our mother we uns who are his or her children can express only the greatest of the loves for us the greatest indulgence towards our faults. If the Divine one exists, so he knows our smallness and our weakness, since it is him who generated us, we uns who had asked anything from him. If this divinity is well our mother, then she can only forgive us our faults, all our faults, and welcome us with open arms. Is there a father or a mother able to wish the misfortune of his or her children? Such a father or such a mother cannot exist. The soul/minds of the Celts can therefore neither perish nor to go to hell, and some soul/minds being able to be as unhappy as the manes of the classical legends about the subject, that cannot exist. Hell does not exist!

The helping vate speaks then in this way to the dying or very sick person: “And now, this rational certainty strongly attached , concentrate on the other world which awaits for us. The nature of this floating in the space 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 these heavenly islanders 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 gods. For the great god himself sleeps confined in a deep cave of rock that shines like gold — the sleep that our distant ancestor the fate 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.”

The assistant may substitute for this text by Plutarch the description of the Christ in majesty, surrounded by the angels, and, in the place of the prayer which follows (the prayer to the sun, folklore from the Isle of Barra in Scotland), to read the Our Father.

PRAYER TO THE SUN

A ghrian !

Hail to you, thou sun of the seasons

As you traverse the skies aloft,

Thy steps are strong on the wing of the heavens,

You are the glorious mother of the stars.

You lie down in the destructive ocean

Without impairment and without fear;

You rise up on the peaceful wave-crest

Like a queenly maiden in bloom.

I am in hope, in its proper time,

That the great and gracious God

Will not put out for me the light of grace

Even as you do leave me this night.

Failte ort féin, a sharian nan tráth,

`S tu siubhal ard nan speur,

Do cheumaibh treun air sgéith nan ard,

`S tu máthair áigh nan reul.

Thu laighe sios an cuan na dith,

Gun diobhail is gun sgath :

Thu’g éirigh suas air stuagh na sith,

Mar rioghainn og for blaith.

Tha misr an dochas `na thrath

Nach cuir Dia mor nan agh

As domhsa solas nan gras

Mar tha thusa dha m`fhagail a nochd.

COMPLETION PRAYER.

Uediiu-semi

O anextlomaros God 8), whatever the name and the gender it is given to you, I beg you to release N. (name of the person) from the death process , and from the wrathful gods who go with it. May you guide N.(name of the dying person) to You by giving to N. (name of the dying person) the force to give up this world. And you O Fate, O Tokade, our distant ancestor, you who are the one who makes all the beings opening out, and there also whatever the name man gives to you, grant to N. (name of the patient or of the casualty) to succeed in transferring one’s awareness in your heavenly hereafter.

The officiating vate puts his left hand, that of the heart, on the forehead or the head of the patient 9)and then speaks in those terms (at least this is there the idea) to the dying person…

May the force of our heroes of formerly go down on you. A passage is now open between your soul or your mind and the other world. Your individual soul-mind is a spark of energy which goes up towards the sky by taking this ray of light. Nert dee agus andee.May the force be with you! Sunartiu!

Notes.

1) What is true, various works, including one of 1701 which mentions its strong and unpleasant odor (?) speak thus about the mistletoe. But medicine had progressed since nevertheless.

2) Let us specify that if these prayers are well Celtic minded, our Latin manuscripts ascribe them nevertheless to Antonius Musa, the personal doctor of Emperor Augustus, a famous follower of the cold water baths. Antonius Musa was of Greek origin but he was also because of his move in Rome the author of an obvious bringing together between Western and Eastern medicines. We know very few things about him, if not that certain Romans referred to his therapeutic practices to go as far as to consciously imitate the Celts and the Germanic people in this field (while also plunging in cool water the new-born children). This ascribing to Antonius Musa nevertheless is very criticized because the language seems much later. They are, of course, Latin texts but perhaps later than Antonius Musa who is not perhaps therefore the true author of these two texts which looks well to be anonymous translations of another thing. N.B. A certain number of rituals were then to be carried out bare feet, in order to make it possible the officiant to remain in touch with the mother-earth. Particularly at the time of certain pilgrimages, but also at the time of the consolamentum ceremonies performed by the vate or during the preparation of the body of the late one. When you were surprised the night by a phantom or a ghost, the Christian superstition has it that , in Armorican Brittany, there are some generations, you quickly take off your shoes in order to be again “man from head to foot”; and the Catholic priests who were to entreat the ghosts were to act also bare feet to be “man from head to toe.” Today it is only advised not to have something synthetic as shoes, only some naturalness (leather, wood, wool…).

3) The Nine fairies of the isle of Avalon?

4) Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd of the silver hand?

5) The ram-headed snake?

6) Senach was a warrior of Belenos Barinthus Manannan mac Lir.

7) A long time ago, very, very long time ago, a king, named Dharmakara took the vow to cause a land where the beings would be born a last time before their true blooming. He expressed even the wish that the only evocation of his name is enough to go in this new land, infinitely purer than ours. That was granted to him, he became therefore the Buddha named Amitabha.

8) It is a non-specified Celtic god.

9) The sculptures discovered in Entremont in the South of France illustrate this ancient ritual of our ancestors. The left hands of the warriors are pressed on cut heads while their right hands hold up the thunderbolts of Taran/Toran/Tuireann. The heads under the fingers of the warriors represent their own death (this is why their eyes are closed), but the thunderbolt as for it symbolizes the light breaking through death night.

10) Gaelic en gaile lon gaile lon laith or luan laith. An equivalent of the Zoroastrian xvarnah making the bodies belissama (for the female gender, which would then give us belissamos for the male bodies).

OBSEQUIES.

The obsequies mode was, of course, to vary according to the social class or the trade of the late one. As regards funeral our spiritual ancestors therefore seem to have been very eclectic, what proves their concrete and practical tolerance, “null constraint as regards religion” was not an empty word nor a pious hope (in short a lie some hypocrisy or taqiyya?) for them; from the burial to the cremation for the rich persons through the exposure of the corpses a little in the way of our Parsi brethren.

It seems nevertheless for the Homo Religiosus, the survival or development of the “soul/mind” (the anaon) in the posthumous stage, required in the beginning a stable material support. In spite of the extinction of the vital functions, the disappearance of the flesh, certain druidic Schools indeed, could not conceive the rebirth in the next world without a material support; from where the treatment of the bones, for example, minimal material base of the late one (cf the case of the druidic temple in Ribemont-sur-Ancre in “Belgian” territory). It was also and especially to grant a material support to the vital force released by the corpse.

Here what Caesar says about these of the great lords. Caesar. B.G. Book VI, 19.

“Their funerals, considering the state of civilization among the Celts, are magnificent and costly; and they cast into the fire all things, including living creatures, which they suppose to have been dear to them when alive; and a little before this period, slaves and dependents, who were ascertained to have been beloved by them, after the regular funeral rites were completed, were burned together with them.”

Diodorus of Sicily V, 28: “. At the funerals of their dead, some cast letters upon the pyre which they have written to their deceased kinsmen, as if the dead would be able to read these letters.”

If cremation is possible, taking into consideration the means of the family, you would not hesitate to resort to it therefore.

In any event for some other druidic Schools the destiny of the fleshy cover had no importance since it was always possible to entrust the lot of it to the also psychopompous animals which are vultures or ravens.

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.”

If some authors of Antiquity evoke the indifference of the Celts about the destiny of the bodies of the warriors killed in action (Pausanias X, 21,6, in connection with the Galatians who attacked Delphi); the ancient Celts were nevertheless known for their funeral rituals; because they were accustomed to burying their chiefs with their weapons (especially swords which they had twisted as a preliminary), their chariots, their horses, their clothing, their jewels out of gold and their drink set, and so on. Around the tomb of the prince, we also find in many cases, some secondary graves reserved for the family or for the close relations of the late one.

What is certain it is that the Irish epic story entitled the battle of Magh Leana, shows well the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) took care also personally of the burials.

“The druid [ of the king] made a capacious grave of sods for Mog Neid there; and he was buried in it with his arms and with his clothes, and with his armor, and the druid chanted the following lay:

Mog Neid lies in a grave upon Magh Tualaing,

With his spears resting by his shoulder

With his club [once] so active in action

With his helmet, with his sword.”

The druids dealt personally with burials but the vates were to also play a part there according to Lucan. Pharsalia I, 444-462.: “You, vates,whose martial lays formerly made immortal the powerful souls/minds [Latin animas] of those who died in the war…”

These vates thus played the role of “drivers of the soul/minds,” such as it is still performed by the today shamans. Their songs and their lyres were as necessary to the soul/minds as the music for the execution of certain services.

We will thus favor below the burial preferably to the cremation but for reasons strictly opposed to those of our Parsi brethren who fear to soil the earth by acting thus, because the earth is on the contrary the universal great regenerating one of the life as the Celtic minded prayer below shows it very clearly.

Prayer to Danu.

Goddess revered, of all nature the Mother,

Engendering all things and re-engendering them from the same womb,

Because you only do supply each species with living force,

You divine controller of sky and sea and of all things

You do bestow life nourishment with never-failing faithfulness,

And, when our breath has gone, in you we find our refuge

So, whatsoever you bestow, all falls back to you.

Deservedly are you called Mother of Gods,

You are the Mighty Being and you are the queen of the divinities, O Goddess;

I adore and your Godhead I invoke.

When a person dies, it is, first of all, necessary to make him able to reach the world of the dead by performing the funerary rituals scrupulously. What was the role of the vates and of their songs formerly for the souls of the warriors killed in action according to Lucan (”And you, vates,whose martial lays formerly made immortal the powerful souls/minds [Latin animas] of those who died in the war”).

The funeral ritual of the vates makes that the one who dies; after a short passage in the kingdom where the Nemet Hornunnos, the god of the dead, even Tethra, Gwynn or Arawn, according to others, reigns ; reappears to the almost-immortality of the world of those it is pleasant to attend (Mag Meld). From where the importance of the funerals. But as nothing is eternal, this heaven itself (Mag Meld) is only a time.

N.B. Only a negligible minority is born again here on earth in order to die on it again, and this, until they purged there their heaviest faults. They are called bacuceos or seibaros = phantom (Irish siabair/siabhradh) straight out from the kingdom of Tethra even from that of Donn (Donnotegia).

Cf in Wales all the medieval folklore relating to the Andumno or Annwn, kingdom of the characters called Arawn or Gwynn.

The funeral ritual comprised in the order: a funeral song carried out in the sanctuary; the burial itself, of the body or of the urn containing its ashes; a banquet as well as funeral games (sometimes); the erection of a tombstone on the grave.

These rituals can be performed by a druid or a vate acting as a celebrant. And they vary naturally according to whether there is a body or not a body, burial or cremation.

(PROELA) FUNERAL WITHOUT A BODY.

It goes without saying it is quite difficult to make one’s mourning WHEN THERE IS NO BODY TO BURY OR TO BURN.

No need to be a great genius to understand that.

There existed nevertheless in Brittany a very old habit of pagan origin making it possible to circumvent this difficulty from a psychological point of view: that of the fictitious burials (proella or broella).

The principle was simple and came under the most elementary sympathetic magic: it was a question of burying a replacement of the body of the late one.

This substitute for the body of the deceased person then could take variable forms, ranging from leaden tablet 1) to beeswax butter or a clay statuette representing a body.

Considering the psychological dangers of such methods (rumors superstitious beliefs, etc.), we warn nevertheless against the abusive use of these rituals and we will underline well here therefore that it is the only case where the recourse to dagydes kind voodoo dolls is allowed to our members: fictitious burials of late, intended to make it possible to the close relations they move through grief.

If the body of the deceased person would have disappeared, it remains always possible therefore to perform a ceremony of the type “proella” or “broella”: i.-e. to proceed to a burial in which the late one is represented by a small object, for example a butter statuette. Why butter? Because it is a question of collecting literally the soul/mind of the missing late by providing him an adequate support, in order to be able to achieve the necessary “rites” of passage .

You will put thus beside the dagyde, some ateberta, i.e., the objects that the late one liked (jewels, memories, collection weapons…) and a letter or several for the soul/minds of the dead of the family (anaon).

It is interesting to note that in France this practice, gone in the state of custom, was recovered by the Catholic church. The last ceremony of this type was carried out in 1962 in the island of Ushant.

The ritual was celebrated, not only for the lost at sea sailors, but also for all those who died far away, in a port, on a boat, whose body had been thrown to the sea even had been buried on the continent. This ritual made the “fictitious” but mystically real, burial, possible, in the cemetery of Lampaul, the capital of the island. At the conclusion of the burial mass, the proella was locked up in the wooden urn of one of the altars in the choir. Then a priest laid it down in a small monument set up for this purpose in the center of the cemetery (a lantern of the dead like at Bisley in the Gloucestershire?)

FUNERAL WITH A BODY.

The lustration of the body has in fact to take place as well in the event of burial as of cremation. Before any burial or burning, the body of the deceased person has to be carefully washed then arranged so that it is most presentable and calming possible. Like sleeping. The word which indicates this ritual, in Ireland, fothrucad, evokes the curative or hygienic bath as well that the lustration of a corpse. It is recommended to achieve it with spring water if possible.

N.B. As we already saw it, a certain number of rituals were then to be carried out barefoot or while wearing no synthetic matter around one’s feet, only some naturalness (leather, wood, wool) in order to make it possible to the celebrants to remain in touch with the mother-earth.

Particularly at the time of certain pilgrimages, but also at the time of the ceremonies of the consolamentum performed by the vate or during the preparation of the body of the late one. When you were surprised the night by a phantom or a ghost, the Christian superstition has it that , in Armorican Brittany, there are some generations, you quickly take off your shoes in order to be again “man from head to foot”; and the Catholic priests who were to entreat the ghosts were to act also bare feet to be “man from head to toe.” Today it is only advised not to have something synthetic as shoes, only some naturalness (leather, wood, wool…).

The body is then dressed with the most beautiful clothes of the late one, at the very least with acceptable clothing. You will put then beside him, some ateberta, i.e., the objects that the late one liked (jewels, memories, collection weapons…) and a letter or several for the soul/minds of the dead of the family (anaon).

Some groups of our community also recommend burying with the dead a dagger or a sword folded into two, as that was done formerly for the dead of the male gender. And a bunch of three keys for the late ones of the female gender. Preferably what they had for their dubbing.

The importance of funerary artifacts depends in practice on the social status of the late one; from the simple liquid or solid food offerings, to the parade cart (princess of Vix) through the war chariot of great lords.

The body could be laid down in a grave on the floorlike in Islamic land or in a coffin if possible made of oak, even coarse (a simple dug trunk).

Gerald of Wales in his De Instructione Principis (1193) reports indeed on the discovery of the remains of Arthur and Guenevere, together with a leaden cross (as a WHITE curse tablet?), at Glastonbury Abbey between two pyramids:

"...King Henry II of England most clearly informed the monks (of the location), as he had heard from an ancient Welsh bard, a singer of the past, that they would find the body at least 16 feet beneath the earth, not in a tomb of stone, but in a hollow oak.”

Gerald records the description of the leaden cross as bearing the following inscription:

HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLYTUS REX ARTHURUS CUM WENNEVERIA UXORE SUA SECUNDA IN INSULA AVALLONIA.

"Here lies buried the famous King Arthur with his second wife Guenevere, on the Isle of Avalon."

N.B. The abbot of Glastonbury, Henry de Sully, was undoubtedly the organizer of this staging , in order to please the king of England of the time. On the other hand, the drop-off of the body in a dug trunk of oak matches incontestably a Celtic practice proved on the banks of the Rhine.

In parallel, it is necessary, during this time, of course, to deal with making a grave dug (orientation of the body: east/west, the feet in the east and the head slightly elevated as if the late one was looking at the rising sun) and to prepare a tombstone intended to bear the epitaph (model below). The concern of the Celts was always to ensure the departed the bliss in the Other World, but also, on earth, the perpetuation of the memory of his name.

The inscription was to be written in Lepontic runes or possibly (according to local tradition) while resorting to the Greek, Latin, or Oghamic alphabet.

It is also necessary to prepare the funeral meal by slaughtering one or more animals (cattle or others) belonging to the late one if possible.

The rest of the ritual is to be held theoretically at night by torchlight, because it is from the night that is born the day. Each one must come there with a small white stone and also, possibly, a letter or a message to forward somebody in the hereafter, by the late one.

MARWNAD: FUNERAL SONG OR EULOGY.

The ceremony starts in general by proceeding outside or in an unspecified building. If the ceremony has to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or laid out. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with an equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light passing as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” suffix of feminine adjective.

matching the portico of the old with a palisade Celtic sanctuaries; or the triumphal gate marking the entrance of the cemetery of the Breton parish closes; even the portal of certain Romanesque churches.

Necessary props or hiera .The funerary artifacts having to accompany the late one. And for the officiating druid a symbolic missive and some mistletoe.

Some readers will be very astonished here to discover that the Celts too, like many other peoples, were in the habit of celebrating the merits and only the merits of the deceased person at the time of his obsequies.

The text of Lucan is indeed extremely clear on this subject and we produce it again here: “You, vates,whose martial lays formerly made immortal the powerful souls/minds [Latin animas] of those who died in the war…” (Pharsalia).

After or instead of this funeral song, the funeral lamentations or praises of the late, of course, are to be if possible delivered by a druid of the vate category. At the whim of the inspiration of the latter.

As examples, we will transcribe again two of them below.

First of all, one of these which were written by Cinaed ua hArtacain * in his Fianna Bátar I n-Emain.

“Champions who dwelt in Emain, in Rathcroghan, in Tara, in Luachair which heroes used to celebrate, in Allen, in West Munster. They remain not, there is not what has died: though many were their deaths, stories of them remain after them; no one save a fool will conceal them etc.etc.”

* Cinaed ua hArtacain, died in 975, was the almost official great poet of all the North of Ireland at the time.

Then the funeral praise composed by Taran/Toran/Tuireann ? on the grave of his three sons, at least according to the Irish legend (the story entitled: “the fate of the children of Tuireann”).

Distressed is my heart over you !

You three noble fair heroes

Who fought so many fights.

Over your grave,

As long as ships will ply the sea.

So long shall I not write lay or song more.

etc.etc.

Then, according to whether there is burial or cremation, the ritual is different.

CREMATION.

In the event of cremation , it is obviously important to transport the body in a place where this ceremony can take place without danger before the placing of the funeral urn.

That can be a specialized room, a crematorium, or then directly in a grave dug for this purpose in the cemetery of the temple.

Four cases can arise indeed.

The body is burned in a room provided then ashes are transported elsewhere in a funeral urn. To be scattered or rest in the lantern of the dead (columbarium) of the parish closes. To be buried in a grave as if it was a coffin.

The body is burned directly on the spot, in the grave which was dug for it in the parish close surrounding the temple.

N.B. The lantern of the dead is a small very narrow tower,topped with a lantern , which can hold a light, at the foot of which or in the base of which the funerary urns are gathered . It is therefore a pagan columbarium. One of the best known in England is that of Bisley in the Gloucestershire.

Nobody knows exactly how were built the funerary pyres of the time. The used tree varieties have to be meticulously chosen: sorb or others.

In the event of cremation, it is burned with the body of the late some of the objects he loved or liked particularly.

If possible (in a crematorium the room housing the crematory furnace has to be converted for that ), the professionals or/and the close relations go three times around the pyre , three small circumambulations (deisil, deiseil, deiseal in Ireland; for comparison in the tawaf performed around the Kaaba in Mecca, there are seven of them ) sunwise or clockwise. The oldest son of the late one, who in theory must lead the rite, breaks then or pretends to do it, the cranium of the dead with the mallet of Suqellus (the hammer of the good death; it is to be in this case not a symbolic mallet out of wood, but of a true mallet being able to inflict “mortal blows”); in order to prevent that it explodes in the fire.

Then the burned out bones or what remains of them are carefully collected, and placed, after washing if necessary, in a funeral urn (out of terra cotta, glass, metal or stone). In the event of later interment , the urn itself is to be inserted in a stone box sealed with lead (the cist: see the famous leaden tablets of the Larzac in France).

The atebertas (various ornaments, usual objects, broken or bent weapons…) burned on the pyre with the late one, either are put into the urn or next to it. If it is next to it , so it is the whole urn plus remainders of atebertas which is to be inserted in the cist 1) because formerly the urn was also frequently surrounded by a circle of stones or pebbles. All that subject to a sufficient place in the niches of the lantern of the dead provided, of course.

N.B. And except if the cremation takes place directly on the floor in the grave dug for this purpose in the temple cemetery.

BURYING.

In the event of burial also people bury the body of the deceased person with some objects, he liked or to which he attached importance. We saw that higher with the example of the funeral organized by the druid Dergdamsa. We also see it in the case of the king Loegaire.

“For my father Niall would not allow me to …. but would have me buried on the perimeter of Tara, like a man standing in battle (for it was the custom of the pagans to be buried armed, with their weapons at hand)…..until the day of erdathe (this, according to the druids, was the day of the judgment of the Lord).

There still, like in the case of a cremation, it also happened that slaves or prisoners of the late one were sacrificed with him.

“But when he was come to the spot now called Forrach in úi meic Uais, there Fiachra died of his hurt. His grave was dug, his lamentation rite performed, his name written in Oghamic runes; after which, in order that perpetually it should be for a reproach to Munster and a fitting matter with which to taunt them, round about Fiachra’s grave the hostages whom they had brought out of the south were buried and they alive. Every man of them, as they were put quick into earth, said: “it is for uch [i.e. ‘upon a cry of despair] that these tumuli are being founded.’ And said the officiating druid there: “even such shall be the name of the place, Forrack to wit” (Aided Crimthaind Maic Fhiddaig. Death of Crimthann son of Fidach).

The principle of these human sacrifices was simple. It was not the execution of a death sentence nor in order to make such or such traditional foe feel ashamed as the Christian monk having transcribed

this text writes it: you gave the man to the earth, not by punishment - the notion of punishment is unfamiliar of the druidic religion - but in the sole purpose of restoring a broken cosmic balance. “Unless the life of a man be offered for the life of a man, the mind of the immortal gods cannot be rendered propitious” Caesar says ( B.G. VI, 16).

The hostages belong to the late, just like servants or slaves, they do not have to live longer than him, and, moreover, the death of these prisoners, nationals of an enemy people, avenges or compensates for that of the king having succumbed to his wounds.

NB. It goes without saying it is some former druidism and if the druids of today understand the psychological function of revenge, because, as they are men and not prophets or gods, nothing human is alien to them, the druids of today condemn categorically such sacrifices, the sacrifices non-founded on a voluntary basis.

But to get back to the present day, burned or buried, whatever one’s religion besides, the dead always has to be accompanied by a minimum of funerary artifacts. In addition to a statuette representing one’s mother-goddess, some personal objects, rings, wedding bands, signets rings, watches, necklaces, or religious ones, even some food liquid or solid food offerings (apples, nut, hazel nuts, for example in a bag or a purse, out of leather). Not forgetting, of course, it is the most important even there, some branches of mistletoe symbol of immortality.

The officiating druid or vate also entrusts, in a letter to the souls or the minds of the dead , a message matching the level of spiritual progress of the late one. And, of course, there are no longer human sacrifices. They are replaced by the resort to small wine amphoras, symbolizing blood, which are given up as is or from which the content is poured in a suitable place after having opened them, or to have broken ritually their neck. Perhaps by a gesture a little similar to that which consists in “cracking ” a bottle of champagne open, nowadays.

If the late one was powerful and wealthy, you will make parading behind his body or his funeral urn, and to his last resting place, some specimens of his richnesses, a part of his horses or of his cattle for example, in order to be slaughtered and buried or burned there with him. Impossible to do with cars today unless being called Cesar Baldaccini. Although to crush a car, a “set of wheels” like it is said in popular language , is a whole symbol. 3)

The funeral procession, after being arrived with the body or the funeral urn, has then go to the place where the remains will be buried (or burned if it is not already done); with the ateberta and the letter for the dead of the family, if they were not already burned with them.

You open this part of the ceremony itself by the great prayer for the dead.

PRAYER FOR THE DEAD.

“My father did not allow me

To betray the faith of his father,

And I want to be buried

In the manner of men at war

For the pagans,

Armed in their tombs, have their weapons ready

Facing the rising sun

The souls are almost immortal

And last until the day of Erdathe

i.e., until only Fire and Water

Prevail

May the force be with us

Sunartiu!

The line of verse “in the manner of men at war ” may be replaced by the expression “like a she-warrior and so on….” if the deceased person is not of the male gender.

The officiating druid pauses and resumes.

“Happy the peoples beneath the Great Bear because they know that the death is only the middle of a long live; and that souls and minds don’t end up like shadows in the hellish and freezing abode of the Erebus.”

X… or Y… (name of the deceased person) knew how to die and did not spare his (or her) life, because he (or she) knew that it continues in the hereafter.

The swan-necked death angel, the goddess or the fairy with an insupportable beauty, in her coracle of white bronze , came to seek our brother (or our sister).

The incantations of our druids could do nothing against the force of this call.

And in the crystal vessel, they sail now both towards the islands in the west of the World, beyond the setting sun. The peaceful deity, with the beauty of a fairy or of a goddess, leads our brother X… (or our sister Y…) to the land of the eternal youth.

Where everything is beautiful, attractive and pure

Where exist neither fault neither disease nor time

Neither border neither war neither suffering neither sorrow nor slavery.

Here music is marvelous,

There brooks of mead run

And peace there is eternal everywhere.

Tir na mbeo, land of the living , biuontiion teres;

Tir na mban, land of women, banion teres;

Tir na nog, land of youth, ogiion teres;

Mag mor, great plain, mara magosia;

Mag meld, pleasant plain, meldomagosia;

Mag inis, insular plain, magosa inicias.

May the force be with us!

Nert dee agus andee. Sunartiu!

The officiating continues the ceremony by reciting the following lay…

“Where does he (or she) go now ? ”

All answer what follows.

“He (or she) goes into a land where there is no age

Neither decline nor darkness.

He (or she) goes into the isle of Avalon

The large and marvelous apple orchard

Which produces all things by itself.

Where there is no cultivation

Except what nature provides.

Here the ground produces everything

Instead of merely grass

She lavishes thus abundant harvests

In its covered with fruit forests.”

During the burial or the cremation , if this one has to take place in the grave dug for this purpose; the celebrating vate, with his hands and his palms raised towards the heaven, in the name of everybody, recites the following prayer.

Where are they gone

All these elegantly dressed riders

Who faced the floods

In their houses

Weapons in hand?

In spite of their frenzied escape

Their lances and their swords

The flood caught up with them

The backward flow took them away

In their palaces or their cottages.

As long as ships

Shall ply the sea.

So long shall I not write lay or song more

The inscription engraved on your stone

Will take the place of it .

Rise O sun,

May the darkness of the night be lifted

In the rays of your glorious light.

Deliver us from the infernal legions of dusii

And from the gigantic anguipedic wyverns *

As well as from all other under-gods of the ices of the non-world.

Nert dee agus andee May the force be with them.

Sunartiu!

* Fomorians in the Irish rites.

The officiating continues by reciting more the prayer below.

“REICNE FOTHAID CANAINNE. Dochta do neoch dales dail Facbas dail n-eco fri laimh Donarlaith do bil oige Morrioghan Is mor do fod boïbh nigius Cride maith recht nodaais Cid gar di sund uan i mbé Na futhbad uaman do gné Nimrumart-sa namasrad Fien gormainech goburglas A techt i nhuire adba Dirsan dond eochaill amra Airc dot daim, sonn ni ainfe Dofil deoidh na haidchi Imusraidhfi neach nach ré. Sunartiu ! ”

It is blindness for anyone making a tryst

To set aside the tryst with death

The triple Morrigan has come

Many are the spoils she washes now,

It is necessary to have a valiant heart

Not to weaken in front of her.

Though it is near us here where she is,

Let not fear attack your shape.

The noble-faced gray-horsed warrior band

Has not betrayed me

Alas, for the wonderful yew forest

That they should go into the abode of clay !

For other trysts

Where everything is beautiful, attracting and pure

Where exist neither fault neither disease nor time

Neither border neither war neither suffering neither sorrow nor slavery.

The music there is marvelous,

Mead brooks run there

And peace is there eternal everywhere.

Tir na mbeo, the land of the living biuontiion teres;

Tir na mban, the land of the women, banion teres;

Tir na nog, the land of youth, ogiion teres;

Mag mor, the large plain, mara magosia;

Mag meld, the plain of joy, meldomagosia;

Mag inis, the plain in the middle of the island, magosa inicias.

Go to your house, do not stay here,

The end of the night is at hand.

Nert dee agus andee.May the force be with you

Sunartiu!

The officiating person proceeds then to a drink offering by pouring ale or mead , on the grave or in the grave, during the cremation, using a set in gold skull.

The people who attend the ceremony are then invited by him to throw in the tomb (or on the pyre), the last messages they want to forward to their disappeared dear beings (died parents or friends, or others).

After a short pause, the celebrating vate resumes while saying (each time by facing a different cardinal point, sunwise or clockwise)…

“Go in peace, children of the Great Bear my brothers, X… or Y… (name of the deceased person ) from now on will repay what he (or she) owes, in the other world”.

The officiating invokes then the Souls or Spirits of the dead of the community.

My children let us pray!

Spirits of health and souls of the Celts

Help us, guide us, advise us,

So that from our combined efforts

A homeland as a light in the night reappears

In which will live eternally

The soul of our ancestors

And of the Celtic hearted and minded people

Under the protection of our gods

Nert dee agus andee.May the force be with us

Sunartiu!

The present persons make the pagan sign of the cross, i.e., with their right fist firmly closed , they beat several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) their breast, as if they hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

Then, before leaving, they throw in the grave or put down a stone around in order to build symbolically a cairn there (a heap of well clean and clear color stones if possible is therefore to have been prepared in advance close by).

People then move to the meal which is to follow, because death in our religion in no case should be a cause of grief; it is necessary on the contrary to see it and to celebrate it with joy like a new birth in another world, better.

Later, during the banquet, the games or after, the tombstone on the grave will be erected, if there was burial or interment of the funeral urn in a grave (cist); with the name of the deceased person and his filiation (son or daughter of such and such) engraved in Lepontic runes (the oldest known Celtic writing) on it and his soul/mind will be able thus to leave definitely the earth.

THE FUNERAL BANQUET.

The meat necessary to this banquet must come in theory from the animals or cattle of the late one if he had some, therefore not to be bought.

It was seen higher than the man, after death, was considered becoming a happy and divine being (meldus) but on the condition that the living always offers a funeral meal to him at the very least a funeral drink offering (from where the habit of drinking to the health or the memory of somebody). This banquet of a little special kind is therefore to assemble then around the same table or under the same roof, the friends or the close relations of the late one. In the case of a cemetery celicnon (building not to be mixed up with a lantern of the dead), the tables are, of course, round.

The best way of approaching it is not to express there an excessive sadness. The dead is from now on in a better world, do not forget it! It takes part in the joys of a permanent banquet. The hereafter of the Celts is a merry, luminous, hereafter, and not dismal. It is the living who is affected by sorrow, not the dead.

Then the following form is therefore recited.

The bard or president of the banquet.

To fame and custom, only funeral pomp should be granted

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE BANQUET.

They are therefore to be despised by us deep down in our heart, but not to be neglected for the others.

The bard or president of the banquet.

He’s as great a fool who weeps; he shall not be alive a thousand years hence.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE BANQUET.

As he who weeps, that he has not lived to a thousand years.

The bard or president of the banquet.

Let’s toast some health of the living and of the dead.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE BANQUET.

It should go round in full bumpers!

The bard or the president of the banquet.

Come.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE BANQUET.

It shall be done!

FUNERAL GAMES.

Less funny were the cluichi which gave rise to gladiatorial combats. These funerary habits or practices persisted during very long time. The legend which reports the fate of the children of Lir, died in the good books - furthermore under the protection of a direct follower of St Patrick - what is nevertheless somewhat heretic; makes them benefit still from the old and antiquated ceremonial of these pagan funerals without them losing through that the least piece of the other parallel world of heavenly nature which awaits for them. “Their tombstone was raised over their grave, and their ogham names were written, and their funeral games (cluichi) were performed, and heaven was obtained for their soul/minds.”

In spite of the many cases of censorship by the Christian copyist monks, this mention of the funeral games (cluichi) is not exceptional in the Ireland of the Early Middle Ages. The two concerns of the Gaels, like all Celts was besides, to always guarantee to the departed the bliss in the Other World and, on earth, where his body received in accordance with the custom an honorable burial, the perpetuation of the remembrance of his name in the memories. This true death which is oblivion is thus avoided to him, because only those we forget die actually; as expressed it very well in his way the little Hesus Cuchulainn hardly seven years old, to response a warning statement from the druid named Catubatuos. “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.”

N.B. It goes without saying the funeral games or should be neither a caricature nor ridiculous, and that it is better to abandon them if impossible to give them a certain solemnity. Important is to respect the spirit of them: death is only the middle of a long life.

MOURNING.

A minimal mourning is finally to be observed. At least three days.

“And to the end of three days no calf was let to their cows by the men of Ulster ” (Aided oenfir Aife, the death of the only son of Aife and Hesus Cuchulainn).

THE LOGA (TOMB STONES).

On the surface, the grave will be signaled by a monument depending on the means of the late one: for example, a carved wood pile, an engraved wooden plank, a stone, a tombstone, or more (a cairn, a mound, a monument or a lantern of the dead).

The last stage of the ritual itself thus consists of the erection of a tombstone, including possibly at the place where was buried the funeral urn. These loga have to be directed East-West. The face turned towards the east, where the sun rises. In Ireland the tombstone was engraved of oghamic runes, but as we already have had the opportunity to say it, oghams are a writing which is not Celtic in the beginning; it was transposed from the Latin alphabet at a time which does not date back beyond the first or of the second century of our era. We find specimens of this writing only in Ireland and in the West of Great Britain. There is no example of it on the Continent. The Irish tradition claims that this writing was invented by the god Ogma god, that the continental Celts knew by the name of Ogmios. But the oldest written form employed by a Celtic people is the Lepontic alphabet adapted from the Etruscan alphabet in the 6th century… before our era, in the North of Italy. And it is undoubtedly it which, while going up beyond the Alps by the amber road, produced the Germanic runes thereafter.

Of course, it can be a different case according to the country of the late and other alphabets can also be used (Latin, Greek, Celtiberian).

The inscription has to be of the type…

- Name and first name or opposite, of the late one. Name and first name of the father followed by the mention - cnos if the dead is of the male gender. By the mention - gena if the late one is of the female gender. Name and first name of the mother followed by the mention - cnos if the dead is of the male gender. By the mention - gena if the late one is of the female gender.

- Birth date - date of the death.

- Carnitu locan (or carnitu artuas) followed by the naming of the person most affected by this mourning, example: her grateful husband… his faithful wife… his younger brother…

In the plural it will be written carnitus…

You may add the mention tacos toutas if several other family members or close relations, want to join it.

These stones or wooden steles may be engraved with various figures: wheels (to evoke a chariot as in the case of the inscription discovered in 1869, at San-Bernardino-de-Briona in Italy), vessels, horses, dolphins. That of Todi, still in Italy, was a stone block thick 20 cm, broad 60 cm and high approximately 80 cm according to Lambert.

1) In black magic that corresponds to the curse tablet of the Romano-British sorcerers. But in the case of the proella or broella we are in the field of the white magic.

2)The cist is generally made of several stone slabs delimiting the space where the funerary drop off, burial or cremation, is done. It can also be a dry stone construction, the box is then delimited by small dry stone walls. The grave is sometimes covered by one or more horizontal flagstones, or simply by the stones forming the mound which covers and protects the whole, when this one exists.

3) Cesar Baldaccini (1921-1998), known as Cesar, author of the sculpture given to the laureates of the Night of the Cesar award (of the movies) , is also the author of crashed cars. As from 1959 indeed, he tackles cars. He uses a hydraulic press, to compress wrecks, initially. This method gives a good place to the chance. His works show a very strong material presence. Compact volumes, sharp edges… the public gets the impression of seeing the car in a new light.

CEMETERIES OR NECROPOLISES.

The first druidic characteristic of the druidic cemetery or necropolis is that it is a sacred space delimited by a ditch as well as a (made of wood or stones) surrounding wall, more or less rectangular ; and of which the opening, always monumental (a portico, a portal, etc.), made in the Eastern wall of the peribolos, opens onto the east. Theoretically, it is never alone, but combined with a place of worship, a temple, fanum, or nemeton…

The other main feature of the cemetery of druidic type indeed, it is that it is located just around a temple and in any way relegated in a remote location of the countryside as it was the case among the Greeks and Romans. You could, of course, be buried on your grounds or along the roads, on the outskirts of the towns, but most druidic was to rest around a temple, if necessary downtown like the Breton parish closes at Pleyben Guimiliau Saint-Thegonnec, etc.

Two quite distinct parts and having almost nothing to do together in the druidic cemetery * located around or behind the place of local worship; the part reserved for the burial of the funeral urns, smaller in general, and the part reserved for the burial of the bodies.

The part reserved to the funeral urns is topped by a lantern of the dead (and not by a cross like in the case of the Christian cemeteries).

The lantern of the dead is a building of variable shape, often slim (like a small tower), generally hollow and topped by an openwork top (at least three openings); in which in the twilight, people hoisted, often with a system of pulleys, a lit lamp, supposed to be a guide for the late ones.

Each time somebody died indeed, a fire was lit at the top of the tower, in the lantern. And this fire burned until the burial of the late one. Some authors think that it was in the beginning equipment intended for the cremation the bodies, the base of the monument housing a kind of furnace. A use which would have been quickly banned with Christianity.

Highest of the known lanterns of the dead is that of Saint-Pierre d'Oléron. The building of the famous lantern of the dead in Saint-Pierre d'Oléron, dear to the last years of our author,dates back to the Middle Ages and falls within the English Gothic tradition. It is indeed at the time when the island was English that was built this lantern. Almost 25 meters high, the tower comprises a base plate reachable by a staircase, then an octagonal shaft about fifteen meters high for a 4.5 meters diameter . It comprises a stairway inside enlightened by two high and very narrow Romanesque windows, as by skylights. This staircase gives access a pentagonal turret opened by high Romanesque windows, thanks to which people could formerly see by far the light of this lantern which perhaps also was therefore used as a headlight for the sailors. This turret is finished by a spire also pentagonal, eight meters high, crowned by a stone cross. The main shaft is decorated in a sober way by Romanesque blind arches with narrow tympanums based on fines and very elegant columns emphasizing the edges.

There exists a certain number of lanterns of the dead in Ireland. The height of these towers ranges between 18 and 40 meters; that of the monastery of Kilmacduagh is the highest in Ireland. The type of masonry evolved, from rough rubble stones in the oldest ones, to cut stones well jointed for the most recent ones .

These constructions were probably built between the 9th century and the 12th century. Ireland had approximately a hundred and twenty of them; most part is from now fallen into ruin , and a score still in perfect state. In Scotland, the two remaining towers are located in Brechin and Abernethy.

The only tower of this type to have a hexagonal base is in Kinneigh, in the county of Cork, and dates back to 1014. That of Clondalkin is the only one in Ireland having kept its original roof.

There are also some of them in several Central European countries (in this last case, the building of the lanterns seems later than the “French” lanterns of the dead). Only one example, on the other hand, in England: in Bisley, in the Gloucestershire.

Closer to us, in the 19th century, a round tower was built in the cemetery of Milford, Massachusetts. Built out of granite, it is the only one of its kind in America.

* The tree characteristic of the druidic cemetery is the birch. In the absence the yew.

N.B. The dead therefore must rest all around the place of local worship, or for example behind, but in the same enclosure, such is the druidic tradition.

Although relatively recent (they date back especially to the 15th century), the parish closes of Brittany took over unconsciously this tradition consisting in burying dead around a place of worship.

The parish close is a religious architectural unit typically Breton. The enclose is in the beginning a closed cemetery contiguous to the church, which received an entrance portico or a triumphal gate.

The parish close, as the name suggests, is closed. It is of a practical measure, indeed, at that time, in the villages, hens and pigs moved quite freely, people got used quickly to surround the cemetery with an enclosure in order to avoid the meddling of these farm animals into this sacred place.

This precaution makes that the entrance portico, always opened, comprises a step to go up, a low wall to be spanned and a step to go down. The close was thus protected from the animal intrusion. We see very clearly this characteristic in Plouneour-Menez.

In Brittany the parish close is therefore today a sacred place encircled by a surrounding wall, including four elements: the entrance with a monumental and triumphal gate, the church, the calvary, the ossuary, and in most cases, the cemetery. They are true masterpieces of architecture which show the enthusiasm of those who built them. These of Guehenno, La Martyre, Pleyben, Sizun, Saint-Thegonnec, Lampaul-Guimilliau, Commana… enable us to discover the multiple facets of this religious art.

The monumental gate or triumphal arch, generally very decorated, now symbolizes the entry of the Righteous person in immortality. It emphasizes the notion of passage we find in all the rites related to death, resulting from the Celtic civilization. In this enclosure, the cemetery is small. It is contiguous to the church, meaning that death does not move away the late one from his religious community which is a community of living AND OF DEAD as it is well seen on November 1st.

The unit presents, in spite of the variety of the buildings, a very beautiful harmony, an almost-theatrical unity of place. The name of the door in Breton language, “porz a maro” (“death gate”), and often the presence of the Ankou, this strange female character, symbol of the death, which sometimes decorates it in the shape of a skeleton holding a scythe or a bow with an arrow, could let believe that the Breton had a deeply morbid vision of existence. It is not the case at all. Thanks to the heritage of his Celtic faith, he rather practiced a kind of living with the dead.

The close is therefore especially the symbolic field of the meeting between the world of the living and that of the deceased persons, between the sacredness and the non-religious. Death is not hidden. It is not shameful as at our time. People learn how to live with it, in a relation obviously tinged with supernatural, allegories and poetry.

N.B. The ground of the cemetery being limited, the relics of the dead were to be frequently exhumed to give way to the new late ones. From where a funerary chapel or an ossuary, where the bones were laid down, even some small tiny rooms, which were built against the church or the wall of the cemetery. Then these ossuaries became isolated, vaster, more beautifully crafted, buildings. They took the shape of a reliquary and were used as funerary chapels.

LIFTING OF NE LITOM OR ELUDE

(Cf. Gaelic úidech -úthach –úithechelodach- elutache fugitive).

The ancient excommunications or anathemas called “ne litom” (no longer worship?) also matched a true attainder. In the event of “ne litom” the sentenced or elutached person (from the old Celtic elutacos = fugitive) became in a way an outlaw.

Here what Caesar says about that:

“. If anyone, either in a private or public capacity, has not submitted to their decision, they interdict him from the sacrifices. This among them is the heaviest punishment. Those who have been thus interdicted [from the sacrifices] are esteemed in the number of the impious and the criminal: all shun them, and avoid their society and conversation, lest they receive some evil from their contact; nor is justice administered to them when seeking it, nor is any dignity bestowed on them .”

Some people thought that this ritual of druidic excommunication was to be a kind of briamon smethraige but it is more probable than it was to be like to peas in a pod with a spell of type leaden curse tablet . The name of the culprit was engraved on a bark or shelf out of wooden of yew or birch with the magic formula corresponding but then publicly burned , unlike the curse tablet concerned coming under the mere black magic.

The ritual formula of druidic excommunication currently become obsolete , and engraved on the tablet, was to be the following one…

NE LITOM. NEQUE TAUNEI LITOM. NEQUE VERTAUNEI LITOM. NEQUE TISAUNEI LITOM.

For X… (name of the person having to be subjected to the “ne litom,” ne litom meaning about in this case, as we saw it, no longer or no… litom. In other words, no longer or no… participation in the sacrifices… for X…).

The ritual of lifting of elude, itself, on the other hand, is made to reinstate in the community those who were no longer part of it; either because they had one day categorically been excluded from it, or because they had put themselves in such a situation. In short, who had lain fallow.

For basic reasons (doctrinal errors with serious consequences, kind monolatry , heresy) or formal reasons (unfair or dishonest behaviors, opposites with druidic deontology, and so on).

N.B. Through heresy we want to say: deviating a little too much from the reference druidism , which may be only the druidism of the original and ancient cradle of the Celtic people.

This rehabilitation does not give back to the elutached person or elutacos the rank that he or her held within the sodality, because compensations are to be carried out before, to repair the evil that he or her has done.

On the Irish penitentials, to see our lesson entitled “essay about the druidism.”

Necessary props or hiera .

Tablet out of yew or birch bark already written (it is always necessary to be optimistic)

Black beret or hood for the elutached person.

Text of the speech of Calgacus and others.

Mallet of Suqellus.

A raven in a cage.

Possibly a portable altar.

room made up of a nave finished by a half-circle shaped apse, where sat, of course, formerly, some magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore not catacombs).

With by order of seniority priestesses and high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) leading the procession, then the gutuaters or gutumaters with in the middle the ambact carrying the Catubodua’s raven in a cage, the vates with in their middle the inquisiting usher and his voulge, lastly the veledae.

N.B. The voulge can be replaced today by a pruning knife of vine growers, a kind of knife in the shape of a small billhook, the southernmost Celts not having awaited for the Romans to discover the vine. The archeological excavations carried out in 1992 close to Paris (in Bobigny) showed besides that the ancient Celts also knew the folding knife kind pocket knife or penknife.

But of course, the voulge can always have its original dimensions, i.e., to be at least long as a Swiss halberd.

mallet of Suqellus, the cage of the raven of Catubodua, or every necessary object; ; if the ritual takes place outdoors.

The cortege performs three circuits (three large circumambulations) at a good distance of the altar or of the simulacrum (deisil, deiseil, deiseal in Ireland… for comparison, in the tawaf carried out around the Kaaba in Mecca, there are seven circuits around the simulacrum).

The officiating druid moves towards the altar in the center of the sacred circle; the velede acting as ambact joins him on his left, puts down the mallet of Suqellus in front of him and remains at side a little in the background. In his place in the middle of his, the vate which acts as investigating usher, with his voulge drawn in his right hand like a halberd, the voulge, traditional symbol of the priests of the forest .

DIALOGS OR MONOLOGUES.

The gutuater or gutumater acting as ambact joined the officiating druid , puts down the cage containing the Catubodua’s raven which will be subjected to a (nonbloody) sacrifice on the altar in front of him 2) and places oneself at the right-hand side of the officiating druid.

The elutached person (old Celtic elutacos)remains separate behind the vates or outside, dressed all in black , hood or beret turned down on the eyes. The cladibo (the sword) of Tethra in his hand, he announces himself by pronouncing the words which follow.

“I am a fisher king, a maimed king, the Celt N. (civil first name and name of the elutached , initiatory name possibly).

I have indeed awful tidings,

To announce to you

Evil is the time!

Summers without flowers

Women without modesty,

Sea without roe

Wrong judgments of judges,

Every justice is removed.

Every art is buffoonery

Music turns into boors.

Every falsehood is chosen.

Every baseborn person is set up,

Every man is maimed

Usurpers are many

Wisdom turns into false judgments

Myself I have…

In front of the assembly of the brethren, the elutached person , dressed in black or as a layman, must admit his errors then. The text of this self-criticism must be approved beforehand by the officiating druid. The fisher king will finish his self-criticism by the formula below.

I ask my brothers to give to the poor fisher king who I am what I have done, I ask them for granting to me their forgiveness for this fault. I accept in advance the sentence and the judgment which you will settle on about my new place within the community of the living, in accordance with our deontology and with the decisions of the Bratuspantium having had to rule on my case 1).

As proof of my good will, as a sign of peace, I give this sword in your hands, in order that there is no longer drawn sword between us. May the peace prevail in our sodality.

The elutached person (Old Celtic elutacos) holds up then in front of him in order to better present it , with his two hands, Orna, the sword (cladibo) of Tethra, drawn from its sheath, and its scabbard next to it.

The inquisiting usher vate takes it from him and guides then the elutached with his left hand towards the sacred center of the circle or inside the cella of the sanctuary before the altar overhanging the sacrifice pit; then announces to the officiating druid …

“Here the fisher king who wishes to ascend again his canecosedlon.”

The officiating druid…

“The bad tidings it is that the sword of Tethra the anguiped had been drawn, that a disagreement and a dispute were raised, that there was no more peace! By your words and your actions, you had seriously harmed our faith and our community of living.

A judgment and a sentence had consequently been delivered by the Bratuspantium (alternative according to the cases: you had cut off yourself from our community of the dead and of the living).

Do you therefore agree once again to take the oath of loyalty to our community of the dead and of the living, O fisher king with a maimed arm ? ”

The elutached…

“Yes, I do ! ”

The officiating druid…

“Do you accept, O fisher king with the cut arm, to renew the promises of your pagan baptism? ”

The elutached…

“Yes, I do ! ”

The inquisiting usher vate then releases the eyes of the elutached person (elutacos) by turning up his hood or his beret on his head and says to him: “In this case therefore once again take an oath on our sacred ensigns” 2).

The elutached person takes the oath, the three fingers ( thumb fore finger and middle finger ) of his right hand raised above the hammer of Suqellus , why repeating the following formula:

I swear to seek only beauty, glory, and Celtism

I swear to remain faithful to the true spirit

Of the true Celtic tradition.

I swear to be the worthy and authentic heir

To the Science and philosophy of the islands in Hyperborea

Or located north of the World:

Thule, Abalum, Gorre and Ogygia the green island

To our elder of the time of the independent and free Great Celltica.

To the last druid 3) of the court of the great Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill

According to Urard Mac Coise

To the Reformation of Sean Eoghain Ui Thuathallain na Leabhar

To the Reformation of Henry Lizeray.

Or of his comarbae…..

I not only swear to support and defend the true Celtic Tradition and the Celtic spirit, but also to develop them again and to spread the light of them everywhere.

I swear to contribute of all my forces to the reconquest movement which will give back to us the spiritual goods from which we were wrongfully deprived or despoiled (rites, symbols, pilgrimages, places of worship, from the Croagh Patrick in Ireland, to the Mount Beuvray in Burgundy…)

I swear to cause that the true spirituality of our ancestors may again enlighten the world like a fire in the night; and may show to everybody the path leading to the eye of light beneath the oak, the yew and the birch.

I finally swear to respect our sodality, his Primate inter pares, his rule and his customs.

May the luminous and peaceful deities move away from me the infernal legion of the dusii and of the anguipedic wyverns (these giants who are called Andernas or Fomorians) as all the other under-gods of the ices of the non-world!

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Adge saveliu,

Luxnei, divu ac nuxtu

Etic ollebo cactiebo nemetos etic talamunos

Toaretudiet pennei mei nemes

Dlogieti talamu con maru critonu

Ringiet gala

Losciet mene aedis

Adtanet gormoceidt omori are talu dumni

Au mon oiton ponc delco

Ac in gascarian ate caedo.

By the sacred ensigns of our battalions

May be no longer a roof over my head

May my parents close their door in my face

May my children close their door in my face

If I do not keep this promise.

The officiating druid…

We are today… (indicate the date in Celtic calendar of Coligny and/or the date in the civil calendar, followed by the mention “of the common era” as well as the o’clock).

We are on the territory of the druidic chair (canecosedlon) of N. (name of the druidic chair or canecosedlon on the territory of which the ceremony proceeds).

The officiating druid asks…

“Do you consider well this time , that through me, you will receive the fullness of what you search?”

- “Yes, I do! ” answers the elutached person , who then beats his breast in front of everybody. i.e., with his right fist firmly closed , he beats several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) his breast, as if he hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance. The officiating druid concentrates a few moments, with his palms raised towards the heaven then recites the following lay.

Three springs shall burst forth.

Whoever will drink from the first

will never be afflicted by the onslaught of illness

And will enjoy long life

Whoever will drink from the third

Shall die a sudden death.

Earth will be turned to stones,

Stones to wood,

Wood into ashes,

Ashes into water.

From a town in the Canutes Forest 4),

A girl shall be sent to remedy these matters by her healing art.

She shall dry up our noxious springs

Simply by breathing on them.

The Virgo shall climb on back of Sagittarius and so let droop its maiden blossoms

Tears shall flow from her eyes.

Next, when she has restored her own strength by some miraculous drink,

She shall carry the Forest of Caledonia 5) in her right hand,

And in her left the buttressed forts of the walls of London.

Wherever she passes she shall leave sulfurous footprint 6)

The smoke from them will stir up the Ruteni 7)

And will provide food for the creatures who live in the sea 8).

Sweet apple tree of crimson color,

Crowing, concealed, in the wood of Caledonia

Though men seek your fruit, their search is vain,

Till the Cadwaladyr comes from the warriors meeting.

Victorious Cymry, glorious their leader,

All shall how their rights again,

All brave men rejoice, sounding joyful horns.

Chanting songs of happiness and peace!

Before the child, bright and bold,

The Anglo-Saxons shall flee, and bards will flourish.

The ignoramus buys some shoes and also some patches

But Merlin laughed at since the poor man will not be able to use the shoes nor the patches,

Since he is already drowned in the waves and is floating towards the shore

For those who know what I mean.

The officiating druid finishes the ceremony by turning to the east, sunwise or clockwise…

May the called upon here powers return to their place now. The spring or the tree… (a short description of the symbolic place chosen for such ceremonies, follows, as its name, example spring of the Rhine of the Danube or of the Rhone River, temple of such forest, lodge of such street…) is in the vicinity (if possible, of course. Most of the time the totem is an oak, but that may also be a yew or an ash, even still another tree variety).

The officiating druid asks then to the candidate…

“Man (or woman) from the High-Lands, do you promise to comply again with all the customs and traditions of our sodality? To always tell the truth to whom deserves it, and never to accept something without providing in exchange a serious counterpart? ”

The candidate:

“I swear it! ”

The officiating druid resumes.

And if we must be hard in our ver sacrum, it is first towards ourselves rather towards the others. The primacy of a predestined nation or of a great monarch predestined for that may be only spiritual and not worldly. Our nation, the nation of gods, must reach out to the rest of the world, but through the force of its example, its freedom, its justice, and not by the strength of its weapons or of its laws. Do not forget our lord the hesus Cuchulainn of Muirthemne was never king. We uns druids are champions of the war of ideas, of the weight of words, of the shock of images, the wars it is important to fight are the wars of ideas, or the shocks of the civilization. Because it is to us that it belongs to treat the causes and not the symptoms of all these diseases of the soul or of the spirit which make the misfortune of the men. What is important for us is to fight by our enlightenment or our light the religious ideologies breaching the human rights in the name of the rights of such or such god, the submission to such or such god. What it is necessary to safeguard above all, which is the priceless good conquered by man through all the prejudices, all the sufferings and all the fights, it is the idea that there is no sacred truth 9), i.e., prohibited to the full investigation of the man; it is this idea that what there is greatest in the world, it is the sovereign freedom of the mind; it is this idea that no inner or external power , no power and no dogma must limit the perpetual effort and the perpetual research of the human reason; this idea that Mankind in the universe is a large board of inquiry of which no governmental intervention, no celestial or terrestrial intrigue must never restrict or distort the operations; this idea that any truth which does not come from us is a lie; that, even in the supports we give, our critical thinking must always

remain in awakening and that a secret rebellion must mingle with all our assertions and with all our thoughts; that if the idea even of God took a tangible form, if God himself stood, visible, over the multitudes, the first duty of the man would be to refuse obedience and to treat him as the equal one with which one discusses, but not as the master whom one undergoes.Here what the meaning and the greatness and the beauty of our secular education is in its principle, and quite strange are those who come to require from the reason to abdicate, on the pretext that it does not have or which it will even never have total truth; quite strange those who, on the pretext that our step is hesitant and stumbling, want to paralyze us, to throw us in the middle of the night, through despair not to have full clearness.

For two thousand years and even more, our marriage of faith and reason, of the faith enlightened by the reason, is therefore persecuted. Remember that true-hearted and minded Celtst were always obliged to defend themselves. Caesar Augustus prohibited the religion druidarum. Caesar Tiberius published a decree against our high-knowers “and all that tribe of vates and physicians ” as he said. The emperor Claudius prohibited the practice of our religion.

To be a true pagan hearted and minded Celt is therefore to belong to a people of priests (each pagan is to oneself his own priest in front of the altar of the gods and of the ancestors in the privacy of his home) homophonous with gods, to a sacred nation whose children have duties, moral laws or gessa, extremely constraining.

And let us not forget also the only wars which are worthwhile are the ver sacrum having for purpose to help the brother or friend peoples to recover their lost freedom, their equality their dignity, their home rule; that a great king of the Belgians, Dumnorix 10), formerly thus defined.

“I am free and the subject of a free state. My government is of that nature, that the people had as much authority over me as I over the people.”

And let us not forget either as men of the High-Lands, that our great spiritual ancestor Calgacus , quite rightly said one day….

“Don’t fear the municipalities which are ill affected and rife with discord between disloyal subjects and oppressive rulers. On the one side, you have a general and an army; on the other, tribute, mines, and all the other penalties of an enslaved people.

Do not believe especially that you will escape from their scorning arrogance by obedience and submission.

Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If a nation be rich, they are rapacious; if it be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the name of making peace; they make a desert and call it peace.

Nature has willed that every man's children and kindred should be his dearest objects. Yet these are torn from us by conscriptions to be slaves elsewhere. Our wives and our sisters, even though they may escape violation from the enemy, are dishonored under the names of friendship and hospitality. Our goods and fortunes they collect for their taxes , our harvests for their granaries. Our very hands and bodies, under the lash and in the midst of insult, are worn down.

And as in a household, the last comer among the slaves is always the butt of his companions, so we in a world long used to slavery, as the newest and most contemptible, are worthless. Valor and high spirit in subjects, are offensive to rulers. Under a woman's leadership, the Brigantes were able to burn a colony, to storm a camp, and had not success ended in supineness, might have thrown off the yoke. Let us, then, a fresh and unconquered people, never likely to abuse our freedom, show forthwith at the very first onset what warriors the High-Lands in Caledonia have generated.

Their army composed as it is of every variety of nations, is held together by success and will be broken up by disaster. Fear and terror there, of course, are, feeble bonds of attachment. All the

incentives to victory are on our side. The Romans have no wives to kindle their courage; no parents to taunt them with flight, many have either no country or one far away. They are dismayed by their ignorance, looking around upon a sky, a sea, and forests which are all unfamiliar to them; hemmed in, as it were, and enmeshed, the gods have delivered them into our hands. Be not frightened by the idle display, by the glitter of gold and of silver, which can neither protect nor wound. In the very ranks of the enemy, we shall find our own forces. Gauls will remember past freedom; the other Germans will abandon them, as but lately did the Usipii.”

Some people are indignant about the fact that our spiritual tradition shows more comprehension towards those of its members who ridicule its rules than towards those who want to conform to it without beings members of it since the start. It is quite simply because to join our cause is a much more fundamental choice.

The officiating druid takes the mallet of Suqellus and swivels on his right to find himself facing the east. With his two hands he presents the mallet in direction of the place where the sun rises, concentrates one moment then returns, still sunwise or clockwise, to his former position, in order to face the candidate. Symbolically he strikes the forehead of the person who has just taken an oath thus, while adding…

“Since you state to regret what occurred not long ago and that you express your will to get back in the straight and narrow ; under the powers vested in me on… (date in druidic calendar of Coligny and/or date in the civil calendar, followed by the mention “of the common era”).

By Trefuilngid Tre Eochair

By the triple lord with the three keys

In the sacred clearing

In the guardian shade of the oak [in Mughna],

Which can shelter a thousand men

Which bears three crops every year

Apples, acorns and round, blood-red nuts.

Noblest of the trees our totem…

You will be again allowed to take part in the ceremonies, but provided that there is compensation.

These conditions here… (account of the sanctions decided against the fisher king. Which should in no case to be as hard than these of the Irish penitentials).

Fisher king, do you accept these conditions? ”

The fisher king: “Yes I do! ”

The officiating druid then releases the Catubodua’s raven who was in the cage out of wicker.

Editor’s note. Odin’s ravens are very intelligent animals. And they are ravens who founded the town of Lyons.

The following story which Artemidorus has told about the case of the crows is still more fabulous: there is a certain harbor on the ocean coast, his story goes, which is surnamed "Two Crows," and in this harbor are to be seen two crows, with their right wings somewhat white; so the men who have disputes about certain things come here, put a plank on an elevated place, and then throw on barley cakes, each man separately; the birds fly up, eat some of the barley cakes, scatter the others; and the man whose barley cakes are scattered wins his lawsuit.

To note: there is also in the Gallo-Roman statuary a god of the ravens of whom we don’t know the name besides. He also holds a yoke and a bill hook (votive stele of Corgoloin in Burgundy). On the stele found in Sarrebourg and representing Suqellus and Nantosuelta is also reproduced below the figures, a raven.

If the omen is not opposed to it, therefore, the officiating druid finishes in this way…

“Celtic brothers and sisters 11) of our community of living and dead , who live in us, rejoice and be glad !

Our brother (or our sister) laid fallow, and now he (or she) is living again.

And he embraces the brother (or the sister) come again to the life of the Community then all come to do the same thing while he transcribes all that on the “register”.

The officiating druid gives then to the ex-elutached the tablet of bark recording this lifting of ne litom.

1) And not in accordance with the Columbanus of Bobbio rule with the Canones Hibernenses (penitential of Cummean and Finnian), as certain rituals of our Parisian friends repeat it in an erroneous way. The fact of entrusting one’s faults or one’s breaches in ethics, to a spiritual guide (anamocaros), is a use indeed druidic, reintroduced on the continent by the Irish monks in the 7th century (St. Columban of Bobbio, and others).

The disastrous innovation of Christianity in this field was to change these free and not very ordinary confessions, into a regular obligation at the mercy of the only priests; who thus, by the way set themselves up as spiritual advisers instead of being satisfied to be spiritual guides.

2) Formerly took an oath straightforwardly on warlike ensigns, topped by wild boars, larks, bulls, and joined together in a stack. What is, Cesar reminds, the ceremony with far-reaching consequences among Celts. “More eorum gravissima caerimonia.”

3) At least it is what we can deduce from the existence still at the time, in the repertory of the great Irish “poets,” of the imbas forosnai of the teinm loida and of the dichetal do chennaib, however, prohibited by St. Patrick (cf. the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach by Urard Mac Coise, a poet having lived in the 10th century).

4) We cannot help but look at the famous forest of the tribe of the Carnutes. But it is nevertheless different of the famous “Bois-Chenu” = Oak Forest.

5) Some Scotsmen?

6) Joan of Arc was actually accused of being a witch. But sentenced for another thing!

7) We cannot help but think of the inhabitants of Rouen . But it is obviously impossible considering the writing date of this text: first half of the twelfth century.

8) End of the prophecies ascribed to Merlin.

9) Because the sacredness it is the Man. It is the Man who made the gods in his image, and not the opposite (which would be absurd), it is him the measure of all things by definition. There does not exist rights of God on his creatures because God was never a demiurge creator of anything he is only the soul of the world. As opposed to what think mass monolatries particularly Islam (cf. its notion of Hudud), therefore there exist only rights AND DUTIES of the Man towards himself towards his brothers towards the world. It is quite obvious for example the majority of the behaviors coming in the category hudud of the Muslim sharia are in no way violations of the rights of God (who does not exist thus) but quite simply violations of the rights of the other men, even all simply the personal case of Muhammad, particularly for all what adultery and false witnesses is, that is quite obvious. Cf. the fits of jealousy of his wives or the adultery charge brought against Aisha.

Because rather curiously in Quran, and unlike Christianity (eli eli lamma sabacthani) God is much worried about the personal fate of his prophet, not to say of his private life (it is true that Jesus having stupidly preferred to devote all his energy to his mission hence his celibacy, what a commoner pettiness, he did not have this kind of very middle class problems). Each time Muhammad has marital or political problems (truce or not truce, etc.) a divine revelation handed down by the archangel Gabriel comes extremely opportunely to relieve his conscience. Quite practical all that!

In every case there exist as rights only these conquered by oneself. If God wants to have rights over the men, then let him manage to conquer them by storm and to keep them. Such is the meaning of all the battles of the Celtic metahistory according to the Irish legends.

10) It is to be a mistake of the scholars of the 18th century having collected this tradition, an inadvertently mix up with the king of the Eburones named Ambiorix. The so-called Dumnorix being the author only of the first sentence mentioned.

11) Celtic hearted or minded brother or sister, admitting to have the Celts as spiritual ancestors. Christians are spiritually Semites according to Pope Pius XI in his short speech of September 6, 1938; but we uns druidicists are still spiritually Celts.

NAMING CEREMONY OF THE TYPE CONFIRMATION (of enlightened by Reason druidic faith).

A terminological reminder. It is spoken about anuanacton for the adults, but the word anmenacton is used when they are children.

Unlike Islam, apostasy is neither hateful nor punishable in the eyes of druidic spirituality! Quite to the contrary we encourage all those who have doubts or who hesitate, to leave us alone and to go elsewhere1). It is the principle of the quest for the grail each one on one’s side.

The ritual of confirmation of druidic faith is intended to integrate in the community of the living all those who was not really member of it until then; while being not very distant (membership in a druidic group already incontestably pagan, membership in other groups of Indo-European paganism, or others).

This integration in the Ollotouta (in the community of the believers of the druidic spirituality) is equivalent in fact to a conversion.

The ritual of confirmation of druidic faith may also be used in the various following cases: disappearance of the evidence of the naming ceremony, of the evidence of the conversion, or doubts about their validity. Highly contestable past behavior of the baptized or of the convert who lays fallow.

For the necessary liquid great river, small river, brook, fountain or spring may be replaced by a lake, a pond, or a barrel, even any other water point located in a building if recourse to a building, there is to be. The important thing is that a vervain branch could be soaked in it beforehand.

The ceremony may take place in no way in the residence of the person who confirms his druidic faith, because even if the apostasy was private, this confirmation indeed is to be public and be performed in the presence of the maximum of witnesses. The necessary minimum being in any event of three persons (the officiating druid , the inquisiting usher vate , a conhospita).

If the ceremony is to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or laid out. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course). and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” a suffix of feminine adjective.

Necessary props or hiera . Cup. Lustral water. Vervain, acorns, nuts, hazel nuts. Portable altar (possibly). A bouget or sporran. A fossil sea urchin. An already written bark tablet. Of birch. Like those discovered near Gilgit in Pakistan in 1931 or in Novgorod in 1951 for the most recent, or even among the Ojibwe Indians (mide-wiigwaas). A tickler.

Everyone being gathered, the officiating druid turns then to the east, while swiveling sunwise on his right and while turning his back on the west.

The vate acting as investigating usher, as well as the conhospita who assists him, do in the same way and will join him.

The officiating druid focuses a few moments, with his palms raised towards the sky.

The young wild boar, the person who must confirm one’s druidic faith, moves forward.

The officiating druid…

The candidate…

“It is not so among us , O great high-knower! ”

Evil is the time!

Summers without flowers

Women without modesty,

Sea without roe

Wrong judgments of judges,

Every justice is removed.

Every art is buffoonery

Music turns into boors.

Every falsehood is chosen.

Every baseborn person is set up,

Every man is maimed

Usurpers are many

Wisdom turns into false judgments.

Why this waste land O great high-knower?

The officiating druid…

marriage, since she believed that no one of the wooers was worthy of her.Now one day she caught sight of a young and handsome giant who was striding along the country. It was Ogmius who, after having taken the cattle of Geryones from Erythea and overcome the cruel tyrant Tauriscus, was visiting the country of Bretannus.

During following centuries, when their forces increased, the children of Keltus built cities in great number. Throughout these provinces, the peoples gradually becoming civilized, the study of noble sciences flourished, having been first introduced by the bards and the vates. The bards were accustomed to employ themselves in celebrating the brave achievements of their illustrious men, in epic verso, accompanied with harmonious sounds on a lyre. The vates investigated the system and sublime secrets of nature, and sought to explain them to their followers. Their minds were elevated by investigations into secret and sublime matters, and from the contempt which they slightly entertained for human affairs they pronounced the souls immortal….

The blessing of the gods was with them, because such was their destiny. Is there another great nation having as many gods with her?

The officiating druid officiating continues with the following words.

For two thousand years and even more, our marriage of faith and reason, of the faith enlightened by the reason, is persecuted.

Remember that true-hearted and minded Celtst were always obliged to defend themselves. Caesar Augustus prohibited the religion druidarum. Caesar Tiberius published a decree against our high-knowers “and all that tribe of vates and physicians ” as he said. The emperor Claudius prohibited the practice of our religion.

Greatest precautions are needed therefore to add other links to the amber chain Ogmius pulls behind him in his ascension of the sacred mountain because the children of Keltus undergo affliction, persecution,mortification, torments, and endure worst vexations.

For which reasons therefore do you present yourselves today in front of us?

Are you unaware of that a terrible destiny awaits for the one who, after having embraced the religion of our spiritual ancestors, the only true worthless religion , the religion of nature, at the same time immanent and transcendent, ends up no longer respecting its ethics?

The officiating druid pauses, then adds:

“But you; if you are in front of us today, it is that you crossed all the tests successfully. The purpose of this quest for the grail was to give you time to reflect.

To be a true pagan hearted and minded Celt , it is to swear fidelity to moral laws , the gessa, extremely constraining and that is by no means necessary in the life of today. One can very well reach heights of spirituality like Mansur al-Hallaj 2) without being a true Celt. To dedicate oneself to our

spirituality is therefore by no means an obligation and must be done only in the event of authentic and absolute calling. The purpose of the length and difficulty of the ordeals which were imposed to you were to test your sincerity. Because what will occur if tomorrow everything starts again like yesterday, as at the time of the Cesars martyring Gutuater or razing Mona to deport the population of it?

The candidate.

“Question. Why can we say of the Old Celtic that it is a chosen language? ”

The officiating druid.

Ni ansa! It is not difficult! Because it was chosen among all the languages, and because to any existing incomprehensible sound in the other languages, a meaning was found to our sacred language , from where its limpidity as its clearness.

The candidate.

“Question. Which is, from the 72 languages he had therefore studied, that which was spread in first by Fenius Farsaid?? ”

The officiating druid.

Ni ansa! It is not difficult. The Celtic language… because of all these which were brought back by its School, it was that he preferred, that about which he had heard since his childhood… Because the god we do not name here translated the truth into 72 languages, in order to teach it to all the human races. But only the Celts accepted the taboos and gessa which resulted from it.

When the fire devastated Rome (in the reign of Nero), Mariccus, before dying on his cross in the arena, declared that the Empire of the worldly things was to fall in the hands of the transalpine nations.

“The Celts had captured the city in former days, but, as the abode of Jupiter was uninjured, miraculously saved by the sacred geese, the Empire had survived. But the conflagration which devastates this city now is a sign of the anger of heaven against it.”

These awkward or at the very least politically incorrect considering the time, premature in any case, words, played in the hands of historians like Tacitus who understood nothing from the mission of our bituriges kings of the world because the primacy of a predestined nation or a great monarch can be only spiritual and not worldly . De minimis non curat druis!

Our nation, the nation of the gods, must reach out to the rest of the world, but through the force of its example, its freedom, its justice, and not by the strength of its weapons or of its laws. And if we must be hard in our ver sacrum, it is first towards ourselves rather towards the others. Do not forget our lord the hesus Mariccos was never king.

Here is therefore the only true meaning of the world kingship announced by this prophet.

We are champions of the war of ideas, of the weight of words, of the shock of images, the wars it is important to fight are the wars of ideas, or the shocks of the civilization. Because it is to us that it belongs to treat the causes and not the symptoms of all these diseases of the soul or of the spirit which make the misfortune of the men. What is important for us is to fight by our enlightenment or our light the religious ideologies breaching the human rights in the name of the rights of such or such god, the submission to such or such god. What it is necessary to safeguard above all, which is the priceless good conquered by man through all the prejudices, all the sufferings and all the fights, it is the idea that there is no sacred truth , i.e., prohibited to the full investigation of the man; it is this idea that what there is greatest in the world, it is the sovereign freedom of the mind; it is this idea that no inner or external power , no power and no dogma must limit the perpetual effort and the perpetual research of the human reason; this idea that Mankind in the universe is a large board of inquiry of which no governmental intervention, no celestial or terrestrial intrigue must never restrict or distort the operations; this idea that any truth which does not come from us is a lie; that, even in the supports we give, our critical thinking must always remain in awakening and that a secret rebellion must mingle with all our assertions and with all our thoughts; that if the idea even of God took a tangible form, if God himself stood, visible, over the multitudes, the first duty of the man would be to refuse obedience and to treat him as the equal one with which one discusses, but not as the master whom one undergoes.Here what the meaning and the greatness and the beauty of our secular education is in its principle, and quite strange are those who come to require from the reason to abdicate, under pretense it does not have or which it will even never have total truth; quite strange those who, under pretense our step is hesitant and stumbling, want to paralyze us, to throw us in the middle of the night, through despair not to have full clearness.

Understand us well, o dalta, the geis is a taboo and every pagan Celt is led by a network of taboos, sometimes fatal.

Let us not forget also the only wars which are worthwhile are the ver sacrums having for purpose to help the brother or friend peoples to recover their lost freedom, their equality their dignity, their home rule; that a great king of the Belgians, Dumnorix, formerly thus defined.

“I am free and the subject of a free state. My government is of that nature, that the people had as much authority over me as I over the people.”

But let us not forget either as men of the High-Lands, that our great spiritual ancestor Calgacus , quite rightly said one day….

Do not believe especially that you will escape from their scorning arrogance by obedience and submission.

Their army composed as it is of every variety of nations, is held together by success and will be broken up by disaster. Fear and terror there, of course, are, feeble bonds of attachment. All the incentives to victory are on our side. The Romans have no wives to kindle their courage; no parents to taunt them with flight, many have either no country or one far away. They are dismayed by their ignorance, looking around upon a sky, a sea, and forests which are all unfamiliar to them; hemmed in, as it were, and enmeshed, the gods have delivered them into our hands. Be not frightened by the idle display, by the glitter of gold and of silver, which can neither protect nor wound. In the very ranks of the enemy, we shall find our own forces. Gauls will remember past freedom; the other Germans will abandon them, as but lately did the Usipii.”

Some people are indignant about the fact that our spiritual tradition shows more comprehension towards those of its members who ridicule its rules than towards those who want to conform to it without forming part of it. It is quite simply because to join our cause is a much more fundamental choice.

[Translator's note. For his Macbeth Shakespeare was inspired by the chronicles of Raphael Holinshed (1587) but the point of comparison for the dialogues or monologues which follow would rather be to be sought from the side of the prophecies attributed to Merlin by Geoffrey of Monmouth, therefore anterior by a half - millennium, our pious bishop having himself resorted and by his own admission to older traditions laid down in writing in Breton language, the famous Britannici sermonis liber vetustissimus.

To which we can add the usual Irish sources] End of the translator's note.

Three springs shall burst forth.

Whoever will drink from the first

will never be afflicted by the onslaught of illness

And will enjoy long life

Whoever will drink from the third

Shall die a sudden death.

Earth will be turned to stones,

Stones to wood,

Wood into ashes,

Ashes into water.

From a town in the Canutes Forest ),

A girl shall be sent to remedy these matters by her healing art.

She shall dry up our noxious springs

Simply by breathing on them.

The Virgo shall climb on back of Sagittarius and so let droop its maiden blossoms

Tears shall flow from her eyes.

Next, when she has restored her own strength by some miraculous drink,

She shall carry the Forest of Caledonia in her right hand,

And in her left the buttressed forts of the walls of London.

Wherever she passes she shall leave sulfurous footprints.

The smoke from them will stir up the Ruteni

And will provide food for the creatures who live in the sea.

Sweet apple tree of crimson color,

Crowing, concealed, in the wood of Caledonia

Though men seek your fruit, their search is vain,

Till the Cadwaladyr comes from the warriors meeting.

Victorious Cymry, glorious their leader,

All shall how their rights again,

All brave men rejoice, sounding joyful horns.

Chanting songs of happiness and peace!

Before the child, bright and bold,

The Anglo-Saxons shall flee, and bards will flourish.

The ignoramus buys some shoes and also some patches

But Merlin laughed at since the poor man will not be able to use the shoes nor the patches,

Since he is already drowned in the waves and is floating towards the shore

For those who know what I mean.

On a signal of the officiating druid the conhospita moves away then symbolically to seek water in the well (or in the water point located in the sanctuary ) then she comes back and fills with it the cup posed on the altar (or the barrel). The cup is to be engraved with the inscription “nessamon delgu linda.”

The officiating druid officiating performs then nine small circumambulations around it 3). Sunwise (clockwise : deisil, deiseil, deiseal, in Ireland. In the case of the kaaba in Mecca , there are of them seven, called tawaf).

Then he recites the lay of Ausonius.

“Iaccitos te!

Hail Sky our father,

Father of all true Celts!

Iaccitos te!

Hail Danu our mother,

Mother of all true Celts

Hail, fountain of source unknown,

Holy, gracious, unfailing,

Crystal-clear, azure, deep, murmurous, limpid and shady!

Iaccitos te!

Hail, genie of our city,

Of whom we may drink health-giving drafts,

Named by the Celts Divona,

A fountain added to the roll divine!”

The officiating druid pauses then adds…

In the Pure Glanum, there is a spring from which four brooks leave

Nine purple hazel trees are above

Nine hazel trees of science and poetry

Vervain grows around

All drop there their leaves, their flowers and their nuts.

The noise of these brooks is more dulcet

That all the melodies around the world.

Men fatally wounded by life

Or broken by it

Are plunged in its pure flow

And they come out from it living the true life.

Sunartiu! ”

The officiating druid then throws vervain, acorns, nuts, or hazel nuts, in water being to be used and orders: “Drink some water from this Fountain of Youth, so that your strength, your energy, your valor, your vigor and your dignity return to you.”

The conhospita gives then to drink from this water to each one of the future confirmed persons 3).

The officiating request then loudly: “Take an oath on our sacred ensigns joined together in a stack ! ”

The future young wild boar, the right hand raised above the hammer of Suqellus, or any other religious symbol of this type (ensigns, etc.), pronounces then the following oath, with his three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded up: ring finger and little finger).

I swear to seek only beauty, glory, and Celtism

I swear to remain faithful to the true spirit

Of the true Celtic tradition.

I swear to be the worthy and authentic heir

To the Science and philosophy of the islands in Hyperborea

Or located north of the World:

Thule, Abalum, Gorre and Ogygia the green island

To our elder of the time of the independent and free Great Celltica.

To the last druid of the court of the great Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill

According to Urard Mac Coise

To the Reformation of Sean Eoghain Ui Thuathallain na Leabhar

To the Reformation of Henry Lizeray.

Or of his comarbae.

I not only swear to support and defend the true Celtic Tradition and the Celtic spirit, but also to develop them again and to spread the light of them everywhere.

I finally swear to respect our sodality, his Primate inter pares, his rule and his customs.

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Adge saveliu,

Luxnei, divu ac nuxtu

Etic ollebo cactiebo nemetos etic talamunos

Toaretudiet pennei mei nemes

Dlogieti talamu con maru critonu

Ringiet gala

Losciet mene aedis

Adtanet gormoceidt omori are talu dumni

Au mon oiton ponc delco

Ac in gascarian ate caedo.

By the sacred ensigns of our battalions

May be no longer a roof over my head

May my parents close their door in my face

May my children close their door in my face

If I do not keep this promise.

The person who thus confirms one’s druidic faith then makes in front of everybody the sign of the warrior. i.e., with his right fist firmly he beats his breast and strikes several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) his heart as if he hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

The officiating druid:

“The sunfish 5) is the symbol of the desert religion which invaded us. And where they make a desert they call it peace.Wearing such symbols is therefore as the name suggests as hanging a millstone about before to plunge into the water as for the spirituality. But never forget that the sea urchin is the symbol of our spirituality to us. Its symbolism is that of the thistle and as folk wisdom says, “gather thistles, expect prickles !”

The innumerable time snakes have one day, some million and million years ago, cast the egg of the world they brooded in the space at the end of a gold chain and it floats now in the current of the time river. This secret, it is to you that we entrust it today.”

The officiating druid press then on the lips of each new young wild boar the fossil sea urchin which belongs to him, puts it again in its bouget (a kind of small sporran) and ties it around the neck of the applicant.

Then he finishes while pronouncing for the benefit of each one of them these few words…

“Your true name is from now on N. (initiatory name that the young wild boar chose himself)!

You are a son (or a daughter) of Ogmius and Celtine, grandson (or granddaughter) of the Nemet Hornunnos, father of all true men. Such will be from now on your name of young wild boar.

X… (civil first name and name of the young wild boar) born on… in…

Son (or daughter) of… (first name and maiden name of the mother) and of… (first name and name of the father).

I confirm your faith as an expression of the most authentic Celtic paganism as for the spirit, be from now one of our nation, the nation of the gods, by Taran/Torann/Tuireann, Lug and the hesus Cuchulainn, and may the force be with you, Nert dee agus andee, Sunartiu! ”

The officiating druid embraces the new young wild boar, all do the same thing. The officiating druid gives then to him the tablet the bark recording all that. He notes the confirmation of druidic faith in the official register and the festivities may begin. People may “kill the pig,” strike up the barditus of the faithfulness song or the barditus of the wine of the C’hallaoued.

EXAMPLES OF TOAST FORMULAS.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

I raise my glass to the ONE. All things in the world are one, and one is all in all things.

RESPONSE OF THE PERSON WHO HAS JUST BEEN CONFIRMED IN ONE’S DRUIDIC FAITH.

What’s all in all things is GOD, eternal and immense, neither begotten nor ever to perish.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

In him, we live, we move, and exist.

RESPONSE OF THE PERSON WHO HAS JUST BEEN CONFIRMED IN ONE’S DRUIDIC FAITH.

Every thing is sprung from him, and shall be reunited to him, he himself being the beginning, and end of all things.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let us sing a hymn upon the power of the BITUS or of the VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE UNIVERSE.

RESPONSE OF THE PERSON WHO HAS JUST BEEN CONFIRMED IN ONE’S DRUIDIC FAITH.

“All things within the verge of mortal laws are changed, all climates in revolving years do not know themselves. Nations change their faces, but the whole of the BITUS or of the WORLD is safe, and

preserves its all, neither increased by time,nor worn by age: its motion is not instantaneous, it does not fatigue its course. Always the same it has been, and shall be. Our father’s saw no alteration, neither shall posterity: it is GOD who for ever is immutable.”

ALL TOGETHER.

“Whatever this, it animates all things, forms, nourishes, increases, creates, buries, and takes into itself all things. And the same,of all things is the parent. From thence all things that receive a being, into the same are anew resolved.

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Notice of the author of this compilation.

Let us not forget nevertheless what Strabo reported on this subject: “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).

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1) Let us be clearer than our Muslim brothers, and let us suppose that the primary druids implemented to their gods the same trustful certainty as that is shown by the central part of the great Indian epic poem called Mahabharata and probably dating from the 2nd century before our era. It is a dialog between the god Krishna/Vishnu and the prince Arjuna, the latter hesitating to launch a great fratricidal battle.

Bhagavad Gita 9, 23-29. “Those who are devotees of other gods and who worship them with faith actually worship only me, O son of Kunti, but they do so in a wrong way because I am the only enjoyer and master of all sacrifices. If one offers me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I accept it. I envy no one, nor am I partial to anyone. I am equal to all. But whoever renders service unto me in devotion is a friend, is in me, and I am also a friend to him.”

Editor’s note. We have translated the Sanskrit word Kaunteya by “son of Kunti” but if somebody has better to suggest, let him tell it to us!

2) A Sufi master of the 10th century burned as a heretic by the (Sunni or Shiite) Muslims.

3) We find the same kind of ritual in the story entitled in Gaelic language Echtra Cormaic I tairngiri (the adventures of Cormac in the land of promise), where it is presented as follows.

Waiting at an altar. It is, a proof which they used at that time to distinguish between truth and falsehood, namely, to go nine times round the altar, and afterwards to drink water over which the incantation of a very knowing of the druidiaction (druidecht) had been uttered. Now if (the accused) were guilty, the token of his sin was manifest upon him. But if he were innocent, the water would do him no harm.

4) Perhaps a very old mistake in the understanding of the Christian symbolism of fish.

NAMING CEREMONY OF THE TYPE CONFIRMATION (of return to Celtic paganism).

It is the principle of the quest for the grail each on one’s side. As for those who go back in the other direction , below what we have to propose to them. N.B. Not to forget nevertheless what we higher noticed in connection with the existence (or the inexistence) of the conversion ceremonies in the former druidism 1).

If the ceremony is to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or laid out. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with an equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” a suffix of feminine adjective.

Everyone being gathered, the officiating druid turns then to the east, while swiveling sunwise on his right and while turning his back on the west.

The vate acting as investigating usher, as well as the conhospita who assists him, do in the same way and will join him.

The officiating druid focuses a few moments, with his palms raised towards the sky.

The proselyte, the person who wants to opt for the druidism, moves forward.

The officiating druid…

The person who wants to convert…

“It is not so among us , O great high-knower! ”

Evil is the time!

Summers without flowers

Women without modesty,

Sea without roe

Wrong judgments of judges,

Every justice is removed.

Every art is buffoonery

Music turns into boors.

Every falsehood is chosen.

Every baseborn person is set up,

Every man is maimed

Usurpers are many

Wisdom turns into false judgments.

Why this waste land O great high-knower?

The officiating druid…

Once upon a time there was a young and pretty princess called Celtine. She was of unusual stature and far excelled in beauty all the other maidens in the country. But she, because of her strength of body and marvelous comeliness, was so haughty that she kept refusing every man who wooed her in marriage, since she believed that no one of the wooers was worthy of her.Now one day she caught sight of a young and handsome giant who was striding along the country. It was Ogmius who, after having taken the cattle of Geryones from Erythea and overcome the cruel tyrant Tauriscus, was visiting the country of Bretannus.

During following centuries, when their forces increased, the children of Keltus built cities in great number. Throughout these provinces, the peoples gradually becoming civilized, the study of noble

sciences flourished, having been first introduced by the bards and the vates. The bards were accustomed to employ themselves in celebrating the brave achievements of their illustrious men, in epic verso, accompanied with harmonious sounds on a lyre. The vates investigated the system and sublime secrets of nature, and sought to explain them to their followers. Their minds were elevated by investigations into secret and sublime matters, and from the contempt which they slightly entertained for human affairs they pronounced the souls immortal….

The blessing of the gods was with them, because such was their destiny. Is there another great nation having as many gods with her?

The officiating druid officiating continues with the following words.

For two thousand years and even more, our marriage of faith and reason, of the faith enlightened by the reason, is persecuted.

Remember that true-hearted and minded Celtst were always obliged to defend themselves. Caesar Augustus prohibited the religion druidarum. Caesar Tiberius published a decree against our high-knowers “and all that tribe of vates and physicians ” as he said. The emperor Claudius prohibited the practice of our religion.

For which reasons therefore do you present yourselves today in front of us?

The officiating druid pauses, then adds:

“But you; if you are in front of us today, it is that you crossed all the tests successfully. The purpose of this quest for the grail was to give you time to reflect.

To dedicate oneself to our spirituality is therefore by no means an obligation and must be done only in the event of authentic and absolute calling. The purpose of the length and difficulty of the ordeals which were imposed to you were to test your sincerity. Because what will occur if tomorrow everything starts again like yesterday, as at the time of the Cesars martyring Gutuater or razing Mona to deport its population?

The person who wants to convert.

“Question. Why can we say of the Old Celtic that it is a chosen language? ”

The officiating druid.

The person who wants to convert.

“Question. Which is, from the 72 languages he had therefore studied, that which was spread in first by Fenius Farsaid?? ”

The officiating druid.

Here is therefore the only true meaning of the world kingship announced by this prophet.

We are some champions of the wars of ideas, of the weight of the words of the shock of the images. The words it is important to fight are the wards of ideas or the shocks of the civilization. Because it is to us that it belongs to treat the causes and not the symptoms of all these diseases of the soul or of the spirit which make the misfortune of the men. What is important for us is to fight by our enlightenment or our light the religious ideologies breaching the human rights in the name of the rights of such or such god, the submission to such or such god. What it is necessary to safeguard above all, which is the priceless good conquered by man through all the prejudices, all the sufferings and all the fights, it is the idea that there is no sacred truth, i.e., prohibited to the full investigation of the man; it is this idea that what there is greatest in the world, it is the sovereign freedom of the mind; it is this idea that no inner or external power , no power and no dogma must limit the perpetual effort and the perpetual research of the human reason; this idea that Mankind in the universe is a large board of inquiry of which no governmental intervention, no celestial or terrestrial intrigue must never restrict or distort the operations; this idea that any truth which does not come from us is a lie; that, even in the supports we give, our critical thinking must always remain in awakening and that a secret rebellion must mingle with all our assertions and with all our thoughts; that if the idea even of God took a tangible form, if God himself stood, visible, over the multitudes, the first duty of the man would be to refuse obedience and to treat him as the equal one with which one discusses, but not as the master whom one undergoes.Here what the meaning and the greatness and the beauty of our secular education is in its principle, and quite strange are those who come to require from the reason to abdicate, under pretense it does not have or which it will even never have total truth; quite strange those who, under pretense our step is hesitant and stumbling, want to paralyze us, to throw us in the middle of the night, through despair not to have full clearness.

Understand us well, o dalta, the geis is a taboo and every pagan Celt is led by a network of taboos, sometimes fatal.

“I am free and the subject of a free state. My government is of that nature, that the people had as much authority over me as I over the people.”

But let us not forget either as men of the High-Lands, that our great spiritual ancestor Calgacus , quite rightly said one day….

“Don’t fear the municipalities which are ill affected and rife with discord between disloyal subjects and oppressive rulers. On the one side you have a general and an army; on the other, tribute, mines, and all the other penalties of an enslaved people.

Do not believe especially that you will escape from their scorning arrogance by obedience and submission.

Let us, then, a fresh and unconquered people, never likely to abuse our freedom, show forthwith at the very first onset what warriors the High-Lands in Caledonia have generated.

Some people are indignant about the fact that our spiritual tradition shows more comprehension towards those of its members who ridicule its rules than towards those who want to conform.

It is quite simply because the reasoned act of faith we ask from you is a conversion of your whole being equivalent almost to a kind of break up, in a way, towards your current tradition or your original family ; since we ask from you to go back to the root of every genuine spirituality; since we ask from you to refer you at the time which was previous to the mass religions which have been revealed, since we ask from you to find again the spirit of the natural religiosity of Mankind, which animated formerly our ancestors, whatever they are, before all the artificial highs which succeeded to it since the Sumerian prehistory ; and that we do not accept bogus conversions; since we uns, we accept the mixed marriages…

The officiating druid continues in this way…

Did you see the lance whose tip bleeds although it has neither flesh nor vein?

The person who converts…

If I saw it? Yes, of course!

The officiating druid…

Did you ask why it was bleeding?

The person who converts…

I breathed no word about it!

The officiating druid…

Did you see the Grail?

The person who converts…

Yes!

The officiating druid…

And who held it?

The person who converts…

A girl.

The officiating druid…

Did somebody walk before the Grail?

The person who converts…

Yes, two boys.

The officiating druid…

And what did they hold in their hands?

The person who converts…

Two candlesticks with candles.

The officiating druid…

Was there somebody behind the Grail?

The person who converts…

Another girl.

The officiating druid …

And what did she hold?

The person who converts…

A silver trencher with a head on it.

The officiating druid.

Did you ask them where they went thus?

The person who converts.

Not! Not a word left my mouth!

The officiating druid.

Good gods! That is precisely what should not be done !

The officiating druid officiating performs then nine small circumambulations around it . Sunwise (clockwise : deisil, deiseil, deiseal, in Ireland. In the case of the kaaba in Mecca , there are of them seven, called tawaf).

Then he recites the lay of Ausonius.

“Iaccitos te!

Hail Sky our father,

Father of all true Celts!

Iaccitos te!

ail Danu our mother,

Mother of all true Celts

Hail, fountain of source unknown,

Holy, gracious, unfailing,

Crystal-clear, azure, deep, murmurous, limpid and shady!

Iaccitos te!

Hail, genie of our city,

Of whom we may drink health-giving drafts,

Named by the Celts Divona,

A fountain added to the roll divine!”

The officiating druid pauses, then adds…

In the Pure Glanum, there is a spring from which four brooks leave

Nine purple hazel trees are above

Nine hazel trees of science and poetry

Vervain grows around

All drop there their leaves, their flowers and their nuts.

The noise of these brooks is more dulcet

That all the melodies around the world.

Men fatally wounded by life

Or broken by it

Are plunged in its pure flow

And they come out from it living the true life.

Sunartiu! ”

The conhospita gives then to drink from this water to each one of the new converted persons 2).

The officiating request then loudly: “Take an oath on our sacred ensigns joined together in a stack ! ”

The proselyte , the right hand raised above the hammer of Suqellus, or any other religious symbol of this type (ensigns, etc.), pronounces then the following oath, with his three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded up: ring finger and little finger).

I swear to seek only beauty, glory, and Celtism

I swear to remain faithful to the true spirit

Of the true Celtic tradition.

I swear to be the worthy and authentic heir

To the Science and philosophy of the islands in Hyperborea

Or located north of the World:

Thule, Abalum, Gorre and Ogygia the green island

To our elder of the time of the independent and free Great Celltica.

To the last druid of the court of the great Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill

According to Errard Mac Coisé

To the Reformation of Sean Eoghain Ui Thuathallain na Leabhar

To the Reformation of Henry Lizeray.

Or of his comarbae.

I not only swear to support and defend the true Celtic Tradition and the Celtic spirit, but also to develop them again and to spread the light of them everywhere.

I finally swear to respect our sodality, his Primate inter pares, his rule and his customs.

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Adge saveliu,

Luxnei, divu ac nuxtu

Etic ollebo cactiebo nemetos etic talamunos

Toaretudiet pennei mei nemes

Dlogieti talamu con maru critonu

Ringiet gala

Losciet mene aedis

Adtanet gormoceidt omori are talu dumni

Au mon oiton ponc delco

Ac in gascarian ate caedo.

By the sacred ensigns of our battalions

May be no longer a roof over my head

May my parents close their door in my face

May my children close their door in my face

If I do not keep this promise.

The proselyte who thus confirms one’s druidic faith then makes in front of everybody the sign of the warrior. i.e., with his right fist firmly he beats his breast and strikes several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) his heart as if he hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

The officiating druid:

“The sunfish is the symbol of the desert religion which invaded us. And where they make a desert they call it peace.Wearing such symbols is therefore as the name suggests as hanging a millstone about before to plunge into the water as for the spirituality. But never forget that the sea urchin is the symbol of our spirituality to us. It symbolism is that of the thistle and as folk wisdom says, “gather thistles, expect prickles !”

The officiating druid press then on the lips of each new converted the fossil sea urchin which belongs to him, puts it again in its bouget (a kind of small sporran) and ties it around the neck of the applicant.

Then he finishes while pronouncing for the benefit of each one of them these few words…

“Your true name is from now on N. (initiatory name that the proselyte chose himself)!

You too are through adoption a son (or a daughter) of Ogmius and Celtine, a grandson (or a granddaughter) of the Nemet Hornunnos, father of all true men. Such will be from now on your name of Celt.

X… (civil first name and name of the young wild boar) born on… in…

Son (or daughter) of… (first name and maiden name of the mother) and of… (first name and name of the father).

I accept your profession of faith as an expression of the purest Celtic paganism as regards the spirit as an expression of an authentic return to the roots of any spirituality; as a return to the natural religiosity of Mankind , which animated formerly our ancestors, be from now one of our nation, the nation of gods, by Taran/Torann/Tuireann, Lug and the hesus Cuchulainn, and may their force be with you, Nert dee agus andee, Sunartiu!

EXAMPLES OF TOAST FORMULAS.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

I raise my glass to the ONE. All things in the world are one, and one is all in all things.

RESPONSE OF THE PERSON WHO HAS JUST BEEN CONVERTED.

What’s all in all things is GOD, eternal and immense, neither begotten nor ever to perish.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

In him, we live, we move, and exist.

RESPONSE OF THE PERSON WHO HAS JUST BEEN CONVERTED .

Every thing is sprung from him, and shall be reunited to him, he himself being the beginning, and end of all things.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

100

Let us sing a hymn upon the power of the BITUS or of the VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE UNIVERSE.

RESPONSE OF THE PERSON WHO HAS JUST BEEN CONVERTED .

“All things within the verge of mortal laws are changed, all climates in revolving years know not themselves. Nations change their faces, but the whole of the BITUS or of the WORLD is safe, and preserves its all, neither increased by time,nor worn by age: its motion is not instantaneous, it doesn’t fatigue not its course. Always the same it has been, and shall be. Our father’s saw no alteration, neither shall posterity: it is GOD who for ever is immutable.”

ALL TOGETHER.

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Notice of the author of this compilation.

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1) By definition there was no one of them, of course! It is a difficulty which started to arise only in the Middle Ages!

2) After apostasy, or not (he was brought up while following another tradition), personal or not (he gave up our faith already at least once in the past, or at least if it is not himself they are his/her parents).

101

THE PRIESTLY RITUALS.

(Rituals peculiar to the druidic sodality.)

“THEY TEACH MANY THINGS TO THE NOBLEST MEN AMONG THEIR PEOPLE, AND THEY DO IT IN A CAVE OR IN SEC RET PLACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FORESTS”

(POMPONIUS MELA. DE CHOROGRAPHIA III 2,18).

102

INITIATION RITUAL AS A MALE OR FEMALE DISCIPLE (comrunos/comruna).

CORMAC’S ADVENTURE IN THE LAND OF PROMISE.

There exist three types of initiation: these which introduce young people in the world of the adults (rites of passage) , these which open the access to secret societies or to closed brotherhoods (religious initiations), these which make the normal human condition to be given up in order to reach the possession of supernatural powers (magic initiations).

If the first type always comprises a religious part and bases its ritual on mythical prototypes, it constitutes nevertheless a secular rite of passage, unlike the second.

It will be therefore question here only of the second kind of initiation: the initiation opening the access to the druidic sodality.

The West, wrote one day the Parisian Remy de Gourmont, since it was nominally Christianized, lives only on a few drops of pagan elixir that it saved from the jealousy of those who converted it. Although that does not mean that it is necessary to open the door to any type of neo-paganism, this remark is nevertheless deeply true.

In the Vedic literature (from Veda, a Sanskrit word meaning “Knowledge” or “Science”), there exists a set of texts which bears the name of aranyakas (literally “forest books”). Anonymous like all the Vedic texts, they are in fact “treatises” resulting from the Brahmanic circles of hermits and ascetics, withdrawn from public life. These “treatises” were to be precisely studied “in the forest,” in places out of contacts, not known by laymen. By their highly speculative or “esoteric” nature, the meditation of these texts could lead far beyond common truths and social conventions. Only comrunos (some “initiates”) prepared to receive these “revelations” (like the vanaprasthas or “inhabitants of the forest”) had access to them. The main texts are the Aitareya aranyaka, the Kaushitaki aranyaka or the Taittiriya aranyaka from which here a meaningful extract.

“In the beginning, That, which was the primary seed of the Thought, was changed into Desire: the sages (rsi), seeking in their heart, discovered intuitively that the root (bandhu) of the Being was in the Non-being. In truth, he receives all that he wishes, who knows thus! ”

Studied the upanishads, the “abandoning ” (samnyasin), the“wandering” (parivrajaka), the “religious mendicants” (bhiksu), and all those who were ready to leave the social conformism to sit down near a master in the forest, to listen carefully to what he had to say, and to meditate these words. Thus in India (at one time a little former to Buddhism), beneath the trees, in the desert, close to a well, took place intense discussions about everything and nothing, about the nothing-everything and the everything-nothing. At this point in time also the yogin and the yoga techniques appear (yug, “to yoke”), in particular the respiratory practices based on the doctrines of the breaths (prana).

The druidic initiation itself was done in the secrecy of the sanctuary (in the middle of the forest as regards the druids). The first stage consisted of the preliminary rites of purification and included ordeals from which the candidate was to leave victorious: symbolic fight (cf. G. Dumezil, Horatius and the Curiatii, Paris, 1942), passage through a narrow gate, difficult to cross, flogging (regarded by J.G. Frazer as a rite of fertility, which is not incompatible with their meaning of tests each moment of the ceremony being able to have a plurality of symbolic meaning).

Often were also shown ritual objects, of which was revealed the deep meaning: for example in Eleusis, from a sanctuary to another, saffron, fig and corncob.

The initiation was continued by the epopteia, the theater performance of a myth and the teaching of a secret starting from stagecrafts.

The new initiate then was to swear to maintain the secrecy on what he had seen and learned; then often he received another name.

The closing ceremonies which followed were public, with games and dances which expressed the joy of the return of the mystes to the life. In Celtic land people could “kill the pig,” strike up the barditus of the faithfulness or the barditus of the wine of the Challaoued.

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The initiation ritual of the disciples (comrunos/comruna) is, of all the rituals being able to exist, that which is perhaps most difficult to implement; for the druid acting as an investigator and responsible for being sure of the quality or of the training of the future member (the Inquisitor). It is not a question to award unknown supernatural and magic powers, but to measure some knowledge and especially the strength of the character. It is only a question for the investigator of knowing how far will be able to really go, for the cause of the druidic neo-pagan revival ,of the defense of its influence the one who will then require to become a member of the sodality or to be ordained in it.

That may consist of very hard bodily ordeals , or of moral and psychological tests. It is necessary to radically change one’s life . The purpose of these tests is therefore to see how far the applicant or inquirer can face the adversity, the affronts, the ridicule, the mocking, the bullying ; in short the moral (or physical) sufferings which faces today daily every neo-pagan wanting to live his believing in the forces of the invisible one and the life after death.

A part of these rituals was handed down to us in a written form in the Cormac’s adventure in the Land of Promise

(Echtrai Cormaic i Tir Tairngiri) but it is necessary to abstract from it the poetic exaggeration (oh these bards!)

Because the letter kills and only the orality of the tradition, make it possible to adapt the tests to the multiplicity of the particular cases. You cannot require the same thing from an elderly person or from a younger person, from a man or a woman, a person in good health or a patient.

Most absolute secrecy therefore binds the high investigator and the comrunos (the initiate). The investigating druid who would allow himself to reveal the content of the initiation rites practiced by him with such or such person would be immediately elutached, therefore would lose thereby all his rights in the brotherhood.

He would be banished from it, people would owe no longer something to him. Every ritual celebration, every enthronement or other ceremony of this type, would be forbidden to him. The secrecy of initiation is a requirement as fundamental as that of the Greek mysteries. It is an obligation as commanding as that of the seal of the confessional in the new (Roman catholic and apostolic) religion.

All what can be written here on the initiation rituals of our sodality, it is that, unlike the Greek mysteries, these rituals took place especially in forest. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) are some priests of the forest, do not forget it!

The forest covered formerly 80% of our territories and our ancestors took refuge in hill forts perched on the top of plateaus and hills, at the edge of the rivers or even in lake cities. Between these settlements thousands hectares of virgin forest type hercynian forest formed as many almost insuperable obstacles. At the time – we tend too much to forget it - the forests constituted natural borders surer than mountains and rivers. They were also the symbol and the refuge of the survival of a prehistoric lifestyle: the place reserved for the risks of the gathering and of the hunting, in opposition to the safety which farming and breeding brought. Each year our ancestors celebrated the event by hunting in forest: stags and hinds were taken, killed, cut up; men and women covered themselves with their skins then and danced during several days. This festival became our carnival.

In the Middle Ages, the forest constitutes a place of work and refuge. Live in it coalmen, glassmakers, outlaws. The forest remains the starting point of every adventure and of every loss. It is enough to read again the writings of Chretien de Troyes and his hunting of the white stag: the forest always appears there as the space of the test from where you come out different. The forest then is perceived as the archetypal place of the initiation rites. To go into the forest, it was therefore at the same time to go down into hell and to go back to the roots of mankind.

Nature was not created by the gods to make it possible for men to flee the towns, it was the towns which were created by men to shelter from nature. Civilization was identified with the clearing, essential to agriculture, to construction, to the opening of ways and roads.

There existed, of course, other possible places for initiations, in the Celtic world. Pomponius Mela in his famous account on the subject mentions also some caves.

"They teach many things to the noblest persons among their people, and they do it in a cave” (De chorographia III, 2,18).

And besides such was well the case in Ireland with the famous underground (perhaps the megalithic chamber of a collapsed mound of Newgrange type) located on a small island on the red Lake (Lough derg) discovered again by St. Patrick in his time. Today replaced by a chapel. This lake is besides

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linked with some feats of the legendary chief of Fenians named Vindos/Finn. Christian mythology makes it the place where St. Patrick would have floored the last of the snakes in Ireland, from where the theoretical color of the lake today.

Each one therefore must, for the circumstance, learn more than the rudiments of the tradition (auraicept), even to study the second book of the adequate oral literature.

Animal figures hold a great place in the Celtic symbolism. The wild boar, the bull, the horse, we find on the coins of the majority of the tribes-states, particularly on the coins of the Bituriges; certain birds, certain trees, certain plants, were national and religious symbols. They became coinage types , military ensigns; they were carried out in the battles; they were venerated, people worshipped in them a source of agricultural or forest richness, of public prosperity. Many ancient Celts had consequently names evoking some animals: Matugenos, Boduognatos, Deiotaros, Brannogenos, Tarbelli…

Here some small pieces of advice to find such a name. Lie down, close your eyes, and imagine that you are in a green forest, letting the sun rays penetrating. You walk straight ahead by going out in the forest. You come close to a high stone drawn up vertically and you hear noises all around you: they are the songs of the birds. At the same time as you listen to them, you whirl on yourself. A small path appears to you, you decide to follow it. You have the impression to go ahead without your feet touch the ground and more and more quickly. You arrive in a clearing where the grasses are tall, and in front of you, there is the wood edge. You are far and you have difficulty to distinguish, but you nevertheless see something which moves in the thickets. A fuzzy form approaches you and you see it now very clearly: it is your totem animal.

In order to help, here some examples extracted from the work of David Rankine.

Bear. Power, inner force, play.

Bull. Courage, prosperity, abundance.

Butterfly. The symbolism of the butterfly is that of the soul removed from its corporeal cover.

Crow. Discovering of oneself, creativity, intelligence.

Deer. Doe. Kindness, innocence, sixth senses.

Dog. Faithfulness, guard, heroism.

Dragon or griffin. Knowledge, growth, regeneration.

Eagle. Respect, creativity, care, health.

Ermine. Symbolizes the warlike virgins. See weasel.

Fox. Intelligence, diplomacy, patience.

Goose. Messenger of the Other World. Swan and goose are used as body cover by the angels of the female gender came from the country of gods (the Celts therefore allocate to it divinatory powers).

Hawk. Long-term view, dignity.

Horse. Power, freedom, movement.

Lark. The golden mean between men and gods.

Otter. Symbolize the end of a time cycle.

Ram. Imagination, beginning again.

Raven. Moral resources, personal changes.

Salmon. Wisdom, regeneration, duration.

Snake. Protection, fertility, wisdom, molting and rebirth.

Stag. Hart. Independence, balance, pride.

Tortoise. * Creation, interconnection.

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Wolf. Team spirit, family spirit, protection.

There exists, of course, a host of other enthralling animals, quite worthy to inspire you: bison, aurochs, lynx, etc., etc. For any information:www.davidrankineart.com.

* Testudo hermanni Testudo graeca and European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis).

Considering the orality of the handing down of these rituals, we will be content here with saying only a few words about them.

- CALLING AND STARTING PHASE.

The calling phase is not ritualized. It is therefore multiform, variable, and can consist as well of exchange of mails as of exchange of various remarks, more or less inciting. It is up to the concerned high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) to see when to put an end to it in order to move on the following stage of this search.

The investigating druid then explains in a short speech that the new comrunos (that the new initiate) will be blood brother or sister of the others comrunos if he goes until the end of one’s quest and chooses an initiatory name or confirms the one he has already.

In the ritual of the former culdee monastic orders, after ingestion in the morning of magnetized water glass, the applicant to the initiation was to compel himself to a complete fasting for the departure except for a little water sweetened with honey (similar rites in our sodality).

Moreover in our community the applicant must provide himself before his departure, with atiobertas, i.e., with offerings (various oblations or drink offerings ) to offer to the gods in the forest.

One of the rites of the day before departure is that of the tablut (chess) or more exactly of the viduceila or vidupeila, between the investigating druid and the comrunos (the initiate). According to whether the candidate wins or loses the game, the tests which will follow will be different.

One of best known consists in shaving hair and beard (or more in the Wiccan rites: a full hair removal) and burning them as ateberta or offering to the great Hornunnos. With regard to our sodality, it is at least the Celtic tonsure. The investigating carefully shaves the whole front of the head of the disciple from ear to ear, letting only the hair hanging behind; and he will burn the cut hair , during the following day, on the rustic altar arranged for this purpose, or in the wilderness 1).

In the former Celtic tradition, that which is previous the coming of the parabolani of Christianity and of their Manichean reading of the world, we can find some elements, particularly among the Fenians, likely to feed our reflection. The companions of Finn were a troop of warlike poets, with an austere deontology and mystic. To be a companion of Finn, it was necessary to give up any family and clannish attachment, to be an accomplished athlete and warrior, then to learn by heart the twelve books of poetry.

Here a poem which speaks to us about them.

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Binn sin, a Loin Doire an Chairn!

Ní chuala mé in aird sa bhith

Ceol ba binne ná do cheol

Agus tú fá bhun do nid.

Aoincheol is binne fán mbith

Mairg nach éisteann leis go fóill

A mhic Calprainn na gclog mbinn

Is go mbéarthá aríst ar do nóin.

Agat, mar tá agam féin

Dá mbeith deimhin scéil an eoin

Do-ghéantá déara go dian

‘s ní bhiadh t’aire ar Dhia go foil.

I gcrích Lochlann na sreabh ngorm

Fuair mac Cumhaill na gcorn ndearg

An t-éan do-chíthe-se anois

Ag sin a scéal doit go dearbh.

Doire an Chairn an choill úd thiar

Mar a ndéindís an Fhiann fos

Ar áille is ar chaoimhe a crann

Is eadh do cuireadh ann an lon.

Sgolghaire luin Doire an Chairn

Búithre an daimh ó Aill na gCaor

Lachain ó Loch na dTrí gCaol.

Cearca fraoich um Chruachain Chuinn

Feadghail dobhráin Druim Dhá Loch

Gotha fiulair Ghlinn’ na bhFuath

Longhaire cuach Chnuic na Scoth.

Gotha gadhair Ghleanna Caoin

Is gáir fhiolair chaoich na sealg

Tairm na gcon ag triall go moch.

An tráth do mhair Fionn ‘s an Fhiann

Dob ansa leo sliabh ná cill

Ba binn leosan fuighle lon

Gotha na gclog leo níor bhinn.

Beautiful, O Blackbird of the wood of Doire an Chairn!

Nowhere on Earth have I heard

A lovelier music than yours

There as you guard your nest.

The world’s loveliest song

A shame you won’t listen awhile.

Listen, o son of Calpurnius of the sweet bells

You could still fit in your nones.

If you knew, as I know myself

The real story of that bird

You would have to cry hard tears

And forget your God awhile

In a blue-rivered Viking region

Mac Cumhaill of the burnished goblets

Found the bird you see before you

True is the tale I tell

Doire an Chairn is the wood back there

Where the Fenians took their rest

So fine and fair its trees

They set the blackbird there

O the throat song of the blackbird of Doire an Chairn

The stag’s call from Aill na gCaor

And the ducks from the lake Na dTrí gCaol

O the grouse at Cruachan, seat of Conn

Otters whistling at Druim Dhá Lake

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Eagle cry in Gleann na bhFuath

Cuckoo’s murmur on Chnuic na Scoth

O the dog’s voices in the valley of Ghleanna Caoin

The cry of the half-blind hunting eagle

The patter of hounds, on their way early.

When Finn and the Fenians lived

They loved the hills, not monks’ cells

Blackbird speech is what they loved

Not the sound, unlovely, of your bells.

Today, the Man is taken in the gears of a big machine arranged, if not to destroy him, at least to flatten him and standardize it. Unlike such a man, encircled , trapped in a “inexorable surrounding,” the human being who “ goes into the forest” can become again, at least for a brief moment, a singular being (a wild boar).

- SECOND PHASE THEREFORE the arrival in the forest of Fenians.

It is not a question of being content with spending one night in open air around a campfire like scouts. It is not a question either of falling in the incredible excesses of which we find the trace in the Penitentials of the Irish Christianity (to sleep in a grave, to plunge in ice-cold water, etc.) . Druids are priests of the Hercynian Forest. The druid responsible for the initiations should especially not for the circumstance have forgotten his voulge, because this last will possibly be used for the scarifications.

Cf for example the folding pruning knife No 10 SF of the famous trade mark Opinel . Blade stainless steel ten cm long. Handle in varnished beech. A gardener tool ideal to trim shrubs, to graft or to make an incision in fruit trees.

But of course, the voulge can always have its original dimensions, i.e., to be at least long as a Swiss halberd.

Did you never walk during the night in the forest? It is possible to see eyes of birds shining , to hear furtive noises. The night in forest everything changes , it is enough to read again Huon of Bordeaux and Shakespeare to be convinced.

In any case, here what said already Lucan 2000 years ago.

“Even the priest or when bright Phoebus holds the height, or when dark night controls the heavens, in anxious dread draws near the grove and fears to find its lord. Men flee the spot nor dare to worship near: 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; and those dragons in frequent folds were coiled around the trunks.”

And Lucan adds it was “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 , 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” (Lucan. Pharsalia. III. 399-425).

An excellent example of forest where to recharge one's batteries therefore that of Sherwood. Sherwood is a wood known universally and surrounding the village of Edwinstowe, historically combined with the legend of Robin Hood. The 432 hectares of the current forest are the vestiges of the vast royal hunting domain which stretched inside the close counties. A park intended to the public

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was opened in 1969, by the Nottinghamshire County Council , and includes some patches of very old origin, where thin birches grow with more than one thousand old oaks, of which the majority are more than five hundred years old. Its principal attraction is the mighty oak which, according to the local folklore, was the principal hiding place of Robin Hood. This oak would be from 800 to 1000 years old, and, since the Victorian era, its branches are supported by a system of stakes in order to prevent that they break.The first handwritten mention of Robin Hood is in Piers Plowman by William Langland (1377), where Sloth, a lazy priest, declares: “I know rhymes of Robyn Hood”; and three years later, the Scottish chronicler John of Fordun writes that, in ballads, the character Robin Hood “delights above all others.”

An outlaw famous for his exceptional archery skill and his merciless fight against the sheriff in Nottingham - who will never succeed in driving him out from the Sherwood Forest -; Robin Hood would have been, according to certain sources, a great lord dispossessed of his estates by the royal authority. We are unaware of the name of the king in question , since, according to the chronology of the works which are devoted to him, Richard I, John Lackland Henry III and even Edward II, appear among his contemporaries.

Around the character of Robin, many inconsistencies were introduced through ages . It is said that Robin, lord of Loxley (chief town of the county of Hallamshire) was dispossessed of his estates by the sheriff of Nottingham and was declared an outlaw. The sheriff appears indeed in the first ballads, where Robin ends up beheading him, but it is not a question of his estates there. His other enemies are a bounty hunter named Guy of Gisborne, as well as rich abbots, who are also killed by Robin. But if the old ballads mention a loan granted by Robin to an unlucky knight , they say nothing about a redistribution of his plunder to the poor. It is also said that Robin resides in the vast forest of Sherwood, in the county of Nottingham, whereas the ballads generally make him move in Barnsdale, county of York, that is to say almost 80 kilometers in the north. These discordances are perhaps explained by the fact they are in reality legends of Celtic origin, of the type “Finn and the Fenians,” but with Robin Hood in the role of Finn.

Another example, the forest of Arden according to Shakespeare. The first scene of the act II of the play of our author, who speaks about it, and, particularly, the speech which the old duke gives to his companions in exile, are very interesting.

Confronted with primary realities first, the old duke indeed seems to prefer this simple and hard life within a wild nature, to the life of a courtier, conventional and sophisticated, given over to the jealousies and the backstairs influences.

This existence safe from the public mob reveals to him voices in the trees, some books in the brooks which run, some lessons in the stones, and the good in everything.

Unfortunately, nothing in this part is detailed in this direction. The companions of the duke are definitely more superficial, are more worried about their sorrows and their pleasures. For them, the forest is above all a place where the game abounds it is good to track to stave off boredom.

Only Jaques, the melancholic person, takes pity on the suffering inflicted to the animals, and the others make fun with him. At the sight of a wounded stag, come to die close to the brook where he daydreamed, Jaques will learn from this spectacle a purely moral lesson. Observing the animal alone and abandoned by his, he will compare his condition with that of the human existence.

The confrontation between the remarks made by Jaques which follow by a few lines these of the old duke, raises an interesting questioning. There Shakespeare leaves us a scene which invites to question us on the place of the man in nature, on the relation he has with the animals.

The western Wicca kept d the tradition of the initiations with a marked sexual nature. A little as in the preislamic ritual the tawaf (circumambulation) around the kaaba in Mecca when Muhammad was young 2).

The texts of the Western Wicca abstain naturally and by definition from giving more details on these tests, more difficult on the psychological level than on the simply bodily level.

All what we may say it is that they are in line with the great female tradition of the Namnete priestesses, who lived near the estuary of the Loire, of the priestesses of the island of Sein; and of the warlike queen of Scotland named Scathache, which could in turn frighten or calm , comfort or relax. Not counting the innumerable and mysterious ladies of the quest for the Grail. In short, in the rites of the Wicca, the woman initiates the man and in turn the man initiates the woman. What, on the psychological level, involves a qualitative recruitment of rather elitist type.

The test of the white mare for the men, in spite of his very shocking nature (see the reactions of Gerald of Wales ) is a test only intended for the sons of kings, and in order to check that they are well “vir integer.”

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With regard to physical resistance, the hardening against the temperature variations, the walk, the vigils, as we noticed it elsewhere , the accounts come to us are contradictory (certain nations seem to have reproached the others their “limpness”); but here is one which is rather clear: “The men of every age are equally inclined to war, the old man and the man in the prime of life answer with equal zeal the call to arms, and their bodies being hardened by their cold weather and by constant exercise; so that they are all inclined to despise dangers and terrors. Nor has any one of this nation ever mutilated his thumb from fear of the toils of war, as men have done in Italy, whom in their district are called unfit for service [murcus]”.(Timagenes. Quoted by Ammianus Marcellinus XV, 12).

In the Fenian ritual, the initiation was a true assault course. The person wishing to integrate the group was to stand in a hole dug halfway up, armed with a simple shield to protect himself from the spears of nine warriors. If he was wounded, he failed. During another test, a chase was organized through the forest. If the warrior in question was caught, if a branch cracked under his feet, or if his braids were undone, it was the failure. It was to be also able to jump above a branch located at the height of his face, to go under another located at the height of his knee, and finally to be able to draw a spine from his foot while continuing to run without slowing down.

Under the name of arra, the Culdee monks also preserved to us a distant echo of all these psychosomatic techniques.

Three days and three nights without drinking, neither eating, nor sleeping, the first night spent in ice-cold water, the second on a bed of nettles, the third on a bed of nut shells.

Three days and three nights without drinking, neither eating, nor sleeping, lengthened naked, in a crypt, a grave or a tomb, to recite prayers. N.B. The Christian penitentials say “beside a corpse,” but it is a little excessive, that looks even a little satanist!

Three days and three nights without drinking, neither eating, nor sleeping, in a cave, a cavern or an underground. Favorite method of St. Patrick (between on June 1st and on August 15th on an island in the middle of Lough Derg, county of Donegal). Because Patrick or his successors did nothing but take over quite a former practice, of course, 3).

Nights in an icy place or in one’s cell to stay awake , to pray, without sitting down, neither to lengthen, nor to sleep. Some months cloistered on bread and water, without a bed for sleeping.

The walk can also be used as an initiatory test. It is a method well known of the soldiers of today. It must in this case be performed bare feet (as that which takes place on the sacred mountain in Ireland located in the county of Mayo, on the last Sunday of July). These rites date back, of course, time immemorial and Patrick did nothing but recover them.

Our sodality not having as calling to train super-warriors (we leave this care to others) it is recommended to be less severe.

In the ordeals of the Fenian type for example (to be buried up to the armpits but with arms remaining free ), the wounds are not regarded as eliminatory , but on the contrary accepted as ritual scarifications or wounds.

In the pre-Patrician rituals were also considered besides , for the circumstance, some other shorter, but harder psychosomatic ordeals (principle even of the commutation of penances). These ordeals were intended to show if the candidate lied or was sincere.

Here the best known.

- The torc of Morann. The torc chokes the candidate who does not have a sufficient faith and lets living the one who has the necessary faith (obviously a little too radical).

- The circlet of Morann. The circlet cuts the hand or the leg of the candidate who does not have a sufficient faith and which lies, on the other hand, leaves unscathed the one who is sincere.

- The cauldron of truth. A gold or silver vase filled with ebullient water. The great inquisitor plunges the hand of the candidate into it. If this the latter lied, his hand is entirely burned. If the candidate is sincere and has really faith, he feels only a burn which is healed quickly.

- Luchta’s iron. A piece of iron is carried to the red and the great inquisitor passes it on the palm of the candidate. If the candidate does not have faith, he is very seriously burned, if he has faith and proves to be sincere in his step, in the worst case he will be slightly reached and his wound will be healed very quickly.

- Sencha's lot casting . Same principle, but with burning coals.

- Mochta’s adze. Idem, but the great inquisitor passes it on the tongue of the candidate instead of the palm.

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But hardest of the initiations was undoubtedly the initiation in the way of Hesus.

After having pruned himself with blows of bill hook or voulge, the oak he wanted, Our Lord Hesus was indeed hung by the feet three days and three nights in order to become shaman.

The effects of these initiations being felt during several weeks, the new disciples, once back at home , were to tell quite singular things in connection with these forests or these mysterious undergrounds. See on this subject once again the Purgatory of St. Patrick and the description the Irish knight called Owen made of it.

Here what noticed Gerald of Wales (Topographia Hibernica, Distinctio II, chapter V) in connection with this center of which a part is frequented by good spirits the other by evil spirits. Finally, if we understood well his text (our seven years of Latin are far!)

There is a lake in Ulster containing an island divided into two parts 4). In one of these stands a church of especial sanctity, and it is most agreeable and delightful, as well as beyond measure glorious for the visitations of angels and the multitude of the saints who visibly frequent it.

The other part, which is only an arid land covered with rugged crags 5), is reported to be the resort of devils only, and to be almost always the theater on which crowds of evil spirits visibly perform their rites. This part of the island contains nine pits, and should any one perchance venture to spend the night in one of them (which has been done, we know, at times, by some rash men), he is immediately seized by the malignant spirits, who so severely torture him during the whole night, inflicting on him such unutterable sufferings by fire and water, and other torments of various kinds, that when the morning comes scarcely any spark of life is found left in his wretched body. It is said that

anyone who has once submitted to these torments as a penance imposed upon him will not afterwards

undergo the pains of hell, unless he commits some sin of an exceptional seriousness.

This place is called by the natives Purgatory of St. Patrick. Because of a debate the saint had with unbelievers concerning the torments of hell reserved for the reprobate, and the real nature and eternal duration of the future life, in order to impress on the rude minds of the unbelievers a mysterious faith in doctrines so new, so strange, so opposed to their prejudices, procured by the efficacy of his prayers an exemplification of both states even on earth, as a salutary lesson to the stubborn minds of the people 6).

In the rituals of our sodality the largest latitude is left to the investigators to adapt these ordeals and to personalize them. The tendency was recently to the abandonment or to the sweetening of the most difficult ordeals, but certain enthusiastic young people of the druidism return there again more and more.

In what concerns us, as we already have had the opportunity to say it, our community insists rather on the symbolic system of the tablut (of the Celtic chess).

It is founded on the myth of the Middle kingdom, with a king occupying the center (nabelcon) and defending it against destroying forces come from outside.

According to whether the candidate wins or loses, the continuation of the tests can be different.

After his night spent in the shelter or the initiatory pit, not near the body of a late as among the Irish Christians mentioned above, but near the simple skull of a skeleton; the candidate is released by the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht).

The initiator proceeds then to the ritual bath or to the lustration, i.e., to the body and symbolic purification of the candidate. If possible by making him bathe completely. What therefore involves that this ritual proceeds not far from a water point of a lake or a river, in which soaked a vervain branch.

The investigating druid recites the following lay: “A man (or a woman) alone on the draft beam of a chariot

A white-bronze sword in his (or her) right hand;

The Celts face water with a sword (a gladivo)

Or with a lance

Throw themselves in the floods and receive the shock from it.

Nert dee agus andee, May the force be with you, Sunartiu! ”

Brother (or sister) N. (initiatory name that the candidate chose himself) present yourself here with all that belongs to you, facing the sun, in the eye of the light.

The future disciple being raised on this injunction (to face the sun) the investigating druid continues…

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“Do you have only a shirt?”

“No! The applicant answers.”

The investigating druid resumes…

“Since you are poor and naked Suibhne Myrddin Wylt or Lailoken, I will give you at least a shirt. The skin which wears a shirt around it, no disease can reach it.”

Then he gives to the disciple a (black or brown) homespun shirt while saying to him:

“Receive today this shirt, symbol of your ignorance. One day perhaps, if you can be worthy, you too will wear the light cloth .”

Generally then you make the disciple drink magnetized water (in a set with gold skull,a skull full of water having stood all the time of the initiation on the rustic altar in the forest); or of water in which a vervain branch soaked.

The candidate must then enter meditation, sitting cross-legged like the Great Hornunnos.

Then the investigating druid goes around the candidate sunwise (deiseil, deiseal) while pointing firmly towards him the buffers of the torc he withdrew from his neck just before, and adds what follows…

“Oian Oian small young wild boar! Listen, O dalta, and understand well. The earth is sacred since always, it should be neither ridiculed nor polluted. And this ground is also because it shelters the bodies of our ancestors.To each country its gods, to each god his country. The earth belongs to the gods, to the ancestors and to the clan.

But Tradition is more important still. The Tradition, it is what connects men to the Divinity. The only races having some importance are those of the spirit, because just as there exists a race of the great leaders, also exists the race of the poets, the race of the wise men or that of the mad men.

One of the key concepts of our spirituality to us, is that of the destiny of our people, we were much reproached for that . But what is this therefore a predestined people? Admittedly not a race having the right or the duty to eliminate or dominate the others, but a duty (noblesse oblige), that to be a light, a light in the night, a light in the night which is descended on the clearing, a headlight intended to enlighten the other nations.

The Celtic Tradition is the only tradition which can really release the Man and the divinity which sleeps in him, the only tradition being able to save our Mother the Earth, the only tradition being able to turn men… into gods.

It is indeed in the Celtic tradition and in it only that the keys being able to make possible on earth the reign of the spirit; the sense of the honor and of the duty, the sense of the sacrifice and of the sacred, Faith and Reason. And of all that only the Celtic-minded people have the innate sense, because they are admodum dediti religionibus .

It is therefore our duty to defend the Celtic Tradition inch by inch. The land is much, but the Tradition is even more. May the knights deal with the Earth, we uns high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) we will deal with the Tradition.

When he considers the time is come, the great inquisitor undoes then the circle by walking around the candidate in the opposite direction then explains…

“For two thousand years and even more, our marriage of faith and reason, of the faith enlightened by the reason, is persecuted.

Remember that true-hearted and minded Celtst were always obliged to defend themselves. Caesar Augustus prohibited the religion druidarum. Caesar Tiberius published a decree against our high-knowers “and all that tribe of vates and physicians ” as he said. The emperor Claudius prohibited the practice of our religion.

“To be a true pagan hearted and minded Celt is to belong to a people of priests (each pagan is to oneself his own priest in front of the altar of the gods and of the ancestors in the privacy of his home) homophonous with gods, to a sacred nation whose children have duties, moral laws or gessa, extremely constraining.

Then finally God and the gods, what is it now for you? Why do you want therefore to join us? ”

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And there the applicant explains to the investigator why he feels spiritually Celt, how he sees the holy poly-unity, why he wants to be comrunos ou comruna (initiated)…

The new disciple must then arrange somewhere in nature a small altar , if it is not already done, then to proceed to a sacrifice to the gods of the forest, with the atioberta (offerings) of his choice. His own hair for example, to burn it.

He must take care of all and particularly of the text of the lorica or prayer intended to call upon God and his gods (he must have composed it before, himself). The fire of this brazier must result from wood or coals belonging to the seven traditional varieties of tree: fir, birch, beech, elm, apple, chestnut, oak tree. In the event of absence of one or more of these varieties, a wild rose or a drink offering of mead in the brazier can replace them.

The officiating druid does nothing but advise him or give him a hand if necessary. For example, by laying out the skull cup filled with water above.

The waiting at the altar being finished with the absorption by the new comrunos of the magnetized or treated with vervain water in the skull cup, the initiate will be able to break his fast by sharing a light meal with the druid having officiated.

Once the initiation of the new comrunos noticed in the register, the disciple will then have to sign it, in red.

1) Our Celtic brothers of the Czech Republic maintain that to have an exact idea of this druidic tonsure it is necessary to look at the stone head of a druid discovered in Msecké Zehrovice close to Prague.

2) It goes without saying druidism regards in any way nudity in itself as a sin. The evil never comes from the fact that a man or a woman is naked, but from the look we can have at a naked man or a woman (machismo, nymphomania, or other).

What we want to say thereby, it is that time is no longer to such practice of nudism in the ritual in spite of the beauty of the gesture: “The Man in the state of nature in front of his creator, without pretense nor artifice.” And in any event, for the true high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) there is not a kaaba but thousands of kaabas, as many kaabas as remarkable holy places.

Let us say simply and to conclude that this religion wants men or women possibly able to show themselves in public like at the day of their birth so necessary to further the cause; or like the beautiful Judith of the book of the monolatrous people, but also in the way of Camma or Khiomara, able to surrender herself bodily to an enemy in order to neutralize him.

3) The fame of the underground (in Lough Derg) which was going to become the Purgatory of St. Patrick had already found his place in the popular superstitions, at the time when, about the middle of the 12th , the regular canons of Saint-Augustine thought of exploiting it in their favor and built in the island the priory. They limited themselves in fact to give Christian names to the areas of the Other World which opened in the mound. The spirits which lived it were changed into demons or angels. An expert preparation, a staging done to strike the naive soul/minds, the darkness of the underground chamber, the lack of air, the emanations of some sulfur spring, caused among the pilgrims an intense state of excitement or of insurmountable dejection , and predisposed them to all the hallucinations. If it there were really some of them who perished in their bold undertaking, it is that they had to slip at the bottom of oubliettes dug under the level of the lake, unless fast and fright have broken their force of resistance.

4) They are in fact two islands very close, the largest of which is called the island of saints (Oilean Na Naomh or island of Mobeoc), rather than one cut into two.

5) The ruins of a megalithic monument?

6) Christian mythology has it indeed that Saint Patrick one day prayed the Lord to show a sign which incited the frightened pagans or sinners frightened to do a penance.

On his order, he therefore traced somewhere a large circle with his stick; the ground opened then inside and it appeared here a very large and very deep well. It was revealed to the blessed Patrick that it was the place of the Purgatory into which whoever would want to go down would have no longer other penance to do, that the majority would not leave it , but that those who would return from there, should have remained there one day and one night. And indeed , many of those who entered

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did not return from there. A long time after the death of St. Patrick , an Irish noble knight called Owen, Owein, Oweins, Hoenus… ventured to do it.

Colgan thinks that his true name was to be either Eogan or Oengus or Aengussius. In Ulster Eogan is the name of the dynasty which, in the 5th century, occupied in the North-West of Ireland the peninsula which always bears its name, Inis Eoghain (Inishowen) and the nearby area, Tir Eoghain (Tyrone). In Munster it is also the name of the ancestor of several dynasties of whom that of the Mac Carthaig, kings of Cashel and Desmond (North-east and South-west of Munster), a family rival of the Ua Briain, kings of Thomond (North-west of Munster). If Eogan is Ua Briain (it is, however, not a name borne in this family), his adventure in the Purgatory becomes rival then of the vision of Tondale, a warrior serving the Mac Carthaig.

Owein is the Welsh writing of a similar Irish name handed down the monk of Saltrey by Gilbert of Louth Park, former abbot of Basingwerk, in the North of Wales. Let us point out that this name was written in old Celtic language Esugenos, in other words, son of Esus. Chance? ?

In short, this knight who had made many sins, wanted to do penance and endure, himself, the Purgatory of St Patrick. After having mortified himself, like everybody did it, by fifteen days of fast, and having opened the door with a key preserved in an abbey, this man went down in the well in question and found a chapel, in which came in monks covered with cowls, who celebrated the service. They recommended to Owen having constancy, because the devil would make him go through many ordeals and that they would not be only mystical visions, but a travel really in corpore in the other world.

He asked them what help he could have against that: the monks answered him: “When you feel reached by these pains, say: Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have pity of me who I am a poor sinner! ” The monks being withdrawn, at once appeared demons… As Owen did not want to yield to their suggestions, he was thrown in the same fire to endure similar torments and felt the same tortures. But when he had exclaimed: “Jesus Christ, son of the living God, etc.,” he was released forthwith from this anguish…

He was then in a pleasant meadow; perfumed by the sweet odor of various flowers. Then two very fair young men appeared to him, who led him to a town looking splendidly and marvelously bright with gold as well as with precious stones. The door let escape from it a delicious odor, which relaxed him so well that he appeared to have felt neither pain nor stink of any kind; and the young people said to him that this city, it was the heaven… Owen went up through where he was gone down , found himself on the ground and told all that had occurred to him.

The Tractatus de Purgatorio sancti Patricii by Henry of Saltrey details the trip in this place of the knight Owen (in 1153). This Latin treatise was translated into French by Marie de France. Its influence was so considerable that it provided even to Dante in Italy the framework of his Divine comedy, and to Calderon in Spain the topic of his drama: the Purgatory of St. Patrick.

But it seems well that with the closing of the underground in 1790, the specific “rite” died out while giving way only to a simple pilgrimage not having as many implications.

The legend of the purgatory of St. Patrick is therefore now all what remains of what was, in the past, a powerful experiment, based on the same spiritual level as the funeral oracles of ancient Greece. It made it possible to the pilgrims to penetrate, by crossing it, the veil of the hereafter dissimulating the soul/minds of the late in the purgatory.

FOR COMPARISON HERE HOW GREEK INITIATIONS TOOK PLACE.

The Greeks designated with the name of mysteries, from the word muein; to close one’s mouth, to remain dumb; certain religious ceremonies which were performed during the night, and silently. A mystery was not, for them, a dogma incomprehensible for the reason and imposed by the authority or accepted by the faith; this ridiculous idea is completely unfamiliar to the polytheism; it was only a secret that people must not to reveal, an ineffable thing.

There existed two celebrations of the Eleusinian mysteries: the great mysteries and the small mysteries. The latter generally took place in spring. It was whereas the priests purified the mystai and that people sacrificed a pig to Demeter.

The Great mysteries lasted nine days, according to the length of the wandering of Demeter in the search for her daughter. In September, before autumn, people prepared for the preliminary ceremonies which proceeded outside and which therefore are documented better.

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The first part of the ritual began with a procession during which they transported sacred relics crowned (the hiera) into the town of Athens to place them in the Eleusinion, a sanctuary built at the foot of the Acropolis. The mystai (candidates worthy of the mysteries) were plunged then in the sea to be purified.

A fast period passed before the procession of the mystai follows the statue of Iacchos, the hiera and the priests, towards Eleusis, along the sacred road.

In the telesterion, after having broken the fast by consuming the kykeon (a drink made of barley), the secret rite of initiation took place then; the mystai received revelations from the initiates then reached the salvation and the life after death.

Whoever spoke Greek and had not committed homicide was acceptable. The participants formed themselves in a procession. Some mystai (new initiates) who came for the first time on the spot in order to be initiated; initiated mystai coming back a second time to reach a higher level; the epoptes who had reached this level; and the priests, priestesses and hierophants, who presided over the rites.

The sanctuary ceased every activity after its sacking by the Visigoths in 395. However, according to Carl Gustav Jung, the Eleusinian mysteries were really removed only in the beginning of the 7th century of the Christian era.

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NOTICES ABOUT THE CELTIC CHESS.

(Fidchell. Modern Irish ficheall. Goidelic Vidoceila. Brittonic Vidupeila).

The name derives from fid (“wood”) and ciall (“wisdom,” “sense,” “logic”).

The chess and its derivative the checkers are of Indian origin. They lengthily evolved in Iran and in the South of Europe before leading to the game we know today. In their current form, they are hardly five hundred years old.

Fidchell on the other hand, is the generic name of the various variants of a board game used in Northern Europe under the name of tablut, played on “chessboards” of increasing size according to the number of pieces concerned.

The literature of Ireland and Wales preserved us invaluable information on these games. But the fidchells are identified there more according to the lay out of their pieces than according to their number or of their size.

The most practical means to classify them nevertheless is to do it according to the number of their squares or the number of their pawns.

The games of this family have a checkerboard with an odd number of squares . The smallest of these games is a 49 (7 X 7) squares checkerboard and the biggest known to date is a 361 (19 X 19) squares checkerboard.

Between these two extremes, there were checkerboards with 81 boxes (9 X 9) 121 (11 X 11) and 169 (13 X 13).

The odd number of the squares makes it possible to have a central square , the navel or nabelcon, a throne on which is placed the king to begin the game. This layout is single in the North-European world of the board games.

In the hopscotch the center does not form part of the play, since it is the place where the captured pawns must be kept. In the chess or in the checkers , the center is only a point among others on the board.

In the tablut or fidchell on the other hand, the forces of the king defend the center, whereas the opposing forces try to gain control of it by encircling the king. But for that it is forbidden them to use the impregnable nabelcon (the central point). These plays are therefore very interesting to study because of their symbolism and of the message they contain.

The Irish tradition ascribes the invention of the fidchell to the god Lug.

Cormac’s glossary, probably written around the year 900, specifies: “The fidchell is four-cornered, its squares are right-angled, and black and white men are on it and more over it is different people that in turn play the king.”

The Book of Rights too, speaks of this game: “ It was a board of silver and pure gold, and every angle were illuminated with precious stones, and a man bag of woven brass wire.”

A variant of the British or Welsh fidchell is mentioned in the Red book of Hergeist under the name of gwyddbwll. The gwyddbwll of Gwendolen was also, richly worked. The board was to be out of gold and the pawns out of silver. Once laid out, its pieces started to play by themselves. At least according to the legends . In a way, a Celtic version of the modern electronic chess.

In the tablut or fidchell the pieces move only straight and orthogonally (not diagonally) from a free square to a free square . The attackers who are laid out on the circumference of the checkerboard begin the first. In the old Irish variants of the play, these pieces are called Fenians i.e., warriors. This name seems to have been most current.

The inequality between the two forces exists with regard to the number of pieces, their props, even the objective which each adversary pursues. The largest force tries to besiege the minority force. No diagonal movement is allowed as we saw it. To jump over another piece either. A piece is regarded as captured if it is neutralized by two adverse pieces forming with it a straight line of which it occupies the center.

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The captured pieces are taken out of the game.

The king can be captured only if he is doubly neutralized, by four attacking pieces forming not one, but two straight lines intersecting themselves on the square he occupies.

A king cannot be captured if he occupies a square to the nabelcon or central square because, as the nabelcon is reserved to the king and to him only, no other piece can occupy it or pass above it; what therefore makes that in this case, there can be only three pawns at the most to encircle the king, and not four as necessary.

The pawns defending the king do not move like the knights of the current games. They have nevertheless the right of castling.

Simplest is undoubtedly the antique Irish game known as Brannaib, Buanfach, Cennchain Conchobar (the blond head of Conchobar). Brandub, Brandubh (black raven). Brandub is a game which, of course, forms part of the family of the board games, but we know a few things about it. We know two poems which say it played by five men (or pawns?) against eight, one of the five being a “Brannán,” or chief. The name means “black raven.” It is played on a 49 squares (7 X 7) checkerboard. The Ard-Ri , of Scottish origin, was also played on a 7x7 squares checkerboard. A 62 cm2 chessboard of the brandubh kind was discovered at the time of the excavation of a crannog 1) in October 1932 in a marsh of Ballinderry, close to Moate (county of Westmeath in Ireland).

The chessboard in question was a piece of yew wood finely carved and had a handle in the shape of a human head. The checkerboard had 49 holes to insert there the pawns which were therefore pegs, like certain current travel games. A groove was used to place the captured pawns, a notch made it possible to introduce there his finger in order to withdraw them. They were out of antler , round, with an octagonal head. The central point where the king must be placed at the beginning of the game (the royal nabelcon therefore) was signaled by a circle symbolizing the navel of the human form whose body was the checkerboard. This central navel or nabelcon, on which the king stands, representing the mystical center of the world; we therefore find in this ancient game the Indo-European symbolism of the body of the dead gigantic ancestor being used to build the world (Ymir at the Germanic ones, Mahapurusha in India).

In the case of the brandub, the king was protected by four pawns only, called knights, opposites, as in all the fidchells, to twice more adversaries.

The British variant of the play game with 81 squares was called dawlbwrd, tawlbort or tawlbwrd. This game was therefore a fidchell having 16 attackers for 1 king and 8 defenders. It is mentioned in the Cycle of the Holy Grail and also in the laws of Howell Dda (914-943).

A game of tawlbwrdd was given to the judges taking their office. As a human and portable reflection of a court of justice, the checkerboard symbolized law and order.

In the 10th century in Wales, these games were widespread in all the social classes, and went ranged from the wealthy specimens of the aristocracy to the simple wooden boards of the farming community.The laws collected in the Demetian code 2) mention, among the various categories of fines envisaged, these which are related to the various variants of fidchell.

“The king's tawlbwrdd, was worth six score pence,the tawlbwrdd given to the chancellor, the judge, and the bard cost three score pence.”

The description of a late variant of tawlbwrdd was kept to us by one of the manuscripts of the Peniarth collection, preserved in the Welsh national library.

Written by Robert ap Ifan in August 1587, this text speaks about a variant of the game played on a 121 squares (11 X 11) board.

This tawlbwrdd was played with a king in the center and 12 pieces around him, plus 24 attackers to try to take him. Attackers placed by groups of six on each side in the middle of the edges of the board.

If one of the pieces belonging to the king were found between two attackers, then it was regarded as dead and withdrawn from the game. Same thing if one of the attackers were found between two pieces of the king.

If the king himself comes to find himself between two adverse soldiers without being able to escape them, after, however, it was said to him before “check” in order to warn him, he is captured. If he answers “gwrrheill” and moves away, he may then still continue to play. If he succeeds in touching the edge of the chessboard, he wins the game.

To reach the edge of the chessboard indeed gives to the king the control of the chessboard. He crossed everything victoriously, from the navel, in the center, to the external boundaries, taking up thus magically his territory, exactly as the ancient king did it each year by settling his court in the main centers of the country. This concept of power going from the center to reach to the borders is found

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besides in the writings of the Welsh bard Taliesin since we find there the following mention in his poem entitled, “the Spoils of Annwfn”: “I praise the Lord, Prince of the realm, King. His sovereignty has extended across the world's tract”.

With regard to the variant of the game with 81 squares, called dawlbwrd, tawlbort or tawlbwrd, the most precise and most detailed rule was brought back to us by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century 3).

The game takes place on a 9 X 9 squares board . The central square is special compared to the others, it is the Konakis or throne of the king, and this is for this reason that he begins the game while being located on this square; because only the king may occupy the Konakis during the game.

A player begins the game with nine blond pieces called Swedes, the king, in the center of the board, and eight soldiers to protect him.

The other player begins the game with 16 darker pieces , called the Muscovites, located on the external squares of the board.

Goal of the game of tablut type.

Each adversary works towards quite different ends: the Muscovites seek to capture the Swedish king, and in every case during the game will have to avoid he escapes and can thus run away.

The Swedes, on the other hand, must help their chief to put himself in a safe place, and to flee the besieging persons for example by giving up his throne for one of the squares the four corners of the board.

The faction which manages the first to achieve its goal gains the game.

Proceedings of the game. Movements.

The movements follow one another in turn. You are allowed to move only a piece each turn. They are the Swedes who begin the first.

The moving are the same ones for all the pieces (even for the king): they may traverse empty squares as many than you want, horizontally, or vertically (like a tower in the chess).

The men can pass over the throne of the king if this one is free, but they can never occupy it: only the king may do it.

Captures: to take and withdraw from the game an adverse pawn, it is enough to occupy two squares which are adjacent to it on both sides, either horizontally, or vertically. On the other hand, if a pawn moves itself between two opposing elements, it is not captured. You may capture enemy pawns with one go.

The capture of the king: to capture the king, the Muscovites must occupy the four close squares so as to encircle him completely. An exception, however: when one of the squares close to the king is the central square, prohibited to the other pawns, it is enough whereas the Muscovites occupy the three squares close to the king. The capture of the king gives the victory to the Muscovites.

Raichi, Tuichi:

When the threatened king has a clear way leading out directly to the periphery, then he must prevent his adversary by saying “raichi” (check)! When he has two ways clear , he announces “raichi and tuichi” (checkmate)! In this case, he won, because you cannot block two clear ways simultaneously.

1) Fortified village built on an artificial island in the middle of some marshes: a palafitte.

2) Area of Wales populated formerly by the tribe of the Demetae called today Dyfed. It is approximately the south-west of the country. The Dimetian code is a variant of the medieval Welsh Law called Blegywryd by his discoverer: Aneurin Owen.

3) It was linked by the Swedes to a dramatic episode of the tumultuous Russo-Swedish relations (seen from the Swedish side); when a glorious king of Sweden owed one’s life only the escape, and to the self-sacrifice of his guard, surrounded that he was by the “Muscovite hordes.” But it is in reality a game older and known in all Northern Europe as we could see it.

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ORDAINMENT OF MALE OR FEMALE VELEDE, VATE, OR GUTUATER.

(Entering minor order.)

If the ceremony is to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or laid out. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with an equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course). and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” a suffix of feminine adjective.

Necessary props or hiera . Voulge. Hammer of Suqellus. Cross of Taran or Labaron. Branch of vervain, or of an apple tree. In every case an apple. A folding pruning knife kind billhook of gardeners. The tablets (register) of the Community. The ceangal filleadh. A tickler. Finally, the future vate velede or gutuater must be dressed from head to foot but still with his beret or hood of simple followers.

With, by order of seniority, priestesses and high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) leading the procession, then the gutuaters or gutumaters with in their middle the inquisiting usher and his voulge, lastly the veledae.

The officiating druid moves forward the center of the sacred ; the velede acting as an ambact joins him on his left, and puts down the ritual objects on the altar in front of him.

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The gutuater acting as Judge of the Tradition joins him then and takes place at the right-hand side of the officiating druid. In his place in the middle of his, the vate who acts as an investigator, with his voulge in his right hand (the voulge, traditional symbol of the priests of the forest).

The comrunos disciple is sidelined behind the vates or outside, already equipped with the cowl, but still with his beret of a simple disciple.

He announces himself by pronouncing the following words…

“I am the Celt N. (initiatory name of the candidate) who seeks the way towards the light in the forest! ”

And he moves towards the circle of the sodality, on the side of the vates.

N.B.The comrunos knocks three times at the door of the rood screen (the sanctuary bar before the chancel) , or shakes nine times a bell kind small cowbell, if the ceremony takes place in a temple or a lodge.

The following dialog is established then between the comrunos and the vate acting as an investigator, brandishing his voulge, who turned towards him while swiveling on his right sunwise...

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher.

Nobody has the right to enter here without being at least a master in something.

The comrunos: question me, I am the king of the referees and the most learned of the judges.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher: you are not missing for us, we uns we have already a very good judge.

The comrunos: question me, I am a clairvoyant and medium.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher: you are not missing for us , we uns we have already a great magus.

The comrunos: question me, I am a doctor.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher: you are not missing for us, we uns we have already a very eminent doctor.

The comrunos: question me, I am a historian and a poet.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher: you are not missing for us, we uns we have already a poet and a historian.

The comrunos: question me, I am a harpist.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher: you are not missing for us, we uns we have already an excellent harpist.

The comrunos: question me, I am a cupbearer.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher : you are not missing for us, we uns we have already many cupbearers.

The comrunos: question me, I am a great champion.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher : you are not missing for us, we uns we have already a champion.

The comrunos: question me I am a true hero.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher: you are not missing for us, we uns we have already a hero, a true one.

The comrunos: question me, I am a blacksmith.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher: you are not missing for us, we uns we have already a blacksmith.

The comrunos: question me, I am the king of craftsmen.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher : you are not missing for us, we uns we have already an excellent craftsman.

The comrunos: question me, I am a carpenter.

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher : you are not missing for us, and we do not need you, we have already a carpenter.

The comrunos: nevertheless go and announce to the king that somebody has just presented himself at the gate of the castle!

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher covers the head then and the face of the comrunos with his hood or his beret then announces…

“Here the andabata who wishes to enter our sodality! ”

The gutuater who acts as Judge of the Tradition: “ May he takes a step ahead! ”

The vate acting as an inquisiting usher then guides the candidate, with his left hand, towards the sacred navel located in the center of the circle, or towards the altar overhanging the sacrifice pit inside the cella of the sanctuary .

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The officiating druid recites then the following lay…

“I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a young and pretty princess called Celtine. She was of unusual stature and far excelled in beauty all the other maidens in the country. But she, because of her strength of body and marvelous comeliness, was so haughty that she kept refusing every man who wooed her in marriage, since she believed that no one of the wooers was worthy of her.

Before leaving, Ogmius dispensed to him the following pieces of advice.

Keltus accepted this pact with the gods. Trefuilngid Tre Eochair put in his hand five magic seeds to sow, some seeds of the tree of life, some seeds of the world tree . Our 5 totems. The billet of ash in Dathi our Yggdrasil to us. The billet of yew in Mugna. The billet of oak in Uxonabelcon our Irminsul to us beloved by the lady of the lake Nerthus. The billet of ash in Tortu. The billet of yew in Ross.

Coic crand sin. Eo Rosa, ibar é. Sairtuath co Druim Bairr dorochair, ut Druim Suithe cecinit: Eo Rosa, roth ruirech recht flatha, fuaim tuinni, dech duilib, diriuch dronchrand, dia dronbalc.

[Translator's note out of the recitation. Current Irish legends make the Mughna tree an oak, but the term in our records (eo) is categorical, it means yew. There was to be confusion in the oral handover].

During following centuries, when their forces increased, the children of Keltos built cities in great number. Throughout these provinces, the peoples gradually becoming civilized, the study of noble sciences flourished, having been first introduced by the bards and the vates. The bards were accustomed to employ themselves in celebrating the brave achievements of their illustrious men, in epic verso, accompanied with harmonious sounds on a lyre. The vates investigated the system and sublime secrets of nature, and sought to explain them to their followers. Their minds were elevated by investigations into secret and sublime matters, and from the contempt which they slightly entertained for human affairs they pronounced the souls immortal….”

Still stories and legends about the semi-divine origins of the Celts or the fact that the Celts are a nation predestined to spirituality will say some people. But most important is not there. Most important is that gods gave us three things.

- Our glorious past of martyrs of the natural religion.

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- The four hyperborean truths from Thule Ogygia the green island Aballum and Gorre.

- As well as the spiritual world to come.

The officiating druid pauses, then resumes…

“Why, Celt N. (initiatory name of the candidate) do you want to become a velede (vate or gutuater/Gutumater according to cases)? ”

The candidate must answer himself. To be accepted in the sodality, he has to explain the reasons, not cultural, but pertaining to worship, i.-e. religious, philosophical, and metaphysical; of his refusal of the modern religions; in short the reasons why he prefers the religion, the religious life, philosophy and spirituality, of nature.

The present members of the community are authorized to ask him some questions.

Once the candidate standing in front of them has finished answering, the gutuater Judge of the Tradition asks what follows…

“Dear brothers and sisters do you consider in all honesty the Celt N. (initiatory name of the candidate); worthy to be admitted as a velede (vate or gutuater/gutumater according to cases)? ”

The vote is done by a show of hands.

If a member does not approve the candidature, he contents himself with crossing his arms.

In the event of opposition, the candidate, always andabata, i.e., blinded, will be taken back outside by the inquisiting vate with his voulge. His admission is refused.

In the event of a favorable vote, the gutuater Judge of the Tradition takes off the hood or the beret of the candidate and the following form is recited 1).

The gutuater. Let us search out, diligently, the causes of things, that we might live pleasantly, and die peaceably.

The candidate. That, free from all fear, neither elated by joy, nor depressed by sadness, we might be liberated by reason.

The gutuater. Let us greatly feed our minds, but sparingly our bellies.

The candidate. It is just and good.

The vate acting as inquisiting usher. Let us toast the gods!

The priestess acting as a conhospita goes then towards the high altar, takes with her two hands the cup filled with a sacred mead comprising the inscription “nessamon delgu linda”; turns round and raises it to present it to the audience, which leans down respectfully, then pours from them some drops in the pit provided.

The gutuater.

“Celt N. (initiatory name of the applicant) do you accept the requirements to wear the ceangal fileadh? 2)

The comrunos.

“I accept them! ”

The gutuater.

“Then take an oath on one of our sacred ensigns.”

The comrunos, by raising his right hand, three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger) above the hammer of Suqellus; or any other religious symbol of this type; then pronounce the following oito (oath).

I swear to seek only beauty, glory, and Celtism

I swear to remain faithful to the true spirit

Of the true Celtic tradition.

I swear to be the worthy and authentic heir

To the Science and philosophy of the islands in Hyperborea

Or located north of the World:

Thule, Abalum, Gorre and Ogygia the green island

To our elder of the time of the independent and free Great Celltica.

To the last druid 3) of the court of the great Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill

According to Errard Mac Coisé

To the Reformation of Sean Eoghain Ui Thuathallain na Leabhar

To the Reformation of Henry Lizeray

Or of his comarbae.

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I not only swear to support and defend the true Celtic Tradition and the Celtic spirit, but also to develop them again and to spread the light of them everywhere.

I finally swear to respect our sodality, his Primate inter pares, his rule and his customs.

May the luminous and peaceful deities move away from me the infernal legion of the dusii and of the anguipedic wyverns (these giants who are called Andernas or Fomore) as all the other under-gods of the ices of the non-world!

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Adge saveliu,

Luxnei, divu ac nuxtu

Etic ollebo cactiebo nemetos etic talamunos

Toaretudiet pennei mei nemes

Dlogieti talamu con maru critonu

Ringiet gala

Losciet mene aedis

Adtanet gormoceidt omori are talu dumni

Au mon oiton ponc delco

Ac in gascarian ate caedo.

By the gods my people worship,

The sky above our heads

The sun and the moon

The ground under our feet

The sea all around us

I swear it.

May the firmament and all its stars fall on my head

May the earth crumble under my feet in a great quake

May the sea with its blue waves recover our lands and our forests

If I do not respect these gessa or taboos that I give to myself!

By the sacred ensigns of our battalions

May be no longer a roof over my head

May my parents close their door in my face

May my children close their door in my face

If I do not keep this promise.

The officiating druid:

“I N. (civil first name and name , initiatory name and title as well as occupation or status of the officiating druid ) I declare to have the intention through the rites which will follow, to ordain velede (vate or gutuater/gutumater according to cases) the Celt N. (initiatory name of the candidate).

On this day… (date in Celtic calendar of Coligny and/or date in the civil calendar, followed by the mention, “of the common era”).

The officiating druid asks…:

“Do you well consider that, through me, you will receive the fullness of what you search, O dalta? ”

- “Yes I do ! ” the comrunos answers, who then beats his breast in front of everybody. i.e., with his right fist firmly closed , he beats several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) his breast, as if he hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance. The officiating druid concentrates a few moments, his palms raised towards the heaven.

“By virtue of the authority vested in me … (date in Celtic calendar of Coligny and/or date in the civil calendar, followed by the mention, “of the common era”).

By Trefuilngid Tre Eochair

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By the triple lord with the three keys

In the sacred clearingIn the guardian shade of the oak [in Mughna],

Which can shelter a thousand men

Which bears three crops every year

Apples, acorns and round, blood-red nuts.

Noblest of the trees our totem…

I hereby give you the ceangal fileadh, the badges of your office in the sodality.”

The druid officiating gives then to the new the velede , vate, or gutuater the sash [or the crown in certain countries) of the ceangal fileadh, the cross of Suqellos or the wheel of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, also known as labaron, that he puts around his neck; he put back in place as befits normally on his head his beret of vate, velede or gutuater/gutumater , he gives him lastly the slatta which will be used from now on as handle for his voulge, or will also be used to carry the hive of Nantosuelta, thus becoming her scepter.

The officiating druid entrusts then to new the vate, velede or gutuater/gutumate, a branch of vervain, a branch of apple tree, or a simple apple in Ireland, while reciting the following lay…

- Iaccitos te,

Hail blessed isle of Avalon

Of which the fruits in winter

Remind us about the joys of the summer

Hail.

Iaccitos te tree of Abellio

Of which the fruits cut into two

Evoke the flower

In which we were all conceived.

Three springs shall burst forth.

Whoever will drink from the first

will never be afflicted by the onslaught of illness

And will enjoy long life

Whoever will drink from the third

Shall die a sudden death.

Earth will be turned to stones,

Stones to wood,

Wood into ashes,

Ashes into water.

From a town in Canutes 3) forest,

A girl shall be sent to remedy these matters by her healing art.

She shall dry up our noxious springs

Simply by breathing on them.

The Virgo shall climb on back of Sagittarius and so let droop its maiden blossoms

Tears shall flow from her eyes.

Next, when she has restored her own strength by some miraculous drink,

She shall carry the Forest of Caledonia in her right hand,

And in her left the buttressed forts of the walls of London.

Wherever she passes she shall leave sulfurous footprints

The smoke from them will stir up the Ruteni

And will provide food for the creatures who live in the sea 3).

Sweet apple tree of crimson color,

Crowing, concealed, in the wood of Caledonia

Though men seek your fruit, their search is vain,

Till the Cadwaladyr comes from the warriors meeting.

Victorious Cymry, glorious their leader,

All shall how their rights again,

All brave men rejoice, sounding joyful horns.

Chanting songs of happiness and peace!

Before the child, bright and bold,

The Anglo-Saxons shall flee, and bards will flourish.

The ignoramus buys some shoes and also some patches

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But Merlin laughed at since the poor man will not be able to use the shoes nor the patches,

Since he is already drowned in the waves and is floating towards the shore

For those who know what I mean.

The officiating druid finishes the ceremony by turning to the east, sunwise or clockwise…

May the called upon here powers return to their place now. The spring or the tree… (a short description of the symbolic place chosen for such ceremonies, follows, as its name, example spring of the Rhine of the Danube or of the Rhone River, temple of such forest, lodge of such street…) is in the vicinity (if possible, of course. Most of the time the sacred tree is an oak, but that may also be a yew or an ash, even still another tree variety).

May all our brothers and sisters, O Ferchertne, recognize that the cowl and the chair or pulpit of ..... vate velede or gutuater/gutumater according cases ….of….[ name of the parish] are not usurped. May all our brothers and sisters recognize you from now on as velede (vate or gutuater according to cases) with the initiatory name of N. (initiatory name that the candidate chose himself).

The officiating druid officiating comes back in his initial place,undoes the triple circle by traveling it three times in reverse, then returns towards the new velede , vate or gutuater, in order to embrace him. All come to do the same thing while he writes down that on the register.

NOTE: the apple is then cut by the new vate, velede or gutuater, using his billhook shaped folding pruning knife, then is divided between the participants in the ceremony, after the embracing.

NOTE: The candidate is therefore already completely dressed when he comes to ask his admission, and he already has in his pocket (in his sleeve ) a billhook shaped folding pruning knife for example of the Opinel brand (the No. 10 model). Except for the ceangal fileadh, the cross of Suqellus or the wheel of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, also known as labaron,the branch of vervain or of an apple tree as well as the slatta; that the velede acting as an ambact will put down on the altar overhanging the offering pit in the center of the sacred circle.

NOTE: ordainment of primatial grace (they say magistral in freemasonry). In theory, to become vate, velede or gutuatre, it is necessary to be gone through all the previous stages (naming ceremony, conversion, and so on). In accordance with the privilege of necessity being the mother of invention, evoked by the bardic tradition from the country of Merlin (south of Scotland) , or from Wales; the Primate inter pares of the sodality nevertheless may exempt certain people from them, if that proves to be necessary, and may authorize that they are from the start made vates, veledae or gutuaters. Same thing for the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) besides. These ordainments through magisterial grace have to remain really exceptional.

1) At least according to the forms reported by John Toland in his Pantheisticon.

2) A kind of crown in the shape of a simple headband around the head (pulled down). Formerly out of metal (bronze silver or gold), today in silver or gold wire, etc.

3) As opposed to what our Parisian penfriends think on this subject, this prophecy by Merlin was in no way implemented to their dear Joan of Arc initially. The oaken (canutus) wood mentioned by this prophecy is not indeed the forest which grew around the native village of our unfortunate Janet . This being said

despite all the admiration we must or we can have for this intelligent and clever girl, endowed with an unquestionable courage, and who could win the respect, even from the innumerable roughneck soldiers the French host had at that time (cf. Gilles de Rais). Because she was also very intelligent! It is enough to read the responses she answered his English judges or to the bishop Cauchon. She was a true daughter of the nation, very simple and it is to insult the peoples that to want at all costs to make her a secret or bastard daughter of the king.

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HANDING-OVER OF DRUIDIC (CRAEB) PALMS.

There exists within each distinct but complementary druidic specialty which are the order of vates, the order of veledae , the order of gutuamaters or gutuaters, different levels, degrees, or ranks. There are not of them 33 like in the ritual ones of the Scottish freemasonry but there are a certain number of them nevertheless.

Unlike the worship with mysteries introduced by Orpheus in Greece; the progression of the candidates to the druidship learning each time something more on the secrets of the divinity is done in a very rational way and without useless complications.

The ritual which follows is intended to officialize each one of these changes of level.

The ritual of the handing-over of apples or druidic palms (of bronze, silver or gold) is very simple.

This is why it is sometimes possible to reach these levels by primatial grace (they say magistral in freemasonry) without having to undergo the various required initiations, necessity knowing no law.

The handing-over of the palms “of primatial grace” is an exemption which tends towards developing since a few years.

If the ceremony is to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or arranged. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with an equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” a suffix of feminine adjective.

Necessary props or hiera .

The small jewel representing symbolically the new rank obtained. Cup containing distilled water (magnetized) in which a vervain branch soaked. Register. Drawn voulge.

Rote or harp and somebody knowing how to play this instrument.

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The brother to be decorated with the apples or palms in question in order to award him for his work, also forms himself, of course, a link of this human chain forming the circle. The small symbolic jewel or the small medal representing these apples or these palms is posed on a cushion carried by an ambact who follows the officiating druid.

The officiating druid and his ambact enter the circle from the east; go round again three times, through the inside , sunwise (three small circumambulations clockwise), then stop in front of the person to be decorated.

It is here that the ordeal known as of Cain Cainbrethach of the waiting at the altar in the Scottish rite; a litmus test through which the aballarios vate, velede or gutuater, shows he is worthy to receive the badge of his new rank (a craeb of apple tree or some palms) in the sodality.

The ordeal shocks the modern minds, because it seems to leave to the chance the care to decide if a aballarios vate, velede or gutuater , deserve to be admitted in such or such rank. In reality, this ordeal in its ancient conception was the very opposite of the chance. The destiny of the druids being directly related with gods, every mistake and therefore every chance were absolutely excluded from it , since it was the gods themselves who, as a last resort, intervened (to judge if a candidate was or not worthy).

But let us return to the druidism of our time.

The priestess acting as conhospita goes then towards the high altar, performs out three small circumambulations around, clockwise and takes with her two hands the cup filled with pure water in which a vervain branch soaked, which is above; then she turns , and raises it, in order to present it to the brother or to the sister to be decorated, who leans down respectfully before it.

The high priestess recites then the following prayer…

O gods of Dana

Give me wisdom

With wisdom understanding,

With understanding great-sense

With great-sense great knowledge,

With great knowledge investigation

With investigation inquiry

With inquiry learning

With learning meditation

With meditation the scrutiny of everything

With the scrutiny of everything the poetry of life.

Awen!

The conhospita or the officiating druid continues…

Brother (or Sister) N. (initiatory name of the dignitary having to receive the craeb or palm in question) do you promise to be worthy of this distinction and to seek to do still more in order to bring beauty, glory and celtism to our community?

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“I swear it,” answers the dignitary who must receive the craeb or palm while raising the right hand , his three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger ). Then he takes the oito (oath) which follows.

Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

By the gods my nation worship,

The heaven above our heads

The sun and the moon

The earth beneath our feet

The sea all around us

May the sky with its showers of stars fall on my head

May the ground where are camped crumbles in a big quake

May the sea with its blue waves comes over our lands and forests

Yes, may all this come across me if I break my oath.

I swear to always tell the truth to whom deserves it, to never accept something without providing in exchange a real and serious counterpart.

The conhospita then makes the dignitary having to change his rank drink magnetized water and the officiating druid explains then why he will give this craeb or this palm…

Then he adds…

I give you here today solemnly in front of all the Celts present here, the craeb (or the palm, out of gold, silver, or bronze, according to cases).

The future taman, drisac, and so on, beats his breast in front of everybody. i.e., with his right fist firmly closed , he beats several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) his breast, as if he hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

This pagan sign of the cross once carried out, the officiating druid orders: “Open with a drum roll! ”

A harpist must then start to play a tune of his choice. Once he has ended to pluck the strings of his rote, the officiating druid resumes…

Blessed are those who are good at history because they will always be equal and free and the servitude will not affect them: their retinue will be of two ambacts.

Blessed are those who are good in the study of the size of the world and the earth: their retinue will be of four ambacts.

Blessed are the masters in poetry: their retinue will be of six ambacts.

Blessed are those who work in the study of the stars and of their movements: their retinue will be of eight ambacts.

Blessed are the champions and cornerstones of science or medicine: their retinue will be of ten ambacts.

Blessed are those who excel in laws: their retinue will be of twelve ambacts.

Blessed are the best in everything , their honor will be the seventh of the price of their death. Their retinue will be of fourteen ambacts.

May all our fellow countrymen and fellow countrywomen , men and women of our community, of our village, recognize you from now in an official capacity of taman (or of drisac, and so on, according to cases).

The officiating druid pins the small jewel representing the craeb or the palm, on his cowl, left shoulder high (that of the heart), embraces the member elect then undoes the circle by traversing it three times in opposite direction.

All are allowed then in turn to embrace the new dignitary while the harpist starts to play again of his rote, freely.

The officiating druid notices all that on his tablets ( the register) and the new taman, drisac, fochluc, or other, will be allowed to make sewn shoulder-high on his cowl a craeb or a palm more (pedauca shaped i.e., goosefoot shaped).

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ORDAINMENT OF A DRUID OR PRIESTESS.

(Entering major order.)

If the ceremony is to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or arranged. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with an equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” a suffix of feminine adjective.

Necessary props or hiera .

Lance of Lug, shield of Brennus, an oak crown, a torc, a white beret on a cushion.

With by order of seniority priestesses and high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) leading the procession, the officiating druid in the middle. Then the gutuaters with the ambact carrying the spear of Lug and the shield of Brennus, the vates and lastly the veledae with, in the middle, the ambact carrying the oak crown, the torc 1) and the white beret, on a cushion for example).

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The officiating druid moves forward the center of the sacred ; the velede acting as an ambact joins him on his left, and puts down the ritual objects on the altar in front of him.

The gutuater acting as Judge of the Tradition joins him then and takes place at the right-hand side of the officiating druid. In his place in the middle of his, the vate who acts as an investigator, his voulge in his right hand (the voulge, traditional symbol of the priests of the forest).

The gutuater acting as an ambact joins them in turn and places himself at the right-hand side of the officiating druid, after having put down the lance of Lug and the shield of Brennus, on the altar or leant against it.

The future druid or the future priestess waits outside behind the vates, bareheaded, but already dressed .

On a sign of the officiating druid, he crosses the rood screen and enters the circle, boldly, straightly towards the altar materializing the sacred navel, and stops some steps away from it.

The officiating druid asks him…

“Celt N. (initiatory name of the candidate), to carry the oak crown and the torc, you will be to follow the example of our ancestor.

I will remind you of him.

Before leaving, Ogmius dispensed to him the following pieces of advice.

Keltus accepted this pact with the gods. Trefuilngid Tre Eochair put in his hand five magic seeds to sow, some seeds of the tree of life, some seeds of the world tree . Our 5 totems. The billet of ash in Dathi our Yggdrasil to us. The billet of yew in Mugna. The billet of oak in Uxonabelcon our Irminsul to us beloved by the lady of the lake Nerthus. The billet of ash in Tortu. The billet of yew in Ross.

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Coic crand sin. Eo Rosa, ibar é. Sairtuath co Druim Bairr dorochair, ut Druim Suithe cecinit: Eo Rosa, roth ruirech recht flatha, fuaim tuinni, dech duilib, diriuch dronchrand, dia dronbalc.

The officiating druid asks then the candidate: “Why is this crown made out of oak and not of bronze, silver or gold? ”

The candidate…

“Half of the city 2) left with Momorus and the blessing of the gods accompanied them, because some ravens come we do not know from where perched then in the trees surrounding the ditches which he made dug. These trees were some oaks because oak being the noblest sacred tree on the earth, most perfect of the communions is to be established between it and the lifeblood of our people. To wear a crown made out of oak leaves, it is therefore to wear the symbol of this enlightenment of the word, of the word of the god, who was and who will be still (labarum).

O king of our forests

Oak abode of Zeus

Give us today

A little from your soul, a little from your strength,

In order to drive out this leprosy which invades our ground

Your ground,

From this land from where you draw your strength and your majesty!

Feed us with your

Pure and generous air

And make us glow with your force.

Make us burn, like the fire which crackles

In the night,

May the force of your golden bough

Be with us!

May our shields be indestructible

Ison its bissiet!

The officiating druid continues: “Why this bleeding lance? ”

The candidate…

People always judge a tree by its fruits, Evil will pass into the bishop crosiers,slavery, inequalities, obscurantism, oppression of the men of black spears ..... Princes heralds or learned who cannot see or who lie, because there is always a betrayal from the intellectuals in the case, sentence their peoples to experiment again a fatal servitude of bodies souls and minds.

This lance symbolizes the enlightenment of the awareness. To carry the lance of Lug or gae bolga that also means to agree with taking up arms one day if necessary, in order to defend our liberties , our dignity, our human rights, against new gods.

Don’t forget that for two thousand years and even more, our marriage of faith and reason, of the faith enlightened by the reason, is persecuted.

Remember that true-hearted and minded Celtst were always obliged to defend themselves. Caesar Augustus prohibited the religion druidarum. Caesar Tiberius published a decree against our high-

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knowers “and all that tribe of vates and physicians ” as he said. The emperor Claudius prohibited the practice of our religion.

The officiating druid : “Why therefore this shield now ? ”

The candidate…

“Because this shield symbolizes clearness. Clearness was always most solid of defenses, because woe to the overcome people, VAE VICTEBO! ” It is a natural law which is enforced as well to gods as to the men.

“ When the ambassadors asking what injury they had received of the Clusinians that they thus invaded their city, Brennus, king of the Celts, laughed and made the following answer. “The Clusinians do us injury, in that, being able only to till a small parcel of ground, they possess nevertheless a great territory, and will not yield any part to us, who are strangers, many in number and poor. This is the same wrong which you too suffered, O Romans, formerly at the hands of the Albans, Fidenates, Ardeates, and now lately at the hands of the Veientines, Capenates, and many of the Faliscans or Volscians; upon whom you have considered natural to make war, if they do not yield you part of what they possess, to make slaves of them, to waste and to spoil their country, and ruin their cities. And in so doing , you were neither cruel nor unjust, but simply observers of the oldest of all laws, which gives the powerful one the possessions of the feeble ; beginning with the gods and ending with the beasts; since each and everyone always tries to have what belongs to weaker. And cease therefore to pity the Clusinians whom we besiege, lest you teach the Celts to be kind and compassionate to those that are oppressed by you.”

The officiating druid…

“Celt N. (initiatory name of the candidate) do you accept the conditions stated to wear this oak crown, this lance of Lug, this shield of Brennus, and this torc? ”

The candidate: “I accept them! ”

The officiating druid continues while saying…

I N. (civil first name and name, name and initiatory title as occupation of the officiating druid), I state to have the intention by the rites which will follow to ordain druid (or priestess) the Celt N. (initiatory name of the candidate); on this day… (druidic date in Coligny calendar and/or date in the civil calendar, followed by the mention, “of the common era”).

It is… o’clock (to tell the time).

We are in the druidic chair and pulpit (canecosedlon) of N… (name of the parish).

The spring or the tree… (a short description follows of the symbolic place chosen for the ordainment as its name, for example spring of the Rhine, of the Danube, or of the Rhone, temple of such forest, lodge of such street…) is in the vicinity (if possible, of course. Most of the time the sacred tree is an oak, but that can also be a yew or an ash, even still another variety of tree).

The druid officiating then asks the candidate…

“Do you promise to comply with all the customs and traditions of our community? To always tell the truth to whom deserves it, to never something without providing in exchange a real and serious counterpart? ”

The candidate…

“I swear it! ”

The officiating druid…

“If one day new tyrants like Seseroneus ere to drive us out from our homes ; do you promise never to subject yourself to his tyranny and to prefer exile rather than submission ? Since such is the only true senses of the spiritual adventure of Momorus 3).

The candidate…

“I promise to always do our great ancestors honor , Calgacus in Scotland and Boudicca in Great Britain, or Momorus and Atepomarus for Frenchmen, and to always fight the usurpers, even if it is necessary to us for that to found a new city.”

The officiating druid insists…

“Do you consider well that, through me, you will receive the fullness of what you search? ”

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“Yes, I do! ” the candidate answers, who then beats his breast in front of everybody. i.e., with his right fist firmly closed , he beats several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) his breast, as if he hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

The officiating druid swivels then towards his right to find himself facing the east. He raises his arms, with his palms turned towards the sky, and concentrates one moment. Then he comes back to his former place, still while continuing to swivel towards his right in order to face the candidate and recites this.

“Under the powers vested in me on… (date in druidic calendar of Coligny and/or date in the civil calendar, followed by the mention, “of the common era”).

By Trefuilngid Tre Eochair

By the triple lord with the three keys

In the sacred clearing

In the guardian shade of the oak [in Mughna],

Which can shelter a thousand men

Which bears three crops every year

Apples, acorns and round, blood-red nuts.

Noblest of the trees our totem…

I give you the badges of your office in the community”.

The people acting as an ambact then take the crown and raise it at arm's length above the head of the candidate; the officiating druid makes the sign of the cross of Taran above, i.e., an X, while, slowly, the two ambacts pull it down on the tilted head of the new druid, who rectifies himself then.

The officiating druid resumes.

“N.(name initiatory of the new druid), ordained and consecrated today by me as high-knower of the three keys Order, will be allowed now to start to teach whoever he will see fit to teach. He will have the authority , including that to hand down regularly and according to the rules this derivation , to the men and the women worthy to be the last links of the amber chain of the druidic and Celtic succession.

“May all the called upon here powers return to their place now.

Taran/Toran/Tuireann in celestial fire

The triple Brigindo in every time and places

Hornunnos in the wood of his forest

Our great queen Epona in the Other World

Hesus hanging in his tree

The triple circle in its center.

May all the powers return to their place!

Men and women of our community,

Fellow countrymen, fellow countrywomen, oyez, oyez, oyez 3),

Go in the peace of gods!

Peace up o the sky

Peace from earth to sky

Peace on the earth and under the heaven

Force and prosperity to everybody! ”

May all the powers return to their place! ”

The officiating druid performs then the ritual elevation of the torc he takes on the altar in front of him with his right hand. He presents it clearly in plain sight , the buffers turned upwards, to then put it himself around the neck of the new druid while saying this: “may this collar of justice chokes you if you lie or if you are not sincere! ”

The new druid or the new priestess seizes then the lance of Lug and the shield of Brennus.

The officiating druid…

“May our brothers and sisters accept you from now on as a high-knower of the three keys Order under the name of druid N. (to indicate the initiatory name of the applicant) because the splendid cowl and the prestigious chair or pulpit of the ferchertne ..... (to indicate the initiatory name of the applicant ) are not usurped.

The officiating druid gives to the new druid the bark tablet recording all that, embraces him , turned sunwise towards the east , comes back in his previous place, and undoes the sacred circle from the inside in the opposite direction. Then all come in turn to embrace the new Celtic priest, while the officiating druid notices what it is necessary in his tablets (in the register).

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1) The torc is a collar which symbolizes the union with the gods as in the case of the kara among the Sikhs.

2) More one vote = absolute majority in the caricatures of democracy . See the account of the foundation of Lugdunum.

3) Old French “listen!”. Archaism still used in certain courts of Law.

ENTHRONEMENT.

The mysteries of ancient Greece were secret ceremonies, sometimes using special effects to impress the new initiate called mystes.

In this case we are closer to the traditional political theater (a coronation) than to a secret Freemasonry since the local public could and even had to attend it, with as only placebo effect the delivery of regalia.

The enthronement is the ritual ceremony through which a druid or a priestess is recognized responsible for such or such area, of such or such fiefdom, of such or such territory.

i.e., and in ascending order…

- The druid or priestess responsible for a small country, soil or microregion like the Vale of Glamorgan dear to Iolo Morgannwg, the island of Anglesey, the county of Mayo, the counties of Offaly, Bradford, Leeds, Calderdale, the Midlothian (Meadhan Lodainn in Gaelic). In Switzerland the canton of Vaud, the canton of Neuchatel, Argovia (German Aargau, the second word, - gau, is also found in the name of the microregion of the Sundgau, or of the Breisgau, in Germany). In France: the Bresse, the Corbieres, the Charolais (there are in general several of them by department). Even the Welche land in the Vosges.Title: Druid of Anglesey, Druid of the Vale of Glamorgan, Druid of Offaly.

- The druid or priestess responsible for a bailliwick or small area, even county, like the Dumfries and the Galloway, the Cumbria, the isles of Orkney, the Northumberland, the Powys, the Leinster, the Connaught. In Spain the Galicia. In France Normandy, Provence, Picardy, and so on. Title: High Druid. High Druid of the Leinster, High druid of the Orkney Isles, etc.

- The druid or priestess responsible for a valland. A valland is therefore a district matching large European areas like Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland. In France some large territories like Brittany (Armorica), Occitania (South of France), Oillitania (North of France); and so on until the French-Provencal valland (Center-east of France and roughly French-speaking Switzerland). In Spain and also partially in France besides: the Catalonia. N.B. A valland it is a territory where at the same time a Celtic language or a Latin language is spoken, like the Narbonnese or the Cisalpine. Finally, at least according to our English friends. In short a “welche” territory on the Continent.

Title: Archdruid. Archdruid of Wales, archdruid of Cornwall, archdruid of Scotland, archdruid of Ireland, archdruid of Catalonia, archdruid of Brittany or Armorica, etc., etc.

Note: this ritual is also that which is normally followed for the election of the Primate of the Druidic Ollotouta. For this purpose, it is necessary to choose carefully, first of all, a favored place which can be regarded as the navel or the umbilical point (uxonabelcon) of the territory which will be endowed with a person in charge.

If the ceremony is to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or arranged. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with an equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids,

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vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” a suffix of feminine adjective.

Necessary props or hiera .

A seat with bronze silver and gold rods. A crown of oak leaves. A cup containing distilled water. Already written tablets of bark. Of birch. Like those discovered near Gilgit in Pakistan in 1931 or in Novgorod in 1951 for the most recent, or even among the Ojibwe Indians (mide-wiigwaas). Stones. A dagger. A hunting horn. Some ticklers.

The person who will be enthroned must come with if possible nine other druids: taman, drisac, fochluc, mac fuirmid, back, caning, ekes, clitos, anderatacos. That was not a problem formerly, it's easier said than done today.

The members of the (local) Sodality or Brotherhood and the druidicist audience take a seat in the apse or the nave of the building, if it is not around the oak at the foot of which takes center stage the canecosedlon (carved wooden single-seat furniture) which symbolizes the unoccupied druidic chair or pulpit (that of the Vale of Glamorgan for example); with above it and laid out like a goose leg a bronze branch, a silver branch and a gold branch.

Hung to the file of this canecosedlon a crown made out of oak leaves. Next to the altar of the cella overhanging the sacrifice pit , or if people are in the open air on a kind of rustic altar (a barrel on andirons or on the floor on a rock, etc.) and in the right-hand side of the future enthroned person; the cup truth with fresh water inside, in which beforehand a vervain branch soaked, two bark tablets, a cladibo (a dagger) to engrave on them the Lepontic runes…

The ambacts chosen to take part in the ceremony are placed at the four signaled cardinal points, in order to form an X. The high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) who is to be enthroned , with on his right-hand side the inquisiting usher druid and on his left one the lay man who will play as King of the Country; places himself just opposite the canecosedlon (opposite the single seat furniture made out of painted or gilded wood).

On the right of the great Inquisiting person the fire Master who will assist him and will help him in his office.

On the left of the King of the Country the Fencing master who will assist him and will lend a hand to him.

Silence being done, the King of the Country accompanied by his Fencing master moves towards the canecosedlon or druidic chair-pulpit to be provided. They turn (clockwise ) and the king plays cornyx, then proclaims the diaspat (diaspad egwan in Wales).

“I have indeed: tidings terrible, evil is the time, chiefs are many, honors are few: men quash fair judgments. The cattle of the world is barren. Men are bad: good kings are few: usurpers are many. The disgraces are crowds. Truth no longer safeguards fame. Every art is buffoonery. Every falsehood is chosen. Everyone passes out of his proper state through hubris or arrogance, so that neither rank nor old age, nor honor, nor dignity, nor art, nor instruction, is served. Every intelligent person is broken. Every king is a pauper. Every noble is contemned: every baseborn person is set up, so that gods are no longer worshipped. Belief is destroyed. Offerings are disturbed. The druidic throne is empty and the land is waste.Here are my tidings.”

The layman playing as King of the Country then turns to the north, sounds cornyx and asks the ambact representing this part of the fiefdom…

- In north is there science?

- No, in the north there is no longer science! the north ambact answers.

New cornyx sounding by the King of the Country who continues while turning towards this cardinal point…

- In east is there wealth?

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- No, in the east there is no longer wealth ! the ambact representing the east of the fiefdom answers.

Third cornyx sounding by the King of the Country wo asks:

- In south is there art?

- No, in the south there is no longer art! the concerned ambact answers.

Last sounding final of the King who asks to the west:

- In west is there strength?

- Not, in the west there is no longer strength! the ambact of the west answers.

The druid playing as Inquisiting Usher intervenes at this time and, followed by the Fire Master, moves forward in turn, his big voulge in his hand, towards the sacred navel located in the center of the circle (uxonabelcon); in order to join the King who comes to seek justice and to ask him: “What is the Law of this country? ”

The King: “No written text records the druidic custom of this country because letter kills and only spirit gives life.

The high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) who will be enthroned responsible for the territory in question.

“Rather than to assert in an untrue way a hypothetical derivation from a druid to a druid since the time of the great free and independent Celtica until today, should we not rather, simply suppose a succession of disappearances/resurgences ? Disappearance each time a druid would die or that a group of druidicists was reported to the in power Christians, like in the case of the roughneck Pannonian soldier Martin of Tours, or of the parabolani of the bishop of Braga in Portugal… Revival each time a dagolitos took over the torch and again organized “sabbazies” according to his memories or these of his close relations… To those who will oppose the absence of texts, I will answer by calling upon the privilege of necessity, of the oral tradition, because necessity knows no law.

This country lost its soul and its mind. Therefore, it needs a druid. I will be this one.”

The person who will be enthroned moves towards the uxonabelcon or sovereignty center of the circle and makes the sign of Celtic cross of the warrior; i.e., with his right fist firmly closed , he beats several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) his breast, as if he hits an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

The inquisiting druid representing the community asks then the future enthroned person by designating the crown of leaves put down on the canecosedlon (the druidic chair) or next to it: “Why this crown is made out of oak and not of bronze, silver or gold? ”

The applicant…

“The oak being the noblest on the earth sacred tree, most perfect of the communions is to be established between it and the lifeblood of our people. To wear a crown made out of oak leaves, it is therefore to wear the symbol of this enlightenment of the word, of the word of the god, who was and who will be still (labarum).

O king of our forests

Oak abode of Zeus

Give us today

A little from your soul, a little from your strength,

In order to drive out this leprosy which invades our ground

Your ground,

From this land from where you draw your strength and your majesty!

Feed us with your

Pure and generous air

And make us glowing with your force.

Make us burn, like the fire which crackles

In the night,

May the force of your golden bough

Be with us!

May our shields be indestructible

Ison its bissiet!”

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The inquisiting druid continues for the candidate while showing him the cup of truth containing the magnetized or distilled water in which a branch of vervain soaked beforehand and by asking that to him.

“Do you agree to promise to always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but also to never accept something without providing in exchange a real and serious counterpart? ”

The high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) who will be enthroned raises his right hand on the cup, with his three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger ), and answers what follows.

“I swear to always tell the truth to whom deserves it, to never accept something without providing in exchange a real counterpart. May this cup break into three if I pronounce on it a lying word.”

The priestess acting as conhospita goes then towards the high altar, takes with her two hands the cup filled with magnetized water, turns and raises it to present it to the audience, who leans respectfully; then pours some drops from it on the ground in the hole or the sacrifice pit provided.

The inquisiting usher druid then gives to the candidate applying for the chair of theology a small little chair he extracts from his leather bouget at his waist (sporran) or which he takes from the hands of the fire master.

He puts down the crown made out of oak leaves on the head of the future enthroned person then asks him…

“Do you agree to respect all the customs and traditions of our Community? ”

The candidate…

- I promise to respect our fraternity as our sacred sodality, its rule and its customs, and the office of Primate inter pares!

The inquisiting person gives then to him the cup of truth: the candidate must drink some from it then to pour the rest into the sacrifice pit.

Dressed with his cowl, the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) thus enthroned , will sit down on the chair of doctors, beneath the bronze silver and gold branches.

The lay man playing as King of the Country gives him the hand of justice held by the Fencing master .

It is only at this time that they may come to the part of the ritual called immacallam in da thuarad in Ireland: in other words the Dialog of the two sages.

The Fire Master takes over from the Inquisiting usher druid. He moves in turn towards the new enthroned person and recites the lay following…

“I am Mor Vessa the druid in Thule. I never heard of the knowledge of this new druid of… name of the parish, for example the Vale of Glamorgan. It is a mistake by my faith that this magnificent cowl of Doctor (or of primate in the event of the election of Primate)”.

The enthroned person …

“A sage is the living reproach of every ignorant person,

But the true wise is the one who corrects,

Not the one who is content with criticizing.

Therefore step a more regular way.

You yield to me very meagrely the food of learning.

You show badly, you have shown badly.

Null and void is the reproach incurred by a druid

If he not questioned it as a preliminary to check his knowledge.”

The Fire Master…

“I am Semias the druid in Ogygia 1) the green island

Who is the cantor of gods wearing the spendid cowl with three colors, a downpour of white bronze at the lower part, brilliant bird feathers in the middle, and color of gold at the upper part?

Where does he come from the druid that I saw sitting down on the canecosedlon of doctors under the bronze silver and gold branches ? ”

The enthroned person…

“From the heel of a sage,

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From a confluence of wisdom,

From perfections of goodness,

From brightness of sunrise,

From the hazels of poetic art,

From circuits of splendor,

Out of which they measure truth according to excellences,

In which righteousness is taught,

In which falsehood sets.”

The Fire Master…

“I am Uiscias the druid in Abalum.

May I know who will celebrate the glory of gods from the top of this throne? What is your name? ”

The enthroned person…

“I know neither father nor mother

I speak with what is alive and with what is dead.”

The Fire Master…

“I am Esras the druid in Gorre. What is your religion? ”

The enthroned person…

“Marriage of faith and reason

Spreading of knowledge

Abundance of teaching

Love of truth

Coronation of science.”

The Fire Master then lights with a torch the hearths being at each side of the new enthroned person, on his right and on his left hand side (andirons, brazier or candles).

The new enthroned person engraves on a bone or a bark, in Lepontic runes, the wish of his choice 2). He breaks into two the tablet and then throws it in the fire of the braziers , a half on his right and a half on his left.

In the event of a ceremony in the open air or in the countryside, the in this way consecrated or blessed fires, produce a specific smoke announcing to all the inhabitants of the concerned parish they have a new person in charge of the local druidiactio.

The King of the Country turns then towards the north, sounds cornyx and asks the ambact representing this part of the fiefdom:

- In north is there now science?

- Yes, in the north there are science and peace now! the ambact representing the North of the territory answers.

New sounding cornyx by the King of the Country who continues while turning towards the other cardinal point…

“In east is there now wealth ?

- Yes, in the east there are wealth and prosperity now! the ambact representing the east of territory answers.

Third sounding by the King of the Country who asks the south…

- In south is there art now?

- Yes, in the south there are art and music now! the concerned ambact answers.

Last sounding finally of the King of the Country who asks the west…

- In west is there strength now?

- Yes, in the west there is strength now! the ambact of the west answers.

The four ambacts holding in their hand a sling stone and a branch of vervain ( or of oak or hawthorn in Ireland) recite then together, or alternatively, for the leader of the country (whether he is mayor, president, king or emperor) the lay following pronounced above the two hiera (objects) thus held up (N.B. In the event of failure of the ambacts, the lay may be resumed by the druid representing the community, the great Inquisitor).

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May the hellish of the dusii, of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns and the other under-gods of the ices of the non-world absorb us all in this hill, if we do not remain faithful to the true mind of the genuine Celtic tradition.

May the curse of aballarios falls down on our heads if we disavow the heritage of the science and philosophy of the Islands of Hyperborea or located north of the World: Thule, Ogygia the green island, Abalum and Gorre.

The curse of tamans on our equipment if we follow no longer the example of our elders of the time of the free and independent great Celtica.

The curse of drisacs on our weapons if we do not implement the precepts of the one who fights on the two levels and of his two nephews Bellovesus and Segovesus.

The curse of fochlucs on our daughters if we do not follow the direction marked by Momorus the glorious founder of the celestial city of Odin’s raven.

The imbas forosnai the teinm laida and the dichetal do chennaib on our sons if we betray the memory of the last high druids in the court of the high king of Ireland Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill according to the great poet of the 10th century Urard Mac Coise.

The curse of clis on our country if we betray the spirit of the druidic Reformation by John Toland.

The curse of anderatacos on ourselves if we do not respect the spirit of the druidic Church of Henry Lizeray.

And lastly the curse of ollams on the druid N. (initiatory name of new enthroned one) if he does not respect our sacred community, its rule, its customs, and the office of Primate inter pares.”

Each ambact puts down then his stone and his branch beside the chosen uxonabelcon (at the foot of the high altar if the ceremony takes place in a sanctuary); then, as to set out again towards the area of the country he represented, turns his back on the new established person on his throne (canecosedlon). The high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) symbolizing the community as a whole (the inquisiting usher druid for example) gives the tablet or the bark recording all that to the new person in charge of the parish, embraces him; and while all do the same thing , he notices it in his register in Greek letters (or while using the Latin alphabet today).

NOTE: most of the time the sacrosanct tree is an oak, but that can also be a yew or an ash, even still another variety of tree like the apple tree, the beech tree, or another one.

1) Symbolic name of Ireland in the work of Roderick O'Flaherty (1629-1718).

2) THE LAR: Ha! Ha! He! What you request is the robbery and not the power. By Pollux I do not know how that could be to you granted. Nevertheless I believe to have found, you have what you wish: go away on the edges of the Loire River.

QUEROLUS: Why thus?

THE LAR: Here men live while following the natural right; here there is not imposture: the sentences to death are delivered at the foot of the oak and are written on bones. There too the peasants plead and private individuals judge. All is allowed! If you are rich, you will be called Patus: so they speak in this Greece. O forests, O lonelinesses! who didn't claim that you were free? And there are many other more important things than we do not say you but nevertheless that is enough for you.

QUEROLUS: I am not rich, and I don’t care about oaks. I do not want this justice of the forests (Plautus: Aulularia, the Pot).

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OLLOTOTAL CEREMONIES (COLLECTIVE RITUALS).

Private or family rituals (venial ceremonies) and more collective rituals investing a numerously more important human community, of course, coexisted. The first among the collective rituals are the quarterly rituals accompanying the changes of season. These seasonal worships are worships related to nature and ultimately have their origin in the agrarian rituals of fertility.

Here what the great French celticist d’Arbois de Jubainville wrote in connection with the great Celtic-druidic quarterly festivals in Ireland.

The large public assemblies, of which this calendar gives the dates, hold in the life of ancient Ireland a place which we could not stress too much the importance. All the needs all and passions of mankind found their satisfaction there. There were, for piety, religious ceremonies, pagan before St Patrick, Christian after the conversion of the country; there were, for the litigants, lawyers and judges; for those who liked music, singers and players of instruments; to whom literature and history pleased , some poets delivered new lines of verse, some scientists recited the old epic compositions, the rolls of kings, the genealogies of the great families. The fickle wives took on new husbands, the kings some soldiers; the tradesmen earned money; the politicians deliberated seriously about the highest interests of the nation, and the cheerfulness of youth found joined together the recreations of its age: “oenach, fair of the king's son,” says an old Irish poet quoted by the Cormac’s Glossary, “fair of the king's son,” it means meal and rich clothes, sumptuous beds, ale and good dishes of meat, chess games, horses, chariots, pleasures of every kind ”.

Such were the large assemblies or Irish fairs of which the festival of Augustus in Lyons, on August 1st, shows us the Romanized forme and which, in the remained independent island, formed the highest judicial and legislative power.

The ancient druidic worship was based on the sacrifice. Solemn homage to the deity , the sacrifice was carried out in the form of a more or less long ceremony; which has as a climax the atiobertas (offerings) given to the Sky (via a hearth) or to the Earth (via a sacrifice pit). The goal is to get in touch with the other world, to make sure of the support of it , in order to get some general or individual, advantages. It is true that there were “fixed” sacrifices, corresponding to dates of the calendar, not comprising votive mentions in theory; but these sacrifices (or such part of them) could very well become enriched with a function of this type. The prayer formed part of these sacrifices, in the sense that it was expressed by the formulas accompanying the actions and the gestures but it had no independent expression. Bloody sacrifices (i.e., implying to eat an unspecified animal kind ox or sheep, during a commensality banquet), as at the time of the Eid al-Adha of our Muslim brothers; are now largely competed by the sacrifices of the type atiobertas (offerings) of small change (for example in the springs or pits, the best known of these sacrifice pits being now the Trevi Fountain in Rome) some mini wine amphoras, amber pearls, milk, grains, cake kind flat pancake and so on.

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THE DRUIDIC CALENDAR.

The starting point of the current Celtic era is the third battle of the Plain of the pillar stones or of the burial mounds : that which saw the end of the hyperborean era and the beginning of current Mankind, there are approximately 3.000 or 4.000 years ago.

Annals of the Four Masters: “The first year of the age of Christ matches the 1871st year of the Age of Mag Tured.”

This battle of the plain of the standing stones or of the mounds is well obviously a mythical battle, as “historical” as the winter solstice of the year 1 chosen to celebrate the birth of the character designated by the name of Jesus in the theological novel or the plea of willy lawyer, called “four Gospels”; but it is the only means of getting consensus from everyone; because never an historical event whatever it is will be able to win unanimous support about its case.

The starting point of the History cannot be itself historical. Only the myth by definition can fulfill this function of starting point of a sacred calendar, because the myth is timeless and eternal and remains, like the origin of the universe, beyond History, beyond its circumstances.

Some specialists nevertheless believed to detect an astronomical coincidence corresponding roughly to - 1870 before our era: Saturn’s entry into the sign of the Taurus (Latin Bull). “

Therefore Heracles has the highest honors and Cronos the second. Now

When at intervals of thirty years, the star of Cronos [Saturn] , which we call Phaenon but they, our author said, Nycturus, enters the sign of the Bull….(Plutarch. De facie in orbe lunae, 26).

The druidic calendar was lunar at the beginning. As a lunar month has not exactly thirty days, but 29 and a half; therefore there was a shift with the common (current) calendar which is solar.

A lunar year having 354 days, a solar year 365 days and a quarter, there was almost two months of difference at the end of five years (period called lustrum).

Every five years consequently, our ancestors added two months (or more exactly twice a month) during which they proceeded to exceptional sacrifices.

“They keep their criminals prisoner for five years and then impale in honor of the gods, dedicating them together with many other offerings of first fruits and constructing pyres of great size ” (Diodorus of Sicily. Book V, 32).

Months and fortnights of the druidic calendar.

JANUARY. Divertomu Riuri 1st. Atenoux Riuri 1st.

FEBRUARY. Divertomu Anaganti 1st. Atenoux Anaganti 1st .

MARCH. Divertomu Ogroni 1st . Atenoux Ogroni 1st .

APRIL. Divertomu Cuti 1st . Atenoux Cuti 1st .

MAY. Divertomu Giamoni 1st . Atenoux Giamoni 1st.

JUNE. Divertomu Simivisoni 1st . Atenoux Simivisoni 1st .

JULY. Divertomu Ecui 1st . Atenoux Ecui 1st .

AUGUST. Divertomu Elembivi 1st . Atenoux Elembivi 1st .

SEPTEMBER. Divertomu Edrini 1st . Atenoux Edrini 1st.

OCTOBER. Divertomu Cantli 1st . Atenoux Cantli 1st .

NOVEMBER. Divertomu Samoni 1st . Atenoux Samoni 1st .

DECEMBER. I Divertomu Dumanni. I Atenoux Dumanni.

The calendar of noiba Brigit, called na raithi firinneacha or “true seasons,” places equinoxes and solstices in the middle of the season, and counts nights.

Spring: February 1st, Oiche Bride (Night of Brigit).

Summer: May 1st, Oiche Bealtaine (Night of Beltene).

Fall: August 1st, Oiche Lunasa (Night of Lugnasade).

Winter: November 1st, Oiche Samhna (Night of Samon).

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This calendar is at one with the agro-pastoral cycle, unlike the calendar of St. Patrick, known as na raithi cama, “the twisted” or “false” seasons, which aligns the beginnings of the season on the solstices and equinoxes.

Winter: December 24th, the Nollaig (Christmas).

Spring: March 17th, the Padraig’s day (the festival of Patrick).

Summer: June 24th, the Seain’s day (festival of St John).

Autumn: September 29th, the Michil’s day (festival of St Mickael).

THE SPELL BOOK OF CELTIC WITCHES.

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TRINOUXTION SAMONI (OS) OR ALL SOULS' DAY.

(Obligatory oenach festival.)

Samon and Beltene are the two poles of the druidic year, shared between light and night, as it is appropriate for a design of the time of Northern origin. So strong was this design, so general and so constraining, that it still remains in the famous and strange text known as In Teanga bithnua or “the ever-new tongue,” a merely Christian treatise enumerating the wonders in the world, the heaven and the hell…

Recension 2, manuscript of Rennes.

Ata innsi for an-muir sin 7-is-or a-gainem 7-ata muir ele ann 7-dociter I ac-linad o-Beltaine co-Samhain 7 ac-traghadh o-Samhain co-Belltaini aris.i-lethbliadain ac-tuile 7 leth-bliadain ac-traghadh 7-eighit piasta in-mara sin 7-a-bladbmhila angein bis ac-tuile 7-bit a-ceas 7-a-suan angein bis ac-traghadh.

Translation John Carey

34. “There is another sea there: ... is seen to flood from Beltaine to Samhain, and to ebb from Samhain to Beltaine. For half a year it is flooding and for half a year ebbing perpetually. Its monsters and whales cry out etc….…. ”

Another translation (Whitley Stokes 1905) .

34.“There is a sea that is set in the ocean south of the island of Ebian. On the first of May, its flood grows high until in winter it goes to ebb. For half the year it is in flood, for the other half always ebbing. Its reptiles and its monsters wail at the time when it takes to ebbing and they fall into sadness and sleep.”

The main druidic festival is that of the 1st Samoni (Cintusamoni). Coupled later on November 1st, which matches the Samonios in the calendar of Coligny. Samon is an oenach, an obligatory festival when people must eat, tradition oblige, wild boar or pork, and it is therefore one of the rare festivals of the druidic calendar theoretically obligatory for everyone, except in cases of absolute necessity.

Samon is the first day or rather the first night of the new year according to the druids. Vegilia Samoni, from where Feil Samhain in Gaelic language. Let us not forget the old druidic idea attested by Caesar and which makes an underground deity of the dead, equated by him with Dis Pater , the origin of the human beings.

The festival consisted of a general meeting of all the men and women forming the community. People also discussed there the political, economic and religious matters.

It is therefore easy to understand that the first official hagiographer of St Patrick, Muirchu, is unleashed against it while parodying unintentionally the very pejorative “genus vatum medicorumque” by Pliny, “this race of vates and physicians.”

“…Now it happened that in that year the heathen were wont to celebrate an idolatrous feast with many incantations and magical devices, and other superstitions of idolatry. And there were also gathered together kings, satraps, leaders, princes and chief men of the people; and, moreover, magicians and enchanters and augurs and those who sought out and taught every art and every beguilement were called to Loegaire, as once upon a time to King Nebuchadrezzar, to Tara, their Babylon. And it was on the same night on which …” [follows what is to be a mistake of Muirchu as for the calendar].

Therefore let us rectify for our readers the heinous propaganda of this Taliban (parabolanus) of Christianity.

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“This day, the community of the living and the community of the dead met. The two worlds interpenetrated. It was at the time of the great festival the day before the full moon of Samon (about on November 1st) beginning of the winter and of the Celtic year. For days, on the roads coming from the four provinces, troops of travelers and of ox teams converged towards the fortified sacred enclosure; which displayed its triple enclosure on the hill, in the middle of immense pastures.

There were historians, genealogists, judges, philosophers, soothsayers, storytellers and harpists; in short the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) who entrusted to the memory of their disciples the whole of the knowledge of the community. There were the noble warriors with most valorous of them, the heroes as their retinue.

There were carpenters, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, enamelers, arms manufacturers, or other craftsmen, and some farmers come from the various small kingdoms.

In short, there were all those who, by their profession, were members of one of the three great functions on which the society was based: priestly function in its two aspects, religious and legal, the warrior function and the productive function. From the twilight to the day before the day of Samon - because it is in the twilight indeed that the festivities start - the king of the kings took care personally that everything is ready for the famous feast during which men will decide laws and customs, during which men will approve the annals, during which the social order will be again affirmed.”

These feasts were initially reserved for the leading class. The king and the warriors formed the main part of the participants there. But it is difficult to imagine that the high-knower of the druidiaction could be completely excluded from it.

The lawyers came there in particular to work out all what was related to the relationship between the individuals and the community. They constituted a kind of Parliament where the affairs of laws and policy were discussed (see the famous Galatian drunemeton in Asia Minor and its 300 deputies). The common run of the people himself made do with the fair, with all that comprised as various transactions and recreations.

The more or less pagan rejoicings of Halloween are the ultimate avatar of the masquerades which followed the end of this festival and the beginning of the new year.

The ritual is badly known. However, it is known that, the day before, all fires were to be extinguished. Of course in order to symbolize the end of the year which will rise symbolically of the ashes like the Phoenix only when the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) has lit a new fire.

In the Irish legends, it is always at Samon that the mythical great events, battles or raids in the Next World of gods, and so on, are supposed to take place.

The tale entitled “the intoxication of the Ulaid shows us for example some warriors who, after having drunk much to celebrate all that, lastly decide to leave, after midnight. Their exit will take the form of a chariot race so frantic that snow will melt under the wheels. So groggy also that they will leave in the first direction come to land in a strange house, necessarily, full of odd things, disappearing as if by chance with the first light of dawn. “At daybreak the house and the birds have vanished and the Ulaid find only their horses, their chariots, the boy and the foals.”

If Samon is the meeting point between the divine world and the human world, it is that the normal time is abolished or suspended in it . It is a neutralized time zone.

In Samon there is no longer dead nor living , neither gods nor human beings, because it is the Couocanton (there is EVERYTHING).

The rites of Cintusamoni may be performed indoors considering the climate of this season.

They start with the ostension in procession of the worship objects of the community: the hiera in Greek mysteries.

People bring to the sound of bagpipes, harps (rotes), or horns (cornyx), the various ritual sacred objects. Labarum, ensign with wild boar, lance of Lug, shield of Brennus, cladibo (sword) of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd, hammer of Suqellus, or others.

Other props or hiera.

Mistletoe bearer tree. Holly. Voulge. Hunting horns. Food. White cloth. Stake. A little of the seven varieties of tree. Bouget or sporran. Message to be thrown in fire, a bone, an ash tablet, birch bark, some leather or a folded paper, on which a letter is written for the late ones of one’s family or of his close relations.

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The members of the sodality, after having put on their ceremonial dress in an adapted place, for example a sacristy of the type sacrarium begin with coming processionnally to form the sacred circle; either it is outside in the middle of the country around a simulacrum (a tree, a totem?) or of a central point carefully selected for this purpose in the countryside, or inside a sanctuary around its cella, or inside a temple in its cella, even inside a semicircle shaped apse if the plan is of the basilica type. In which case it is then necessary, of course, consequently to adapt the ceremony and particularly the gathering methods.With, by order of seniority priestesses and high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) leading the procession, the officiating druid in the middle. Then the gutuaters or gutumaters with the four ambacts holding the sheet, the vates with the judge of the Tradition and lastly the veledae; with in the middle the one who holds the voulge having to be used by the officiating druid for the gathering. The procession comes if possible from the east to the chosen place and go ritually three times around the tree bearing mistletoe, or around the holly plant , sunwise. A little like in the case of the tawaf around the Kaaba in Mecca, but nakedness missing 1).

Participants being in their place; the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) in the east facing the west, gutuaters or gutumaters in north facing the south, the vates in the west facing the east, the veledae in the south facing north; the vate acting as Judge of the Tradition moves towards the sacred center of sovereignty to salute the officiating druid with his voulge, brandished, as a halberd 3), and waves a sign to the ambact playing the part of King of the Country.

The King of the Country turns then towards the north, sounds cornyx and asks the ambacts representing this part of the territory…

- In north are fires extinguished?

- Yes in north fires are extinguished! the ambacts representing this region answer.

The King of the Country turns then towards the east, sounds cornyx and asks the ambacts representing this part of the country…

- In east are fires extinguished?

- Yes in east fires are extinguished, the ambacts representing this country answer.

The king of the country turns then towards the south, sounds cornyx and asks the ambacts representing this part of the parish…

- In south are all fires extinguished?

- Yes in south fires are extinguished ! the ambacts representing this district answer.

The King of the Country turns then towards the west, sounds cornyx and asks the ambacts representing this part of his fiefdom…

- In west are fires extinguished?

- Yes in west fires are extinguished ! the ambacts representing this part of the country answer.

The audience makes then the pagan sign of the cross. i.e., with their right fist firmly closed , they beat several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) their breast, as if they hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

The vate acting as Judge of the Tradition finds himself again facing the officiating druid, to the east, who adds….

Since the fires are extinguished and there is peace, I proclaim open this Samon X… (to put the year in druidic calendar) year X… of the common era.

The Judge of the Tradition resumes , for the benefit of the officiating druid…

O high-knower , a company came to the Slemain Mide of N. (name of the place) a company walking with… (name of the first sacred object: labarum, lance, cladibo, etc.)

The officiating druid : may they be welcomed!

Another company came to the Slemain Mide of N. (name of the place) with… (name of the second sacred object: shield or other).

And so on until the Judge of the Tradition could enumerate in this way all the ritual objects of the believers attending these trinouxtion samoni.

The Judge of the Tradition asks then the officiating druid…

Tell us O high-knower, what means the period of the year into which we are arrived?

The officiating druid…

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This time is no longer a period of the year, because there are no longer years. The old year is being completed and the new one begins. In Samon time exists no longer!

The Judge of the tradition…

If time exists no longer during Samon, O high-knower, what becomes the invisible wall ti erects between the kingdom of the Dead and that of the Living ?

The officiating druid…

This wall falls and remains abolished, until the sun, eye of the world, three times looked at from east to west , until darkness three times covered the earth. Then and then only, time reappears, the invisible wall rises again, and the new year begins.

The Judge of the Tradition…

Is it possible during Samon, O high-knower, to go from a world to another, from the kingdom of the living to the world of the dead, and from the world of the dead to the kingdom of the living?

The officiating druid answers…

As each time a year dies and darkness starts, the living persons pray and think of the dead , then the company of the departed lives again and comes back on Earth.

N.B. It is then only, once this lay recited, that the ceremony itself of the gathering of the butcher's broom and of the mistletoe may be carried out; adapted to the new conditions under which the ritual is to be unfolded if the ceremony takes place indoors.

The Judge of the Tradition…

Mistletoe and holly are revered during this day, why? O high-knower?

The officiating druid…

Because mistletoe has fruits in full winter, whereas its tree, like all nature, is sleeping! (If it is some mistletoe.)

Because the ruscus has leaves brilliant and immortal Ike the souls, and therefore symbolizes their life and their perenniality! (If it is butcher's broom.)

The officiating druid makes the vate Judge of the Tradition trace a circle, with the tip of his voulge, under the mistletoe or the butcher's broom which man wants to gather; then he asks the ambact velede to bring the voulge intended for the cutting. Then he similarly asks the four ambact gutuaters/gutumaters designated for that, to prepare the cloth of white flax which will receive either the butcher's broom or the mistletoe.

Covered with his white cowl, bare feet and with her feet carefully washed , or at least wearing only natural matter (leather, wood, wool) and no synthetic matter; the officiating druid cuts with his voulge the butcher's broom in place or the plant which cures all (they will be collected in the white linen held by the four ambacts. The carriers of this mistletoe or butcher's broom are theoretically some gutuaters, men or women –gutumaters-).

All come back then to their place, while swiveling on the right : veledae, vates and gutuaters/gutumaters. The ambacts distribute the mistletoe and the holly to the audience by turning sunwise. The rest if there is will be placed on the ritual stake or will be brought back. The officiating druid, after a moment of focusing, his arms raised, palms opened towards the sky, to the east, undoes the circle while traveling it three times from the inside in the opposite direction and orders…

Light fire!

The stake is to be almost completed at this time, and to have the shape of a churn, with three sides, three angles and six doors or six openings level with the ground.

You will try to have the seven following tree varieties there (one for each door): fir , birch, beech, elm, apple tree, chestnut, oak. The varieties of tree you will not manage to find may be replaced by a drink offering of mead . In the absence of being a true stake thus erected ,the fire may consist of a torch, a firebrand, a candle, even quite simply a log lit on a pair of andirons.

It is the vate Judge of the Tradition who is theoretically the supervisor of this stake. It is therefore him who takes the last logs, or the last branches, and who lays out them on the stake, in order to finish its building; suitably directed, a point of its base towards the west, the side opposite to this point facing the east; stake generally built on a height to be seen by far.

Each time the officiating druid asks…

Why do you carry these branches in your hands?

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The vate Judge of the Tradition:

“In order to be able to feed the sacred fire with the power of the most beautiful trees in nature! ”

Le pyre thus completed, the officiating druid puts down on it the rest of the gathering of mistletoe and holly , while reciting the following lay…

The ritual of Samon being placed under the sign of the mistletoe (or butcher’s broom) which symbolizes immortality, we lay down here a branch of it.

The officiating druid makes a circle traced on the ground all around, by the Judge of the Tradition, with the tip of his voulge; and speaks then to the girl or the woman acting as conhospita…

“Conhospita, please set ablaze the seven varieties of sacred wood! ”

The conhospita takes a torch, then turns three times inside the symbolic circle drawn with the voulge, sunwise , and lights the fire, by starting with the east.

It is here that the prayer, that the old pagan ones pronounced ritually when they wanted to gather herbs like vervain, the samolus or the selago, is placed.

The officiating druid…

Goddess revered, of all nature Mother,

Engendering all things and re-engendering them from the same womb,

Because you only do supply each species with living force,

You divine controller of sky and sea and of all things

You do bestow life nourishment with never-failing faithfulness,

And, when our breath has gone, in you we find our refuge

So, whatsoever you bestow, all falls back to you.

Deservedly are you called Mother of Gods,

You are the Mighty Being and you are the queen of divinities, O Goddess;

I adore and your Godhead I invoke:

With all your potent herbs do I now intercede;

And to your majesty make my appeal:

You were engendered by Mother Earth,

And given for a gift to all.

On you she has conferred the healing

So that to all mankind you may be time and again an aid most serviceable.

This in suppliant wise I implore and entreat:

Hither, hither swiftly come with all your potency,

Forasmuch as the very one who gave you birth has granted me leave to gather you.

The King of the Country turns then towards the north, sounds cornyx and asks the ambact representing this part of the fiefdom:

- In north is there now science?

- Yes, in north there are science and peace now! the ambact representing the North of the territory answers.

New playing cornyx by the King of the Country who continues while turning towards the other cardinal point…

“In east is there now wealth ?

- Yes, in east there are wealth and prosperity now! the ambact representing the east of territory answers.

Third sounding by the King of the Country who asks the south…

- In south is there art now?

- Yes, in south there are art and music now! the ambact concerned answers.

Last sounding final of the King of the Country who asks the west…

- In west is there strength now?

- Yes, in west there is strength now! the ambact of the west answers.

People sing the barditus in the honor of Llywelyn and the wine of the C’hallaoued ((see the anuanacton, naming ceremony) or they recite them.

People who still have branches or logs of the tree varieties matching the verse, may hold up them and throw them into the stake during the chorus.

BARDITUS OR MARWNAD OF LLYWELYN.

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In the night the campfires are lit

All the men of the Clan gather

To celebrate by our laughs and our songs

The lifeblood and the pure force of our soul

Of our mind.

For my father would never allow me to be buried differently

Than like a man standing still in battle

For it is the custom of the pagans is to be buried armed

With their weapons at hand

To remain there until the day of erdathe

Which is according to our old druids, the day of the judgment of our Lord.

We sing for our brothers who died

Killed in action.

Their glance face the enemy

Their widespread blood was ours

That which runs in our veins

Glorious blood

The blood of the race of the great captains.

Do you not see ?

The wind dashes the rains upon us

The oaks clash

And the sea’s crash scours the land:

Do you not see?

The Sun falls and the stars are shrinking!

Proud king, swift hawk, fierce wolf

Can we believe our world is ending?

His head has fallen and with it our pride

His head has fallen – a dragon’s head

Noble it was to us , fierce to our foes

This land is empty – and our spirit cut down.

His head had honor in nine hundred fiefdoms.

We sing for our wells and our woods

For our plains, our paths and our roofs

For our wine, our corn, our honey

For our winds, our snows and our sun

Living sun Glorious sun.

We sing to hand down our taste for freedom

To our children

For our sons who tomorrow in the battles

The sword of justice in their fist

Faithful to our leaders and trustful in our gods

Will be able to guard the land of our noble ancestors

Noble ancestors.

And when the daybreak will extinguish the campfires

All the men of the Clan will get up.

Mother nature is here

Our gods are back.

Peace on the Clan.

Here begin Merlin’s prophecies

For those who know what I mean.

The baths of Badon shall grow cold,

And their salubrious waters engender death.

London shall mourn for the death of twenty thousand;

And the river Thames shall be turned into blood.

A damsel shall be sent

From the city of the forest of Canute

To administer a cure, who, after she shall have practiced all her arts,

Shall dry up the noxious fountains

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Only with her breath.

The Virgin shall mount upon the back of Sagittarius,

The monks in their cowls shall be allowed to marry,

And their cry shall be heard upon the white mountain.

The oppressed shall prevail,

And oppose the cruelty of foreigners.

A boar of Cornwall shall give his assistance,

And trample their necks under his feet.

The islands of the ocean shall be subject to his power,

And he shall possess the forests.

The house of Romulus shall dread his courage,

He shall be celebrated in the mouths of the people;

And his exploits shall be food to those that relate them.

O Dervos,

Genius of Kildare 2)

Genius of the Church of the oaks!

Venerated shelter of spirits and men

Superb oak, king oak

Give us your strength

Stretch over us your guardian shade

And speak to us about the divine one.

The officiating druid resumes then the word says…

Let us have today a thought for our brothers and sisters departed for a broader life and having preceded us in the light of the Mag Meld. May they be there to welcome us when it will be our turn to land on the other bank like Procopius reported it! Let us also have a thought for the Nemet Hornunnos, the dark guard of the doors or of the airlock which leads to the Other World.

The vate acting as Judge of the Tradition then recites the list of the brothers and sisters left since last year for the land of eternal youth in the country of the delightful to attend persons. He gives their civil first name and name , followed by their druidic title , their initiatory name and their profession.

After this short evocation of the dead, the officiating druid recites the prayer calling upon the soul/minds…

My children, let us pray !

Spirits of health and souls of the Celts

Help us, guide us, advise us,

So that from our combined efforts

A homeland as a light in the night reappears

In which will live eternally

The soul of our ancestors

And of the Celtic hearted or minded people

Under the protection of our gods

Nert dee agus andee

May the force be with you

Sunartiu!

Take away from us the hellish legion of the dusii and of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns as all the other under-gods of the ices of the non-world!

Sunartiu!

Each one then comes with a message to be thrown into fire, a bone, an ash tablet , some birch bark, some leather or a folded paper, on which he wrote a letter for the late ones of his family or of his close relations.

People may also throw there the messages prepared by the absent persons or various ateberta.

The conhospita then presents to the officiating druid a cup bearing the inscription “nessamon delgu linda” and filled with mead while saying…

I bring you the flowers from the Sedos

Tir na mbeo, land of the living, biuontiion teres.

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Tir na mban, land of angels, banion teres.

Tir na nog, land of youth, ogiion teres.

Mag mor, great plain, mara magosia.

Mag meld, pleasant plain, meldo magosia.

Mag inis, insular plain, magosia inicias.

The officiating druid takes the cup containing mead then pours some drops from it close to the fire or in the brazier. It is after only that he will be allowed to drink from it . The cup is filled again then presented to everybody in the circle by the conhospita.

This once finished mystical communion, the officiating druid pours the remaining mead into fire and concludes with these words…

Let us rejoice my brothers, because a new year begins. May it bring to us all what is necessary for us or which was missing ! A new year begins , let us rejoice!

Around fire the dance of the geese or of the cranes occurs then, carried out by young Namnetes girls , crowned with flowers and dancing to a tune of sacred harp 3).

To finish, a meal on the spot, brotherly meal where all the provisions are shared: bread, fresh butter, ale, various dairy produces, apples, nut and hazel nuts, pork, and so on.

As fire decreases, the Judge of the Tradition gathers ashes and embers of it so that all is well burned. Cool ashes will be then collected and distributed to the participants. People put from it in small packets that they wear in a leather bouget (sporran), or that they bring back home.

If the ceremony is to proceed housed by an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it must be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and is to be suitably decorated or laid out. And instead of a stake, it is in this case a brazier!

The following day, to close the whole, short goodbye meal containing pork products: fresh bread and butter, sausages, nuts or apples, ale, dairy produces and cheeses.

As the proverb says it

Meat, ale, nut, andouille,

Here what is due to Samon,

Merry campfire on a hill,

Churned milk, bread and fresh butter.

Important N.B. This is not a religious negative forbidden food but a limited positive recommendation: it is customary that on this day we eat that.

A funeral wreath laying may be carried out to the nearest war memorial, whatever its nature (cemetery, necropolis, lantern of the dead…) and the officiating druid, with in his hand his big voulge held like a Swiss halberd, pronounces the following funeral oration…

We lay down today this wreath in the memory of all those who died for… (to put the name of the country in question) and who were killed in action.

Other dangers threaten our country now. Let us learn from these great heroes, or from these heroines, like Lucterius, Ambiorix, Boadicea, Calgacus or Arthur 8).

N.B. List to supplement according to the context.

I declare closed the first day of the trinouxtion Samoni X… (to put the year in the druidic calendar of Coligny) year X… of the common era.

I declare open the new year X… (to put the year in the druidic calendar of Coligny) year X of the common era.

1) Complete nakedness missing … It goes without saying druidism regards in no way nakedness in itself as a sin. The evil never comes from the fact that a man or a woman is naked, but from the looking at a naked man or a woman, machismo, nymphomania, or other).

What we want to say in this way it is that time is no longer (adapted) to such a practice in the rituals; in spite of the beauty of the gesture of this ancient Arab paganism (jahiliyya): “The Man in his natural state in front of his creator, without pretense nor artifice.” In any event for the high-knower of druidiaction (druidecht) there is not one kaaba but thousands of kaaba, as many kaaba as remarkable holy places. And considering the season “The state of original purity in which we came into the world” is perhaps no longer to advise in the northern hemisphere.

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2) Perhaps Kildare in Ireland, whose name precisely means Church of the oaks. In the pre-Christian era , Kildare was the site of an altar dedicated to the Celtic deity Brigindo.

3) “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, Geography III, 4,16). This dance today is generally replaced by a choral society or tunes of traditional music.

4) Ambiorix Belgian king. Commius. King of the Atrebates in [Great] Britain. He will issue coins with his name starting from Calleva, current Silchester, until around - 20 before our era.

Boadicea or Boudicca, queen of the Iceni (about year 61 of our era). Tacitus. Annals (XIV, 29-37).

Boadicea , in a chariot, with her two daughters before her, drove through the ranks. "This," she said, "is not the first time that the Britons have been led to battle by a woman. But now she did not come to boast the pride of a long line of ancestry, nor even to recover her kingdom and the plundered wealth of her family. She took the field, like the meanest among them, to assert the cause of public liberty, and to seek revenge for her body seamed with ignominious stripes, and her two daughters infamously ravished. From the pride and arrogance of the Romans, nothing is sacred; all are subject to violation; the old endure the scourge, and the virgins are deflowered. But the vindictive gods are now at hand. A Roman legion dared to face the warlike Britons: with their lives they paid for their rashness; those who survived the carnage of that day, lie poorly hid behind their entrenchments, meditating nothing but how to save themselves by an ignominious flight. From the din of preparation, and the shouts of the British army, the Romans, even now, shrink back with terror. What will be their case when the assault begins? Look round, and view your numbers. Behold the proud display of warlike spirits, and consider the motives for which we draw the avenging sword. On this spot we must either conquer, or die with glory. Though a woman, my resolution is fixed: the men, if they please, may survive with infamy, and live in bondage."

On the speech by Calgacus the day before the battle of the Grampian mountains to see the life of Agricola XXX to XXXII.

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AMBOLC or Saint Brigit’s day.

Noiba Brigit of Ireland or Brigit of Kildare was born in Faughart close to Dundalk, in the county of Louth, in Ireland. She is honored on February 1st.

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.

The future noiba Brigit would have been born in the middle of the 5th century in the East of Ireland. The accounts relating to her do not agree. They consist especially of miracles and anecdotes, of which some are come from the Irish folklore.

According to the legend about the origin of the royal clan of the Fotharta of which she would be a member; her birth would have been announced by a high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) as being that of another Mary, from where her nickname of “Mary of the Gaels.”

Some accounts imply that her parents were of humble origin; others that father was a clan chief in Leinster called Dubhthach, and her mother a Christian prisoner called Brocca.

The accounts agree to say, on the other hand, that they were all baptized by St Patrick, and that the future saint would have well known him, but it is not sure in reality she met him.

As she wanted to remain virgin, noiba Brigit would have prayed her god to give her an unspecified infirmity in order not to be asked in marriage. She lost therefore an eye (cf the blindness of some high-knowers of the druidiaction like Mog Ruith who voluntarily blinded himself in one eye in order to reinforce his gifts of clairvoyance) and this infirmity caused she became so ugly that nobody consequently wanted to attend it.

Same legendary diagram with the little saint Frenchwoman Neomadie, Neomoise, Neomoye, Neomaye, Neomaie, Neomee, Nemoise, or Ennemoye, who, to escape her suitors obtained from God the grace to have a foot changed into a goose leg. Some churches or chapels of the West of the country represent her still thus. The saint is represented there as a shepherdess or a keeper of geese [what was one moment my maternal grandmother in Pont-Varin] or goose-footed.

But let us return to Brigit. When St Macaille gave her the veil, he saw on her head a fire column. At the moment when Brigit leant to kiss the wooden staircase which led to the altar , this wood started to grow green again ; and noiba Brigit recovered her eye as all her beauty (when one marries the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it is better to be beautiful).

Book of Lismore. Around 468 Brigit and some other girls went to receive the veil from the bishop Mel in Telcha Mide. By humility, Brigit remained behind in order to be the last to receive the veil. But a red rose fell on her head, from the ridge of the roof of the church. The somewhat disturbed bishop says to her then: “Move forward , Brigit, so that I can decorate your head with the veil before the others.” And by accident he recited or read then for her… the ritual of a bishop ordainment.

Macaille protested that the episcopal ordainment was not to be awarded to a woman, but the bishop answered him that it was too late and that it could no longer do something for that.

This story was perhaps invented to justify the very particular status of noiba Brigit in her time. She practiced semi-episcopal functions, like preaching, receiving confessions (without discharge), or directing the Christians of her area; even if some of our texts mention that it was via her friend St .Conleth (Conlaed), chosen by her as bishop of Kildare circa 490. N.B. For the Vatican, there was an official bishop in Kildare only starting from 519.

With those of her friends, who had taken the veil at the same time, she moved towards the forest which stretched not far from Dublin. They chose there an enormous oak and arranged three cells in its trunk. From where the name of the place from now on: “Kill-Dara,” i.e. “the cells in the oak.”

Three cells in the trunk of a gigantic oak or three huts at the foot of an oak, even in an oak grove?

Noiba Brigit is one of the patron saint of children and breast-feeding. To noiba Brigit were dedicated many springs the water of which was said to cure sterility as well as headaches, and her main attribute was a coat (brat in Gaelic language). According to the legend, she uses it to remove from a man his donkey ears: she covers his head that, on his knees in front of her, he had put in her lap; or, to

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acquire grounds and to make her cow feeding there: man grants her the surface her coat will be able to cover, a coat which then starts to grow all alone. Noiba Brigit indeed had a cow which gave her a really exceptional milk. One day she received bishops, having nothing to give them, she prayed God and could thus milk her cow 3 times in the course of the day. Whereof to feed most famished ones of them.

Everyone is free to believe such nonsense! There have always been fools everywhere! The main thing is that monolatrous people do not make it a matter of life and death. Factual truth no! Myth useful to study, yes!

What is probable, it is that there was conversion to Christianity of a college of druids and priestesses up to that point dedicated to the goddess or fairy Brigindo and it is possible that the one who was going to become Saint-Brigit then governed the destiny of the two communities.

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 no man had the right to enter. This fire, at the time, was still kept by 20 nuns.

Cogitosus, a monk of Kildare, reworked circa 660, that is to say a century after her death, the vita prima sanctae brigitae, detailed it then versified it in good Latin. This text is known, wrongly besides perhaps, as being the second of the biographies of St. Brigit, and forms an excellent example of the Irish monastic under-culture of the time.

What is perhaps most interesting in the text by Cogitosus, it is his description of the cathedral of Kildare in his time. It is "spacious in its floor area, and it rises to an extreme height. It is adorned with painted boards and has on the inside three wide chapels, all under the roof of the large building and separated by wooden partitions. One partition, which is decorated with painted images and is covered with wall hanging (the rood screen) , stretches transversely in the eastern part of the church from one wall to the other and has two entrances, at its end. By one entrance, placed in the external part , the supreme pontiff ???? enters the sanctuary and approaches the altar with his retinue of monks. And by the other entrance, placed on the left side of the above-mentioned transverse partition (the rood screen), the abbess, with her faithful virgins and widows, equally enters.”

In short, an already classical church with a rood screen, a choir and three apse chapels. A great deal has to happen in Ireland since the time of the saint.

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

The ritual of Ambolc or great lustration (Ambivolcos) normally is celebrated on January 31st and on February 1st, using holly and mistletoe, collected during the previous Cintusamoni. Ambolc is especially a festival of the andirons or fire dogs, that is to say of the hearth, of the family and of the children. Its rites are celebrated indoors.

This festival is that of the belisama Brigindo Brigantia Brigit (Nantosuelta on the continent) this is why the officiant person this day cannot be a man, but is to be a priestess.

In spite of the date that corresponds to the spring cleaning. At the time of the festival of noiba Brigit, nature itself seems to take her breath back. This return of the sun, however, is to be associated with its purification (its "baptism") from where the name of this festival: Ambivolcos. Everything is therefore to be clean and shine. It is necessary to have one’s feet and one’s head washed three times (purified) to perform the rituals.

Unlike the other festivals of which the celebration is very open, that of Ambolc is more intimist! People meet at the fireside. It is a question of carrying out a soul-searching , to make an assessment, before setting out again with the season which will start. At Ambolc, children, parents and grandparents, are brought together around the mother. Blessed then are the women who had many children!

Each family must, in the previous days , to prepare personally the decoration of its festival of Ambolc.

Above the main door, they put greenery cut during the festival of Samon, greenery which does not die during the winter. For example, some butcher’s broom bound by a red ribbon. Straw also plays a great role in the traditions which relate to Ambolc. Today still, it is used to make crowns or stars.

They prepare the crown of noiba Brigit, which people will suspend from the ceiling or will put somewhere prominently displayed.

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It is a straw circle covered with an embellishment of flexible branches of fir tree, tightened by a green string and surrounded by a red ribbon.

At the four opposite diameters, short and broad waxes (candles) are fixed.

During the festival, the crown of noiba Brigit will shine brightly thus.

Four small flames, the first for the gods, the second for the ancestors, the third for the absent ones, the fourth for the heirs, to be born.

White, red, blue, green (color of the waxes).

The habit also has it that this day people put at the windows big torches or some candles.

There are to be in theory as many waxes, or torches, as children at home , each one having his.

For Ambolc everyone is to have a meal of kings.

People kiss the newcomers under the mistletoe which decorates the threshold of the home.

Initially because it is a festival and that it is no festival without embraces, but also because Ambolc is “the festival of abundant food” in a time when cold, ice, and bleakness still seem to prevail.

Whoever does not eat a good portion of cabbages during Brigit’s day will remain poor all the year, the proverb says.

The traditional meat of such a feast is the wild boar or the pig, but people also make some pancakes this day.

The ale crepes , through their round and gilded shape, remind of the solar disk, they therefore evoke the return of the spring after the winter.

There still nowadays exists a whole symbolic system related to the crepes cooking. It is therefore recommended to make the flapjack with one’s right hand and while holding a gold coin in one’s left hand ,flipping, in order to experiment wealth and prosperity during all the year.

This custom varies according to the countries, so, in certain areas, this pancake was then folded around the gold coin and was placed on the top of the cupboard in the room of the householder. The leftovers of the pancake of the previous year were then recovered then the coin it contained given to the first poor met later. If all these rites were respected, the family was ensured to have money all the year.

Today when the gold coins are rare, people took the practice to make the crepes flipping while holding in their hand the most important coin possessed by the family.

In front of each plate on the table is to be laid out a small branch of butcher's broom (of holly), the ruscus or the butcher's broom being the archetypal plant of Ambolc.

White stones bearing , written in Celtic (Lepontic, or Oghamic in Ireland) runes, the names of all the participants (apart from the most aged) are placed in the hearth of the chimney where fire will be lit!

People recite during this time a prayer as that which follows.

Toutai Deuas

Scelon suiebo bero

Dordreti damos

Ro caedesit samos

Snigeti giamos

Esti arduos ac riuros aventos

Iselos Grannos

Uergiouia mori

Roudisama ratis

Ro gabasit ogtu

Atenones etnion

Toageti gnota

Gigurannas gutu

Inso mon scelon.

Men and women of our community,

Fellow countrymen, fellow countrywomen, oyez, oyez, oyez,

I have tidings or you.

The stag bellows

The summer is gone with the wind

It is winter

The wind is strong and cold

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And the sun is low

The sea breaks

The fern lost its dress of greenery

Cold numbs

The bird wings

The wild goose shouts its sound.

Here my tidings.

Since everything returns inexorably

It is better to remember

In order to remain free 1)

Nert dé agus andé. Awen!

It is at the time to sit down to eat and not before, that people may carry out the lighting of the wax (one more) which will be then used to illuminate, in the evening, the crown of noiba Brigit.

The mother or the present priestess will carry out this task.

While saying a word of the absent persons away from home, and some words also on the home, the unity of the family, the departed ancestors , etc.

Then the priestess or the housewife recites the lay following…

Let us have a thought for the absent ones,

A thought for the children to be born,

A thought for the missing loved persons.

Before this ambolc other ambolcs took place.

Joy ambolcs but also sorrow ambolcs.

Ambolcs when we recognize ourselves ,

In the night, in the only gleam of torches.

From winter will reappear, not only the next spring,

But also the thousands of springs which will follow.

PRAYER TO THE BELISAMA BRIGINDO (Carmina Gadelica No. 73).

Uediiu-semi

Bless me O saint goddess or good fairy

Me and mine

And all their parents

May it be in the scents of the plain or in my shelter in the mountain.

Bless everything which is at home

And everything I have,

Cattle and harvests, herds and collections

Since the day before Samon to the day before Beltene,

Through a good and frank blessing.

From a sea to another, from an estuary to another,

From a wave to another and from a waterfall into a waterfall .

Be the three persons at the same time taking up my being,

Be the holy triad keeping me in the truth;

Fill my mind with the words from Belenus,

And take those I love under your wing of resplendent glory.

Bless anything and each and everyone

Of the household which stands beside me.

Display on us the labarum of the god in Andesina and the force of his love

Until our arrival in the Land of the people charming to be attended.

When the cattle leave the cattle shed,

When the sheep give up the sheepfold,

When the goats go up in the mountain swamped in fogs

May the holy watchfulness of your three persons accompany them,

Nert dé agus andé

May the force be with us,

Sunartiu!

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Gach ni na m' fhardaich, no ta 'na m' shealbh,

Gach buar is barr, gach tan is tealbh,

Bho Oidhche Shamhna chon Oidhche Bheallt,

Piseach maith, agus beannachd mallt,

Bho mhuir, gu muir, agus bun gach allt,

Bho thonn gu tonn, agus bonn gach steallt.

Tri Pears a gabhail sealbh anns gach ni 'na m' stor,

An Trianailt dhearbha da m' dhion le coir. 2)

About midnight, or a little before, people extinguish the candle after having used it to light four waxes fixed on the crown of noiba Brigit.

While proceeding to this intervention, the housewife will say some words about the great goddess or fairy if you prefer, and the perpetual fire of the Church of the oak.

Example…

A Brigantia, triatona Brigantia

Tusso areuemontia carron

Argosamas Belisamas

Bardion, gobannion etic leagiion matrona

Sonni maran eulan snebo da.

O Brigindo, triple Brigindo,

You who drives the chariot of the sun

Patron saint of poets blacksmiths and doctors

Give us the great science which enlightens us.

Move away from us the hellish legion of the dusii

And of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns

As well as the other under-gods of the ices of the non-world.

O Brigit, triples fairylike goddess,

Sudden flame,

May Your burning red sun

Led us towards the true world to come

That of the Albiobitus.

Ison son bissiet!

The dessert must be made up by good and beautiful apples from the terroir. The housewife or the priestess, before proceeding to the distribution of the apples, must recite the following prayer:

GENEALOGY OF NOIBA BRIGIT (Carmina Gadelica N° 70).

SLOINNTIREACHD BHRIDE 2).

Sloinneadh na Ban-naomh Bride,

Lasair dhealrach oir,

Muime chorr Chriosda.

Gach la agus gach oidhche

Ni mi sloinntireachd air Bride,

Cha mharbhar mi,

Cha spuillear mi,

Cha charcar mi, cha chiurar mi,

Cha loisg teine, grian, no gealach mi,

Cha bhath luin, li, no sala mi,

Cha reub saighid sithich, no sibhich mi,

Is i mo chaomh mhuime Bride.

Uediiu-mi Brigind of the triple coat

Blazing like gold

Foster mother of the Gods,

Whether it is day or night

As long as I know your genealogy

I nor will not be murdered

Nor tortured

Nor wounded.

As long as I do not forget it

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Fire sun and moon

Will not hurt me.

No lake neither water nor sea

Will be able to drown me.

No dart nor arrow

Will reach me.

My noble foster mother is the beloved Brigind.

May the triple coat of Brigind be over us

May the memory of Brigind be in us

May the protection of Brigind preserve us

From injustice ignorance and lacking in compassion;

And this day as night

From morning till evening

From evening till morning.

Nert dé agus andé.

Awen!

The young lady of the house, in a white dress, then puts on her head the crown of noiba Brigit with its four lit candles, to offer the legendary apple. One of the present members of the clan takes the apple. When this one went thrice round the table, from hand to hand, the girl too goes around it, sunwise, to offer some apples to everybody. She places herself then to the east, a torch or a candle lit in her hand, because it is here that the ceremony of the torches itself takes place.

To accompany her fellow countrywoman, the priestess or the housewife intones again the following lay…

The torch passes from hand to hand

When death captured from the one

The nearest takes it again.

The relay continues.

Time passes and nobody asks

How long each one will carry the torch

What it is simply needed it is that it shines

And that a heart also burns with him,

Brilliant and pure.

Like that of Galaat.

Here is most important.

May it be radiant

In the darkness before us

The others wait.

We too we will therefore carry it with us

This torch.

Nert dé agus andé.

Awen!

The provided with torches participants, in single file, one by one, light their torch from that of “Brigit,” and prepare to leave after having recovered their stone in the chimney, in order to look for the coat of noiba Brigit (Brat Bride). The last to have found one’s stone must to kiss the young lady of the house. The Brat Bride is in fact a fabric part hidden somewhere by the housewife (another name of this piece of protective fabric is “brat boinne” or “woman coat”). The one who finds it first, of course, will be allowed to keep it in order to use it as he likes during the whole year. To place for example next to the skin under one’s clothing, on a woman in labor or a cow which calves.

EXAMPLES OF TOAST FORMS FOR THIS MIDNIGHT SUPPER.

The bard (president) of the table (the household head for example).

I toast wit, modesty, facetiae. Let us search out, diligently the causes of things, that we might live pleasantly, and die peaceably.

RESPONSE OF THE TABLE.

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That, free from all fear, neither elated by joy, nor depressed by sadness, we might always release ourselves through reason.

The bard (presiding over the banquet).

Let us greatly feed our minds, but sparingly our bellies.

RESPONSE OF THE TABLE.

It is just and good!

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let us toast the Graces.

RESPONSE OF THE TABLE.

Let us toast the goddesses or good fairies!

Then each one clinks glasses with one’s neighbor before draining one’s glass.

1) According to the daughter of the author (Millicent, of Cuers in Provence), that would be an allusion to the blindness of the French media political elites facing the rise of certain monolatrous religious fundamentalisms in the world.

2) Carmina Gadelica is a collection of popular prayers or magic formulas dating back to the last years of the 19th century and gleaned by Alexander Carmichael (six volumes) in the highlands or I the Western Scottish Islands, from Arran to Caithness, from Perth to Saint-Kilda.

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BELTENE OR FESTIVAL OF THE VERVAIN 1).

(Oenach or obligatory festival for druids.)

This festival of Bel, which begins in the night of April 30th, includes in the evening songs and dances around two fires, as well as the crowning of the May Queen. The following day plantation of a tree (arbor intrat already represented on the cauldron of Gundestrup) and general assembly.

The members of the sodality must meet in the place devoted for this purpose, which depends on the country where you ares.

Uisnech in Ireland. The Drunemeton in Turkey. The great Drunemeton of the country of Carnutes, i.e., Suevres/Sodobriga, close to Mer in France. And so on.

Uisnech in Ireland, the Drunemeton in Asia Minor , the great Drunemeton in the country of the Canutes…

It goes without saying that in the event of impossibility, the rites of the fire of Bel may be celebrated elsewhere; on the condition that you have then a very particular thought for these distant uxonabelcon and to join through your heart and your mind the participants in the general assembly of their sacred hill (Sedobriga).

Nevertheless, whatever the place, the common point, it is that the rites of Beltene always start with the ostension processionally of the worship objects of the community (hiera in the Greek mysteries 2). People bring to the sound of bagpipes, harps or horns (cornyx) the crowned objects: labarum, ensign with a wild boar, sword of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd, the arrow of Abarix 3) or others.

Props or hiera.

First day.

Voulge. Almost finished stakes with the seven traditional varieties. Or a substitute. A torch to kindle the stakes.

Basket filled with vervain and apples. Lily of the valley. Sacred harps. She-dancers. Provisions for the traditional meal. Tickler.

Second day.

Bagpipes, harps, hunting horns, labarum, ensigns, a sword, an arrow, voulge, shovels, pickaxes, the tree to be planted.

The members of the sodality, after having put on their ceremonial dress in an adapted place, for example a sacristy of the type sacrarium, begin by coming processionnally to form the sacred circle; either it is outside in the middle of the country around a simulacrum (a tree, a totem?) or around a central point carefully selected for this purpose in the countryside, or inside a sanctuary around its cella, or inside a temple in its cella, even inside a semicircle shaped apse if the plan is of the basilica type. With by order of seniority priestesses and high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) leading the procession, the officiating druid in the middle. Then the gutuaters/gutumaters, the vates with the judge of the Tradition and lastly the veledae; with in the middle the one who holds the drawn voulge .

The procession arrives if possible from the east at the selected place where the three stakes almost finished wait already, and performs sunwise the three large ritual circles around them .

The participants being in their place; the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) in the east facing the west, the gutuaters/gutumaters in the north facing the south, the vates in the west facing the east, the veledae in the south facing the north; the vate acting as Judge of the Tradition moves towards the sacred center to salute the officiating druid with his voulge, brandished like a Swiss halberd.

After one moment of concentration, his arms raised, palms opened towards the sky, facing the east, the officiating druid undoes the circle by traveling it three times from the inside in opposite direction and orders…

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“Oyez oyez oyez, fellow countrymen, fellow countrywomen, men and women of our community, build the three stakes! ”

Each one then brings to the common work one’s log, one’s branch or one’s bundle of sticks. The pyres are to be churn shaped , with 3 sides 3 angles and 6 doors (or 6 openings) level with the ground. One will try to have the seven following varieties of tree there (one by door): fir, birch, beech, elm, apple, chestnut, oak, apple tree. The variety of trees which one does not manage to find can be exceptionally replaced by a drink offering of mead into the fire.

In the absence of true stakes thus erected up, fires can be represented by three torches, three firebrands, three candles, even quite simply three logs lit on andirons.

It is the vate Judge of the Tradition who is to be theoretically the supervisor of these stakes, it is therefore himself who will take these logs or these branches and who will lay out them on the suitably directed “churns.” Stakes built in theory on a height so that everyone can see their fire.

Each time the officiating druid asks…

- Why do you carry these branches of trees in your hands?

And the vate Judge of the Tradition answers…

“In order to be able to feed the sacred fire with the force of the most beautiful trees in our country”.

The druid who celebrates sends then the conhospita having to play the part of guardian of the perpetual fire, to place herself to the east of the stakes, then gathers all the other participants around him, to the west.

The stakes once ready, he makes traced around, by the Judge of the Tradition, a circle or an ellipse on the ground with the tip of his voulge, and speaks then to the girl or the woman acting as conhospita…

Let us have a thought for the men and the women of our community, our fellow countrymen and our fellow countrywomen, today in Sodobriga or elsewhere, and for Abarix the high druid of Hyperborea, a servant of Abellio. 3)

After one minute of silence, the officiating druid then speaks to the she guardian of the perpetual fire in the oaks Church…

- Noiba Brigit, please set ablaze the seven varieties of sacred wood.

Lady Brigit then takes an ignited brand , moves while coming from the east towards the space located between the two stakes then lights them, while beginning with that which is located to the south.

As soon as the three fires are kindled , Lady Brigit comes back to her place, and the officiating druid joins her, then adds…

These fires will never die out.

They will prevail on all the others.

The kingdoms will fall in front of them,

But themselves will fill up all things with their power,

Without end,

Nert dé agus andé

May the force be with us,

Sunartiu!

People sing then the barditus of the fire of the gods or they recite it. The verses were distributed in advance between the dignitaries of the sodality but the audience each time sings together the refrain.

The people who still have branches or logs of the variety of tree matching the verse, may hold up them and throw them on the stake during the refrain.

FIRE BARDITUS.

Refrain.

Wood fire, king fire

You are the same in each home

Clear fire, merry fire

In every place, fire of the gods.

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Fir tree, green and always young tree

With faithful foliage, Summer and winter alike,

Resinous and always odorous tree,

You are immortal youth

Which sparkles and which flames

In the life fire.

Birch, clear and always soft tree,

Your bark is light

And your flesh is white

Like that of a girl

Whose hair flutters in the wind

In the shade of the thickets .

Beech, strong but always flexible tree

Like the young man

To whom your wood provides

Weapons and tools

And even the beechnut oil with which he will anoint

His muscles and his kidneys!

And you, elm

With calm and dense shade

You are wood with which we make

The house beams

And the cart wheels

Glory to you!

And you, apple tree

Of which fruits during the whole winter

Speak us about Spring

And once cut

Show us the flower which conceived them!

Glory to you!

To you also chestnut

Chestnut our blood

Of which nutritive fruits

Sparkle in the embers,

Of which resistant wood

Furnishes our residences

Glory to you!

O Dervus, genius of the Oak Church!

Venerated sanctuary of gods and men

Superb oak, king oak

Give us your force

Cast on us your guardian shade

And speaks us about the gods.

Then the officiating druid beckons the spectators to come, because it is at this time that the ritual passage between the flames is to take place, from the west towards the east.

The participants go one by one between two of the fires which were lit by the priestess acting as Lady Brigit and come to join them.

While the officiating druid officiating recites the lay of the fire of Belenus.

Ö Belenos

Protect us today

Protect us

During the day which comes!

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Protect the scientist and his studies

The craftsman and his tools

The farmer and his plow!

Protect the ways

And fords as well as the bridges

Which make us able to visit our friends

But make them impassable

To our enemies!

Protect our homes as those who live under our roof

Protect our parents and our children

Our houses and our animals.

Protect and inspire our druids

Who need it certainly

May their works make us discover gods!

Grant to us courage

And unfailing friendship

Because it is in ordeals

That man recognizes his true friends.

Grant to us also health

So that this evening

While leaving us in your luminous glory

You leave us free healthy and happy

Like you found us at dawn!

Ison son bissiet!

It is here that usually the atioberta (offering) of the vervain and of the apples of Abellio takes place.

The conhospita presents to the officiating druid a basket filled with vervain and apples while saying…

There is in the ocean beyond the northern winds an island where no farming exists, except these of which nature takes care itself. The ground generates there everything as some grass, and dispenses abundant harvests in covered with fruit forests.

In this island north of the world, in the middle of a clearing in the forest, there is a stone temple.

From this temple people distinguish the mountains that there are on the moon. Our Apollo to us comes back every nineteen years there in order to play rote (harp), and to dance under the stars , from the vernal equinox until the rising of the Pleiades constellation.

The officiating druid takes one of the bits of vervain and fixes it in his belt in his bouget (sporran), then he takes an apple, cuts it into two and eats it. The basket is then presented to everybody by the conhospita on duty, in the usual direction.

It is then only that may begin the choreography of the birds carried out by crowned with flowers Namnetes girls dancing on sacred harp tune 4).

For that they make verses in old Celtic and translations in language of the country, alternating.

After each verse in old Celtic of the officiating druid, for example, the translation by the judge of the Tradition.

People sing or therefore recite…

Cintusma Giamoni, Cana peiteto

Ro suaria rotlio esti

Canont nesalcoi lanon loidion

Apo lagenat greinos tanon candon.

May first smiles us

What a beautiful season

The blackbirds sing

As soon as the sun casts its least ray.

Gariet croudios ac dannios cuucos

Esti uocania suarii sami

Dosediet senios serban

La beiat ganscones caldi.

The cuckoo calls

Hail summer which comes

It calms the bitterness of the storm

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Which broke the tree branches.

Cerbat samos suuailicon spruton

Saeget luatos graegos lindon

Letati uota bruca

Uorberiti uanos uoltos uindu.

The summer dries up the rivers

Horses seek water

Heather invades moor

The foliage grows in a bright way.

Uxsberont sceilontes blaccoi spetetos

Ambireteti reno ridiu retu

Uolegeti salantia (mori) in sopnon

Togeietr blotiebo bitu.

Hawthorn buds spout out

The Ocean falls asleep

The sea enters sleep

The world is covered with flowers.

Beront bicoi (becca nertis)

Caito bliniebo pautebo bongon blotion

Beret alaman bennicos

Adberet sodian satin.

Bees gather the pollen of flowers

Mountains house again cattle

And bear rich pastures.

Sennonti caldi senmonu

Comcoret ceuelia slanon sedon

Diexcartati tena ulua com denguos

De lindoni lanu loccu.

Woods resound with music

Their melody calm us

Dust disappeared

Just like the mist of the abounding in water lake.

Labaret trenos tragnos

Canet ardua ac glanis riiatro

Ualentiet do tepsmei tondnei

Adtaneti lucariion (secscion) loidos.

The water rail recovered word

The waterfall

Sing its joy of being free

The swishing of the rush began again.

Lingont uenaloi uesuo

Ambisediet croudia senmo croucas

Uorberit meios meita medta

Coreietr brecca (salar) bedu-de.

The swallows leap in the sky

Music goes up from the hills

A beautiful harvest grows in the fields

The trout leaps.

Loudet brigo uirion

Ogia esti bodio bration brigonion

Cana esti pepion caldion calro

Cana pepa mara ac mata magosia.

Men recovered their strength

Forces and virtues triumph again

Woods recovered their splendor

Plains recovered their beauty.

Meldacca rotlio esti

Excingit garbos auentos giami

Gleiva uida, toratica tondna

Ollios sedos, subiiacos samos.

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The season is pleasant

The wind of winter left

Forest shines,

Water is full of fish

Peace reigns, the summer will be merry.

Sodeieti elua etnion

In iatu in ioi biiesit bana

Rugtu cluetr in gortu glastu

In ioi braton esti gleion glaston.

A troop of birds landed

On the field the girl has just left

You hear mooing in the

Shining with greenery meadows.

Mara gritu, ambiraedontes epoi

Ambisrnontion stretet slugos

Ro-suarion raton cilistarion

Auri silistarion ueida.

Horses run a little everywhere

Here and there are round dances

Pond overflows

Wild iris shines like gold.

Garmen ardeti uanon uiron

Uadalos uocanet uptu

Uedos (esti) ambicanontos

Cintusman Giamoni, canan peitonin.

The man without courage is afraid by the least cry

But those who have constancy sing with all their heart

The larks sing

May first smiles us

Nert dé agus andé. Awen!

End of the canticle. People organize a frugal meal on the spot, a fraternal meal where all the provisions are shared. Wild boar or pork (the animal of science and sovereignty reserved for Belisama and Abellio), cabbages, fresh milk and curdled milk, ale, bread.

The dessert is a pancake which the queen of May will divide and distribute to the men and the women of our community,to the sat at table fellow countrymen and fellow countrywomen.

The officiating druid blesses the meal by making on him the sign of the cross of Suqellus (i.e., an X); three fingers of the right hand stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger).

Upwards on the right: “By the strength of Abellio.”

Downwards but on the left: “By the strength of Abaris.”

Upwards on the left: “By the strength of Belenus.”

Downwards but on the right this time: “By the strength of Brigindo.”

May this meal be blessed!

Nert dé agus andé

May the force be with it!

Sunartiu!

The ambact having to play the part of the king of the festival will offer then to the girl of his choice a may ; i.e., some foliage or flowers (for example some lily of the valley), gathered especially for her and in her honor, while reciting her the following lay…

Iaccitos te

Tree of Abellio

Of which the fruits cut into two

Evoke the flower

In which we were conceived.

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Hail!

Iaccitos te,

Blessed island of Avalon

Of which the fruits in winter

Remind us of the joys of summer

Hail!

The girl thus designated becomes the queen of the ceremony and therefore is awarded with a white crown, a little like that of the bride. This tradition of the queen of May symbolizes the spring released from the powers of winter. The May queen thus crowned, distributes, possibly, the flowers or the fruits, with the assistance of other young girls in flowers. As fires decline, the Judge of the Tradition gathers ashes and embers of them so that all is well burned.

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The rites of the day after Beltene begin with the ostension, processionnaly, of the worship objects of the community: hiera in the Greek mysteries 2). People bring to the sound of bagpipes, harps (rotes) or horns (cornyx) the sacred objects: labarum, ensign with a wild boar, the sword of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd, the arrow of Abarix, the apple tree to be planted, for the circumstance, and so on.

The members of the sodality, after having put on their ceremony clothes in an adapted place, for example a sacristy of the sacrarium type start begin by coming in procession to form the sacred circle; at the place where the apple tree will be planted; i.e., between the ashes of the two fires of the day before; either it is outside in full nature around an uxonabelcon or a central point carefully selected for this purpose in the countryside, or inside a sanctuary around its cella , or inside a temple in its cella , even inside the semicircle shaped apse if the plan is of the basilica type. If it is a roofed sanctuary, this one is to contain in its center in front of altar overhanging the sacrifice pit, a large barrel filled with earth intended to welcome the tree to be planted.

With by order of seniority priestesses and high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) leading the procession, the celebrating person in the middle.

Then the gutuaters/gutumaters with in the middle four ambacts carrying the tree to be planted, the vates, with the Judge of the Tradition and his high voulge brandished like a Swiss halberd; finally the veledae or the ambact carrying the shovel or the pickaxe.

The procession comes if possible from the east to the selected place and rounds thrice ritually sunwise. A little like in the case of the tawaf around the Kaaba in Mecca, nakedness missing.

The participants being in their place; the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) in the east facing the west, the gutuaters/gutumaters in north facing the south, the vates in the west facing the east, the veledae in the south facing the north; the vate acting as Judge of the Tradition moves towards the sacred center to salute the officiating druid with his voulge, brandished as a Swiss halberd, and makes a sign to the ambact playing the part of King of the Country.

The King of the Country turns then towards the north, sounds cornyx and asks the ambact representing this part of the parish…

- In the north, country of Abellio, is there peace?

- Yes in the north, country of Abellio and Abarix, there is peace! the ambacts representing this region answer.

The King of the Country turns then towards the east, sounds cornyx, and asks the ambact representing this part of the parish…

- In the east is there peace?

- Yes in the east there is peace! the ambacts representing this part of his fiefdom.

The king of the country turns then to the south, sounds cornyx and asks the ambact representing this part of the parish.

- In the south is there peace?

- Yes in the south there is peace! The ambacts representing this district answer.

The King of the Country turns then to the west, sounds cornyx, and asks the ambact representing this part of the parish…

- In the west is there peace?

- Yes in the west there is peace! the ambacts representing this part of the country answer.

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The audience makes the sign of the Celtic warrior then. i.e., with their right fist firmly closed , they beat several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) their breast , as if they hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

The Judge of the Tradition begins resumes while speaking the officiating druid…

O high-knower , a company came on the Slemain Mide of N… (name of the place) a company walking with… (name of the first sacred object: labarum, lance, cladibo, etc.).

The officiating druid : may they be welcome!

Another company came on the Slemain Midé of N… (name of the place) with… (name of the second sacred object: shield, or other).

And so on until the Judge of the Tradition enumerated in this way all the ritual objects of the community of the dagolitoi or believers present at these fires of Bel (lance of Lug, labarum, the sword of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd, etc.). Not forgetting the apple tree to be planted, of course.

The officiating druid then makes a small circle traced by the Judge of the Tradition with the tip of his voulge, in the site just in front of the vate where the tree will be planted.

Then he makes a sign to the ambacts carrying the apple tree to come, in order to place himself in the sovereignty center of the circle.

He also beckons to whom carries the shovel or the pickaxe or quite simply a voulge, to come to join them, in order to finish the hole (possibly).

Dressed with his white cowl, his feet carefully washed but bare feet, or at the very least while wearing no synthetic product around his feet (only leather wood or wool); the officiating druid comes to help them to plant the tree of May then adds these some words…

The ritual of the fires of Belenos and Belisama being placed under the sign of the freedom, we plant here the world tree symbolizing this victory. By the sacred name of Abellio, in front of you O freedom tree, world tree, we bend down.

The audience bends down or goes down on bended knee.

The officiating druid orders clearly and audibly…

Plant the apple tree!

Then the ambacts install the tree to be planted: in the hole which was dug as a preliminary or in the pot which was laid out as a preliminary, between the ashes of the three hearths of the day before.

The officiating druid during this time recites the lay following.

This tree, its roots dig deeply into the heart of the ground and its summit rises up to the sky. This freedom tree some men of the black spears wanted, and still want, to cut down it. But if this tree is uprooted or broken , then the whole world will collapse.

By Trefuilngid Tre Eochair

By the triple lord of the three keys

In the sacred clearing

In the protecting shade of the oak in Mughna,

Noblest of the trees.

To you Hornunnos our friend

I entrust the protection of the nature which surrounds us

And which sustains us.

O White Stag with golden horns

Protect it from stains

From speculators,

From greedy and mercantile traders

From merchants of every kind

From inefficient farmers

From reckless alchemists.

Because science without conscience

Is but the ruin of the soul.

Cure it from its wounds

So that we can find it intact

And to preserve it thus for our children.

For the rest of the spirit of our brothers the oaks

That men cut down and that men burn, Let-us pray.

For our brothers the beeches

That men tear off and that men murder, Let-us pray.

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For the elms

That men mutilate and uproot, Let-us pray

Yes, let us pray!

Let us pray for our brothers yews and birches,

Resting place of our ancestors,

And for all the trees that mankind murders. Awen!

The prayer having been said, and on a sign of the officiating druid, the King of the Country turns then towards north, sounds cornyx and asks the ambact representing this part of the parish…

In north is there now science and peace?

- Yes, in north there are science and peace now! the ambact representing the North of the parish answers.

New playing cornyx by the King of the Country who continues while turning towards the other cardinal point…

“In east is there now wealth and peace ?

- Yes, in east there are wealth and prosperity as peace now! the ambact representing the east of the parish answers.

Third sounding by the King of the Country who asks the south…

- In south is there art music and peace now?

- Yes, in south there are art and music and peace now! the concerned ambact answers.

Last sounding finally of the King of the Country who asks the west…

- In west is there force and peace now?

- Yes, in west there are force and peace now! the ambact of the west answers.

All come back to their place while swiveling sunwise on the right, high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), veledae, vates and gutuaters/gutumaters

The officiating druid undoes the sacred circle by traveling from the inside in the opposite direction. The circle may then be broken.

The ceremony continues in theory with the general meeting of the sodality. If possible in a mecca similar to the montsalvatge described in the adventures of our lord of Muitrhemne: Cuchulainn.

It is there that from everywhere may come those who have questions to ask to the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht). It is there too, in this circumstance, on the death of the previous one, that is elected the new Primate inter pares. Neither quarrels nor violence must break out there.

The general meeting begins with the ritual of the cladibo (sword) of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd.

The ambact who assumes the role of lector places himself , with his sword brandished, as leader of the procession coming to the place where the general meeting is to be held.

It is to be if possible a celicnon i.e., a room closed with,in its center, either a round table or some tables laid out in a circle.

In front of the entrance, the ambact who assumes the role of lector draws then in space, with the tip of the cladibo, three small circles.

During this time, behind him, the officiating high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht), reads the text of the ordinance of the druids…

“ May every member of the sodality attend this oenach. If somebody causes quarrel or violence there, may Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd with his sword cut an end of his coat to him, in order to bring back him to one’s sense.

The purpose of this assembly is to remind about or to modify the rules of the sodality, to determine the rights and duties of each one, to approve the recording of the files.

The fellow country man or the fellow countrywoman, the man or the woman of our community, who will transgress this rule or these decisions, and who will make himself thus guilty of elude, will be banished from the community. This elutached will lose all his rights in the sodality and whoever will support him in the same way. Any ritual celebration and any enthronement will be forbidden to him. Gods and men will owe no longer anything to him.”

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PRAYER OF THE WISE.

Uediiu-semi

O gods of Dana

Give me wisdom

With wisdom understanding,

With understanding great-sense

With great-sense great knowledge,

With great knowledge investigation

With investigation inquiry

With inquiry learning

With learning meditation

With meditation the scrutiny of everything

With the scrutiny of everything the poetry of the life.

Nert dé agus andé.

Awen!

I call to order the general meeting X (… druidic year in the calendar of Coligny) of the sodality, year X (… calendar year) of the common era.

Everyone takes a seat around the Round table of the celicnon (in the grianon) and the ambact acting as lector puts down the cladibo (the sword of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd) in front of the officiating druid, its pommel turned towards him. If necessary, and to bring back a little calm, the officiating druid will be allowed to knock the table with it (with the pommel) by three times or more.

Formerly, the ambact playing the role of lector could even cut out with this cladibo pieces of the clothing of the disturbing elements, in order to calm them somewhat 5).

1) Vervain having become increasingly difficult to find it was replaced by the lily of the valley in the Middle Ages.

2) Hiera. Plural neutral of “hieron” = “sacred things.” Designates all the objects necessary to the worship of a deity within the framework of the mysteries. Example the bow and the quiver in the worship of Apollo in Delos.

3) Abarix (Abaris Hyperboreos in Plato) is a semi-legendary character mentioned by various authors of Greek Antiquity. Scythian or Hyperborean, he travels through the whole Greece, and makes himself especially admired by the Athenians. It was said that he had received from Apollo a flying arrow on which he crossed the airs, and the gift of prophecy. People also attributed to him very great knowledge in medicine, and Plato considers him as a master in the art of the incantations. It is therefore a representative of the wisdom of the Barbarians, whose the contemporaries of Herodotus began to become enamored, and of the mystical purifications, dear to the Orphics or to the Pythagoreans. Under his name many apocryphal works circulated, among other things expiatory forms, Scythian oracles, a prose theogony…

4) “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, Geography III, 4,16). This dance today is generally replaced by a chorale or by tunes of traditional music.

5) Strabo IV, 4,3: “If a man disturbs the speaker and heckles him, the lector or sergeant at arms approaches him with drawn sword, and with a threat commands him to be silent; if he does not stop, the lictor or the sergeant at arms does the same thing a second time, and also a third time, but at last cuts off enough of his cloak to make it useless for the future.”

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LUGNASADE.

(Oenach or obligatory festival.)

The festival in Tailtiu in Ireland, the Concilium Galliarum in France (in dialect “gulaust” ) is normally celebrated on July 31st . You may if you want, devote your summer holidays to it, that is to say the last 15 days of July and the 15 first days of August.

The lugnasade was also, of course, an oenach, i.e., an opportunity for various meetings. It was a question of honoring the work of craftsmen and artists, poets or musicians, from the whole world. At least of that which was known at the time by these populations obviously.

It is therefore easy to understand that the first official hagiographer of St. Patrick, Muirchu, is unleashed against it while parodying unintentionally the very pejorative “genus vatum medicorumque” by Pliny, “this race of vates and physicians.”

Was this Lugnasade or Samon (ios) ? In any event the names of Nebuchadrezzar and Babylon have nothing to do there. Therefore let us rectify for our readers the heinous propaganda of this Taliban (parabolanus) of Christianity.

Here for example how the fairs on the Gulaust took place in the year 40 of our era.

You saw there the Bretons with their ambers and their tinning more shining than silver, the Aquitanians from Cahors with their feather mattresses, the Belgians with their coarse wool fabrics, the Germanic people with their salted meats, the Spaniards with their well-tempered weapons. The flax and hemp fabrics from the north of Gaul, the red pottery with which Cisalpine inundated the whole Europe, the fine oils of Provence, the full-bodied or pitched wines from Narbonese and from the valley of the Rhone; formed true warehouses sheltered under gigantic sheds built on the banks of the confluence. A fleet of boats, rafts, of every shape, every origin; was moored to the shore, encumbering the various arms of the river which curved between the islands; and formed as a second floating town, a town much noisier than the official city staged on the hill. A variegated crowd spread out on the bank, covered with shacks, in which the products of the whole world were displayed; a cosmopolitan market in which the exchanges were done either in-kind, or with precious metals and some coins from all the origins bearing all the effigies. The Phoenicians brought there their dyed fabrics and their glassware which competed with the products of local manufacture.

In Ireland this festival of the beginning of August (gulaust or mouth of August in dialect) was supposed to have been instituted by the god Lug himself; in Tailtiu, in memory of his feeding mother, the Belgian goddess or fairy Talantio (Gaelic Tailtiu, today Teltown in the county of Meath); Irish symbol of the Mother-Earth being equivalent to the goddess or fairy, if this word is preferred, Rosemartha, on the Continent. This Gulaust or Mouth of August seems to have been especially a royal festival. The king chaired in it horse races indeed, as well as poetic spars. All that occurred under the patronage of a mother goddess who, according to the myth, died in order to guarantee prosperity to her many children. It is therefore probable that in this circumstance some funeral games representing the great primordial myths were performed, a little like the mystery plays of the medieval religious theater, each one playing one’s role in this generalized confrontation of the involved Forces.

Necessary props or hiera.

Vouge. Dagger. Red cloth. White cloth. Mistletoe. A gigantic cauldron. Horse meat and beef. Stake built with the seven varieties of tree ready to be kindled. Braziers or candles. A horn of aurochs for the

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drink offerings. A voluntary girl to lead the procession equipped like a Valkyrie. A storm lamp. A Lance. A bullfighter and his team. Bagpipes. Hunting horns. Harps. The sacred objects of the Community. A bull for the bull races . A white mare. Food: spring water bread ale mead.

The members of the priestly brotherhood (sodality) must to gather in the place devoted for this purpose; i.e., a town dedicated to Lug like Carlisle (ex Luguvalium), Leyde in the Netherlands (ex Lugdunum Batavorum), Legnica/Liegnitz in Poland (in Silesia), Lucunanta in Moesia and so on… In the event of impossibility, the rites of the assembly held in honor of the adoptive mother of Lug may be celebrated elsewhere; on the condition to have then a very particular thought for the town of Lug, and to be united by the heart and the mind with the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), past or present, of this place.

The torch passes from hand to hand

When death took it from one

Nearest takes it over

The relay continues.

Time passes and nobody asks

How long each one will carry the torch

What it is necessary simply it is that it shines

And that a sparkling and pure

Heart burns with him.

Here is most important.

May it clearly shine

In the darkness before us

The others wait.

We will thus carry it with us too

This torch.

Nert dé agus andé.

Awen!

Every good self-respecting Celtic hearted and minded person must celebrate Lugnasade, in one of these cities founded by Lug, at least once in one’s life. Just like every good Muslim must go at least once into Mecca during his life.The ritual in memory of the Gallic Fir Bolg princess having acted as a mother for Lug begins with a general meeting of all the Celtic people. Each present person must indicate from which area he comes ; from the country of Arthur, from the country of the Eduans , from the country of Merlin (Scotland) from the country of the Santones, from the country of noiba Brigit (the green Erin) from the country of the Petrocorii, from the country of Arganthonios (i.e., Tarshish or Tartessos in Spain) from the country of the Arverni, from the country of Bellovesus, Sigovesus, Ambicatus, etc.

The purpose of this general meeting of the cities is to contribute to making better know themselves the brothers and sisters brought together in this place, and therefore to oblige everyone to make historical research efforts.

It may be increased to other formerly Celtic countries, in memory of the former contract signed with the gods, or at least increased to formerly Celtized countries; like Danemak and Turkey.

This council is therefore a very widely opened festival. Everyone may take part in it. The mood is to be friendly, the warriors must come there without weapons, without useless quarrel: it is a divine truce.

This gathering of all the tribes is done in a place especially arranged for this purpose called (according to my Parisian pen-friends) Amphitheater of the four Celticas; a territory, among the Celts, being always divided into four, with a central area. See the Galatian constitution. The Romans, of course, each time disorganized all this sacred geography, in fact, by reducing to three the number of the concerned districts, what means no longer something from the point of view of the symbolic system.

Everyone being come, all the tribes of Europe being there, the Primate of the Celticas or the officiating druid, facing the audience (the delegates of these tribes) recites the following traditional lay…

O Rosemartha Mother of the Celts

Who takes care of our land

The land of the Middle

Bless our pastures and our fields

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Protect our corn

Protect our herds;

May the milk prove to be abundant

And scented

As well as the tome cheese of our mountain pastures;

Bless the seed in the ground

And the fruit in the flower.

May our fields be enough

To feed our multitude

So that it remains worthy of gods!

Ison son bissiet!

Sons of gods and grandsons of gods my brothers, men and women of our community, fellow countrymen, fellow countrywomen, oyez, oyez, oyez; if the gods preferred you to the other nations, there is a reason, it is not by chance. Celts my brothers, always remain worthy of this royal priesthood. Do like our great monarch Ambicatus. Take charge without hesitating the cause of those who are oppressed. Like the soldur knights of your ancestors, have profoundly the sense of equity, of law and right, of honor, and of justice.

Do not tolerate people break their word. It is not greater crime against the spirit than to let without doing something injustice and hubris triumphing. Because your geis to you, Celtic ladies and knights, as members of the consecrated nation, it is here.

Like Ambicatus be good and generous. Never forget the widow and the orphan, the oppressed peoples and nations. If to help them, the force of your arms is needed, do not hesitate. Honor and dignity are not bargained, they are conquered. And freedom is not a gift (of the gods), but a fight of every moment. Never accept a dishonoring peace, because you would have then war and dishonor.To die weapons in hand for a right cause is more than a sacrifice for a true-hearted and minded Celt , it is a consecration. The soldur knights of your ancestors, when they had friends, shared with them all the goods of the life; but if they perished, they had, or to share their fate, or to kill themselves. And from memory of Celt, nobody was seen refusing to die in such circumstances.

To leave the oppressed nations and peoples to their sad fate, the widows and the orphans, the victims of the injustice, even and especially in a desperate plight; what is much done today nevertheless is unworthy of a true knight of the Round Table.

A fo ben, bid bont

The duty of kings, the duty of the leaders, it is to make the interest of their people coming first.

He who would be a leader, let him be a bridge

The duty of kings, the duty of the leaders, it is the truth.

The duty of kings, the duty of the leaders, it is the intellectual and moral integrity.

The duty of kings, the duty of the leaders, it is to have the sense of honor

And not to be servile.

The duty of kings, the duty of the leaders, it is generosity.

The duty of kings, the duty of the leaders, it is Selflessness.

Such is your only privilege, such is your challenge in this world, such is the duty which ennobles you and makes you different, which makes you the salt of the land, its race of kings or great soldiers; O hearted and minded Celts.Nert dé agus andé.

Awen!

At this point in time can begin the bull feast (tarbhfess) itself. A bull having the look and the shape of an aurochs, but white, vigorous and nimble, sparing in its herd neither man nor animal.

The urus hunter who will sacrifice the animal enters the pit (the amphitheater or the arena) and salutes the officiating druid, who chairs the ceremony. His right hand raised, his three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger ),

Awen primate of the four Celticas,

Nert dé agus andé

The one who is about to fight the bull salutes you.

I swear to seek only beauty, glory, and Celtism

I swear to remain faithful to the true spirit

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Of the true Celtic tradition.

I swear to be the worthy and authentic heir

To the Science and philosophy of the islands in Hyperborea

Or located north of the World:

Thule, Abalum, Gorre and Ogygia the green island

To our elder of the time of the independent and free Great Celltica.

To the last druid of the court of the great Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill

According to Urard Mac Coise

To the Reformation of Sean Eoghain Ui Thuathallain na Leabhar

To the Reformation of Henry Lizeray.

Or of his comarbae.

I not only swear to support and defend the true Celtic Tradition and the Celtic spirit, but also to develop them again and to spread the light of them everywhere.

I finally swear to respect our sodality, his Primate inter pares, his rule and his customs.

May the luminous and peaceful deities move away from me the infernal legion of the dusii and of the anguipedIic wyverns (these giants who are called Andernas or Fomore) as all the other under-gods of the ices of the non-world!

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Adge saveliu,

Luxnei, divu ac nuxtu

Etic ollebo cactiebo nemetos etic talamunos

Toaretudiet pennei mei nemes

Dlogieti talamu con maru critonu

Ringiet gala

Losciet mene aedis

Adtanet gormoceidt omori are talu dumni

Au mon oiton ponc delco

Ac in gascarian ate caedo.

By the sacred ensigns of our battalions

May be no longer a roof over my head

May my parents close their door in my face

May my children close their door in my face

If I do not keep this promise.

The aurochs hunter who will fight the bull made then in front of everybody the sign of the pagan warrior. i.e., fist firmly closed right, it strikes several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) the heart, as if one ran up against of an unspecified lance an invisible shield.

The officiating druid consecrates then a branch of mistletoe by engraving above (Lepontic) Celtic runes with his dagger (his cladibo) or with his pruning knife.

As soon as the golden bough touched the ground, some herdsmen release the bull out from the bull pen.

This sacrifice of the bull or tarbhfess comprises two main variants.

- The Volcae Tectosages and Celtiberian rite, born in fact somewhere in the Hercynian silva.

In the lands of the Volcae, Rauraci or Nemetes , tribes, hunting for the aurochs was indeed a means for the young warriors of becoming hardened and of training themselves. They took them in pits in which young people jumped to face the animal, the sword in their hand. (Caesar. B.G. Book VI, 28).

In the Celtiberian rite , the aurochs hunter who kills the bull can keep the horns for him if the druid chairing the ceremony as Primate of the four Celticas gives him the permission to do it (by showing a white linen, that which was used for the mistletoe for example).

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Then craftsmen will garnish their edges, with a circle of silver and they will use them as cups (to drink).

If the gladiator in question, in this funeral game in the memory of the Fir Bolg princess called Rosemartha on the Continent, or Tailtiu in Ireland; on the contrary is killed by the bull; his soul/mind goes directly to heaven to join that of the foster mother of Lug.

Note: the red fabric held up by the officiating druid means, lap of honor for the corpse of the animal who fought well.

- The Galician or Galatian rite.

In the Galatian or Galician ritual, there is not or there is no longer killing of the bull.

People select only a termagant (a tarvos trigaranos) i.e., a bull whose horns are for the first time equipped with balls. On his forehead as a superb cockade, people fix to him an additional bronze horn, from where his name: tarvos trigaranos (what produced tervagant or termagant).

The herdsmen on horseback with their three-pronged fork drive the animal out of the bull pen, and the young men must then, alone and without weapons, chase him for removing it from him.

This difference between the two rites (the Celtiberian and the Galician one) comes from the fact that the Volcae trapped aurochs (in a pit) and that the Galicians, themselves, hunted him on horseback horse with some three-pronged forks (lances, pikes).

OTHER RITES.

Reworking of the author. The girl from Arles who is a member of my pen friends points out to me that as regards the theatrical side and the staging, the most spectacular (there Shakespeare is soundly beaten) are the Camargue bull fights and that they are also the oldest ones since the race of "biou" in question is already mentioned in writings dating from Roman Antiquity and figured in the form of a statuette found in Saint-Remy de Provence (the three horned bull dating from the 1st century).

DULY NOTED. But this is similar in that case to the bull-leaping known in Crete since the Bronze Age and to the current Landes bull fight in France or to the Recortadores bull fights in Spain (unlike the Camargue razetor who removes cockades, tassels and strings, the Spanish recortador threads rings on the horns of the bull, the goal being to put as many rings as possible).

The 2nd act of this Great Council of Lug is more complex.

At the appointed time, and the bull feast finished, each one goes to the nemeton where is to be burning the perpetual fire in the honor of the Gallic Fir Bolg princess who acted as a mother for Lug (Rosemartha on the Continent, Tailtiu in Ireland therefore); since such is the case in every self-respecting city of Lug.

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If the Lugnasade takes place in the Lugdunum of the confluence, it is the basilica built on the site of the old pagan temple in the island of the Canabae, the nemeton of Ainos/Ainay.

The columns supporting the cupola of its choir are indeed these of the altar of the Four Celticas of our ancestors. It should be noticed also that this church also uses Celtic capitals with interlacing, coming from the barbarian island, particularly for his baptistry and the northern door of its chapel St Martin (ramparts street in Ainay). As one arrives in the basilica, each one will go around the syenite columns of the altar ; while crossing clockwise the provided transept and ambulatory; while sprinkling with water from the Rhone and the Saone River, each time, the aforementioned columns, which succeeded the trees of the forme nemeton.

According to the legend, the Cers bad winds in the valley are then driven out by a more favorable wind.

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As we have had already the opportunity to say it, the fire of Lug being perpetual, there is always to be at least a flame in a large sanctuary dedicated to his name.

A first small circumambulation (deisil, deiseil, deiseal, in Irish, tawaf in Arabic in Mecca) having been performed beforehand around the aforementioned perpetual fire; each one undertakes then a second round , while lighting by the way a candle in front of each column.

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Each one then may undertake the third stage of this sacred circumambulation; namely to entrust to the flame of the torches or braziers, a message for the genius of this heavenly city dedicated to Lug, like Carlisle, Leyden in the Netherlands, Legnica/Liegnitz in Poland… Letters on tablets of bark so that they can be better consumed, therefore to deliver thus the wishes in question.

This being finished, each one withdraws after having kissed the base of the columns of the altar of the four Celticas 1) which succeeded the trees of the form times. And after having made the pagan sign of druidic cross.

i.e., with their right fist firmly closed , they beat several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) their breast, as if they hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

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Then gathering outside the sanctuary (in front of the basilica St Martin in Ainay therefore if it is the Lugdunum located at the confluence of the Rhone and of the Saone River); in order to prepare oneself to the climbing towards the temple of Lug located on the hill; because every shrine of Lug by definition is a grianon located on a hill.

Non-forgetting the termagant or tervagan (tarvos trigaranos) survivor from the fight against the aurochs hunter in the arena (or another); and the riding valkyrie carrying the flame of Lug at the end of a tribann (of a lance), to lead the march on her white horse. Not a she rider covered with armor like the Joan of Arc dear to the hearts of our Parisian pen-friends, but rather like the famous heroin in Coventry, less nakedness 2).

Prayers or canticles depending on circumstances, before the departure and during it, labarum and other sacred objects leading the procession.

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If the procession takes place in Carlisle for example, the participants may repeat what follows.

From a town in Canutes Forest ,

A girl shall be sent to remedy these matters by her healing art.

She shall dry up our noxious springs

Simply by breathing on them.

The Virgo shall climb on back of Sagittarius and so let droop its maiden blossoms

Tears shall flow from her eyes.

Next, when she has restored her own strength by some miraculous drink,

She shall carry the Forest of Caledonia in her right hand,

And in her left the buttressed forts of the walls of London.

Wherever she passes she shall leave sulfurous footprints

The smoke from them will stir up the Ruteni

And will provide food for the creatures who live in the sea.

Sweet apple tree of crimson color,

Crowing, concealed, in the wood of Caledonia

Though men seek your fruit, their search is vain,

Till the Cadwaladyr comes from the warriors meeting.

Victorious Cymry, glorious their leader,

All shall how their rights again,

All brave men rejoice, sounding joyful horns.

Chanting songs of happiness and peace!

Before the child, bright and bold,

The Anglo-Saxons shall flee, and bards will flourish.

The ignoramus buys some shoes and also some patches

But Merlin laughed at since the poor man will not be able to use the shoes nor the patches,

Since he is already drowned in the waves and is floating towards the shore.

N.B. Lug is indeed the patron saint of the shoemakers.

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If the procession takes place in the Lugdunum located at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone ; it endeavors then to go through the bridge, from the top of which people threw formerly the termagant or tervagan (the tarvos trigaranos: from the way in which the ox whirled in water, they could draw all kinds of lessons); then through the former street Ecorche-boeuf , where its meat was distributed to the poor people, before arriving to the enclosure of Lug itself, on the top of the hill.

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Third act of Lugnasade: the sacrifice of the horse, the fire and the gigantic meal on the hill of Lug (the place located in front of Our-Lady of Fourviere and its terrace if it is the Lugdunum located at the confluence of the Rhone and of the Saone River).

The stake will have to be able to support the weight of a gigantic cauldron and to make its contents cook. The whole with the seven traditional varieties of tree: fir, birch, beech, elm, chestnut, oak, apple tree. The varieties of tree which it is not easy to find may exceptionally be replaced by a wild rose (or a rose), or a drink offering of mead made with an aurochs horn.

The perpetual flame must be brought by a she rider (or a he- rider) at the end of a lance of Lug (tribann) riding a white filly, and coming from the nemeton where was held the first part of the ritual.

People bring to the sound of bagpipes, harps (rotes), or horns (cornyx), the various ritual sacred objects. Labarum, ensign with a wild boar, lance of Lug, or others.

If the ceremony is to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or arranged. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with an equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” a suffix of feminine adjective.

Or then, it has to be a plan of the Pantheon type i.e., a large rotunda, separated as regards the inside, by a kind of choir; preceded by a large rectangular room (pronaos) with a transitional building matching the portico of the old with a palisade Celtic sanctuaries; or the triumphal gate marking the entrance of the cemetery of the Breton parish closes; even the portal of certain Romanesque churches. At the end of the 11th century indeed, the carved decoration took place on the frontage of churches, in order to announce symbolically the passage of the secular world to the sacred enclosure. People will bring consequently much care to the ornamentation of the main frontage which acquires thus an unknown hitherto characteristic of monumentality. The artists do not have yet, of course, all the wanted experience in the handling of the chisel. They give to faces strange expressions, with bulging eyes, arched eyebrows. The characters have often false proportions, stiff attitudes. If they are plants or animals which are used as ornamentation patterns for the moldings, the capitals, we find again there the Celtic influence in the distortion of reality to come up at fantastic types, very far away from nature: these extraordinary representations, ewes, woman-headed quadrupeds, dragons, chimeras , adopted by the first Christian artists, had ended up meeting the popular beliefs 3).

The members of the sodality begin by coming in procession to form the sacred circle around the stake supporting the gigantic cauldron, either it is outside on a place or a square in front of a church , or inside a temple in its cella.

With by order of seniority priestesses and high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), the officiating member in the middle. Just behind him the conhospita carrying the bread, and the ale in its horn, then

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an ambact carrying a torch, then the gutuaters/gutumaters and a second torch bearer, the vates, with a third ambact torch bearer; lastly, the veledae with the fourth and last torch bearer.

The procession comes if possible from the east to the chosen place and go ritually three times around the gigantic cauldron. A little like in the case of the tawaf around the Kaaba in Mecca, but less nakedness.

Participants being in their place; the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) in the east facing the west, gutuaters ou gutumaters in north facing the south, the vates in the west facing the east, the veledae in the south facing north; the vate acting as Judge of the Tradition moves towards the sacred center of sovereignty to salute the officiating druid with his voulge, brandished, as a halberd , and beckons the ambact playing the part of herald.

The herald.

- In north is there now science?

- No, in north there is no longer science ! the ambact representing the North answers.

New playing cornyx by the herald who continues while turning towards the other cardinal point…

“In east is there now wealth ?

- No, in east there is no longer wealth! the ambact representing the east of the fiefdom answers.

Third sounding by the herald who asks…

- In south is there art now?

- No, in south there is no longer art now! the concerned ambact answers.

Last sounding finally of the herald who asks the west…

- In west is there strength now?

- No, in west there is no longer strength now! the ambact of the west answers.

The vate acting as Judge of the Tradition finds himself again facing the officiating druid, to the east, and adds….

O high-knower , a company came to the Slemain Mide of N. (name of the place) a company walking with… (name of the first sacred object: labarum, lance, cladibo, etc.)

The officiating druid : may they be welcomed!

Another company came to the Slemain Mide of N. (name of the place) with… (name of the second sacred object: shield or other).

And so on until the Judge of the Tradition enumerated in this way all the ritual objects of the dagolitoi or believers attending this Lugnasade. Then he asks….

- Close to Arar is the mount Lugdunum. Lugdunum, from where comes this name?

The officiating druid…

- It is not difficult O dalta!

Momorus and Atepomarus came in this place to found their city there after being driven out from their premises by the tyrant named Seseroneus . Momorus who was a good soothsayer , called the place Lugdunum, since raven is said lugos in Celtic language and hill dunon.

That occurred, two thousand five hundred years ago. The grave of Rosemartha is under the arenas of the confluence where she died while ensuring, by her sacrifice, the perenniality of her people.

On her death Lug organized for her games like we never had seen similar ones , and he ordered us to make in the same way each year.

“There is also another famous grave not far away, that of Mariccus our last great prophet. Our son of the star to us 3). In the year 2441 of our era (68 of the common era), the gutuater Mariccus, a priest of Hornunnos, tried to stir the common people up, against the Roman tyranny. Denounced to the authorities by some public figures of the town of Augustodunum 4), taken and imprisoned, he was given to the wild beasts in the amphitheater of the four Celticas. But the animals turned away from him, enthralled by his glance. And as the crowd began to revolt, the emperor Vitellius made his throat cut . Mariccus is our third great martyr. It is to him we owe the cycle of the prophecies about the return of Ambicatus, because such is the historical destiny of the Celts: to be the people of the gods. We are a nation predestined for this: to be admodum dedita religionibus.”

The ambact symbolizing the eastern cities moves then with his torch towards the stake and proclaims…

- I am the prince Sigovesus, I come from the east, from the country of the Galatians.

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The ambact symbolizing the southern cities moves with his torch towards the stake and proclaims…

- I am the king Argantonius, I come from the south, from the country of Tarshish.

The ambact symbolizing the western cities moves with his torch towards the stake and proclaims:

- I am the riothamus ambrosius Artus and I come from the west, from the country of the Britanni.

The ambact symbolizing the northern cities moves then with his torch towards the stake and proclaims:

- I am the prince Calgacus, I come from the north, from the country of the Picts.

The officiating druid makes an offering of spring water poured and recites the traditional lay previous the kindling of the stake supporting the gigantic cauldron.

Men and women of our community , fellow country men, fellow countrywomen, oyez, oyez, oyez, let us pray so that next year we can still freely celebrate our sacred rites in the sanctuary of the four Celticas, in a free town; so that we can once again see the sun rising here between the syenite trees of the altar of the shrine of the confluence, in the middle of the bronze crowns of the winged victories of the sacred grove.Nert dé agus andé. Awen!

The she rider got on the white mare, with the perpetual flame at the end of her lance, goes around the sacred circle then, from outside; while giving each time to the four ambacts the flame with which they light their torch, the whole while starting from the north.

The operation once finished the officiating druid orders…

- Light the sacred fire!

The four ambacts come then to kindle the stake in front of them.

The officiating druid concludes.

“May all the called upon here powers return to their place now.

Lug in celestial fire

Rose-Martha in every time and places

Epona and Sabinus in the Other World

Hesus hanging in his tree

Mariccus in the world of gods.

May all the powers of the Past return to their place!

Men and women of our community,

Fellow countrymen, fellow countrywomen, oyez, oyez, oyez ,

Go in the peace of gods!

Peace up to the sky

Peace from earth to sky

Peace on the earth and under the heaven

Force and prosperity for everybody!

May all the powers return to their place! ”

Then he undoes the sacred circle by traveling it from the inside in the opposite direction.

THE SACRED HIEROGAMY.

At this point in time took place formerly the ritual which renewed the enthronement of the king of the kings of the area, and which guarantees thus the prosperity of all the country. Ritual which continued at least until the 13th century in Ireland.

The description was kept to us by Gerald of Wales , who presents it to us in the most unfavorable light possible (as a Welsh monk the latter hated all that was Irish).

Topographia hibernica III, 25. “There are some things which shame would prevent my relating unless the course of my subject required it. …. 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

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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” 5).

N.B. It goes without saying that such elements of the ritual of Lugnasade, confirmed in some remote areas of the Celtic world in the broad sense (nothing proves that they are well of Celtic origin) can no longer be perpetuated nowadays, not by prudishness, but for other obvious reasons. On the other hand, it is still possible to make a simulation of them (mount a mare and to hold up a sword, to organize a horse race, what would also be well in the spirit of these “Tailteann” games, and especially most important: to eat horse meat there this day, etc.).

In Ireland, according to the account of an eyewitness, reported by Frazer, there still existed at the end of the 19th century, a custom known as of the white horse (Gaelic Lair Bhan). During certain bonfires, people saw appearing, after everyone had jumped over embers; a wood figure summarily articulated, provided at one of its ends with the head of a horse and covered with a white cloth hiding the man who maneuvered it. The mask jumped over fire, then made pretense go into a pursuit of the spectators. When the witness who was not informed of the thing asked what this horse represented, people answered him: “The whole cattle! ” The horse was therefore well in this case a symbol of abundance and fertility.

Bread and ale are given by the conhospita to the officiating druid who makes a bread oblation by throwing one in fire; and an ale drink offering by pouring some of it close to the flames with a horn of aurochs ringed with silver.

The circle having been undone, as we said it, people organize on the spot at the places being able to lend itself to that, a frugal meal, a brotherly meal where all the supplies are divided, horse meat , broth, various fruits. Barrels of ale or mead are broached for the circumstance, so that each one can come to take there one’s fill.

As fire decreases, one gathers ashes and embers of it so that all is burned.

People also sing, late in the night, the barditus of the wine of the C’hallaoued and the barditus of the faithfulness (see the anmenacton, naming ceremony).

The day after Lug’s fire, everyone is to meet in a shrine still a little preserved from the concrete, but located within the limits of the urban area or not far from the city dedicated to Lug.

Barbe Island for example if the Lugnasade took place in the Lugdunum located at the confluence of the Saone and of the Rhone River.

In order to greet the sun there, by reciting the following lay, facing the light, eye of Lug.

O gods, O Lugoves Samildanacoi!

Let us have today a thought for the great ancestors who sacrificed themselves so that we live today 6).

In this land beaten by the waves of the life but which does not sink, solid and proud on its gneiss rock, where the ages piled up alluvium patiently; there was formerly the largest temple on the earth.

Our spiritual ancestors, the former high-knowers of the druidiaction, came to pray there before going to gather mistletoe in the country of the gentle daulphins 7), the land of those who come from elsewhere, the Allobroges. They left then this bedecked with gold and crimson island, the sixth day of the first moon of the year, then went into the forests, in order to seek the golden bough there.

1) A little as in the case of the tawaf around Meccas of course. Nevertheless for the true high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), there is not one kaaba but thousands, as many kaaba that remarkable holy places.

2)Less nakedness …. It goes without saying that our druidism regards in no way nudity in itself as a sin. Evil never comes from the fact that a man or a woman is naked, but from the looking at a naked

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man or woman (machismo, nymphomania, or other). It is certain that there exist Armorican coins having as pattern a naked she rider, armed only with a sword and a shield. What we want to say only by the way it is that time is no longer favorable to such a practice in the rituals, in spite of the beauty of the gesture. “The Man in natural state in front of his creator, without pretense nor trick.” And in any event, for the true high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), Godiva is the last echo of a myth relating to the goddess or good fairy, if this term is preferred, Epona, not the Gallic Fir Bolg princess who was the adoptive mother of Lug; moreover the naked riders of the Armorican coins represent the Morrigu/Morrigane.

3) According to the daughter of the author, Millicent, of Cuers, in Provence, it would be an allusion to Simon Bar Kokhba.

4) Note in connection with the legend which has it that Mariccus was denounced by Christians. If Christianity is demonstrated in Western Europe in Lugdunum about the year 150 (see the case of Pothinus), it had to exist before in the country, particularly in its “Montanist” form (some kinds of talibans of Christianity, called parabolani besides).

The Apostles would have sent seven their disciples or even a much greater number, to found some Churches to the Rhine. Some authors mention Valerius in Trier, Martial in Limoges, Austremonius in Clermont, Gratian or Gatian in Tours. They mention in the same way for the Rhenish countries, in Trier, Eucharius, of whom Valerius seems to have been only the successor, Crescens in Mainz (or Vienna), Maternus in Cologne, Clement in Metz. They also make the Church of Auxerre dating back to the apostolic time, as that of Perigueux, with the Bishop St. Front.

On the apostolate of St. Lazarus [in Marseilles and Autun. Editor’s note] of St. Magdalena and St. Martha in Provence [in Tarascon more precisely for St. Martha. Editor’s note] see Duchesne, Christian Origins, chapter XXVI. The author judiciously distinguishes : “St. Pothinus is the first bishop whose name was preserved. It does not necessarily mean he is the most former bishop or this country did not receive the light of the Gospel as of the time of the apostles. Another thing are the known facts, another thing the actual facts. Christianity is to be as old in this country as in the countries of similar geographical location, Africa for example” (Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte fur Studierende. France - X. Kraus. Volume I).

If we understand well the various traditions about this subject (and in particular the treatise on the Trinity which is today ascribed to St. Caesarius); there would have been therefore Christians in these countries as of the end of the 1st century of our era. “The city of Arles had St. Trophimus, a disciple of the apostles, as founder, that of Narbonne St. Paul, that of Tolosa St. Saturnin, that of Vaison St. Daphnus. These four disciples of the apostles founded Churches in all the country so that their see was never occupied by heretics” (Treatise on the Trinity ascribed to St. Caesarius).

5) This type of sacrifice was brought wrongly closer to the sacrifice of the horse or ashvamedha in former India. One or more white horses were left free to move at will , accompanied by a royal guard and sometimes by young people. If one of the rajahs whose estates were crossed by the horse seized the animal, it was the sign he refused to be the vassal of the king owner of the horse in question, and that was equivalent to a declaration of war. In the contrary case, the rajah who let his grounds crossed without intervening was supposed to have tacitly agreed to be his vassal. When the horse returned from his travels, he was sacrificed with great pomp during a festival where all the vassal rajahs were invited. The rajah having practiced the sacrifice of the horse received the title of king of kings (Chakravartin). The rite is described in the old texts, like the Mahabharata, for example. The first historical sovereign having practiced the ashvamedha and of whom the memory is kept is Pushyamitra Shunga, the murderer of Brihadratha, the last Mauryan ruler, founder of the Shunga dynasty, which celebrated in this way his victory over the Greek satraps.

6) we know a little more today about the accommodations which were to be made to survive. Notices handed down by one of our Parisian pen-friends. In the year 12 before our era, Drusus, son-in-law of Augustus, erected a monumental altar on the slopes of the current Croix-Rousse district in Lyons; in the presence of the notable ones of the three Celticas (the fourth having remained independent?), in order to celebrate the worship of the emperor Augustus. This part of the peninsula, which had as a toponym “Condate,” was in Segusiavian territory and therefore juridically speaking did not form part of the city of Lugdunum.

The ceremonies were chaired by a priest each year elected by the whole of the delegates from the cities. The priesthood of the Confluence constituted the highest administrative office the public figures of the sixty cities could reach. The main ceremony consisted of an annual gathering of all the delegates at the beginning of August (mouth or gulaust).

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The altar would have been built on a large terrace, 300 m long, on the level of the current street of the Claudian Tables.

The access to the altar , located in the center of this terrace, was probably done by a double ramp. If there remains nothing of its vestiges - the building having been used as a career in the Middle Ages, like many ancient monuments - the memory of the topography would be still visible in Burdeau Street , of which the layout is characterized by a double slope, vestige of the original double ramp.

In his “Geography” (IV, 3,2), Strabo evokes this sanctuary unique by its role and its size: “The temple that was dedicated to Caesar Augustus by all the Celts in common is situated in front of this city at the junction of the rivers. And in it is a noteworthy altar, bearing an inscription of the names of the tribes, sixty in number; and also images from these tribes, one from each tribe, and also another large…. “ [a sacred grove ?)

The importance of the sanctuary is shown by its presence on the reverse of certain coins , which give a rather precise idea of its probable configuration. They represent a central monument, decorated at its base with a crown, surrounded by vegetable stems (some laurel leaves?) On the central monument constituting the altar , the sixty statues were held representing the cities. At the base of the altar , the inscription ROM-ET-AUG (“Romae et Augusto”: To Rome and Augustus) reminded of the dedication of the building and its religious role. The monument was surrounded by two columns on which two Victoria stood while holding up a crown. These two columns would have been sawed into two during the Middle Ages, and would have been re-used to support the crossing of the Romance church Saint Martin in Ainay. These columns would have been therefore 14 m high originally (the height of a good oak in a way).

The meeting of the delegates had not only a religious role, but also a political role: there was an original institution of which the denomination can be translated into “Council of the Three Celticas” and which had its management as well as its equities. This administrative and political entity can be regarded as a representation of the interests of the nation to Rome, in a way the first parliamentary assembly of the country!

The emperor Claudius (born in Lyons) pled before the Senate in 48 the entry of the transalpine Celts in the high assembly. The affair caused a big stir in Rome. It was discussed passionately in the council of the princes. The speech was apparently convincing considering what happened . A copy of it was sent to Lyons, was engraved on bronze and was posted in the enclosure of the sanctuary. Found partly in 1528 ( the upper part is missing ) it is exhibited in the museum of the town.

Tacitus, in his Annals (XI, 23-24), reports this speech, and explains to us that the Eduans obtained the first right to sit in the Senate in Rome. This favor being granted considering the seniority of their alliance and the fact that, alone among the Transalpine Celts, they bore the title of brothers of the Roman people.

The main mandate of the deputies of the transalpine Celtic peoples was perhaps to elect their pontiff, and to take care of the management of the temple of Rome and Augustus. This management had several civil servants, and there was a till which received the share related with each nation. It is a very good example of an egregore or koinon. The koinon was in fact a union of cities which had roots much older than the Roman conquest (see our essay about the druidic Pantheon).

7) Old French for dolphin.

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THE CALENDAR OF ST. PATRICK.

Winter: December 24th, the Nollaig (Christmas).

Spring: March 17th, the Padraig’s day (the festival of Patrick).

Summer: June 24th, the Seain’s day (festival of St. John).

Autumn: September 29th, the Michil’s day (festival of St. Michael).

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EPONA’S DAY or MATRA NOUX.

Feast of the winter solstice. Nollaig in the calendar of St. Patrick. Look out, it is not an oenach but a tennotatos (tantad)!

In the 6th century the monolatrous or parabolanus Fulgentius (467-532. May gods have pity of the soul/mind of this bishop) tried to prohibit our ritual in the honor of the Great Goddess 1) or fairy, if you prefer this word. In vain fortunately! We can indeed find survivals of Epona a little everywhere including on the Romance capitals representing the “Flight into Egypt”: the virgin is represented there sidesaddle on horseback, a stool under her feet, just like the Epona of our spiritual ancestors 2).

The worship of the matres was still celebrated in winter , and our modern fairies are the heiresses to these solstitial Celtic “mothers.” Because among Celts it was always more question this day of Christmas-Mothers than of Santa Clauses. At the time of these solstitial ritual, the role of celebrating person is ensured by a gutuater/gutumater and not by a high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht), in theory and as far as possible, naturally.

We are unaware of why the officiating person on this day should not be a priest having taken the major Indo-European Celtic (a druid druid), but a priest having only taken the minor orders in Celtic mode. In any case, it was always thus!

Epona’s day is celebrated on the day of the winter solstice. 2000 years ago, this solstice fell on a December 24th (according to the Guidizzolo calendar).

People place a big clump of Samon mistletoe in the house, suspended by a bright red ribbon at the entrance of the main room. It is there that you will have to kiss the guests, according to their arrival.

On the wall, above the other doors, on the chimneys, on the tables, greenery which does not die in winter. Fir tree and butcher's broom (holly of Samon) in garlands, in crowns, tied with ribbons, either red, or with the symbolic and traditional colors in the area. The ruscus or butcher's broom is the archetypal winter plant.

Typically Celtic custom also, the creche of Nantosuelta (those the word “creche” embarrasses can use in the place the Latin word “aedicula” or even the Japanese word “kamidana”). This creche of Nantosuelta today is, of course, influenced by the new mass religions aligning themselves with the teaching of the great Nazorean rabbi Jesus of Palestine 3) that is to say Christianity and Islam.

It is therefore a shelter or kami dana in which takes center stage, in the central place, a statuette of Epona and of her adoptive son, crowned with flowers. Its most traditional representation is a stable, the stable reminds of the role of “mare goddess” of Epona, but certain Nantosuelta’s creches point out also sometimes the cave where our initiations take place. Horses and bulls form also rightfully part of this creche of Nantosuelta. On our premises this bull is called Taruos trigaranos (what produced termagant or tervagan), he is represented with three horns on his forehead and with three cranes near him. The straw also takes part in the decoration of this creche of course. It formerly played a great role in the traditions concerning the solstice of Epona. Today it is especially used to make stars and crowns or various animals (horses, bulls, cranes, stags).

This creche of Nantosuelta should not be posed on the floor, but at the right height. On a low piece of furniture for example, following the example of a butsudan or kamidana. To place it at the foot of the fir tree is a practice due to the influence of Christianity. This creche of Nantosuelta in the honor of Epona could be then kept during several weeks and be used thus in a way as an additional family altar intended to honor certain deities 4).

The cosmic tree or world tree is the second center of interest of Epona’s day. It will have been prepared the day before or at the time of the festival of the bull and of the white horse. With one of the trees of the sacred clearing on the hill.

The support itself of this tree, which may be a fir tree, but also very another variety of tree, is to have as much as possible have a lunisolar meaning (triskelion, little wheels, silver wheel).

People generally hang to this tree, to decorate it, red apples, symbol of immortality, animals made out of braided straw, horses, cranes, bulls or stags. The possible candles placed in the tree (not to misuse

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them nevertheless) will evoke the flowers which open out there in spring. To the top of this Christmas tree, you will hang a ball or a wheel representing the sun.

Comes then the time of the consecration of herds and of the sacrifice of the bull (tarbhfess).

Consecration of the horses.

Those who have horses lead them to the place agreed upon for this purpose, where people also lead oxen to slaughter for their meat. There the priest in a white cowl blesses them by making on them the sign of the cross of Suqellos (i.e., an X); the three fingers of the right hand stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger ),

Upwards towards the right: by the strength of Abellio. Downwards but towards the left: by the strength of Belenus. Upwards towards the left: by the strength of Brigindo. Downwards but towards the right this time: by the strength of Epona.

Then he gives a light tap with a Suqellus' silver hammer on the forehead of the horses 5).

Sacrifice of the bull.

“Having made all due preparation for the sacrifice and a banquet beneath the

trees, during a great religious ceremony, the sixth day of the moon [they choose this day because the moon has already a considerable force during it without being, however, in the middle of her course];they bring thither two white bulls, the horns of which are bound then for, the first time. Clad in a white cowl the priest ascends the tree, and cuts the mistletoe with a golden voulge, which is received by others in a white cloak. They then immolate the victims, offering up their prayers that God will render this gift of his propitious to those to whom he has so granted it” (Pliny. Natural history. XVI, 249).

The last act of the Epona’s day is more family, and takes place in each residence, from the castle to the humble cottage.

The guests beginning to arrive, the celebrating gutuater/gutumater or the householder goes to the foot of the tree. At least three candles (a red, blue and green one) will have been placed there beforehand.

The ambact assisting the celebrating gutuater/gutumater, the housewife, or any other dagolitos (believer), after having required one minute of silence from the assembly, raises the question which follows.

How to symbolize the resurrection of the sun which will bring back for us our great psychopompous queen Epona?

The gutuater/gutumater (or the person who acts as an officiating person in his place) answers.

By lighting the three waxes that you see here, and which represent the three components of any living being, the body, the mind, and the soul.

The celebrating gutuater/gutumater, or the person taking up his duty, then lights the three central candles (red, blue, green) placed either in the tree or around its foot. Then he hands down the sacred torch to the assistants who are there, by lighting the candles that were distributed to them, while moving for this purpose in the usual direction, i.e., sunwise.

Finally, everyone will place one’s candle in the “Christmas” tree and the celebrating person (gutuater/gutumater or other), recites the lay which follows…

By Trefuilngid Tre Eochair

By the triple lord of the three keys

In the sacred clearing

In the protecting shade of the oak in Mughna,

Noblest of the trees.

To you Hornunnos our friend

I entrust the protection of the nature which surrounds us

And which sustains us.

O White Stag with golden horns

Protect it from stains

From speculators,

From greedy and mercantile traders

From merchants of every kind

From inefficient farmers

From reckless alchemists.

Because science without conscience

Is but the ruin of the soul.

Cure it from its wounds

So that we can find it again intact

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And to preserve it thus for our children.

For the rest of the spirit of our brothers the oaks

That men cut down and that men burn, Let-us pray.

For our brothers the beeches

That men tear off and that men murder, Let-us pray.

For the elms

That men mutilate and uproot, Let-us pray

Yes, let us pray!

Let us pray for our brothers yews and birches,

Resting place of our ancestors,

And for all the trees which mankind murders.

Nert dé agus andé.

Awen!

The celebrating person (gutuater/gutumater or simple lay man ) moves then towards the creche and also gives on the forehead of the horses or the cattle a small tap with a Suqellus' mallet while saying…

Epona,

Queen of the World, Holy Queen,

Sancta Epona, Augusta Epona,

Rigena Epona, Vinda Epona

Christmas Mother

Goddess or fairy of homes

Matron of the small children

Patron saint of foals and puppies

The silver wheel in the sky is your crown

And the sun is your child!

O Epona our Lady of the gold Unicorn

With the horns of plenty overflowing with fruits,

You had presented your youth

So that before the Summer we can taste your Spring

Your sap and your perfume.

While offering the flower

You gave to us the leaf and the fruit.

While carrying the basket

You gave the horn of plenty.

You filled the cup to the brim

But by offering the cup of sovereignty

You had the forever spouting out spring

Since by handing the sacred vessel of the grail

You received the divine spirit there,

Since by offering Spring

You had the Eternal one,

Since by giving the flower

You received the fruit.

O Epona Queen of the World, our Lady of the gold Unicorn

Since gods wanted you at their sides

To share with you their power

We will take to you at the same time as our mother

And as our Queen.

We offer to you our hearts

Be Queen of our faith

Be queen of our world

Be queen of our nation and of our homes

Queen of our life.

O fairylike triple goddess

Hand down to gods our prayers and our sacrifices

Our joys and our sorrows

And in return give us the fullness of the divinity

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Who will work in us.

O Epona our Mother to all, our Lady of the gold Unicorn

Since you are our mother

And by three times our mother

We have the happiness to have three mothers in one

We have your beauty, your kindness as your good.

Take care of our souls, our minds and our bodies

So that they are worthy to receive the Spirit of the gods.

Widened our filial mind , O Triple mother

So that it can better receive and keep the divinity

Release our still captive soul.

Nert dee agus andee.

Awen!

The celebrating person observes a moment of silence then resumes…

Men and women of our community , fellow country men, fellow countrywomen, oyez, oyez, oyez, in this solemn moment let us have a thought for Eponine and her children, because a woman must also be strong!

Each one then will put down in the chimney one’s log or one’s faggot. After they will put in it the Yule (Christmas) log. Carefully posed on its fire dogs (or andirons), it may be out of oak or fruit trees (the apple tree, tree of Abellio for example).

The celebrating gutuater/gutumater of this solstice (or the householder), moves towards the log in the chimney then, using his cladibo (his knife), engraves on it the inscription of his choice in Celtic runes (Lepontic alphabet).

It can also engrave above, always using his cladibo or his pruning knife, various solar symbols: cross of Suqellus, and so on. Then the celebrating gutuater/gutumater or the father improvises while saying some occasional words to the attending people.

Example.

O dagodevos Suqellus Gurgunt, god of druids,

Move away from us the hellish legion of the dusii and of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns, as all the other non-gods of the ices of the non-world…

Facing the chimney, he finishes with the following invocation…

O Suqellus Gurgunt, you merriest and most human of all the gods,

You who is called Dago Devos the general help god ,

You who never harms the human beings

But protects on the contrary their young;

The place of honor close to the cauldron in the chimney is reserved to you 6).

The drink offering of a distilled beverage may replace the seven necessary varieties of trees. The clan chief or the householder hands to the celebrating gutuater/gutumater an alcohol horn with which he sprinkles the log thus consecrated.

Naturally, if there is no gutuater/gutumater on this day, he does it himself.

The household head must then light it with a fragment of the log of the last year.

The Yule or Christmas log having began to sparkle joyfully in the hearth, you may attack the midnight supper itself and down to eat.

Before each plate a small branch of holly (ruscus variety) decorated with a red favor. In that of the children small presents heralding the big ones.

It is here that is generally placed the call for the blessing of Epona.

The celebrating person, alone or with the attending persons, makes the sign of the Celtic cross, i.e., with their right fist firmly closed , he beat several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) his breast, as if he hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance.

The traditional meat of such a midnight supper is the beef. The dishes will have to circulate then from the right side of the guests to their left one. A large barrel of ale or mead will be laid out in the end of the table so that each one can drink to fullness by serving oneself. People sing a metamorphosis song of the type of that of Ceridwenn and Gwion Bach 7) the barditus of the wine of the C’hallaoued (see the anuanacton, the naming ceremony), etc.

Editor’s note : the following forms are recited during the solstices and the equinoxes from which are born the succession of the seasons as all the other changes on our sphere (when the sun is in the middle or at the end of its race).

The bard (president) of the banquet.

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Let us banish strife,envy, and obstinacy.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

Let us harbor sweetness, knowledge, and politeness!

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let jokes and mirth be our pleasures!

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

May the Muses and Graces be propitious!

The bard (president) of the banquet.

I toast wit, modesty, facetiae . Let us search out, diligently, the causes of things, that we might live pleasantly, and die peaceably.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

That, free from all fear, neither elated by joy, nor depressed by sadness, we might be liberated by reason.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let us greatly feed our minds, but sparingly our bellies.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

It is just and good.

The bard (president of the banquet).

Let us toast the Graces.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

Let us toast the goddesses or good fairies who leaned over our cradles!

Each one clinks glasses then with one’s neighbor before emptying one’s glass.

SECOND SERIES OF FORMS TO BE RECITED AT THE TIME OF THE SOLSTICES OR THE EQUINOXES.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let us sing a hymn upon the nature of the BITUS or UNIVERSE.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

“Whatever this is, it animates all things, forms, nourishes, increases, creates, buries, and takes into itself all things: and the same, of all things is the parent.”

Sometimes, the following :

“All things within the verge of mortal laws are changed. All climates in revolving years know not themselves; nations change their faces, but the world is safe, and preserves its all; neither increased by time, nor worn by age: its motion is not instantaneous, it does not fatigue its course. Always the same it has been, and shall be. Our father’s saw no alteration, neither shall posterity. It is God who for ever is immutable.”

N.B. Notice of the author of this compilation. Let us not forget nevertheless what Strabo reported on this subject: “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).

Each one clinks glasses then with one’s neighbor before emptying one’s glass.

THIRD SERIES OF FORM TO BE RECITED AT THE TIME OF THE SOLSTICES OR THE EQUINOXES.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let us now make honorable mention of those men and women, among the ancients, who taught or acted nobly; because the actions are to match the words with respect to every true-hearted or minded Celt.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS:

That they may benefit us by their example, as well as learning.

The bard (president of the banquet).

I toast…names at the discretion of the president of the banquet. For example, Lafayette.

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Or, more antique, Eponine and Sabinus, etc.

Each one clinks glasses then with one’s neighbor before emptying one’s glass.

The feast having been consumed according to the rites, i.e., with beef, people can come to the dessert. This one will consist of apples quite simply, but carefully selected.These apples will not have to be distributed directly. They will have on the contrary to pass from hand into hand and sunwise until everyone was thus in a way served by one’s neighbor. Formerly it was probably a question of making these apples go thrice around the table.

During this time the celebrating person will recite or sing the following lay …

Ogtos, Ogtos

Ogra innoxtu letaua magosia

Ardullia esti snixs ne bergonnia

Nepom rosaegeti caruos ad ituom

Ogron endio ad bretom

Rostagrasit in dumnu gala

Abonna tagit pepa etarcio.

Etic lanos loccos pepon lindon

As morimaros pepos loccos esti lanos

Etic esti lanon lindon pepos ritos

Nac meis tramsont uo eda sindo.

Nac tramsont epoi tares ritom

Nepuos tractos iom nec diberet tonda

In brogebo nepon diroueston

Nec sennet clocca

Nec labaront correoi.

Weather is cold, weather is cold

It is freezing this night in the large plain

Snow is as high as a mountain

The stag does not find any more to eat

There are storms everywhere

The least furrow on the slope became river

And each ford a pond filled with water.

Ponds became lakes

And the lakes some seas at high tide

You can no longer ford the river

Even horses succeed no longer to do it.

The shores are beaten by the waves

Even in lands there are no longer sure shelters

And herons keep silent.

The apples of happy immortality having thus gone around the table, from hand into hand, clockwise, the banquet may be closed, about eleven hours or midnight.

In theory all must end in a midnight swim, ritual, even if it takes place… at three o'clock in the morning.

The gutuaters/gutumaters themselves should never take part in these night swimming. They must remain on the spot to help the parents to lay out the gifts intended for the children (in the clogs provided close to the chimney, or at the foot of the world tree).

Because the children once gone to bed , you will have taken care of displaying in front of the andirons or the fire dogs of the chimney, or above; the “Christmas” presents that our good Suqellus Dagodevos Gurgunt is supposed to have brought to them in his sack, with his sledge pulled by stags like Cuchulainn.

It is not forbidden to tell the children that it is this good giant himself who, following the example of Medros/Midir in the Tochmarc Etaine, went through the chimney to lay down these presents for them.

You may also prefer to tell them the truth quite simply, namely that they are the parents who bought these presents for them. Epona’s day is in any event their festival.

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1) Expositio sermonum antiquorum. But our unfortunate goddess, or fairy, if this word is preferred, is also disparaged or dirtied by the Christians called Minucius Felix (in his Octavius) and Prudentius (in his Apotheosis).

2) In the Danubian provinces, Epona sat on a throne, a stool under her feet, framed by two or four horses.

3) The Neapolitan creches had very rightly taken over as decoration, initially, some pagan temples fallen in ruin.

4) Epona’s aedicula or creche. Kind of rather deep small triptych shaped cupboard, with two doors. Contains at the back a statuette representing the goddess Epona fullface between two horses, taking center stage on a chariot as a black Madonna. Or containing a statuette of Hornunnos a little similar to the votive stele in Rheims. Or housing the three Bethen carved in the image of the votive stele in Vertault or of the matrones in Bonn and elsewhere in Germany. Etc.etc. They are there only some examples, the list is far from being exhaustive. Topped by a statuette representing Taran/Toran/Tuireann represented as a Jupiter of the columns with a gigantic anguipede (before being placed above this cupboard some time this reproduction is arranged inside). On the door of the left-hand side a colored illustration showing Ogmius within a framework which ends in the arc of a circle, on the door of the right-hand side the same kind of framework with the genius of Lugdunum inside (cf. coins of Clodius Albinus 196-197). Or others, of course, according to the tastes of each one (Suqellus, the Venus sheltering with her coat her five children : to see the terra cotta figurines). The lower part of this worship cupboard is equipped with three drawers in which people can arrange the torcs or the amber necklace to wear for each prayer, the dodecahedrons filled with candle wax having to be used as candles precisely, the means of lighting them, the cup or small dish intended to collect the offerings, the result of the genealogical research of the family, etc. After each use the statuette which represents Taran/Toran/Tuireann as column Jupiter with giant must be carefully arranged in the aforementioned aedicula.

5) Rite recovered thereafter for the St Eligius of the Christian religion.

6) In the countries endowed with rigorous winter, Suqellus, the god of the high-knowers of the druidiaction (Dagda in Ireland) is generally represented as a white beard giant , dressed with a vast brown red houppelande equipped with an edged of white hood. Like Cuchulainn, the greatest of our heroes, he travels sitting on a sledge harnessed with stags, some presents for the children placed in the sack fixed on his back. In the countries endowed with a more moderated, climate, he is simply dressed with a short tunic, equipped with a belt, a hood, some breeches or boots, but remains always a mature and bearded man. Some enthusiastic people see in the dog which accompanies him a husky. Not very plausible. On the other hand, no longer sack but a magic cauldron or olla, from which treasures leave. It is his medieval successor on the Continent, Gargantua, who will be equipped with a grape basket. Last point finally: let us remember that formerly, Sant Klaus wore, not a red dress, but a brown clothing.

7) Specialists call metamorphosis song a song having as a topic, like in the case of Ceridwenn and Gwion Bach, the various metamorphoses of a man or a woman seeking to catch another one of them. In Wales, it is indeed the legend of Ceridwenn and Gwion Bach. Chased by Ceridwen, Gwion Bach flees while taking successively the appearance of a hare, a blue salmon, a dog, a stag, a roe deer, a rope, an axe… but Ceridwenn changes as much time. In a barn finally, Gwion Bach is transformed into a corn grain, Ceridwenn takes the appearance of a black hen and swallows the corn grain then, some time later, gives again birth to Gwion Bach.

There exist many versions or variants of this traditional topic, with various titles (“If you are made an eel” for example). In the south of France, the song of Magali (a poem by Frederic Mistral published in 1859) is another one. It should be noticed that if Mistral took as a starting point some popular topics to write his text, we find today his words on six other melodies at least (including to the Canada and the United States, cf the famous “runaway bunny” by Margaret Wise Brown…)

The boy.

O Magali , ma tant amado,

Mete la tèsta au fenestron!

Escota un pauc aquesta aubada

De tamborins e de vioulons.

Es plen d'estèlas, aperamont.

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L'aura es tombada,

Mai leis estèlas palliràn,

Quand te veiràn.

O Magali, my so much beloved,

Come to the window, show yourself;

And list awhile to this aubade

Of tambourin and violin!

The sky above is full of stars;

Softly blows the wind,

But even the stars will all grow pale

When you they see.

The girl.

Pas mai que dau murmur dei brondas

De ton aubada ieu fau cas!

Mai ieu me'n vau dins la mar blonda

Me faire anguièla de rocàs.

Not more than for the leaves their murmur

I will pay attention to your aubade.

For I am going to the blonde (sic) sea

To change into a conger eel.

Ò Magalí, se tu te fas

Lo pèis de l'onda,

Ieu, lo pescaire me farai

Te pescarai.

O Magali, if you become

A fish in the waters

A fisherman I’ll be

I’ll fish you.

Ò! mai, se tu te fas pescaire,

Tei vertolets quand gitaràs,

Ieu me farai l'aucèu volaire,

M'envolarai dins lei campàs.

But if you become a fisher,

When you will throw your net,

I will change into a flying bird

And fly across the fields.

Ò Magalí, se tu te fas

L'aucèu de l'aire,

Ieu lo caçaire me farai,

Te caçarai.

O Magali, if you become

A flying bird,

I’ll be a bird hunter

I’ll catch you.

Ai perdigaus, ai boscaridas,

Se vènes, tu, calar tei laçs,

Ieu me farai l'èrba florida

E m'escondrai dins lei pradàs.

For partridges for warblers

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If springs you should mind setting,

I will change into a flowery herb

And in the meadows hide away.

Ò Magalí, se tu te fas

La margarida,

Ieu l'aiga linda me farai,

T'arrosarai.

O Magali, if you become

A daisy plant

I’ll change into the limpid stream

And water you.

Se tu te fas l'aigueta linda,

Ieu me farai lo nivolàs,

E lèu me'n anarai ansinda

A l'America, perabàs...

If you change into limpid water

I’ll change into a cloud,

And thus I rapidly shall wander away

To far America.

Ò Magalí, se tu te'n vas

Alin ais Indas,

L'aura de mar ieu me farai,

Te portarai.

O Magali, if you should go,

To remote India

I will become the sea breeze

That shall waft you over.

Se tu te fas la marinada,

Ieu fugirai d'un autre latz:

Ieu me farai l'escandilhada

Dau grand solèu que fond lo glaç.

If you change into a sea breeze

I will escape another way;

I will become the scorching sunbeam

Of the great sun that melts the ice.

Ò Magalí, se tu te fas

La solelhada,

Lo verd limbèrt ieu me farai,

E te beurai.

O Magali, if you become

A hot sunbeam

Into a green lizard I’ll change

And drink you up.

Se tu te rèndes l'alabrena

Que se rescond dins lo bartàs,

Ieu me rendrai la luna plena

Que dins la nuech fai lum ai mascs.

If you change into a salamander,

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And in a thicket hide yourself

I will become the harvest moon

That lightens witches and sorcerers (sic) by night.

Ò Magalí, se tu te fas

La ròsa bèla,

Lo parpalhon ieu me farai,

Te baisarai.

O Magali, if you become

A beautiful rose,

Into a butterfly I’ll change

And I’ll kiss you.

Vai, calinhaire, corre, corre

Jamai, jamai m'agantaràs.

Ieu, de la rusca d'un grand rore

Me vestirai dins lo boscàs.

Go on my fair wheedler, run, run,

Never, never you’ll catch me

For with the bark of a great oak.

I shall clothe me in the wood.”

Variants.

I will see her Sunday, Sunday I will go

To ask for the hand of my beloved.

If you come Sunday, I will not be there

Behind in my aunt

There is a pond

I will change into an eel,

Eel in the pond

If you are made eel, eel in the pond (bis)

I will change into a fisherman

Fishing in the pond

I will have you while fishing.

If you are made fisherman to have me while by fishing (bis)

I will change into a lark

Lark in the fields!

If you are made lark, lark in the fields (bis)

I will change into a hunter

Hunting in the fields

I will have you while going hunting.

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THE TEN NIGHTS OF GRANNUS (decamnotiaca).

Twelve days or more exactly twelve nights period, from the winter solstice until the beginning of January, in connection with the sun (Irish grian = sun) mentioned by an inscription discovered at Limoges in France.

Postumus dumnorigis filius, vercobretus, aquam Martiam decamnoctiacis Granni, de sua pecunia dedit.

The Vergobretus Postumus son of Dumnorix gave from his own money the water of Martius for the ten-night festival of Grannus.

This ten nights and twelve-day period called gourdeziou in Armorican Breton language is difficult to place in our calendar.

According to the sources, they are the first twelve days of January, the twelve days which follow the winter solstice, or the six days previous to it and the six ones which follow it. In short, some days located between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox and including the Candlemas.

In a recent work devoted to the popular festivals and beliefs in Europe, Yvonne de Sike insisted on the importance , in the festive cycle of winter, of the twelve days or twelve nights period; result from a compromise or from a marriage between two different ways of measuring time: the moon calendar and the sun calendar.

These twelve days produced very diverse customs. The twelve nights symbolism is multiple. They are the “magic,” critical, nights when the demons come back to restore the primeval chaos. The sun is to return from its death and to be born again. This “backward turned time” was thus often regarded as a return to initial chaos.

As well as R. Christinger writes it so nicely: “People believed to return, during a short moment, to the primitive chaos, a not differentiated stated, so that a new creation comes. But the future rests on the knees of the gods and abundance runs out from the hands of the spirits. Each restarting, which falls under a cycle, a new mystery is played; when the sun disappears then reappears, carried by a boat or an animal, when the year is completed and that the round of the seasons starts again, when a life dies out and that another one begins; when a disaster destroys the world and prepares the regeneration of the Bitus or Universe. All these events therefore led to the intervention of the gods or of the spirits.”

In the first centuries of our era, in the processions of January 1st, men and women wore masks and particularly these which represented an old woman, the Vetula, or in Gaelic language Cailleach Bheur/Caillech Berri. Samon indeed introduced the reign of the old woman of Beare, the witch old queen , who reigns over the winter season until the return of the belisama Brigindo Brigantia Brigit, in the spring beginning (= Nantosuelta on the Continent).

Her name means literally the veiled one, epithet often applied to those who belong to the hidden worlds, but which, later, came from there to mean simply “old woman.”

Bher means “sharp” or “bitter,” because she personifies the bitter winds and the length of the northern winter, which is called “Cailleach’s time.”

People also said that she was the daughter of Grianan, “the little sun” which, in the old Scottish calendar shines since the Samon until the Brigit’s day followed by the “big sun” of the summer months. In England, Ireland and in the Scandinavian countries, people lit every evening since Christmas until Epiphany the large candle of Christmas.

The Christian intellectuals always considered the masked plays, the calendar feasts, the night searches… as worrying resistances or resurgences of paganism; more dangerous still than the civic and imperial worships, because related to the time rhythm and the popular base of local societies.

Thus will be denounced, as of the Early Middle Ages, the vestiges of the Celtic calends of January [in fact the twelve-day period ranging since the winter solstice until the beginning of January, the gourdeziou in Armorican Breton language]; the practice “to play the stag,” to play “the old woman,” to get dressed with skins of animals, to take the appearance of monsters, to disguise oneself in a goat or in a bear.”

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The sermons of the Christian parabolan/taliban Caesarius of Arles in connection with the calends of January are eloquent on this subject. Sermons 192 and 193.

“I rebuke the demented customs of those who for the sake of foolish gaiety observe the calends of January or the folly of other superstitions which men think give them license to get drunk and indulge in obscene chanting and games. Worse still is the indecent flaunting of men in women’s clothing and make-up grotesque enough to make the demons themselves blanch. They sing bawdy songs in praise of vice, sung with shameless gusto and accompanied by disjointed gestures and mumming in the likeness of she-goats and stags. The inventor of evil makes his entry through these in order to master souls ensnared by the appearance of a play. I call upon the sober and upright members of this congregation to reprimand your neighbors and subordinates, to forbid them to use indecent language or sing those bawdy songs, and especially to deny alms to those who by sacrilegious custom are carried away by insanity rather than playfulness. And unless you want to share in their guilt, I tell you: do not allow a little stag or a little yearling or monstrosities of any other sort to appear before your houses, but rather chastise and punish them and, if you can, even tie them up tightly. Admonish your household not to follow the sacrilegious customs of the unhappy Pagans.”

Brrr. It looks as hard-line Islam! Parabolan = Taliban? It goes without saying nevertheless that it is imperative today not to have too much alcohol in blood when you drive.

Four hundred years later, Theodore of Tarsus, the monolatrous archbishop of Canterbury, will reoffend in the same sense. “To those who go about at the Calends of January garbed as a stag or an old woman, taking the form of beasts, clad in the skin of beasts and assuming the heads of beasts; who transform themselves into animals, three years penance, for the thing is devilish”.

It is therefore fashion among the beautiful minds since the arrival of Christianity to make fun of the farmers our ancestors to all. Such a racist, religious or social, contempt, is unfamiliar to us. Formerly, people did not travel, they stayed in their villages. Apart from the noble ones, the monks and the kings, nobody could read. They did not have information. They were afraid of the night, because they believed that everything could occur at this time and they feared death also. Of three newborns, two died of disease in low age. They feared that time stops, that the phantoms or the genies attack them. To overcome these fears, they invented traditions, rituals, which were performed in the form of “gestures,” of festivals or of more or less secret acts. By doing that, they were less afraid.

The masquerade is a primarily rural festival which has a magic goal, performed by the teenagers and the young adults, to attract all that can be beneficial: good harvests, many animals, many children. Formerly, moreover, people married only at the beginning of the year: it was well necessary to follow the example of Nature and to make like the animals which live around us.

The mask is perhaps one of the oldest expressions of the human civilization. The mask, which makes it possible a person to radically change one’s identity, is of everywhere and of immemorial time. It is present in the majority of the societies, from the most antiquated to the most worked out, bearer of values and uses which remain often difficult to interpret, but which show nevertheless certain derivations.

It is necessary to distinguish two different types of masks well.

The masks of wintry time represent the spirits of the vegetation or of the animals (animal egregores, elementals) and fall under the logic of the fruitfulness rituals. For other researchers, it would be a representation of anonymous and mysterious beings, presumedly malevolent and dangerous (some gigantic anguipedic wyverns? ? ?) from which it would be advisable to be protected, called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Gaelic language.

The masks of the festivals of November 1st and the various carnivals fit rather into the logic of the beliefs related to the survival of the soul/mind and of the return of the soul/minds on earth (anaon in Armorican Breton language).

There exist some traces of the use of masks well before the men started to cultivate the ground. Several prehistoric sites produced human representations of “wizards” or of “masked dancers.” One of the best illustrations of Paleolithic art was discovered in the Ariege, in the cave of the Trois-Freres, decorated with painted and engraved images dating back to approximately 15.000 to 8000 years before our era. The walls are covered with a multitude of representations of bisons, ibexes, stags,

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horses, reindeers, in the middle of which are scattered human figures, of which some masked with heads of animals. Most enigmatic is, of course, a painting with the engraved circumferences which represents a man wearing on his head horns of cervids, a false beard, the tail of a horse, and whose face reminds of the hide of an animal. In Dordogne the cave of Gabillou also revealed the representation of a character, probably male, get up with a head and a skin of bison.

These customs had an important social role: they channeled fears and aggressiveness, made it possible to the young people to take their place by ensuring the changing of oldest people in the perpetuation of the tradition. Mankind is haunted by death and is afraid of dark and baleful forces. While being thus disguised in “monsters,” they feel as if they drive out the “malefic soul/minds ” away from the village.

Very a long time ago, before Christianity and its necessary corollary the hedonistic or atheistic materialism invade our daily space,it was the druid (gutuater/gutumater) of the village which was to pray so that the seasons appear. When the winter arrived, he made certain gestures so that time resumes and that spring comes back. Then, he was to manage so that his community has a happy year. But when the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) disappeared, the masquerades continued. These are these winter festivals which proceed from January until CarnIval. Several times in History, and still rather recently, they were prohibited, but the naturalist faith fixed in the man of the countryside always overcame these oppositions or came to an arrangement with religion.

In the Alps, the grimacing masks of Lœtschental, the tradition of the “Klausen” in Appenzell or the similar Austrian traditions; are the ultimate reflection of what were the myths and beliefs of the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), assimilated, taken over and changed.

In fact, we lack the overall pattern of the rituals of this period.

These decamnotiaca were perhaps the opportunity for young people to beg New Year's gifts. The remarks of R. Christinger on this subject indeed make think of the customs of the New Year's eve in other areas of Europe. Before returning on their premises, the participants took the opportunity to go to beg in the villages around (from where the curses of the Christian Taliban St. Caesarius against these “daft” days) in order to claim with a hue and cry some New Year's gifts. Hogmanay, Auguilaneuf, Calennig,Nos calan …During the Middle Ages, this word shouted in the streets on January first, was used to mark the joy of the population, at the time of the renewal of the year.

The young people thus traversed in groups the village , presented themselves to the door of each house and sang the traditional verses of these new year songs. The bags filled up with donuts or with other food given more or less heartily , which the following day, brightened up their table. By extension, the word Hogmanay, auguilaneuf, Calennig, Nos calan, was applied to the New Year's gifts themselves, and also as to the search that young people of both sexes carried out on January first; in the same way still to small sums of money that the parents gave to their children in order they have fun , on certain feast days.

The word “Hogmanay, Auguilaneuf, Calennig, Nos calan ” or other, applied to the New Year's gifts for the children, is perhaps a memory of the old druidic ceremony attached to this period of the year.

The etymological origin of the word does not seem obvious nevertheless. Indeed, the assumption according to which the word and the tradition could derive from a Celtic custom, is probable as regards the tradition, but not at all as regards the word. That would suppose for example, to explain the word, that the druids shouted in French “with the mistletoe a new year ,” extremely improbable thing. To explain this phenomenon by the Breton “O ghel an heu” solves in no way the problem, because one wonders well why the Gallic druids would have spoken Breton. Unless, of course, to consider than the latter, particularly its Vannes expression, is an ultimate avatar of this language disappeared at the end of the 6th century (cf. Sulpicius Severus and his famous “Gallus” as well as the Gallica lingua of Gregory of Tours as regards France; and in the 7th century as regards Switzerland) not without having by the way deeply influenced the incipient French language 1).

What is undeniable, on the other hand, it is that the mistletoe, this evergreen plant, was for the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) a sacred plant. We find besides this parasitic plant on the oak, another archetypal sacred plant among the Celts . Eternally green on a tree which, during winter, seems dead; the mistletoe was therefore, for the high-knower of the druidiaction, a symbol of immortality.

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In Brittany, but also in Poitou, in Vendee, the poor used to go from house to house while, by offering some mistletoe, hoping to receive in exchange some New Year's gifts called “aguignettes.” In Bordeaux and in the villages around, the young people, often disguised in devils, were going in groups to cut branches of oak with which they made crowns, in exchange of small presents, while singing some songs called “guilanus.”

For this purpose the aguilanneux wore all kinds of masks (horses, stags, or others. St Caesarius help!) They noisily toted for example a horse skeleton at the end of a pole. The jaw was articulated, the aguilanneux, dressed in white sheets similar to shrouds, pretended to bite with it, all those they met. What is called in Wales Mari Lwyd.

This custom takes place at the time of the New Year, and symbolizes the revival. The coming of the horse (Mari Lwyd) is accompanied by verbal sparring between the participants in this masquerade. It is on January 6th that the “Mary Lwyd ” rang and asks riddles. Those who do not know the answer are bitten (!!!) by this creature, and must offer to it something to eat.

Thus tricked out the “horse” and the “three horned bull ” visited therefore the houses, with a lot of jingle of bells and songs, causing the fear of the children. The somewhat terrifying nature of these masks of a horse, of a bull with three horns, crane or stag, was diminished in general by the cheerfulness of the procession which accompanied them. After being gone by all the houses, by starting with that of the Christian priest, the merry company continued while singing joyfully, lit up by paper lanterns.

In his “Popular songs in Canada” Ernest Gagnon gives three versions collected in Quebec and describes various habits accompanied by this song. The variants of these collection songs were numerous. They included generally a request, a thanks and a threat or a curse, in the case of refusal. Watch out then, to the misers who balked at putting his hand into his own pocket! The kids burst into various songs to convince the recalcitrant ones.

In Switzerland, the actors of the festival are the “Silvesterklause,” the “Clauses” of the New Year, in the backcountry of Appenzell, i.e., in the villages of Urnasch, Herisau, Hundwil, Stein, Waldstatt and Schonengrund.

During the 19th century, the outing of these masks was often condemned by the clergy like by the press, the particularity of journalists being conformism. In 1848, for example, this custom practiced “with eagerness in certain areas,” was considered as "one of most improper, more unworthy, and therefore reprehensible, means, to collect alms.”

Today three kinds of Silversterklause are more or less clearly distinguished : Wueschte (the ugly ones), Schone (the beautiful ones) and Waldktause or Naturklause ( the Klause of forest or nature)”.

The ones carry one or two bells and represent some “Mannevolcher” ( some male characters). The “Wueschte Klause” often carry alarming masks manufactured with papier-mâché, teeth of a pig or of cattle, bones or other natural products. The vegetable materials form the coat, the headgear and the pants. They also use very often a little hay, straw, the branches of fir a tree. Under the coat, hardly visible, the “Mannevolcher” carry a bell which is fixed on their shoulders using a strap.

Today, a “Schuppel” - group of beautiful Klause - has generally six boys, two Rolli and four Schelli. On their back and their chest, the Schellenklause carry cow bells which are linked up on the shoulders using wool or leather bands. On the head, the Schellenklaus wears an almost rectangular flat hat, of which the sides as well as the lower part are furnished, like the headdresses of the Rolli, with thousands of small glass pearls, multicolored cords, little mirrors, and silver paper. In the niches of the headdresses and on the upper part of the hats, people represent scenes of everyday life, with small figurines carefully carved or painted. The face of Schellenklaus is hidden by a bearded male mask which, before, was out of leather generally. In the hole of the mouth a black “Lendauerli” is often fixed, the typical pipe of the Appenzell. A costume of embroidered with silver velvet , white stockings and heavy shoes, supplement this equipment.

The Klause of nature or forest, that the popular language calls in a still more suitable way “Schowueschte” (handsome ugly ones) are, as this other name indicates it, an intermediate shape of the already depicted types of Klause. In the middle of the 1960 years , a group from Urnasch appeared for the first time in this form. For the manufacture of the coats and hats, people use natural materials by showing a great sense of the decorative effect.

Moreover, they represent on the headgear and in the niches of the coat, scenes similar to these the handsome Klause wear.

Under their cape, the Klause dissimulate, on their chest and on their back, two enormous bells. The complete harnessing of Klaus can reach some 40 kg to 50 kg, of which 10 for the headgear and 25 for

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the jingles of bells . The groups are usually composed of seven to ten Kläuse, framed by two participants carrying of female clothes, dressed up with elegance and delicacy, the “Rolli” or “Weibliche Rollen-Klause.” Those wear a blouse with an apron, lace decorated , a bodice and a velvet skirt, as well as an impressive harness on which 13 enormous little bells are fixed: 4 on their chest, 4 on their back and 5 at their belt.

The headdress, which is half-circle shaped, contains interiors or agricultural life scenes . As for the mask, itself also in covered with wax fabric, it reproduces a little silly female face, made up carefully and decorated, at the corner of the lips, with a little flow.

On the feast day, as of the day break, more than a ten groups set off. By covered with snow ways according to a precise route, each group goes, on the sound of the little bells and cow bells which resound in all the valley. Their “mission” consists in going from a house into a house, from a farm into a farm, in giving their best wishes, and in guaranteeing, by their passage, happiness and prosperity.

This scenario will continue all day long. The coming evening, the groups go back down in the valley then continue their vocal performances from an inn into an inn until late in the night. The festival preserves in the eyes of the inhabitants a considerable importance. The tourist, the foreigner, is regarded there as a nuisance, because he is likely to disturb the ritual that people of the place practice between them, for themselves.

In other areas of the alpine uplands, the custom was shifted in time.

The Lotschental, in the Valais , preserved several folk traditions, particularly the making of fantastic mask carved in arolla pine wood (pinus cembra). These were worn by groups of young people who spread themselves in the villages of the valley before the Ash Wednesday, dressed in sheep or goat skins; while imitating the mooings of the bull and while waving a bell hanging from their belt. Their local name, tschaggat/tschagata means “dappled, mottled, those who are soot stained,” because they are supposed to enter houses by the chimneys.

For certain people, the word used, tschaggat/tschagata, would mean “hag.”

You can meet the Tschaggata in the villages of Blatten, Ferden, Kippel and Wiler, since February 2nd (Candlemas) until the Ash Wednesday, preferably in the end of the afternoon or in the evening.

The disguise is supplemented by a fur-trimmed coat made out of sheep or goat skin, covering the body completely, and by pieces of fabric hiding their climbing boots, in order to cover their tracks. The hands are dissimulated by a pair of shearling mittens .

The Roi Tschagata also wears some bells (Trichlun) hanging from a broad cow collar holding serving as a belt for them. Formerly they showed a long stick on the end of which was hung a bag of ashes being used to strike the spectators.

For certain authors, these masks would personify the revolt and the rebellion within a farming community kept in insulation for centuries, under the close monitoring of the Church. Inveighing against it from the top of its pulpit since St. Caesarius, the clergy made an effort indeed, tirelessly, to put an end to this custom equated with a dangerous emanation of paganism.

In Austria, as of mid-November, the Tyrol keeps pace with the mask outing. Many villages see groups of strange and impressive characters walking around, who stop from a house to a house. Among them, the hosts of devils, blowing in foghorns, parading according to the sounds from drums, bells and belts of little bells. The tradition of the zhorn bogeymen or other krampus, has its origin in a rather confused mixture of rites, beliefs and traditions. Bogeymens, zhorn or krampus, are connected with a mythology which is found in all Western Europe, and which is resulting from the Celtic civilization, particularly from the topic of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called Fomorians in Ireland (Andernas on the Continent).

These merrymakings constituted a link of the return to the spring. Accompanied with drummers, you disguised yourself in animals, devils, witches, or buffoons, to move away the demons and to call fruitfulness on the earth.

Today, this custom remained quite alive, thanks to its festive use, and many villages have their specific masked characters, symbol of the local identity.

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The masked processions of St. Nicholas's Day are particularly remarkable in the Pongau. The evening of December 5th, the krampus, some kinds of demons who prevail particularly at the time of the year when nights are longest; dressed with fur-trimmed coats, wearing alarming masks equipped with billy goat horns; roar and make the bells attached to their waist tinkle.

Dressed all in hairy clothes with their masks equipped with long teeth and decorated with two enormous horns, the krampus loaded up with their jingles of bells and their drums seem to leave straightly from the forging mills of the hell.

In Mitterndorf (Styria), but also in several close villages, St. Nicholas is also accompanied by other characteristic masked characters, the schabs; true sheaves of traveling straw with their head topped by long poles like antennas which change them into mysterious insects. According to the local tradition, they must drive out the winter demons thanks to the rhythmed crack of their whip. The latter resounds in the whole valley. The strohschaben keep a six times beat and the straw makes a light friction noise whereas they move heavily and slowly over all the width of the street…

St. Nicholas is accompanied by the “Priest.” Behind are rushing the Beggar and the Death with her scythe [Ankou in Breton language ] the Blacksmith, a chimney sweep covered with soot as his name suggests it, who nails everything when he passes. The whole of the krampus with their faces covered by terrifying masks, works of the local craftsmen, follows. The krampus is covered with a fur. This fur is a broad overcoat made out with sheep fleeces of which the color varies. The belts with the large bells (rollen) are a part of the attributes of the krampus. The krampus has also a whip fixed at a wood handle, consisted of a horse’s tail. He uses it to strike blindly around him.

The costumes. They are prepared or made by the participants themselves, some of them with a goatskin, and others out of corn ears. They show much skill, imagination and sense of esthetics. They keep very warm and can weigh up to 100 kg. The masks are to frighten and to look wild. The costumes are often decorated with big or little. The profusion of the hairs represents a manifestation of the vegetable, instinctive and sensual, life.

The horns. Symbols of power, rise and strength. The warriors as certain great conquerors like the one quoted by the sura No. 18 of the Quran: Dhul-Qarnayn 2) wore horned helmets in order to profit from their magic and to seize their force. The horns evoke the powers of the life, the inexhaustible life and of the fruitfulness. The horns generally symbolize femininity because of their lunar shape, except for the horns of rams of which the shape is solar and symbolizes then the male , as certain horns of billy goats when they are knotty and good scale.

Jingles of bells, cow bells and little bells. Symbolize wisdom, femininity, harmony. The masquerades where each character wears jingles of bells are multiplied during time, because they have a very important protective role: protection of the cattle, waking up of nature, moving away the evil spirits, evil charms and “savages.” Little by little, pagan rites and Christian religion mixed. The noise of the jingles of bells, of the cow bells, or of the little bells, is everywhere in the world considered as having an exorcism and purification power. It moves away bad influences. The noise of the little bells is often combined with that of the drums.

The billy goat. Just like the ram, the billy goat symbolizes reproductive power, vital force, libido, fruitfulness. If the ram proves to be diurnal and solar, the billy goat, itself, is night and lunar. The animal was a long time combined with the reproductive forces, then its image was perverted and associated with lust. From powerful and respected animal, it became an abomination symbol , stinking and accompanied by the Devil, the Devil representing, for the Christian Church, the god of sex, impurity or curse. This particularly in the Middle Ages.

These rituals generally have an expiatory purpose, i.e., they are performed in order to purify what is impure, and to divert the evil. They often represent the marriage between the male forces and the female forces, the fecundation, the childbirth and the solstitial worship ( St. Epona?) In Austria, only men may put on the costumes of devils. They come to drive out the forces of the evil, the bad spirits, the illnesses and the death, so that the following year experiments the revival of life, spring, birth or resurrection.

The dance and the movements represent the force of fertilization and fecundation of the man. According to the customs and the countries, several characters can be represented: the young groom, the warrior hero, the devil, the robber, the Christian priest, the midwife, the girls… Often provided with sticks or branches, they strike or whip the friends and the girls attending the procession. This in order to drive out the bad influences and the diseases.

In Austria, the devils have their hands coated with black grease and smear the face of the spectators with a same aim. They sometimes go from house to house, especially among the farmers, where they

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achieve dances in order to drive out the evil spirits and the stains left by the dead season that is winter.

All these winter merrymakings were marked by strange habits, some reactions to the systematic rejection developed by Christian authorities or dominant classes like St. Caesarius, about them. People for example invested with transitory functions the deacons, sub-deacons, priests and choirboys . According to the places, at the time of these feasts of fools, they took the title of bishop, archbishop, abbot, pope. In this upside down kingdom, all these exceptional dignitaries, for the time of the festival, officiated, while wearing miter and badges of their status… in Tournai, in Belgium, on December 28th, people elected a small vicar of the cathedral “bishop of the stupid persons.” He got up the ornaments of the bishop enriched with some props: the miter was decorated of small bells and the crosier ended in a dummy head. The new bishop was led by the whole town, he blessed crowd and comic scenes followed one another.

These pagan rituals thus mixed during the centuries with the Christian religion. They are from now on celebrated with the Catholic Festival of the Saint Nicholas’s day, St . Nicolas being the guard of the children, and announce Christmas. The masks and the masked plays remain a favored way of social communication, and one of the essential components of the popular rejoicings. They supported formerly, at least people believed it, the good progress of the year, guaranteed the good health of men and animals, a good harvest and a good reproduction of cattle.

All these propitiatory practices belong to a religious heritage dating back going back to ancient times . Those who still currently take part in the noisy manifestations of these brotherhoods, do not suspect that they repeat, without understanding them, some gestures which date back to the dawn of Mankind.

As Rutimeyer noted it with good reason, these brotherhoods of the Lotschental and other areas in Switzerland, particularly that of the Mount Pilatus, or of Austria, therefore join together the last descendants of cultural groups having existed in Europe as of the Neolithic time.

THE TWELFTH NIGHT FEAST.

The festival of the beginning of January or Epiphany is previous to Christianity. It was a festival in connection with the winter solstice. The Epiphany is also sometimes called “the twelfth night” even in Swedish language “the thirteenth day after Christmas” (Trettondag Jul).

This day finished the twelve-night cycle in questions and for a long time it was the most popular festival, much more than Christmas. Because if the Epiphany is a Christian feast, the origin of the Twelfth-Night pancake itself ; is completely pagan. The round and gilded shape of the cake is a direct reference to the sun worship.

The Roman tradition had it even that at the time of the saturnalia, a king is elected among the young soldiers. This “king” could do then all what he liked. This tradition evolved during the centuries to lead to the Epiphany.

According to the areas, the Twelfth-Night pancake is a round cake in filled or not, puff pastry, even a crown furnished with candied fruits. Inside a broad bean or a hazelnut was placed. The one who discovers this lucky charm is the king or the queen. In England, as in Burgundy, in the past, people preferred to form an occasional couple by putting in the cake a hazel nut and a garden pea. To draw the Kings, the youngest person was sent under the table.

On the day, the servants had also a holyday.The children carried out, there still, some collection tours. They sang…

Hail Kings

Up to twelve months

Twelve months last

Kings come back!

Then, they asked the Share for God…

We are from a foreign country, come in these places,

To make you the request of the share of God!

And often the call was heard, because while cutting the Twelfth-Night pancake , a share had precisely been reserved for the poor.

SAYINGS.

The twelve-day cycle is a period particularly favorable for the development of beliefs and superstitions, or more judicious observations. Thus our elder believed to be able to interpret the weather of these

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twelve days and twelve nights, to predict time that it will be during the twelve months of the year to come. Unfortunately, the modification of the calendar occurred a few years ago upset the statement of these sayings.

1) the traditional anti-racist presentation (it is the same thing) of the problem is the following one. Armorica was an almost deserted area (but of Latin language) and it was repopulated by immigrants come from the other side of the channel; the latter thus brought there their language (Celtic in fact) the Breton.

The objective examination of these data makes it possible to seriously doubt the extent of the Breton immigration, which was mainly a migration of elites (monk, military chiefs); the poor and the people being well forced to remain on the spot, as in the case of the deportation to Babylon as regards the Hebrews or the former Jews . As always!

As well as the strictly insular origin of the Breton language, which owes probably much more than it is believed to the local dialect. How can they maintain indeed that Armorica was completely Latin speaking when the Bretons came (the first ones apparently having migrated as of the end of the 3rd century within the framework of the Roman empire); whereas Gaulish was still spoken in the close area in the 6th century according to the famous “Gallus” in Gregory of Tours.

In 565 in the area of Agen, the Roman poet Venantius Fortunatus, who attends only the courtiers, still learn from them the meaning of the indigenous place names. These noblemen, while speaking, of course, Latin, therefore understood still the language of their ancestors, all the more so the common people.

To claim that the Bretons spoke a language, and the Gauls another, is a monumental mistake outdated for more than one hundred fifty years. There were only tiny dialectal variants between the Continental Celtic and the Insular Celtic. To imply that the Brittonic has nothing to do with the Continental Celtic , serves at the same time certain authors ; to prove that Breton is a language of invaders come from Great Britain to bring disorder in an area where everyone spoke Latin (sic); and certain Bretons, to say that they have nothing communal with Frenchmen. In reality, when Bretons arrived into Armorica, they found here people speaking the same language as them.

The first inhabitants whose language really marked that of Moliere or that of my ancestors in the Kingdom of France during the 17th century (Attancourt 1635) are the Celtic natives of the local terroir.

Their language survived the Roman conquest until the 5th , even more. By this prolonged contact, it deeply transformed the Latin spoken in the country. Of all the preexistent languages of Romania, the Gaulish is the language which had the strongest influence on the spoken Latin. It left in the French lexicon many rural words referring to the agricultural work: to glean, for example; or to the configuration of the ground: for example marl ; some names of animals and plants and names of old measures: league, arpent; as well as domestic or political words: vassal, embassy. To note that people take many Celtic words (several thousand?) for Latin words, because they were Latinized and entered late Latin whereas they are not in classical Latin…

Specialists allocate to the continental Celt the sound ü (y) which is also found the dialects of North Italy and in certain parts of the Portugal. This sound u [y] could be characteristic of the Gaulish dialects (Belgium included?) even of old Brittonic dialects (it was present also in the primitive Cornish, old Cornish , and Middle Cornish. Same thing for the passage from- ct to - it, for example the Latin factum > French fait.

Specialists also allocate to this Celtic continental the nasal vowels, the language of Moliere being, with the Breton language, one of the rare languages, to have this type of sound.

The upholding of the final s, as mark of the plural, is also due to this substrate.

These phonetic changes differentiate, largely, the French from the other Romance languages.

On the other hand, this Gallo-Romance underwent a very effective pressure (lexical, phonetic and syntactic) of the Germanic superstratum, in the north. Rather strong, this time, so that we can distinguish two languages in this Gallo-Romance : the protolanguage of oil in the north, the protolanguage of oc in the south. The reason for this decisive influence is due, of course, to the long duration of the contact; from 486, defeat of the last Gallo-Roman patrician Syagrius before the Franks of Clovis, to 987: Hugues Capet will be the first king of France to speak only the Romance language; an interpreter is necessary for him when it is spoken to him in Germanic language.

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The oaths of Strasbourg are a text of 842, written in three languages: in old high German (teudesca lingua), in Latin and finally in a composite Romance language that specialists think to be some proto-Occitan or some proto-French (the two languages not being then as definitely separate as today).

The text in question comprises some enigmatic additions. Where the Germanic text has a logical and grammatically correct expression: so hald ih thesan minan bruodher, soso man mit rehtu sinan bru (d) her scal; the French text comprises an illogical addition semantically speaking, and syntactically doubtful: si salvarai eo cist meon fradre karlo, & in aiudha & cadhuna cosa, sicum om par dreit son fradra saluar dift. A verb, to be (er = will be) for example, should have been necessary.

There are some corrections from the hand of the copyist: “dist di en avant” was corrected into “in avant”, adiudha into aiudha and aiuha in aiudha.

The phonology of the text comprises some antiquated features. The tonic a is preserved in fradre, salvar, returnar. There are no diphthongizations, Deo for Dieu, poblo for peuple, meon for mien, me for moi.

The scribe sometimes uses (by inadvertence and in the absence of standard?) a straightforwardly Latin orthography: in o quid (= “en ce que”).

The first properly literary monument will be therefore the Canticle of Saint Eulalia. It tells the history of a young martyr who wishes to preserve her virginity as her faith in Christ rather than to succumb to the devil (diaule) and to the moral forfeiture.

The text includes twenty-nine rhythmic lines of verse .The text is much closer to the “ordinary” French of the Middle Ages than the Oaths of Strasbourg. There are still some Latinisms such as rex. The diphthongization of the short tonic o in uo is an antiquated feature. It is communal to almost all the Romance languages, but is not kept in French, where uo becomes ue in the 12th century: buon/buona: bonum buon buen (buen will be replaced by the protonic form bon/bonne).

P.S. And besides, to close the subject, let us remind that for the Greeks, first “civilized” people having gotten in touch with it, France is still Gallia.

2) It goes without saying we are pleased to see God or rather Muhammad in fact (the notion of uncreated Quran can be only a deception or at the very least a non-truth due to the lack of reflection even of intelligence simply ) to thus pay homage to this famous anti-racist thinker who was Alexander the Great. To speak about him in his Quran God probably took into account one of the many fictionalized versions of his life circulating at the time in the Middle East. And the Ya' juj and Ma' juj are equivalents of our still modern Swiss or Austrian krampus zhorns or Tschaggata.

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THE FESTIVAL OF TARAN/TORAN/TUIREAN.

The Seain’s day or St. John’s day in the calendar of St. Patrick.

Look out! There also it is not an oenach but a bonfire!

The festival of Taran is the very example of the Celtic local festival, varying ad infinitum according to the areas. What follows is therefore only one example among others.

The new religion, of course, tried to prohibit this ancient ritual. Here what one of the talibans/parabolani of Christianity wrote, St Eligius, in Belgium about it…"No Christian on the feast of Saint John or the solemnity of any other saint performs summer solstice rites or dancing or leaping or diabolical chants."

In France Bossuet too tried to prohibit “to dance around fire, to feast, to throw herbs over fire, to gather some of them before midday on an empty stomach; to have some of them, to preserve them all the year long, to keep the firebrands or the coals of sacred fire.”

But this antique habit (so ancient that it is even pre-Druidic) was revived by a Catalan celticist : Francis Pujade, in 1955.

In 1955, indeed, a Pyrenean mountain dweller called Francis Pujade, wanting to celebrate at the same time his birthday and midsummer, lit again a traditional fire on the top of the Mount Canigo the sacred mountain of the Catalans.

Francis Pujade then had been very impressed by the brotherhood of the Sanch (the Blood) with their red, black, cowls, their hoods, and so on.

In 1963, a Circle of young people will take the decisive initiative: to take down in the plain this flame from the Canigo, lit beforehand from the fire of the sky on the Royal Mountains and watched all the year long in the Casa Pairal.

As we had nothing else in our files on this solstitial bonfire, since it is a ritual, of course, native in Europe, but pre-druidic, we took over the basic elements of the ritual of the fires of this queen of mountains.

During this solstitial ritual, the role of the officiating druid , is carried out in theory, and as far as possible, by a priestess, and not by a high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht).

We are unaware of why the celebrating druid this day should not be a priest having entered the Indo-European Celtic major orders (a druid druid), but a priestess. In any case, it is thus except in Stonehenge which is a particular case as we will see it (the neo-druids may come there). On the other hand, as for the ritual of lighting of the Olympic flame since 1936, we will follow the same basic principle with regard to the costume of the priestess in order to reconcile both the theatrical necessities of the staging and the fidelity to our history. The costumes must be similar to those of the Celtic princesses of Antiquity (but not the priestesses of Hera as far as we are concerned, of course!)

The preparation of the solstitial fire starts in the evening of the day previous to the solstice, therefore in the night of June 20th to 21st.

Before being used then to light fire, the flame (from the sacred mountain and not from Olympia) must be kept (relayed) by means of a storm lantern , in a place chosen not far away from the stake: the tennotatos or tantad. When the girl and the ambacts carrying torches come to seek the flame, they will light torches or candles with this storm lantern, which will be extinguished then; and put again (inside the tennotatos/tantad ) while waiting for the following year.

The ceremony of the sacred fire may then begin, torch bearers, priestesses, vates and veledae or gutuaters/gutumaters prepare.

The ceremony begins with a general procession. The priestesses open the walk while singing occasional anthems (barditus of the faithfulness, or another song of this kind).

Then the gutuaters/gutumaters come in red cowls, a vervain branch in their hand. The vates in green dress follow: they lead the white ox which people will make barbecued on a spit.

Finally the veledae in blue cowls. They also lead, by the bridle, the riding young person on her white mare, bringing the flame symbolically lit a few moments earlier from the sky fire. Taken down from the King-Peak and watched all the year long, in accordance with the Tradition, the flame of Tarantantad having to be a perpetual fire.

“In cujus aede perpetui ignes numquam canescunt in favillis sed, ubi ignis tabuit, vertit in globos saxeos” (Solin. collectanea rerum memorab. 22.10).

N.B. The Peak of the Canigo can be, of course, replaced by every other place where the lightning is likely to fall.

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The stake in the honor of Taran/Toran/Tuireann towards which the procession of priestesses, veledae, vates and gutuaters/gutumaters as well as wheel bearers, moves, must be built before in accordance with the rule book; i.e., in the shape of a gigantic mannequin out of wicker.

This mannequin out of wicker must be topped by representations, out of wood or straw, of various animals (cats, cocks, or others).

If they are found intact the following day, it is a bad sign. That wants to say that Taran/Toran/Tuireann did not really accept their sacrifice. This is why it should be checked that they burn well with all the rest.

Yet very not a long time ago, in certain areas, as solstitial stake dedicated to Taran/Toran/Tuireann, people used mannequins out of wicker filled with animals.

“Having devised a colossus of straw and wood, they throw into the colossus cattle and wild animals of all sorts, even human beings (?), and then make a burned offering of the whole thing” reports even Strabo (IV, 5).

“Taranis Ditis pater hoc modo apud eos placatur: in alveo ligneo aliquot homines cremantur” reports the anonymous commentator of the works by Lucan (Bernese Scholia).

This habit disappeared and today the animals are not any more but out of wood or straw, as for the Epona’s day.

We have to find in this stake the seven following varieties of tree: fir, birch, beech, elm, apple, chestnut, oak tree. The tree varieties which people do not manage to find could be (exceptionally) replaced by som honey or a drink offering of mead in the fire, as we will see it.

The members of the sodality arrive in procession to form the sacred circle in the place where the stake will be lit. With by order of seniority the priestesses leading the procession, the celebrating priestess in the middle. Then the gutuaters/gutumaters, the vates, with the Judge of the Tradition and his high voulge held like a Swiss halberd, lastly the veledae. The procession arrives if possible from the east at the selected place where the almost finished stake is waiting for, then goes ritually sunwise three times around it.

The participants being in their place, priestesses in the east facing the west, gutuaters/gutumaters in north facing the south, vates in the west facing the east, veledae in the south facing north; the vate acting as Judge of the Tradition moves towards the sacred center to salute the celebrating high priestess with his voulge, brandished like a Swiss halberd.

The reception of the guests takes place at this time, and to begin that of the distinguished guest who will be regarded as being Abarix, the famous Abellio’s priest, about whom even the Greeks spoke; accompanied by two ambactes (Opis and Arge) carrying the horn of plenty and a basket of apples 1).

Abarix. There is in the Ocean beyond the northern winds , an island where no farmer exists except these of which nature takes care itself. In this island the ground generates everything like grass and dispenses abundant harvests in covered with fruit forests. In this island north of the world in the middle of a clearing in the forest, there is a stone temple. From this temple, people distinguish the mountains there is on the moon. Our Apollo to us, Abellio, returns there every nineteen years to play harp , and to dance under the stars there, since the vernal equinox until the rising of the Pleiades constellation.

These symbolic presents are offered by Abarix to the celebrating high priestess, particularly the horn of mead she passes then on her left so that it can go sunwise around the sacred circle. The last drops are poured on the stake. The other guests are then also presented by the high priestess and are welcomed by torch light.

Then, like each year, the celebrating high priestess says again the ancient message of the former primordial druids on the divine plans.

We uns, of the religion of Nature and Forest, we think that it is good that there are Celts, Romans, Germanics, Greeks, Indians, and so many other languages or peoples still. The divinity is expressed into this diversity so that each one has one’s worship, one’s rituals, one’s canticles and one’s tribe of believers.

It is good that mankind is made of thousands and one different families, it is good that Mankind is made of thousands and one different communities. Like as many tree varieties in the forest. The main thing is that every tree, oak, birch, elm, or beech, has its territory, its biotope, its oak grove, its birch grove, its elm grove, its beech grove, so that no tree variety can choke another and that all have their place under the sun, Lord of the Universe.

Foreigner my brother, friendly tourist passing through the region, more you will be yourself, different, another person; otherwise, more you will resemble us in truth. Because it is by digging more possible into oneself than we reach the universal, not by giving up one’s personality, one’s identity, to become an undifferentiated golem or robot equipped with a metal heart.

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Far from being what the biographer of the Christian parabolan named Patrick, reported about it, the fire which will burn presently on the heights is the very symbol of this unity in the diversity of mankind. All the countries of our area and even of elsewhere, in this moment, are on the point of celebrating the midsummer, but each one in its way, and it is that which is admirable.

Rome formerly wanted to subject the whole universe to her law. Rome formerly wanted to standardize the whole earth, but as our great king Calgacus said it…

“There is nothing beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, now they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace. Nature has willed that every man's children and kindred should be his dearest objects. Yet these are torn from us by conscriptions to be slaves elsewhere. Our wives and our sisters, even though they may escape violation from the enemy, are dishonored under the names of friendship and hospitality.”

Foreigner my brother, friendly tourists, you whom we invited at our table to speak about your so beautiful country, in accordance with the traditions of our legendary hospitality, know well what follows. On our premises everybody may go freely everywhere in full safety, without being even worried, because as another one of our great spiritual ancestors, we are a free country. But it is necessary never agitate the people with false reports by pushing them thus to make very serious mistakes. Friendly tourists, foreigner my brother, when you will go back home, filled with wisdom and reason, say well to yours that difference is more than a right, it is a duty. The duty of difference is the first of the commands, because peoples have all particular geniuses.

The celebrating high priestess having finished this sermon, the layman playing the role of herald turns then towards the north, sounds cornyx and asks the ambact representing this part of the fiefdom…

- To north is there strength, richness, art, science and peace?

-Yes in the north there is peace, the attending persons answer.

- To east is there strength, richness, art, science and peace?

-Yes in the east there is peace, the attending persons answer.

- To south is there strength , richness, art, science and peace?

-Yes in the south there is peace, answer the attending persons answer.

- To west is there strength, richness, art, science and peace?

-Yes in the west it there is peace, the attending persons answer.

The celebrating priestess…

- Think of the sacred fire which will be kindled while putting down your offering on the stake.

Then, by torchlight, all those who have wood or ad hoc vegetables to entrust to fire begin then to engrave a message in Lepontic runes on it. The high priestess, after having lengthily walked around the stake, from the left towards the right, extracts from it a piece of wood she engraves too, by using her personal dagger or pruning knife before positioning it back. Each one writes thus, while using these Lepontic runes, the wish of one’s choice, to entrust it to the flames.

On the signal of the high priestess who celebrates (“Men and women of our community, fellow countrymen, fellow countrywomen, build the stake! ”) the foreigners to the group, invited for the circumstance and welcomed, as well as the other assistants, vates, veledae, gutuaters or priestesses; then go and put down each one their little faggot of small branches or vine shoots mixed with St. John’s worts. Each one must indeed bring one’s log or one’s bundle of sticks to the communal work.

The stake therefore is to have the shape of a gigantic mannequin. People will try to have the seven following tree varieties in it: fir, birch, beech, elm, apple, chestnut, oak tree. The varieties of trees which people don’t manage to find easily can be exceptionally replaced by a drink offering of mead in the fire.

It is the vate Judge of the Tradition who must be theoretically the supervisor of this stake, it is consequently himself who will take these logs or these branches and who will put them on or in the suitably laid out“mannequin.” A stake in theory built on a height in order to be seen by far.

Each time the high priestess asks…

- Why do you carry these branches of trees in your hands?

And the vate Judge of the Tradition then answers…

“In order to be able to fuel the sacred fire with the force of the most beautiful trees in our country.”

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The stake once ready, the high priestess makes traced by the Judge of the Tradition a circle on the ground all around it, with the tip of his voulge; then recites the prayer intended for Taran/Toran/Tuirean ,to whom the wood or straw animals are devoted.

We give our existences

In your paternal hands

Be the spirit of miracles

The spirit of spiritual cures

And of conversions

Change the lark of our soul/mind

Into a white swan from Hyperborea.

Nert dé agus andé

May the force be with us

Sunartiu!

The celebrating priestess speaks then to the ordinary guest or the guest of honor playing the role of Abarix.

High-knower Abarix, please light the sacred fire.

The guest of honor playing the role of Abarix, goes and takes the flame from the Mount Canigo in order to light the stake, while turning for this purpose clockwise , from the left towards the right.

Then later on, still with the torch of the flame from the Canigo, he kindles a straw or wood wheel decorated with swastikas and triskelions, that people make be hurtled down the hill until it is lost 2).

Notice: if the Tarantantad is kindled on a regional mecca , as in the case of Tara in Ireland (“whoever kindled on this night his before that of the king was to perish”); it is it which then gives the signal of all other fires of Taran, in the area.

This element of ritual can be removed if there is fire risk.

As soon as fire is kindled, after one moment of concentration her arms raised, palms opened towards the sky, facing the east, the celebrating high priestess undoes the circle by traveling it three times from the inside in the reverse direction and adds what follows.

“Afallen peren, a pren fion

Attif ydan gel, yg koët Kéliton

Kid keisser ofervid herwit y hafon

Yn y del kadwaladir oe kinadel ryd

Kinan ny erbin ef rychwin ar Saesson

Kymri a orvit, kein bit eu

Dragon Kaffaud paub, y theithi, llauen vi bru

Kenhittor kirnn, eluch, kathil hetuch a hinon .”

“Sweet apple tree of crimson colour,

Growing, concealed in the wood of Celyddon:

Though men seek your fruit, their search is vain

Until a Cadwaladyr comes from the warriors meeting

Victorious Cymry, glorious their leader,

All shall how their rights again,

The brave men rejoice, sounding joyful horns.

Chanting songs of happiness!

A staff of gold, signifying bravery

Will be given by the glorious Dragon Kings.

The grateful one will vanquish the profaner,

Before the child, bright and bold,

The Anglo-Saxons shall flee, and bards will flourish.

Then the bonfires will never die out .

They will prevail on all the other fires.

The kingdoms will fall in front of them

But themselves will fill up all things with their power,

Through ages,

Nert dé agus andé

Sunartiu! "

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Notice: if the ceremony takes place at Stonehenge, the druidicatons (the druidicates) are then confirmed in the following way. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) raise their right hand, the three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger ), and pronounce all together in a loud voice the oito or following oath…

I swear by the gods my people honor

To be faithful until my death to this world

To the druidic gessa that I gave myself freely

Help us O great Taran/Toran/Tuirean

Help us O Abellio

Help us O Abarix

Help us Opis and Arge

To remain in communion

With the amber and gold chain

Of the immortal druidic succession.

Of the true Celtic tradition.

I swear to be the worthy and authentic heir

To the Science and philosophy of the islands in Hyperborea

Or located north of the World:

Thule, Abalum, Gorre and Ogygia the green island

To our elder of the time of the independent and free Great Celltica.

To the last druid of the court of the great Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill

According to Urard Mac Coise

To the Reformation of Sean Eoghain Ui Thuathallain na Leabhar

To the Reformation of Henry Lizeray

Or of his comarbae.

May Abellio who reigns also on this place

Take care of our apple trees

Nert dee agus andee. Awen!

These words once pronounced (such is the characteristic of this oath, its privilege in a way) the druidicatons which were up to that point only provisional become definitive, sacerdos in aeternum.

End of the note about Stonehenge.

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People sing then the barditus of the fire of the gods or recite it. The verses were shared out in advance between the dignitaries of the sodality, but the audience each time resumes in chorus the refrain.

The people who still have branches or logs of the variety of tree corresponding to the verse, can hold up them and throw them on the stake.

FIRE BARDITUS.

Chorus.

Wood fire, king fire

You are the same in each home

Clear fire, merry fire

In every place, fire of the gods.

Fir tree, green and always young tree

With faithful foliage, Summer and winter alike,

Resinous and always odorous tree,

You are immortal youth

Which sparkles and which flames

In the life fire.

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Birch, clear and always soft tree,

Your bark is light

And your flesh is white

Like that of a girl

Whose hair flutters in the wind

In the shade of the thickets .

Beech, strong but always flexible tree

Like the young man

To whom your wood provides

Weapons and tools

And even the beechnut oil with which he will anoint

His muscles and his kidneys!

And you, elm

With calm and dense shade

You are wood with which we make

The house beams

And the cart wheels

Glory to you!

And you, apple tree

Of which fruits during the whole winter

Speak us about Spring

And once cut

Show us the flower which conceived them!

Glory to you!

To you also chestnut

Chestnut our blood

Of which nutritive fruits

Sparkle in the embers,

Of which resistant wood

Furnishes our residences

Glory to you!

O Dervus, genius of the Oak Church! 3)

Venerated sanctuary of gods and men

Superb oak, king oak

Give us your force

Cast on us your guardian shade

And speaks us about the gods.

Then people may feast around the tables set under the oaks in the clearing, by sharing fraternally the supplies brought.

The high priestess blesses the meal by making on it the sign of the cross of Suqellus (i.e., an X); the three fingers stretched out like in a hand of justice: thumb, forefinger and middle finger (folded down: ring and little finger ).

Upwards on the right: “By the Strength of Abellio.”

Downwards but on the left: “By the Strength of Taran/Toran/Tuirean.”

Upwards on the left: “By the Strength of Belenus.”

Downwards but on the right this time: “By the Strength of Brigindo.”

May this meal be blessed!

May the force be with it!

Nert dé agus andé

Sunartiu!

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It is then only that may begin the choreography of the birds carried out by crowned with flowers Namnetes or Celtiberian maidens dancing on tunes of sacred harps (Catalan bagpipes and Sardana in the Pyrenees). In fact, replaced today by a chorus or a song. The evening will start. The dagolitoi or believers and the guests form a circle around the fire. They dance and they sing, they jump over, particularly the young grooms.

As fire decreases, the Judge of the Tradition gathers ashes and embers of it so that all is well burned .

Each one may then, if he wishes it, light his candle with the last flames of father fire (tantad), or take in it firebrands, even embers, to bring back them to home. They will be preserved like amulets against the storms or the other natural disasters. And too bad for the great bishop of the children of the king of France, who was Bossuet, if it is not less effective than some holy water!

The celebrating high priestess sprinkles then the andirons (the fire which dies out) using some water drops taken from a cup with the branch of a tree then recites the following prayer:

O Taran/Toran/Tuireann

Great Spirit ruler of the Sky

Move away from us the hellish legion

Of the dusii and of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns

As all the under-gods of the ices of the non-world.

After this last prayer, priestesses, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters, leave the fire, at least symbolically; but the tennotatos (tantad) is not finished for as much, because a new ceremony will gather the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), the priestesses, the veledae , the vates and the gutuaters/gutumaters, on the following day at daybreak.

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If the ceremony does not take place at Stonehenge but in the area of Oxford a symbolic mecca similar to the castle of Scathache may be the center of it. For memory below what the grianon of Scathache resembled.

It is indeed on or at the foot of such a solar construction or suitable place arranged not far away from the fire of the day before, that is to be completed the ancient ritual. In a strict sense of the word , within this grianon the tower of Abellisama is to be a true tower, with staircases to reach its top… as for the Magdalen Tower in Oxford (or in Brancion in France) but it can be replaced by a simple terrace or a simple rise in the ground if necessary. The tower of Abellisama were built on visible sites by far, and often forming part of a whole network of signal towers.

The ambact or the herald responsible for the horn sounding goes up at the top of the tower, with young singers or a choral society.

Called with great reinforcement of soundings of cornyx or hunting horns (or French horns simply) everyone gathers at dawn at the foot of the building, simple dagolitoi (simple believers ) or invited foreigners to the community, spectators, tourists.

At the time when the sun appears at the horizon, the herald sounds horn and all turn to the East.

The officiating druid…

O Belenus! May the darkness of the night is dispersed in the rays of your glorious light.

At the top of the tower of Abellisama, turned towards the East where the sun rose, the choir 4) then burst into a barditus in the honor of the sun or recites the prayer of noibo Colmcille.

O invincible Sun, be the way prosperous;

Alone am I upon the mountain;

I have no more fear of aught

Than if there were six thousand with me.

If there were six thousand with me

Of people, though they might defend my body,

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When the appointed moment of my death shall come,

There is no fortress that can resist it.

They that are ill-fated are slain even in a sanctuary,

Even on an island in the middle of a lake;

They that are well fated are preserved in life,

Though they were in the first rank of battles .

Whatever is destined for one,

He shall not go from the world till it befalls him;

Though a Prince should seek anything more

Not as much as a mite shall he obtain.

O Royal sun , true Living God!

Woe to him who for any reason does evil.

What you see not come to you,

What you see escapes from your grasp.

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,

Better is He on whom we depend.

I reverence not the voices of birds,

Nor sneezing, nor any charm in the wide world,

Nor a child of chance,

My druid is Hesus, the son of God.

May the force be with me!

Nert dé agus andé

Sunartiu!

During this time “at the foot of the tower” four vates equipped with their green cowl bring a large white sheet in the center of which are various herbs.

Pliny preserved to us the list of these ten St. John’s worts that Bossuet did not want to see any more.

The verbena or vervain. The oualoida or chamomile. The visumaros or clover. The souivitis or ground ivy. The belenountia or henbane. The betilolen or burdock. The pimpedolen or cinquefoil. The samolus or water pimpernel . The selago or savin.

The officiating druid dressed in his white cuculla recites or reads the following text 5).

“After these things shall come forth a heron from the forest of Calaterium, which shall fly round the island for two years together. With her nocturnal cry she shall call together the winged kind, and assemble to her all sorts of fowls. They shall invade the tillage of husbandmen, and devour all the grain of the harvests. Then shall follow a famine upon the people, and a grievous mortality upon the famine. But when this calamity shall be over, the detestable bird shall go to the valley of Galabes, and shall raise it to be a high mountain. Upon the top thereof it shall also plant an oak, and build its nest in its branches. Three eggs shall be produced in the nest, from whence shall come forth a fox, a wolf, and a bear. The fox shall devour her mother, and bear the head of an ass. In this monstrous form shall she frighten her brothers, and make them fly into Normandy. But the fox will not be a fox and the lion and the leopard will not be animals. Elsewhere those who order are filled with hubris and insolence; there they are hate by nobody and want to be beloved by each one; there they don’t seem as wolves with their inferiors; but are gracious and good for their subjects. Whereas others want to be compared with wild animals, make rabid foxes, leopards and lions, painted on their shields or embroider on their standards; theyselves, simple and modest, have as coat of arms some flowers, but these flowers, marvelous and worthy to be celebrated thing, drive away the lions and the leopards. We saw the wild animals going back their caves on their only odor.” 5)

Then he distributes St. John’s worts to the public come to attend the ceremony.

Once finished the delivery , at the appointed time, the officiating druid asks the audience…

- What is the length of the shadow on the earth ?

The vate Judge of the Tradition…

- There is no more shade. It is twelve o’clock. The time is come to conclude this festival, facing the sun, eye of Belenus.

The festival of the sacred fire is thus completed, the longest day of the year, i.e., on June 21st.

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Currently the ceremony is still practiced by our brothers and sisters of the Druid Order, within the imposing framework of Stonehenge, that Diodorus of Sicily describes as follows.

“And there is also on the island both a magnificent sacred precinct of Abellio and a notable temple 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. II, 47).

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1) We find allusions to all these characters in Herodotus and in the writings of other ancient Greek authors (under the name of Hyperboreans, but with Abaris instead of Abarix).

2) If necessary, if the climate and the dryness make this ritual dangerous (fire risks particularly) then people as a preliminary tie these sun wheels to a wood post so that they can rotate on the spot without moving an inch, and they give up making them descend the slopes.

3) Perhaps Kildare in Ireland, whose name precisely means Oak Church. In the pre-Christian era, Kildare was the site of an altar dedicated to the Celtic deity Brigindo.

4)The chorus-singers must be white dressed as for a dubbing.

5) The text below was found, crossed out by Peter DeLaCrau himself, but his children considered to be preferable to make it a notice inserted into this place.

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BRON TROGAIN.

The autumnal equinox or the festival of the Apple tree.

Also said festival of the memory. Called thus in the honor of John Toland, who, on September 21, 1717, in the Apple tree tavern , in London, started again the druidism then fallen in full decline.

The facts of the problem.

The fourth great festival mentioned by our hero, our eternally young lord (of Muithemne), our king (of the warriors), is the festival of Bron trogain (cf the Tochmarc Emire).

Co bron trogain ..... i.taite fogamuir.i.is and dobrini trogan.i.talam for thoirthib. Trogan ainm di thalmain. Until autumn… i.-e. the beginning of autumn: the earth sorrows under its fruits. Trogan is one of the names of the earth.

But normally that matches the date of Lugnasade. Many experts therefore make this Bron trogain a simple (forgotten) synonym of Lugnasade, what is not without posing problems .....

As John Toland must do it on September 21, 1717, people begin generally by thinking of the rest of the soul/minds of the martyrs in Anglesey, massacred or sold as slaves, with women and children, by the Roman army; when Paulinus Suetonius took and burned the national druidic great center in Mona (ancient name of the island) in 58. These high-knowers of the druidiactions, our spiritual ancestors, were indeed the inspiration of all the revolts, but in 58 in Anglesey, the Roman army took and occupied without difficulty an island which was not defended. Not forgetting also the last Irish druids of the 10th century according to the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach by Urard Mac Coise.

What is certain indeed it is that John Toland was the greatest specialist in the druidism known at the 18th century (see the book he devoted to its history in 1726) because his knowledge of the Gaelic language enabled him to have a direct access to the files relative to the last Irish druids.

The autumnal equinox is therefore a festival of the memory (commemoration of our martyrs) we have said .

Each one takes generally the opportunity to evoke also the memory of the great reformer who was John Toland, his life, his work, and the officiating concludes thus…

- We are joined together in this place today, in the shadow of the disappeared large apple tree, because this day is a day of Thanksgiving.

The officiating person receives from the hands of the conhospita who is on his right the cup containing a little barley ale and bearing the inscription “nessamon delgu linda,” then sprinkles the ground with it while saying…

- May the soul/mind of our earth, may the spirit of great Hornunnos, welcome the homage that we pay to them, and grant us also their benefits on next year!

Men and women of our community, fellow countrymen , fellow countrywomen, oyez, oyez, oyez

May all the powers called upon here go back now to their place,

The triple Brigindo in all times and all places

Hornunnos in the forests

Epona and Sabinus in the Other World

The triple circle into its center.

May all the powers go back into their place!

Go in the peace of gods!

Peace up to the sky

Peace from earth to sky

Peace on the earth and under the heaven

Force and prosperity for everybody!

May all the powers return to their place! ”

BANQUET BEING TO FOLLOW THE CEREMONY.

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At the request of John Toland, the following forms are recited for the solstices and equinoxes from which rise the season changes and all the other changes on our globe (when the sun is in the middle or at the end of its course).

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let us banish strife,envy, and obstinacy.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

Let us harbor sweetness, knowledge, and politeness!

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let jokes and mirth be our pleasures!

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

May the Muses and Graces be propitious!

The bard (president) of the banquet.

I toast wit, modesty, facetiae . Let us search out, diligently, the causes of things, that we might live pleasantly, and die peaceably.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

That, free from all fear, neither elated by joy, nor depressed by sadness, we might be liberated by reason.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let us greatly feed our minds, but sparingly our bellies.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

It is just and good.

The bard (president of the banquet).

Let us toast the Graces.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

Let us toast the goddesses or good fairies who leaned over our cradles!

Each one clinks glasses then with one’s neighbor before emptying one’s glass.

SECOND SERIES OF FORMS TO BE RECITED AT THE TIME OF THE SOLSTICES OR THE EQUINOXES.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let us sing a hymn upon the nature of the BITUS or UNIVERSE.

RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

“Whatever this is, it animates all things, forms, nourishes, increases, creates, buries, and takes into itself all things: and the same, of all things is the parent.”

Sometimes, the following :

“All things within the verge of mortal laws are changed. All climates in revolving years do not know themselves; nations change their faces, but the world is safe, and preserves its all; neither increased by time, nor worn by age: its motion is not instantaneous, it does not fatigue its course. Always the same it has been, and shall be. Our father’s saw no alteration, neither shall posterity. It is God who for ever is immutable.”

Each one clinks glasses then with one’s neighbor before emptying one’s glass.

THIRD SERIES OF FORM TO BE RECITED AT THE TIME OF THE SOLSTICES OR THE EQUINOXES.

The bard (president) of the banquet.

Let us now make honorable mention of those men and women, among the ancients, who taught or acted nobly; because the actions are to match the words with respect to every true-hearted or minded Celt.

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RESPONSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS:

That they may benefit us by their example, as well as learning.

The bard (president of the banquet).

I toast…names at the discretion of the president of the banquet. For example, Lafayette.

Or, more antique, Eponine and Sabinus, etc.

Each one clinks glasses then with one’s neighbor before emptying one’s glass.

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THE VERNAL EQUINOX OR CLOVER FESTIVAL (ver sacrum).

Same kind of ritual that for Bron Trogain, but with the variant below.

The high priestess.

- We are gathered here today to celebrate the rebirth of our mother Earth , etc., etc.

The celebrating priestess receives from the conhospita who is on her right a clover tuft symbolizing spring and adds…

- This plant represents the living power of the three light rays of the goose foot , gold, silver and bronze.

The ceremony of the broken sword. This ceremony, intended to strengthen the bonds of friendship between the various Celtic people, is placed within the framework of the vernal equinox (ver sacrum). The strong point of this ceremony is the reconstitution of the sword of Ambicatus.

The high priestess explains…

- This broken sword which was resoldered in front of you is the symbol of the Ambicatusian ver sacrum, the very symbol of the great Celtic family widespread all around the world since the death of Catuvelladurus and Catuvellaunus, but which remains united by the bonds of the heart and the spirit. This sword forms also the symbol of our resistance against the persecutions we underwent, we undergo, and we will still undergo.

“For two thousand years and even more, our marriage of faith and reason, of the faith enlightened by the reason, is therefore persecuted. Remember that true-hearted and minded Celts were always obliged to defend themselves. Caesar Augustus prohibited the religion druidarum. Caesar Tiberius published a decree against our high-knowers “and all that tribe of vates and physicians ” as he said. The emperor Claudius prohibited the practice of our religion.

The people of one book, the parabolani disciples of the Nazorean rabbi Jesus, like the roughneck Pannonian soldier called Martin or the bishop of Braga, then assaulted even martyzed our old druids, or burned our sisters on the pretext of sorcery. Then they usurped our ancient worship places, our pilgrimages, our gods and our festivals. And the monolatrous people or the God’s fanatics of today dream only to complete this civilization genocide. Let us think a little of what they inflict in the other end of the world to our Parsi or Zoroastrian or Yazidi brethren, as to the last pagans in Pakistan: the Kalashs.

To be a true pagan hearted and minded Celt is to belong to a people of priests (each pagan is to oneself his own priest in front of the altar of the ancestors, his kamidana or his Epona’s Creche), to a sacred nation whose children have duties, moral laws or gessa, extremely constraining.”

Therefore let us work all together for the come back of our great Monarch Ambicatus.

Local rites, pardons and pilgrimages.

The rituals in the honor of the majority of the local deities (heroes, prophets or demigods and messengers of the other world) are to be performed opposite to the , in the eye of the light.

In all cases, the andirons as well as the fire must play a central role there. This fire is lit theoretically on a well-cleared height, in the center of a circle or of a triple circle, people of one Book and others monolatrous people or godless people, should never enter, with some exceptions.

The stake there too is to be churn- shaped , with three sides, three angles and six doors or six openings at ground level. The seven following varieties of tree will be put (one by door): fir, birch, beech, elm, apple, chestnut, oak tree.

The tree varieties people hardly manage to find, may be exceptionally replaced by a wild rose (or a rose).

In certain cases, they may even substitute to this wild rose a drink offering of mead. In the absence of being a true stake, the fire can be reduced to a lantern, a torch or a candle, even simply a log lit on a pair of fire dogs. The participants are invited to come to bring themselves a faggot, some logs or a simple branch. It is the ambact fire master who must be theoretically the supervisor of this stake. It is him therefore who will take these logs, these faggots or these branches, in order to lay out them on

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the stake, suitably directed, a point of its base towards the west, the side opposed to this point facing the east.

Each time the high priestess will ask…

- Why do you carry these tree branches in your hands?

And the vate Judge of the Tradition will answer…

- In order to be able to fuel the sacred fire with the life of the most beautiful trees in nature.

In general fires are lit by a priestess (a vate, a gutumater or a velede) symbolizing the she guardian of the perpetual fire of the Church of the oaks, i.e., Lady Brigit.

The members of the brotherhood, after having put up their ceremony cowls in an adapted place, begin by coming processionally to form the sacred circle around the selected place.

With by order of seniority priestesses and high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) first, the celebrating person in the middle, in front of him the conhospita carrying the cup sporting the inscription “nessamon delgu linda” and the mead , behind Lady Brigit (theoretically that must be two priestesses). Then the gutuaters, vates, within their middle the Judge of the Tradition, his high voulge in his hand like a Swiss halberd, lastly the veledae.

The procession arrives if possible from the east and goes round ritually thrice , sunwise. Participants being in their place; the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) in the east facing the west, the gutuaters/gutumaters in the north facing the south, the vates in the west facing the east, the veledae in the south facing the north; with possibly some disciples.

Various rites take place then according to the circumstances: the vate acting as Judge of the Tradition can come to salute with his held up voulge the high priestess; the high priestess can move into the center of sovereignty of the circle and swivel on her right to find herself facing the setting sun, her hands stretched out towards the sky , and so on.

She may for example ask…

- Do you know what is the length of the shade O daltas?

The vate Judge of the Tradition…

- There is no more shade, the night has just fallen.

The high priestess…

- It is therefore the time for the andabatas to celebrate the rites under the moon, in the light of her silver wheel and under the stars…

Rise O sun,so that the darkness of the night is cleared in the rays of your glorious light…

Release us from the hellish legions of the dusii and of gigantic anguipedic wyverns as well as from all other under-gods of the ices of the non-world.

By the strength of the nemet Hornunnos

Our master, our adoptive father,

By the strength of Taran/Toran/Tuirean

By the strength of Hesus

By the strength of Epona and Sabinus.

By the strength of Lug

Sunartiu!

With these words and by torch light, in the falling night; all those who have some wood, a candle, some leather, or ad hoc plant to entrust to fire, begin to engrave on it a message in Lepontic runes , using their cladibo (dagger). The high priestess, after having lengthily walked around the stake churn, from the left towards the right, takes from it a piece of wood she engraves with her personal dagger, before carefully positioning it back. Each one writes out thus using the Celtic runes, to entrust it to the flames, the wish of one’s choice.

The high priestess speaks then to the person acting as Lady Brigit:

- Noiba Brigit, please set ablaze the seven varieties of sacred wood.

Lady Brigit takes a torch, walks round inside the circle three times, symbolically, sunwise, and lights the stake while starting with the east. As soon as the fire has taken , in each door or windows, she comes back to salute the celebrating priestess, and to position herself again in the east, on her right.

The participants, provided with torches or candles, while following, of course, the circle, come one by one to light their wood or torch engraved with Celtic runes , to that of Lady Brigit.

Then, always by respecting the circle, they entrust them to the fire while getting back their position . It is at this time only that they make their wish. The song of the fires is sung, or it is recited. The verses were distributed in advance, but the assistance each time takes again in chorus the refrain.

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Refrain.

Wood fire, king fire

You are the same in each home

Clear fire, merry fire

In every place, fire of the gods.

Fir tree, green and always young tree

With faithful foliage, Summer and winter alike,

Resinous and always odorous tree,

You are immortal youth

Which sparkles and which flames

In the life fire.

Birch, clear and always soft tree,

Your bark is light

And your flesh is white

Like that of a girl

Whose hair flutters in the wind

In the shade of the thickets .

Beech, strong but always flexible tree

Like the young man

To whom your wood provides

Weapons and tools

And even the beechnut oil with which he will anoint

His muscles and his kidneys!

And you, elm

With calm and dense shade

You are wood with which we make

The house beams

And the cart wheels

Glory to you!

And you, apple tree

Of which fruits during the whole winter

Speak us about Spring

And once cut

Show us the flower which conceived them!

Glory to you!

To you also chestnut

Chestnut our blood

Of which nutritive fruits

Sparkle in the embers,

Of which resistant wood

Furnishes our residences

Glory to you!

O Dervus, genius of the Oak Church!

Venerated sanctuary of gods and men

Superb oak, king oak

Give us your strength

Cast on us your guardian shade

And speaks us about the gods.

The high priestess receives from the conhospita who stood on her left the cup bearing the inscription “nessamon delgu linda” and containing a little mead, then she sprinkles the ground with it while saying…

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- This day is a Thanksgiving day for the hearted and minded Celts, may our mother the Earth receive the tribute that we pay to her and grant for us her benefits.

“May all the called upon here powers return to their place now.

Taran/Toran/Tuireann in celestial fire

The triple Brigindo in every time and places

Hornunnos in the wood of his forest

Our great queen Epona in the Other World

Hesus hanging in his tree

The triple circle in its center.

May all the powers return to their place!

Men and women of our community,

Fellow countrymen, fellow countrywomen, oyez, oyez, oyez 3),

Go in the peace of gods!

Peace up to the sky

Peace from earth to sky

Peace on the earth and under the heaven

Force and prosperity for everybody! ”

May all the powers return to their place! ”

The celebrating high priestess performs another circumambulation in the opposite direction. Placing herself at the west, she lights with the fire a torch or a candle, then she leaves to place herself to the east.

She then invites the participants who wish it to bring back the fire at home (or in the room which will house in fact the end of the meeting). Those, while undoing in turn the circle, leave and light their torch or their candle with that which was set up by the great priestess and finish the circle while leaving by the west one by one.

Thus carrying the symbol of the continuity of the sacred fire.

The circle being demolished one can jump over the last flames of stake.

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OTHER FIRES.

Look out, they are in no case some oenach!

The ordinary vehicle of the offering made to the celestial gods is fire, of which the lighting itself forms an autonomous ceremony. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) are the fire masters and it is the fire of the most powerful or most skillful druid which wins. The evil rowan tree fire prepared under the direction of Cithruadh, for example is dominated by the beneficial fire which the druid Mog Ruith lights in turn. The immediate reason for the superiority of Mog Ruith is simple besides. It is due to the meticulousness of the achievement of the ritual of building of the stake. Fire, without being the single means of the sacrifice, was one of its main instruments and illustrated a large number of religious ceremonies.

According to the excavations carried out in the “Belgian” temples by Jean-Louis Brunaux; the sacrifices then took place using three fires, laid out around a not very deep pit which played in a way the role of a hollow “altar .”

If the ceremony is to take place outdoors, the place where it has to be celebrated thus is called “nemeton.” If it has to take place in an unspecified building, temple or lodge, the place where it has to be celebrated in this case is called by a name depending on the importance of the building and has to be suitably decorated or laid out. For example, a large chamber or a rectangular room, linear; ending at the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time of a deambulatory or of a choir with a high altar, with an equal to the width of the room diameter , and separated from this one by a choir. In short a plan of the basilica type. In other words, a meeting room made up of a nave ended by an apse having the form of a half-circle, where sat, of course, formerly, the magistrates, but making possible today the ritual circumambulation (deiseil/ deiseal) of the druids, vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters (or priestesses of course) and letting the light pass as much as possible ( kind cathedral therefore, not catacombs).

The word basilica comes from a Greek term formed starting from two elements: “basileus” which means “king” and the suffix “- ikê,” a suffix of feminine adjective.

Or then, it has to be a plan of the Pantheon type i.e., a large rotunda, separated as regards the inside, by a kind of choir; preceded by a large rectangular room (pronaos) with a transitional building matching the portico of the old with a palisade Celtic sanctuaries; or the triumphal gate marking the entrance of the cemetery of the Breton parish closes; even the portal of certain Romanesque churches. At the end of the 11th century indeed, the carved decoration took place on the frontage of churches, in order to announce symbolically the passage of the secular world to the sacred enclosure. People will bring consequently much care to the ornamentation of the main frontage which acquires thus an unknown hitherto characteristic of monumentality. The artists do not have yet, of course, all the wanted experience in the handling of the chisel. They give to faces strange expressions, with bulging eyes, arched eyebrows. The characters have often false proportions, stiff attitudes. If they are plants or animals which are used as ornamentation patterns for the moldings, the capitals, we find again there the Celtic influence in the distortion of reality to come up at fantastic types, very far away from nature: these extraordinary representations, ewes, woman-headed quadrupeds, dragons, chimeras , adopted by the first Christian artists, had ended up meeting the popular beliefs 3).

Below an example of ritual forms to recite (extracted from the book of the Merlin’s prophecies).

“Woe to the red dragon, for his death hastens on. His lurking holes shall be seized by the white dragon.

The day hastens, in which the citizens shall perish on account of the guilt of perjury.

Woe to the perjured nation, for whose sake the renowned city shall come to ruin.

At that time shall the stones speak, and the sea you cross will be contracted into a narrow space.

On each bank shall one man hear another, the soil of the island shall be enlarged and the Gaul shall tremble for fear.

In those days the oaks of the forests shall burn, and acorns grow upon the branches of the linden trees.

The roots and branches will change their places, and the novelty of the thing shall pass for a miracle.

There shall succeed the ass of wickedness,

Swift against the goldsmiths; but slow against the ravenousness of wolves.

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He shall be advanced by a sea wolf, whom the woods of Africa shall accompany.

After this shall be produced a tree upon the Tower of London, which having no more than three branches.

It shall overshadow the surface of the earth with the breadth of its leaves.

It shall be esteemed hurtful to native fowls;

For they shall not be able to fly freely for fear of its shadow.

The Daneian wood shall be stirred up, and breaking forth into a human voice, shall cry:

Come, O Cambria, and join Cornwall to thy side,

Piety shall hurt the possessor of things got by impiety till he shall have put on his Father:

There shall be a most grievous holocaust of men that the natives may be restored.

He that shall do these things shall put on the brazen man,

And upon a brazen horse shall for a long time guard the gates of London.

Religion shall be again abolished, and there shall be a translation of the primate sees.

The whiteness of wool has been hurtful , and the variety of its tinctures

For those who know what I mean.”

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SACRIFICES.

Gaelic idpart. The name is old. It is used besides to translate the word “mass” into Gaelic language. Idpairt choirp Crist is used to translate Eucharistia mysteria in the Latin lives of saints according to Plummer.

Sacrifice in itself was never enough to restore the harmony or to do the things reinstated into the Big Whole, but its value of catharsis which can contribute to it nevertheless, on the human level, is undeniable. The druidic worship therefore is based on the sacrifice. Solemn homage to the deity, the sacrifice is carried out in the form of a more or less long ceremony, which has as a climax the atebertas or offerings given to the underground air deities; through a fire a little similar to that of the Parsis, or via a sacrifice pit.

It is in the forms of the sacrifice that the druidic religion shows the largest affinities with its Greek and Italic contemporaries.

From a subjective point of view, the goal is to get in touch with the divine world, and to ensure the support from them in order to get some advantages, general or individual. As we said it, the usual vehicle of the ateberta or offering is the fire for the celestial gods, or the sacred pit or well for the underground deities.

There exist two types of sacrifices, the occasional sacrifices according to the circumstances and the “fixed” sacrifices, matching some dates of the calendar, therefore comprising in theory no particular votive mention due to the events (war, starvation, etc.) . But these sacrifices (or such part of them) can easily be charged , like in the case of the occasional sacrifices, with a function of this kind. But that we already noticed it, it seems to us.

The worship places discovered among Belgian people show a warlike character more or less marked for the time and reveal only these two types of religious activity, the animal sacrifice and the weapons offering.

ATEBERTA.

Many the excavated sanctuaries present an entrance as carefully arranged as a gate of Romance church. It is an often impressive building spanning the fence ditch: in fact some true propylaea - word that Strabo uses besides to indicate these doors - where the Celts fixed the skulls they had detached from the bodies of their enemies.

The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) believed that soul/mind and life ultimately rested in the head, and not in the area of the heart as it is believed generally today. From there the importance of the rites and practices which surrounded the head in their tradition. But that also we have already said it.

The building was erected on big wood posts and had a stage where weapons, skulls of men and horses, or remains of chariots, were piled up - obviously therefore some trophies picked up in the battles. The victorious warriors cut out with their knife, as they were used to do in hunting, the skulls of the enemies whom they had killed, skulls they regarded as their personal property; but the rest of the corpses, the weapons, the horses, and the remains of chariots, were brought in a place where a trenched enclosure delimited a sacred enclosure dedicated to the deity who had supported the victory, and therefore was to be thanked. The remains were then laid out according to their membership to such or such camp.

This warlike aspect of the druidic religion gave to us the presence of thousands of iron weapons, initially put down in the entrance porch (a kind of triumphal arch ) as on its walls.

In the event of successes or of exceptional relief, one of the most beautiful bratou decantem (ex-voto) you could offer to gods also was without question your own hair, as Silius Italicus confirms it . “And Sarmens next, who vowed, if victorious, to offer to you O Gradivus [Mars] his yellow locks — the hair that rivaled gold — And the ruddy topknot on the crown of his head .” (Silius Italicus, Punica IV, 200.)

Silius Italicus speaks to us here about a warrior (former druidism), but nowadays, such an offering could also very well be made by a woman. After a birth for example, or a success in an examination, even a new recruiting.

The drink offerings were performed in wooden vats (bascaudae), their three quarters buried in the ground of the sanctuary, surrounded by amphoras laid out in a circle, containing the liquids to be offered, and regularly restocked by the dagolitoi (by the believers).

In addition to the sacred mead (ordinary mead, but added with different other elements), noble liquor; there was the barley ale, the korma… some coarser alcohols which were also used as ateberta, more common, to be offered to gods in particular rites.

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Archeologists also bring to our attention the use of small wine amphoras, symbolizing blood, which people give up as it is or from which they pour the contents in a place adapted, after having cracked them, or having broken ritually the neck of it. Perhaps with a gesture similar to that which consists in “cracking ” open a bottle of champagne, nowadays. Repetere = ars docendi.

ANIMAL SACRIFICES.

“Having devised a colossus of straw and wood, throw into the colossus cattle and wild animals of all sorts, even human beings, and then make a burned offering of the whole thing” (Strabo. Book IV, chapter IV, 5).

Unlike what some misunderstood ancient texts - as that of Strabo – let us believe, Celtic people seldom sacrificed wild animals, they consumed besides very little, having to consider those belonged to the divine field.

The habit mentioned by Arrian (a kitty to buy the animal which will be sacrificed on the birthday of the hunting goddess) proves it.

On the other hand, as in the great ancient civilizations, they offered to their domestic animals they had bred themselves. The exhumed animal bones show that they are especially cattle, sheep and pigs - the three species which we find in the Greek sacrifice and especially in the Roman suovetaurile.

The first of the animal sacrifices, most spectacular, therefore does not relate to the sheep as in Islam, but the cattle. Generally, cows or oxen old at the point to be no longer eatable as a butcher's meat. It is a total sacrifice, the whole animal is given up to the gods. It is the famous Sanskrit “dadami se dehi me,” an expression coarsely translated by the Romans with their “do ut des .” I give you so that you give me (the deity, a little like a human being, the deity too is then morally obliged to give in return, in order not to lose face. Analogy and anthropomorphism therefore).

The killing was therefore carried out close to the hollow altar or the sacrifice pit located in the center of the sanctuary, according to various modes. Throat cutting like in the case of Islam, a blow of hammer poll on the frontal bone like in the slaughterhouses of former times , axe blow in the nape of the neck…

The dead animal was then thrown entirely in the pit, where it remained thus to rot during six to eight months. In this way, it was supposed to feed the gods who were under it, in the ground.

At the end of this period, the carcass, of which only the rachis was still interdependent, was withdrawn from the pit, and the bones were the subject of a rigorous division. The skulls were then displayed on the entrance gate (triumphal arch ) for a determined period, the rachis were put down in the fence ditch, the remains of the skeleton left the sacred enclosure.

This total sacrifice of animals thrown in a cavity where people let them rot, shows greatest resemblance with the sacrifice known as “chthonian” in Greece which, as we emphasized it, is intended for the underground deities.

COMMENSALITY SACRIFICES, pigs, sheep, and young cattle.

Bloody sacrifice means meat and banquet. To eat - or to feast - forms incontestably a basic social and religious activity . To feast, it is to make some religion. The inscription found in 1959 in Portugal, at Cabeço das Fráguas, is very clear on this subject. Here it is.

Oilam trebopala indi porcom laebo, comaiam iccona loim inna, oilam vsseam trabarvne indi tavrom ifadem […] reve…

What means about…

A ewe for Trebopala and a pig for Laebo, a heifer for Iccona Loiminna, a one-year-old ewe for Trebaruna and a bull […] for Reva….

It is consequently obviously a suovetaurile. The pig and sheep bones, found on the excavated sites, concern a usual type of sacrifice that of commensality between men and gods, the latter this time being some deities residing in the heavens.

These two animal species, indeed, are represented by very young animals, lambs and piglets, of which a part, after being cut out, was the subject of a human consumption.

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Of course at the time of feasts between chiefs or important warriors, meeting in the sacred enclosure, under the gods aegis , a little like we see it in the Irish legends.

The immanent/transcendent nature of the sacrifice appears here in all its clearness. The banquet that the sacrifice makes possible expresses the commensality being able to exist between gods (to whom goes the choicest part, sign of their undeniable superiority) and men.

The former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) let the carcasses of pigs rotting in the pits dug at the entrance of the nemetons. The flesh, then decaying, made it possible to sow symbolically the earth. See the role of these animals in the mabinogi of Pwyll in Wales.

On the cauldron of Gundestrup, three victims are represented of which a stag. The Celts indeed seem to have been one of the rare peoples of Antiquity to sacrifice wild beasts in addition to the domestic animals, according to Strabo IV , 4,5. “Having devised a colossus of straw and wood, throw into the colossus cattle and wild animals of all sorts, even human beings, and then make a burned offering of the whole thing.”

In Sentinum besides, in - 295 before our era, they at least sacrificed a hind according to Livy, History of Rome, X, 27. “ Whilst the two armies were standing ready to engage, a hind driven by a wolf from the mountains ran down, into the open space between the two lines, with the wolf in pursuit. Here they each took a different direction; the hind ran to the Celts, the wolf to the Romans. A way was made for the wolf between the ranks; the Senones speared the hind.”

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THE SACRIFICIAL RITUALS.

The performers (gutuaters/gutumaters, vates, veledae) are directed by a druid druid , who supervises and makes a decision as soon as a mistake or an accident occurs. A little as in an army the officer is helped by more specialized non-commissioned officers. What is expected from an officer it is especially some general knowledge, the technician specialists they are the N.C.O.

The gutuater/gutumater recites or sings prayers. The velede harangues the participants a little like a Hebrew prophet. More precisely let us say like a Bructerian prophetess (Veleda), but who knows still today what was the Bructerian people ?

Lastly, the vate helped by a conhospita, proceeds to the innumerable gestures and recitations who constitute the scenario even of every sacrifice. Because there exist of course “formulas” accompanying the actions and the operations; they do not have an independent expression and therefore do not form prayers in the usual senses of the word. There can also be many other assistants, bards particularly. The laymen (the king and his warriors for example) attends the sacrifice with his wife. He pronounces even some formulas, but his crucial role is to distribute the fees assigned to the various celebrating persons; who can reach fabulous dimensions in the Irish legends: 10 cows and a heifer for the poem called anamain, 5 cows for a nath, 2 cows and 1 heifer for an anair, 2 cows for an emain, a cow for a lay.

With the Romanization, the sacrifices of commensality with the gods, bloody (i.e., implying to eat an unspecified animal, publicly killed with the assistance of various celebrating persons of the type vate or other) disappeared little by little.

It goes without saying indeed that the bloody sacrifices, directly carried out formerly in the sanctuaries, in the close proximity of the sacrifice pit, could not remain. And in a sense it is as well, because what is important it is the inner transformation of the individual. The solemn sacrifices involving the PUBLIC immolation of various animals therefore could be replaced by simple atebertas (offerings) or by drink offerings of liquids.

The important thing is not to lose sight of the commensality with the gods which must result from this, it is consequently always preferable to make these atebertas or these drink offerings followed by a true ingestion of solid or liquid food.

- In a symbolic way initially.

- In a real way and by the means of a festive ritual banquet (the slaughtering of the animals to be consumed being done then apart from the place of worship).

Simpler rites therefore replaced the complex rituals having to proceed in the open air we have said, some rites carried out by the common people this time, the elites or the public figures of the country having preferred to collaborate with the governing power like always. The honors granted to the gods (anthem or ceremony inside a fanum in the countryside, even of inside a celicnon or a lodge in a town ) replaced the sacrifice.

The ateberta or offering may always nevertheless consist of pieces of meat especially prepared for the meal of commensality with the gods which will follow. Usually, the beef, but we also find the mutton and the pork, as some hunting products (wild animals), Strabo testifies it . Archeologists besides often found in the shrines bones of deer or wild boars.

It can also consist (generally at the poor) of products of farming or breeding: corn, milk, butter, cheese, etc., in short the honors which people call puja in Hinduism.

Archeologists also brought to our attention the use of small wine amphoras, symbolizing blood, which people give up as is or from which the contents is poured in a suitable place after having opened them, or to have broken ritually their neck. Perhaps by a gesture a little similar to that which consists in “cracking” a bottle of champagne open, nowadays. But that, we have already said it.

It is the famous Sanskrit “dadami se dehi me,” an expression coarsely translated by the Romans with their “do ut des .” All these products or all these animals, even still alive, can be brought directly in the shrine; or kept when they can remain a certain time there, in a kind of sacristy or sacrarium. A little in the example of what was still practiced each September 8th at the time of the Catholic pilgrimage in the honor of Our Lady of Life until about 1950 in Savoy (Saint Martin, 20 km in the south of Moutiers 73).

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This place was visited with two distinct aims. First of all, to get fertility as well as health: the women immersed in the fountain a linen and washed their eyes, face and chest, mainly at the time of the pilgrimage of September 8th. Offerings were then carried out (coins, jewels, food, animals, then sold in an auction).

The other vocation of this place was that of a “respite sanctuary”: the celebration of a service made it possible to bring back to life the stillborn children the time for them to be baptized (therefore to reach Heaven); the new religion established in the country having had the good idea to torture the parents of these unfortunate children by making them believe that their children would go straightly to hell for all eternity, in the contrary case. What an idea! Quite worthy of a love religion, forever. The parents were to be distraught about it.

The religious ideology which then prevailed, of course, made fun with the stone statue kind “primitive art” which took care on the spring of this sanctuary.

But the druids druids thought that Ultimate Reality always overflows the shape which evokes it, nevertheless , for many other believers, the simulacrum or the arcana (the statue or the image of the saint) takes part indeed in a certain way in the divinity.

The rites relating to the domestic simulacrum or arcana (kamidana) may be practiced in each residence. The householder is the ordinary celebrating person; but in his absence, another family member may compensate him. All these rites are accompanied by prayers. They are carried out by the father or the mother without the help of any other celebrating person , with exception. It is not a question here of great seasonal rituals or others.

As we already have had the opportunity to notice it higher, in this case the big druidic rituals disappear. Simpler rites replace them; and very often, they involve no longer the intervention of executants appointed between the dagolitos (the believer ) and the divinity. The honors replaced the sacrifice! They are simple daily atebertas or offerings performed for certain deities; on the altar bridge of the type butsudan or kami dana (kind of Shintoist creche) or in a small cauldron especially intended for this purpose. A little amber intended to be burned like incense, some seeds, barley, corn, bread, fruits, apples, nuts or hazel nuts, honey [according to St. Patrick’s confession indeed, people made in Ireland before him honey offerings of which the consecrated a part, and which they consumed the rest] beeswax, salted butter, pancakes, etc., etc.

The shortest solemn rite is “the oblation to the perpetual sacred fire”: simple offering to the celestial gods, carried out the evening on the hearth of the domestic altar (of the ancestors of the gods, or Epona’s creche) .

N.B. In Kildare formerly it was accomplished in the morning by the priest or the priestess serving the sacred grove.

But let us not forget either the mass of the votive or expiatory rites which are based on the pattern of the sacrifice of the moon fortnights.

With regard to the fountains, the springs, lakes, or the sacred wells, the atebertas or offerings are generally some coins; but also various representations of parts of the human body (anatomical ex-votos like to the springs of the Seine River – today property of the Town of Paris- or in Chamalieres).

More complex, on the other hand, are the quarterly sacrifices accompanying the season changes and the sacrifice of full and new moons, atenoux or divertomu; with their immolations of animals and their vegetable oblations (ateberta) requiring several celebrating persons, as soon as the new moon shows win the sky its gold sickle, and which are sacrifices of commensality between men, or and between men and gods. The whole, either is put down at the foot of the altar or above it , or thrown in a sacrifice pit, or still thrown into fire, but also partly consumed by the celebrating persons and the lay “sacrificator” who secured their support (generally the king or a great lord).

Differences between the druidic service (which is in reality initially and above all a sacrifice followed by a meal of commensality with the gods) and the Celtic Christian mass.

The culdee mass is based on one great principle, that of the consumption of the animal totem. At the totemic time indeed, man did not offer a victim to his gods or their priests, because he knew neither gods yet nor priests. The clan renewed his provision of strength (nertio) by eating, following the rites, a totem animal. This need survived the phase of strict totemism, and that in two forms. An animal totem, regarded as impure, continued to be eaten ritually. It is what occurred in certain mystical sects in

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Jerusalem, to whom the following passage of Isaiah (LXVI, 17) refers. “Those who consecrate and purify themselves to go into the gardens, following one who is among those who eat the flesh of pigs, rats and other unclean things--they will meet their end together with the one they follow," declares the LORD.”

These prohibited foods played already the role of these magic potions we find in the witch pharmacopeia and which are generally considered all the more effective as the ingredients are more disgusting or more horrible. But the idea of sanctification and purification is still clearly indicated by Isaiah, and the habit against which he protests energetically is only a vestige of the most distant religious past of Mankind.

Secondly , when the need to “sanctify” oneself had no longer the possibility of being satisfied at the expense of an animal, dispossessed from its prestige in consequence of the decline of totemism; it was inevitable that it turns then to the man himself. From there, human sacrifices accompanied by acts of cannibalism, it is well necessary to regard as substitutes for totemic sacrifice. The most important texts in this respect are these of Plato and Pausanias on the worship of Zeus Lykaios in Arcadia, in whom some people wanted wrongly to see a Phoenician Baal. This worship took over a wolf totemic worship, which comprised the ritual sacrifice of the animal and a banquet; by the effect of which the believers thought to assimilate the nertio or strength of the victim and to become themselves some divine wolves. When the totem wolf had been replaced by the lupine (lykaios) Zeus, the rites were preserved but the victim was a man devoted to the god. The believers , after having tasted his flesh, believed being changed into wolves and gave each other the name of lykoi; as the initiates of Bacchus became some bacchoi, excessively pious women of Bassareus (the fox-Dionysos) some Bassarides, and those of the ursine Artemis some Arktoi.

The druidic “mass” itself is based on two great principles. The first therefore is that of the commensality between men and gods. The druidic Eucharist, or more exactly its “devogdonion” meal of communion between men and gods, is only the periodic re-actualization by the men and for the men, of the feast of immortality offered to the gods by Gobannos or Pwyll (the magic pigs). The consecration to the gods of all this food changes it nature and the divine force in this case also rain down upon all the participants in this meal of commensality.

The second is that of the reversed metamorphosis (the appearance remains, but the inner reality is changed). What the Christians call transubstantiation or consubstantiation. Once carried out the consecration, during the whole time of the ceremony, the cup in question ceases being an ordinary cup to really become, in spite of its appearances, the skull cup of the god; the lance in question becomes really that of the deity; the sacred drink becomes the blood of the god; and so on.

The Irish legend of Cuchulainn in Ireland provides us an excellent example of it. It is in this case wine being then changed into blood (little time before his death, at the end of his legend therefore).

“Then Catubatuos/Cathbad and the veledae attending him, the Hesus Cuchulainn went on to Duxtir/Dechtire's castle, there to bid his mother farewell.

Duxtir/Dechtire when he came upon the green stepped forth to meet him, the while knowing well that it was to fall upon the Irishmen he was fain to go. Then she proffered him that cup (ballan) from which to take a draft before a journey or expedition undertaken was to him a certitude of victory ; but this time what should be in it but crimson blood alone.

Duxtir, alas ! he said, that all else forsake me surely is no wonder, when in this state [ full of blood] you tender 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, thy cup is empty….”

Another excellent example of all these metamorphoses is provided to us by the Irish legend entitled: Aided Muirchertaig meic Erca- the violent death of Muirchertach son of Erc.

…Then the king with his household came into the fortress. When they had been a while seeing the fighting, some of the water of the Boyne was brought to them, and the king told the damsel to make

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wine of it. The damsel then filled three casks with water, and cast a spell upon them and it seemed to the king and his household that never came on earth wine of better taste or strength. So of the fern she made fictitious swine of enchantment, and then she gave the wine and the swine to the host, and they partook of them until, as they supposed, they were sated. Furthermore, she promised that she would give them forever and forever the same amount; whereupon Muircertach said: “hitherto never has come here food like the food ye see,no end of wine as if it is wine a feast worthy of a noble king!”

N.B. The taken badly mention , of stones changed into blue men or Muslims (Firu Gorma) playing in this legend the (bad) role of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns or Fomoire in other accounts, even of the Viking pirates, is, of course, an anachronism due to the oral handing down of all these stories. Pagan Celts and Arab-Muslims never came in contact historically speaking even if some hadiths lead one to believe the Galatian sacred bull and his three cranes belonged to the statues housed by the kaaba in Mecca at the time of the Jahiliya.

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PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS OF HUMAN SACRIFICES I.

Text found crossed out by Peter DeLaCrau itself, but kept by his children.

On the cauldron of Gundestrup, three victims are represented: a bull a stag and a man.

The former druids who were not against capital punishment in the event of particularly despicable (theft of sacred or dedicated to gods, objects, etc.) crime recommended that for such human sacrifices lay justice has recourse to sentenced to death persons whose execution could thus be postponed for the purpose in hand.

Cf Diodorus of Sicily V, 32: “For their criminals they keep prisoner for five years and then impale in honor of the gods, dedicating them together with many other offerings of first fruits and constructing pyres of great size. Captives are also used by them as victims for their sacrifices in honor of the gods.”

Caesar is also categorical about this subject. “They consider that the oblation of such as have been taken in theft, or in robbery, or any other offense, is more acceptable to the immortal gods; but when a supply of that class is wanting, they have recourse to the oblation of even the innocent” (B.G. VI, 16).

Moreover very quickly the druids who followed were contented with some human blood drops for their ritual. It was therefore in the years which were previous the writings of Pomponius Mela (III, 2,18) since the latter speaks about that in the past tense.

Let us not forget either that a certain number of the human sacrifices denounced by the ancient authors were only in fact some forms of suicide as the case of the soldurs of Caesar or Athenaeus IV , 40, proves it.

We must avoid two extreme attitudes in fact: either to detest these cruel rites according to our Western conceptions of the civilization, or to feel indulgence, even for some people, admiration, for a rite releasing “from the end which comes through slow rotting, or through the miserable condition of the disease which breaks up, or by the consumption through age, or the slow reduction to total disability, the best thing can reach the mortal, unable to prefer to all that the rite of the sacrifice” (Diego Rivera about the human sacrifices among the Aztecs); in the name of antiracism and of the right to be different or in the name of the respect of all the civilizations in all their aspects (cultural enrichment).

We should simply adopt the position of the modern druid, who seeks to understand, i.e., to relativize, therefore to compare; but while agreeing to compare only what is comparable (particularly by taking account of the context).

The majority of civilizations practiced the human sacrifice. We find for example in the Bible the sacrifice of Isaac (stopped in extremis by the will of God if all that is well factually true) and that of the daughter of Jephthah, because of an imprudent promise of his father: to offer in a holocaust the first person who would leave his house to come to his meeting. We will come back on this subject. It is important, first of all, therefore to define exactly as a preliminary what a human sacrifice is.

This one consists of the killing of a human being, man or woman, war prisoner or member of the community within the framework of a RELIGIOUS RITE. Sacrifice in that is distinguished from the massacre, perpetrated by revenge, collective elation or overflowing, or from a sentence to death within a legal framework (for example, following a judgment of the Inquisition).

HUMAN SACRIFICES AMONG HEBREWS.

It is generally admitted that the sacrifice, not carried out finally, of his son, by Abraham, is the last one tried by the Hebrew people. It is unreservedly indeed that the people of the only Book reject this practice which offenses the human intelligence and freedom, completely absurd because the child that God claims from Abraham, it is precisely the single child He Himself had given to him at the time when this one despaired of having a descent.

The least which we can say therefore it is that this abdication or submission of Abraham hardly encourages respecting human rights.

As we have already seen it, another episode of the Old Testament, however, evokes a human sacrifice gone to completion: that which is achieved by Jephthah, one of the “Judges.” Its circumstances can bring it closer to that of Isaac; it is indeed his own daughter Jephthah gives to God in exchange of a victory. And yet, she is his single child.

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The difference with the sacrifice that Abraham almost achieved is that the holocaust in this case is indeed accomplished. It also lies in the fact that Jephthah is not presented to us as being tested by his god but as the victim of a promise he has himself made.

This human sacrifice, however, makes it possible that Jephthah- or, at least, he believes it - to win the favor of his God in the battle.

HUMAN SACRIFICES IN ROME.

If the Romans prohibited to the peoples they subjected to sacrifice human victims, they nevertheless also engaged in such practices, in certain cases. It is besides the observation of such a paradox which is at the base of one of the Roman Questions by Plutarch. :

“ When the Romans learned that the Celtiberian people called Bletonesii, had sacrificed a man to the gods, why did they send for the tribal rulers with intent to punish them, but, when it was made plain that they had done thus in accordance with a certain custom, why did the Romans set them at liberty, but forbid the practice for the future? Yet they themselves, not many years before, had buried alive two men and two women, two of them Greeks, two Gauls, in the place called the Forum Boarium ?”

Three times indeed during the Republic’s period , in 228, 216 and 114/113, the Romans buried alive, in the Forum boarium, two couples of foreigners.

Here the account that Plutarch writes about that (Marcellus. 3,3,7), for the first of these cases.

“Nevertheless, the Romans were greatly alarmed by the proximity of their country to the enemy, with whom they could wage war so near their own boundaries and homes, as well as by the ancient renown of the Gauls, whom the Romans seem to have feared more than any other people. For Rome had once been taken by them [….] Their alarm was also shown by their preparations for the war (neither before nor since that time, we are told, were there so many thousands of Romans in arms at once), and by the extraordinary sacrifices which they made to the gods. For though they have no barbarous or unnatural practices, but cherish towards their deities those mild and reverent sentiments which especially characterize Greek thought, at the time when this war burst upon them they were constrained to obey certain oracular commands from the Sibylline books, and to bury alive two Greeks, a man and a woman, and likewise two Celts, in the place called the ‘forum boarium,’ or cattle market; and in memory of these victims, they still to this day, in the month of November, perform mysterious and secret ceremonies.”

Let us quote the passage of Livy (22, 57,2-6) relating to the sacrifices of 216.

“They were terrified not only by the great disasters they had suffered, but also by a number of prodigies, and in particular because two Vestals, Opimia and Floronia, had in that year been convicted of unchastity. Of these one had been buried alive, as the custom is, near the Colline Gate, and the other had killed herself […..] In the midst of so many misfortunes this pollution was, as happens at such times, converted into a portent, the decemvirs were commanded to consult the Books of Fate […..] some unusual sacrifices were offered after that; among others a Celtic man and woman and a Greek man and woman were buried alive in the Cattle Market, in a place walled in with stone, which even before this time had been defiled with human victims.”

Let us bring to attention still that, according to Pliny the Elder (Nat. 28,12), such ceremonies still took place at his time, in the 1st century of our era therefore.

The origins of these human sacrifices caused a lot of ink to flow in the modern ones.

It is obvious that the burial of living beings represents an expulsion at the same time symbolic and material, from the world of the living; the alive buried people are given up to the world of the dead and of its deities.

In addition, the context of these rites shows us in an indisputable way that it is a question of diverting an external danger perceived as particularly threatening and imminent.

The unfortunate Celts victims of this racist practice represent the whole of their peers.

Curiosity now. The two oldest sanctuaries of Diana are that in Capua, and that in Aricia (on the edges of the Lake Nemi, close to Rome), where she was called Diana Nemorensis: the Diana of the Wood. This Diana of Nemi was the Artemis of Taurida, brought into Italy by Orestes. What explained the brutality of her rites.

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities by Daremberg and Saglio (1877).

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REX NEMORENSIS. This title, in the ancient writers, designates a kind of priest responsible for the worship of Diana Aricina, in the wood of Nemi, on the slope of the Alban Mount. Diana herself is usually called nemorensis…

It was a strange practice and which stinks of the primitive cruelty that the one which governed the move of the priest-king in Nemi. It is a singular combat between the serving priest and the pretender to the succession which decided indeed on the priesthood. The place was for the one who struck the other with a branch gathered on certain hidden deep in the woods trees [some mistletoe]. The royalty of Nemi being thus a bonus awarded to the brute force, there were only fugitive slaves who ventured themselves to contest it. In the reign of Caligula, whose madness was annoyed with every superiority, the place was occupied by a true colossus who kepT on there for years; the emperor never stopped finding for him a more vigorous competitor. The custom was still in favor at the time of Pausanias.

But actually, the character put in place by such means, was no longer a priest in the strict sense of the word. The proof is that in the circumstance the pontiffs of Rome came in this place to achieve personally the religious ceremonies which concerned the State. J. - A. HILD.

SUBSTITUTION SACRIFICES.

Many of these civilizations nevertheless, came to disavow these practices, by replacing the immolated human beings by sentenced to death people (case of the druids) animals, images or symbols.

AMONG CELTS.

Diodore of Sicily, V, 32. “For their criminals they keep prisoner for five years and then impale in honor of the gods, dedicating them together with many other offerings of first fruits and constructing stakes of great size.”

Lucan. “Hesum Mercurium credunt, si quidem a mercatoribus colitur, et praesidem belloreum et caelestium deorum maximun Taranin Iouem, adsuetum olim humanis placari capitibus, nuc uero gaudere pecorum “."They believe Hesus to be Mercury… and Taranis, the ruler of wars and the greatest of the celestial gods, him who was accustomed formerly to be appeased with human heads, but now glad of those of animals, to be Jupiter. ”

AMONG GREEKS.

Iphigenia is one of the daughters of Agamemnon and Clytemnestrea. Agamemnon, alas, having risked the anger of Artemis, the Greek fleet , for lack of wind, remains blocked in Aulis. Questioned, the soothsayer Calchas answers that the anger of the goddess can be alleviated only if the king sacrifices to her his daughter Iphigenia.

Weighed down, Agamemnon is opposed to the sacrifice then, urged by Menelaus and by Ulysses, he agrees. He convenes his daughter in Aulis, under the fallacious pretext to promise her in marriage to Achilles. The maiden, thus become confident, approaches the altar . The sacrifice will be completed, when the goddess or the fairy, having suddenly taken pity on the girl, substitutes her a hind as the victim. She takes her into Taurida where she will become one of her priestesses.

This substitution probably inspired the writers of the Bible, in the passage of the (ordered to Abraham) sacrifice, but , unlike the Greek text, without the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, readers, know why God required of Abraham such obedience. This simple fact obviously shows the distance which separates the mythology of the one of the revealed mass religions (these last calling upon the faith, i.e., upon a belief), from the logic of the myths, in the paganism of the philosophical and thought out type.

THE LAUGH OF TARANIS * IN ROME.

In the famous dialog between Numa and Jupiter reported by Valerius Antias (quoted by Plutarch), we see the second king Rome playing the wise guy with the god, in order to get the victim to be offered, in order to protect oneself from the effects of a thunder-stroke, is not human. Where Jupiter requires a head, Numa proposes an onion head. The god specifies his request then: “the head of a man”; the king answers: “You will take his hair” but the god requires a life. Numa retorts: “The life of a fish”. The

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god started to laugh and said: " See to it that by these things you do expiate my bolts, O man whom none may keep from converse with the gods !” ** (Ovid. Fasti. 3,339-342).

Nota Bene. What thus refers us to the typically Celtic notion of druids speaking the same language as the gods (they are homophonon in the writings by Diodorus of Sicily, V, 31).

According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1, 38,3), it is Ogmius, therefore in fact Hercules in the interpretatio romana, who would have put an end to the human sacrifices that the Ancients offered hitherto on the site of the future Rome.

“And lest the people should feel any scruple at having neglected their traditional sacrifices, he taught them to appease the anger of the god by making effigies resembling the men they had been wont to bind hand and foot and throw into the stream of the Tiber, and dressing these in the same manner, to throw them into the river instead of the men, his purpose being that any superstitious dread remaining in the minds of all might be removed, since the semblance of the ancient rite would still be preserved.”

This historian also specifies that the Romans still performed this rite at his time, in May;it matches the ceremony of Argei, during which the vestal virgins threw in the Tiber some mannequins representing men.

Macrobius (Sat. 1,7,31) allocates the same “civilizing” role to Ogmius. Before his coming in Italy, the Pelasgians offered human heads to Dis pater and human victims to Saturn, because of the oracle which said in Greek language: “Send heads to Cronus' son, and send to the sire a man.”

“But later Ogmius would have come along with the cattle of Geryon and would have reinterpreted one word in the oracle, phota, so Saturn that should be honored with candles, since phota meant “light” as well as “man.” Macrobius concludes by also giving a second, more rationalizing, version, according to which Ogmius led them from their dark life of ignorance by introducing the lightsome arts and sciences.”

¨Different therefore of that of Merlin. But let us return to the human sacrifices accomplished by the druids of the Old druidism.

PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS OF THE HUMAN SACRIFICES IN THE FORMER DRUIDISM II.

The first of the human sacrifices had to be that of the war prisoners. The offering of human lives to the war deities after the victory. There too, the principle is extremely simple. It is for example obvious that a war deity , insofar as she exists of course (Buddhism has only wrathful deities, after the death) can only enjoy human blood like the famous Kali of the Hinduism or the Yahweh Sabaoth of the Hebrews in the Bible.

“They would shoot victims to death with arrows, or impale them in the temples…” the Greek word anestauron means “to suspend or hang to a post.”

We may wonder if it is not simply the description of trophies or of triumphal arches built with corpses of warriors killed in action. At the time of Posidonius, the building of gigantic human trophies of this type was already become obsolete, it is therefore through an intermediary source, a Greek traveler of the end of the 3rd century perhaps, that the ethnographer got wind of this practice.

The author of his source or his informer did not, of course, see himself the performing of the rite, which was to be done apart from the village , or in the narrow circle of the comrunos (of the initiates); he saw only therefore the result of it: some bony corpses still fixed on posts; it is starting from this observation that he rebuilt a probably imaginary ritual.

The word “to impale” must therefore, in this case, only mean “to hang to a palisade” or “ to piles,” and is to enter within the framework of a rite of dedication of the corpses.

Apart from the case of the prisoners of war, the human sacrifice, true leitmotif of the ancient texts - like what the schizophrenic hypocrisy of the opinion makers goes back a long way -, is nowhere attested by direct eyewitnesses, on the other hand. We have only the account of Strabo on the subject (IV, 4,5) undoubtedly reporting old traditions.

“ The Romans put a stop to these customs, as well as to all those connected with the sacrifices and divinations, that are opposed to our usages. They used to strike a human being, whom they had devoted to death, with a sword, in the false ribs [is nothon pleuron or is nothas pleuras in Greek], and then divine from his spasms of death throes. But they would not sacrifice without the druids. We are told of still other kinds of human sacrifices; for example, they would shoot victims to death with arrows,

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or impale them in the temples, or, having devised a colossus of straw and wood, throw into the colossus cattle and wild animals of all sorts, even human beings, and then make a burned offering of the whole thing.”

The use of the sacrificial pools of mud (a sacrifice which consisted in throwing men in the marshes) proves attested for the Scandinavian areas. The archeologists indeed found in certain peat bogs corpses who could have been sacrificed to the Goddess or fairy, if you want, Nerthus… The indubitable case of sacrifice discovered in 1984 in the marsh of Lindow Moss (Cheshire) undoubtedly also concerns this kind of practice. The man indeed was strangled, ritually , whitewashed with blue and immersed in the peat bog. A kind of death we find in the legend of Lleu Llaw Gyffes or Lailoken.

Various ancient texts evoke the cannibalism among Celts, some of them by emphasizing the absolute need for this act at this time.

Caesar. De Bello Gallico VII, 77 reporting the speech of the Calgacus or of the Boudica on the Continent: “If you cannot be assured by their dispatches, since every avenue is blocked up, take the Romans as evidence that their approach is drawing near; since they, intimidated by alarm at this, labor night and day at their works. What, therefore, is my design? To do as our ancestors did in the war against the Cimbri and Teutones, which was by no means equally momentous. Driven into their towns, and oppressed by similar privations, they supported life by the corpses of those who appeared useless for war on account of their age, and did not surrender to the enemy. If we did not have a precedent for such cruel conduct, still I should consider it most glorious that one should be established then delivered to posterity. For in what was that war like this? The Cimbri, after laying our Celtica waste, and inflicting great calamities, at length departed from our country, and sought other lands; they left us our rights, laws, lands, and liberty. But what other motive or wish have the Romans, than, induced by envy, to settle in the lands and towns of those whom they have learned, by fame, to be noble and powerful in war, and impose on them perpetual slavery? For they never have carried on wars on any other terms. But if you do not know these things which are going on in distant countries, look to the neighboring Celtica, which being reduced to the form of a province, stripped of its rights and laws, and subjected to Roman despotism, is oppressed by perpetual slavery.”

Polybius. Histories, I, 84: “Finally, Hamilcar managed unexpectedly to beleaguer them on ground highly unfavorable to them and convenient for his own force; and reduced them to such a pitch of distress that, neither venturing to risk an engagement nor being able to run away, because they were entirely surrounded by a trench and stockade; they were at last compelled by starvation to feed on each other: a fitting retribution at the hands of Providence for their violation of all laws human and divine in their conduct to their enemies.”

Polybius. Histories, I, 85: “But when they had used up for food the captives in this horrible manner, and then the bodies of their slaves, and still no one came to their relief from Tunes, their sufferings became too dreadful to bear and the common soldiers broke out into open threats of violence against their officers. Thereupon Autaritus, Zarzas, and Spendius decided to put themselves into the hands of the enemy and to hold a parley with Hamilcar, and try to make terms.”

Not easily credible testimonies.

Strabo, Geography IV, 5,4: “Besides some small islands round about Britain, there is also a large island, Ierne, which stretches parallel to Britain on the north, its breadth being greater than its length. Concerning this island I have nothing certain to tell, except that its inhabitants are more savage than the Britons, since they are man-eaters as well as heavy eaters, and since; further, they count it an honorable thing, when their fathers die, to devour them, and openly to have intercourse, not only with the other women, but also with their mothers and sisters; but I am saying this only with the understanding that I have no trustworthy witnesses for it; and yet, as for the matter of man-eating, that is said to be a custom of the Scythians also, and, in cases of necessity forced by sieges, the Celts, the Iberians, and several other peoples are said to have practiced it.”

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Pausanias, Description of Greece, X, 22,3: “Every male they put to the sword, and there were butchered old men equally with children at their mothers' breasts. The plumper of these sucking babes the Galatians killed, drinking their blood and eating their flesh.

St Jerome, Aduersus Iouinianum: “When I myself, a youth, heard that the Atticoti, a British tribe, eat human flesh, and that although they find herds of swine, and droves of large or small cattle in the woods, it is their custom to cut off the buttocks of the shepherds and the breasts of their women, and to regard them as the greatest delicacies.”

Half credible testimonies.

Caius Julius Solinus, Polyhistor XXIII: “[Great] Britain is surrounded by many significant islands of which Hibernia comes closest to it in size. The latter is inhuman in the savage rituals of its inhabitants but, on the other hand, is so rich in fodder that the cattle, if not removed from time to time, would happily gorge themselves to a dangerous point. On that island there are no snakes, few birds, and an unfriendly and warlike people. When the blood of killers has been drained, the victors smear it on their own faces. They treat good and evil as the same thing.”

NB. There are no snakes! Here it is what puts the miracle of the ousting from of the serpents from Ireland, ascribed to St. Patrick, in its place (that of the myth). Still a lie, moreover, in the mouth of our Christian friends.

Encephalophagy was a practice rather largely demonstrated in Europe during the Paleolithic era, but also and more especially during the Neolithic era. The most serious ancient testimonies show the upholding of these practices, reduced to the use of skulls arranged out as drinking cups. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) believed indeed that the soul/mind and the life ultimately lay in the head, and not in the area of the heart. From there the importance of the rites and practices which surrounded the head in their tradition.

Credible testimony.

Silius Italicus, Punica XIII, 482: “the Celts have a horrid practice : they frame the bones of the empty skull in gold, and keep it for a drinking cup .”

Half credible testimony.

Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History XVII, 4: “Part of this region was inhabited by the Scordisci, who now live at a great distance from these provinces; a race formerly savage and uncivilized, as ancient history proves, sacrificing their prisoners to Bellona and Mars, and drinking with eagerness human blood out of skulls.”

Not credible testimony.

Orosius, History against the pagans, V, 23. “In the meantime, Claudius was assigned by lot to the Macedonian War. At that time the various tribes, which were hedged in by the Rhodopaean Mountains, were most cruelly devastating Macedonia. Among other brutalities, dreadful to speak of and to hear, which these tribes inflicted upon captives, I may mention this. When they needed a cup, they were wont to seize and use greedily and without any feeling of repulsion, in place of real cups, human skulls, still dripping with blood and covered with hair, whose inner cavities were bedaubed with brain matter badly scooped out. The bloodiest and most inhuman of these hordes were the Scordisci.”

Florus, Epitome, I, 39: “Throughout the period of their advance they left no cruelty untried, as they vented their fury on their prisoners; they sacrificed to the gods with human blood; they drank out of human skulls; by every kind of insult inflicted by burning and fumigation, they made death fouler; they even forced infants from their mothers' wombs by torture. The cruelest of all the Thracians were the Scordisci."

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THE TRUE DRUIDIC SERVICE.

The eminently theatrical theme of the cauldron and of the three witches has an essentially negative value in Shakespeare's Macbeth; but in our staging the spectator should see it only as a simple reference to put on exactly the same level as the mysterious procession of the grail which so fantasized the authors of the Middle Ages; when it was only the simple account of a ceremony briefly seen in a forest sanctuary which certainly sought to be forgotten at the time in order to avoid a demonization comparable to that which will happen to the 9 witches of Caer Loyw (Gloucester) in the Welsh Peredur. Ceremony of a medieval Freemasonry whose only placebo effect was the ingestion of solid or liquid foods, special.

But in Peredur ab Evrawc the grail is still… .a severed head placed on a tray. Brr!

Below in any case how one can summarize the situation of the Welsh Perceval.

A traveler wanders in a lost forest and comes across a mysterious sanctuary (baptized castle) where an old druid and young assistants were still busy, in front of a big fire. Right in the Christian 13th century ???.

The traveler taken aback and needing a safe place to spend the night did say a word (we understand) but the good monk having learned of this anecdote (of this adventure) will prefer to put an end by a stroke of his pen to this scandal by making the knight in question come back to massacre everyone after much consideration. Here the original author of this sequence may have perhaps remembered the historic Peredur of the Battle of Arfdery (573) which sealed the fate of the last pagan kingdom of Great Britain (somewhere south of Scotland) , that of Prince Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio and the young Merlin Wyllt his bard. The end of a world in a way! And he called his hero with the same name.

Closer to us we cannot help but think of the strange pilgrimage that took place in Savoy at Notre Dame De La Vie near Saint Martin de Belleville or Moutiers until the beginning of the 20th century, every September 8.

“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 druidic service is primarily a sacrifice taking place every fifteen days at each moon. Divertomu (beginning of the 1st fortnight, full moon) and Atenoux (beginning of the 2nd fortnight, new moon).

At the origin in the former druidism of Antiquity, it was, of course, a bloody sacrifice (there were various types of them).

It was then after the Romanization, primarily an idpart, in other words, a sacred banquet , of commensality, based on idpart (offerings) or drink offerings for the gods.

Let us repeat it, the Celtic sacrificial team is made up as follows.

- A vate who, with a conhospita, pours the drink offerings and proceeds to the innumerable gestures or recitations which compose the sacrifice.

- A gutuater/gutumater (choir master) who recites or chants prayers.

- A velede (reciting the oral teaching). The velede harangues the participants a little like a Hebrew prophet. More precisely let us say like a Bructerian prophetess (Veleda), but who knows still today what was the Bructerian people ?

N.B. The sacrificial team is directed by a druid (the officiating person) who supervises silently and makes a decision as soon as it occurs a mistake or an accident.

Necessary hierae.

Some idpart. See above. The name is old. It is used besides to translate the word “mass” into Gaelic language. Idpairt choirp Crist is used to translate Eucharistia mysteria in the Latin lives of saints according to Plummer. Old Celtic ateberta.

Some Galatian bread or panis divinis in Latin language, some Tekmorian bread or bread of those who have made the sign (i.e., in fact, some twice-baked bread, some dipyres or hardtacks, similar to that used by the society of the xenoi tekmoreioi 1). In other words, unleavened barley bread soaked in a mixture of milk, oil, and salt, or honey if it is wanted it is sweetened.Ancestor of the türkish pide bread?

NOTICE ON THE BREAD TO BE USED FOR THE MEAL OF COMMENSALITY WITH THE GODS.

Despite the excellence of the baguette of my baker fiend in Paris, it would seem according to Adolphe Joseph Reinach (Revue Celtique No. XXVIII 1907) that unleavened bread pancakes were a must in

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the Xenoi Tekmorioi brotherhood if we are to believe some inscriptions discovered by the Scottish archaeologist Sir William Mitchell Ramsay.

The first of these "Tekmorian" inscriptions (from tekmor = sign) was discovered by our English friend in 1882 in a cemetery of what is now Kumdanli in Turkey.

This is a list of donors with opposite their names what they gave to the association.

The others were discovered in a village a little further north, in the middle of the Tolistobogian territory, Sagir.

However, what this scholarly historian wrote on Amyntas in 1906 is not very clear (page 310 of his essay entitled "Studies in the history and arts of the eastern Roman province").

To conclude, let’s remember that no one is forced to stick to this ancient 3rd century pagan revival a few kilometers away only from Antioch of Pisidia, even if we sympathize with it.

A representation of the sword of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd made by Trebuchet (a short sword or a sword with a sleeve and a cross-belt).

The trencher of Peredur: a silver-plated dish.

The lance of Lug or gae bolga: a javelin or a spear with some red on the tip and a thin trickle of red on the higher half of the shaft wood.

The protection-sovereignty cup: a gold crimped skull or more exactly a gold crimped skull top , which can be used as a cup. (The high-knowers of the druidiaction - druidecht - believed that the soul/minds and the life ultimately laid in the head, and not in the area of the heart like it is said generally today. From there the importance of the rites and practices which surrounded the head in their tradition). On this cup having to be used for the commensality with gods must be reproduced an inscription of the kind “Nessamon delgu linda.”

A big cauldron containing the sacred liquid having to be used for the commensality (some barley ale or some korma).

On this subject it will not be useless to remind here about what was said among Romans of the sacristy or sacrarium of Mars on the Palatine Hill: the ancilia were locked up there. And also of the sacrarium of the Regia: the hastae martiae as well as the lituus of Romulus were preserved there; not forgetting the sacristy of Ops Consiva, which was located at the same place; but the authors and the inscriptions name others of them. The family of the Julii for example, had a sacrarium for its sacra gentilicia in Bovillae.

The sacrifice makes it possible the human society to purify, to remain alive. Our spiritual ancestors were therefore persuaded, like everyone at the time, that the peace with the gods is kept only by the regular practice of sacrifices. They even thought that these sacrifices were necessary to the keeping of a certain cosmic balance.

We find in the Senchus Mor, in connection with a called Connla Cainbrethach, some traces of this ancient design of the role of the druidic service , about which the Christians at the time already understood no longer something. “The druids said it was them who made the heavens, and the earth, the sun and the moon and the sea [to live and move)".

PLAN OF THE “CASTLE” IN WHICH THE DRUIDIC SERVICE IS TO BE CELEBRATED.

The romances of the Round Table generally describe us the residence of the fisher king or of the maimed king as a castle of medieval type. It is, of course, a “Hollywood” anachronism before the term was coined. In the former druidism it was to be rather a rectangular palisaded enclosure, doubled with an inner ditch, but without warriors to stand guard around since it was not intended for military purposes but was pertaining to worship (German viereckschanze). The whole equipped with a monumental gate still out of wood but an ancestor of our modern triumphal arches.

Inside no dungeon but a rectangular festival hall intended to receive the guests of the sacred feasts being to take place there, later the guests of the king (Gaelic Tech Midchuarta).

In short a construction which resembled more the first strong forts built by Europeans in North America to protect themselves from Indians (for instance in Detroit or the first two forts built close to the Niagara falls ) than Disneyland. But without armed guards since intended for the worship.

There must be as much as possible in the place of worship having to house the druidic service, being next to the part of the building where the apse opens on the rectangular nave located a few steps down (aetashkadeh or aetashgah); one or two sacristies or sacraria or cellae intended for the liturgical

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objects and separated from the rest of the apse or nave by a wall or at least carefully dissimulated from the eyes of the laymen, only accessible by a backdoor.

In the chimney leant against the back of the apse, elevated part compared to the rest of the building (compared to the ateshgah) on a pair of worked andirons, must be burning wood logs (pyreum). The seven traditional varieties.

In front of the apse, downwards, in front of the steps, in the middle of the transept formed by these cellae or sacraria, between four columns, the officiating gutuater druid or gutumater priestess must be sitting * on a canecosedlon i.e., on a seat , majestic but rather light nevertheless, so that four men can transport him.

In front of him, perpendicularly with the axis of the aetashkadeh a large table of wood or stone which will be used as an altar.

In front of him also, but parallel to the axis of the ateshgah; in the place of the central aisle, another large rectangular table, long and narrow, and made of wood (dismountable, posed on trestles for example, and covered with a large white cloth) is to be installed.

It is necessary also to install beside the altar table of the fisher or maimed king, the gigantic sacred cauldron which will contain the drink of which it will be necessary to metamorphose the core or the essence, by a pagan i.e., subjective transsubstantiation or consubstantiation.

* Who can be a druid druid and not a simple gutuater druid or a simple gutumater priestess in the large grail castles like Monsalvage.

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

I THE SUMMONING (subtitle from the editorial board).

The ceremony starts with the call of a herald who from the top of the entrance porch of the sanctuary, a tower or a hill, or another thing, invites the dagolitoi (the believers) to come to the semi-monthly sacrifice; by blowing into a cornyx or a horn of this type which also awakes the heavenly or underground deities.

II THE INTROIT (subtitle from the editorial board).

The dagolitoi or believers make the druidic sign of the cross while passing in front of the graves of the great ancestors in the place, i.e., with their right fist firmly closed , they beat several times (3 times 6 times or 9 times) their breast, as if they hit an invisible shield with an unspecified lance . They lay down their atiobertas (offerings) in the sacrarium next to the sanctuary envisaged for this purpose, they throw coins in the water point of the sanctuary located inside at the entrance.

Then the believers take a seat by the sides in the aetashgah or nave at the end of which the worldly intendant of these “devogdonion” places, seats, the gutuater druid or the gutumater priestess or the druid druid renamed “fisher king” or “maimed” king (cf the Irishman Nuada ?) in the romances of the Round Table.

The dagolitoi (believers) wait while keeping a respectful distance. People of one book and the monolatrous people too ,of course, in no case should to approach; the [hearted and minded] Celts [ are not exotic animals to photograph, it is not a circus acts for tourists, but an act of faith having to be respected following the example of these of Islam or Hinduism. The philosophical implications, on the other hand, it is another thing. Each one is free to have or not to have the highest consideration in its connection**.

When everyone or almost has taken a place the member of the sodality who officiates, asks:

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“Friends, from which do you come today?

Answer of the believers. *

On the morning we set off for what you know before the spotter sounded the daybreak in his cornyx.

** Sentences found crossed out by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau.

Journalists, media, and intellectuals, are free, for example, to want for our poor Mankind or our planet, migratory movements, massive, permanent, unceasingly uprooting from their original civilization million people, often impoverishing their native land as much, and coming to occupy underpaid employment that people seek no longer (cultural enrichment causing tensions destabilizing certain elements of the society). Or then to find more logical that each one can live and work in his country. If to find more logical that each one can live and work in one's country it is that to be Nazi, then long live to Nazism! If it is that to be Stalinist, then long live to Stalinism!

* in practice only the sitting at the end of the rows believers, do it, and in a symbolic way.

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III TEACHING OF THE OAK CHURCH.

The officiating druid or the high priestess takes the peace branch (craeb) and waves the little bells kind cow bells at the end of his wand in order to get silence, then recites the cantelon; a not imposed belief resulting from the free choice of a man enlightened by reason.

THE CANTELON (text of this Celtic creed).

We believe in a unique

And multiple at the same time,

Divinity

An uncreated one who did not create the world,

But is the origin of it

And will be the completion of it.

We believe

That “the one who is nameless.”

Is!

That he is the mind and the universal soul of the world

That he is One and Triple at the same time,

Being of beings, uncreated without being a creator

That he appears through accessible divine emanations,

The gods,

That we may compare things human

With divine.

That this inner life of the Man we call soul or mind,

Is almost immortal

And therefore is a part of “The one who is nameless”

That this divine spark

Animates also the least differentiated beings,

Asserts itself and is individualized

Through multiple living forms,

To arrive to the Man.

That in this world we rise with the practice

Of the three paramount duties:

To be a man, a true one, to abstain from wrongdoing, to revere the gods.

And that this other white world or Albiobitus

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It is the only true world.

Nert dee agus andee. Awen!

IV THE FIRST PROCESSION OF THE COMMUNITY HIERAE.

Then from the first cella or sacrarium located on the left of the pyreum lit in the monumental chimney leant against the wall of the apse, leave….

A vate (if possible a young man) carrying a white lance clenched by the middle with some red on the tip, and a thin trickle of red on the higher half of the shaft.

Two other young vates (a boy, a girl) holding in their hands pine torches.

A girl (conhospita) holding with her two hands the protection-sovereignty cup (the gold crimped top of a skull bearing the inscription “nessamon delgu linda”) of the biological or foster mother of the hesus Cuchulainn (Duxtir/Dechtire).

Another maiden (conhospita) holding a silver plate.

Two other young vates (a boy, a girl) holding in their hands some pine torches.

Lastly, another vate (if possible a young man), or an ambact, bearing, hanging from his neck with a finely braided cross-belt, a sword in its sleeve : the sword made by Trebuchet for Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd.

Several ambacts carrying the sacred cauldron provided with a lid and veiled, as carefully as some penitent of the Sanch brotherhood covered with cowls (caperutxa) carrying their misteri, each Good Friday in the small Catalan capital of the North of the Pyrenees 2).

The sacrificial team in full force.

All pass behind the officiating member of the sodality on on's canecosedlon and then go clockwise around the sitting believers who observe complete silence, before coming back into their sacrarium; or to enter the other one located on the right side of the pyreum burning in the chimney if there are two sacristies.

The four young people carrying fire, light in passing the torches inserted in the bronze dodecahedrons laid out here and there, and on the floor, or on the walls or on supports (the incense being unknown in Celtic civilization, the only product used then was the amber or the pine resin, the resin with which people made the torches).

V FIRST SERMON OF THE VELEDE.

During this time a velede or a high priestess, speaks then in this way to the dagolitoi (believers) gathered in the midchuarta.

Men and women of our community, fellow countrywomen, fellow countrymen, oyez, oyez, oyez! All spiritual lineages on the Earth seek their path , but one will succeed in this search for the Sangreal, that of Galaat, because only Galaat will be worthy of it. Worthy of speaking the same language as the gods. All the gods! But our faith should not be a superstition, a superstition more! Our faith is to be enlightened by reason. If in the legends our lord Hesus known as Setanta or Cuchulainn picks the mistletoe in the forest with a voulge, it is to show well that truth remains a rare thing, often difficult to reach, and which is got only after a long search. If the termagant or tervagan (Tarvos trigaranos) himself, too, is well hidden in this forest, it is to make us understanding that the main thing is not a thing easy to comprehend well. Appearances are often deceptive and it is easier to repeat ad infinitum commonplaces, clichés, or preconceived ideas , than to dive within oneself to think well.

Men and women of our community, fellow countrywomen, fellow countrymen, thus let us remain faithful to the Reason of our spiritual ancestors who, following the example of the prince Indutiomarus, blamed by Cicero in the dubious plea his Pro M. Fonteio Oratio forms, repeated unceasingly: “To believe is a thing,to know is another one.”

As one day a famous Roman procurator of the first century retorted to a man who, like Setanta, claimed to be the way to be followed, the truth and the life: “what is truth?” indeed.

Therefore let us not fall into credulity. I believe even if it is absurd, I believe because it is said, the new mass religions drum in together; now we uns , we always celebrate the marriage of faith and reason.

Within the framework of our teaching, which is that of the oak church [variant on the Continent: “which is that of the druidic and national church of Henry Lizeray] I can therefore only repeat you this which is following.

And there is placed an oration or a speech, model hereafter…

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SECOND PROCESSION OF THE RELICS OF THE COMMUNITY.

Another ostension of the grail then (sword lance torches olla and silver dish) begins here exactly in the same way as the first one, the need for lighting the torches inserted in the bronze dodecahedrons, missing. (Except if some of these torches are still not lit, of course.)

The velede appointed for this purpose or the high priestess focuses one moment, his arms raised to the sky, palms turned towards the east, and recites the following prayer.

- Men and women of our community, fellow countrywomen, fellow countrymen, oyez, oyez, oyez, the time is come to affirm again your fidelity. We are joined together this evening on the symbolic grave of the relic of one of our ancestors, in order to perpetuate their memory.

To love or respect one’s parents and one’s grandparents, and to piously improve the memory of their parents and grandparents to them, in short of the ancestors; kings, queens and great lords, or humble farmers, resting in the peace of the neighboring cemetery; in the shade of the lantern of the dead, is a duty as sacred as natural. Without them, without these ancestors who lived and worked hard, we would not exist. Without the heroic sacrifice of some of them facing the Barbarians, the true Barbarians , we would not be today what we are, namely as Dumnorix said it, free men in a free country, beneath the protection of the gods of whom we speak the language. The duty of remembrance is a flame which, like freedom, must enlighten the world.

Our hearted and minded ancestors, Celts and Celtized people , formerly conquered the world. Under the direction of their monarch king Ambicatus,kings, princes and warriors of more than sixty tribes-states ; extended the gateways of the Empire, the Celticum of Livy, from Tarshish to the Baltic Sea and from Ireland to Greece, of which the capital Delphi was taken by the great Brennus. Another brenn took Rome besides and made the Roman hubris folding under the weight of his sword. But they are the simple plowmen and farmers, craftsmen and goldsmiths, who built our civilization stone by stone.

Through their sweat and their humble daily work, these ancestors deserve our respect. Without the daily and anonymous efforts of our fathers, our mothers, and of their forefathers and foremothers before them, we would not exist. We therefore owe them everything, even the color of our hair and of our eyes.

Without the sacrifice of those who died for the homeland, we would not be there either today, free and proud to be so, beneath a sky entirely ours.

Brennus, Ambicatus, Bellovesus and Sigovesus , Crixus, Mariccus, Calgacus, Eponine and Sabinus, alas, today this epic is only a duty of remembrance and the language of gods rings no longer on the wharfs of Tarshish or the shores of the Black Sea.

The time of the persecutions and of the barbarian cruelty which is claimed civilization is come back, and only the commemoration of the endured formerly persecutions can fight it,because the future belongs to those who have the longest memory by definition. Since memory is constitutive of the identity of a being. And one day a great monarch like Arthur will return who will give back us our lost pride .

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VII THE THIRD AND LAST PROCESSION OF THE GRAIL.

Once finished this sermon or this harangue of the on-duty velede, the ostension of the hiera or relics takes place thrice in the same conditions as previously (sword lance torches olla and silver dish).

The on-duty velede intervenes then once again to say what follows…

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Anamnesis. As Catubatuos/Cathbad and the veledae attending him, our lord the Hesus Cuchulainn went on to Duxtir/Dechtire's castle, there to bid his mother farewell.

Duxtir, alas ! he said, that all else forsake me surely is no wonder, when in this state [ full of blood] you tender 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 some beverage” but bol bail boil etc. also means chance prosperity effectiveness. Today one loses oneself in conjecture about the exact meaning of such transubstantiation. Ale or wine transformed literally into blood (symbolically it must be the blood of our hero). John Tillotson (archbishop of Canterbury in the 17th century) denounced in his time the “cruel and 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.”

The idea of the symbol is, of course, 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.

The transubstantiation is, literally, the conversion of a substance into another. The word indicates, in the doctrines of some of the mass religions of today, the conversion of the bread and wine into the body and blood of a demigod.

Consubstantiation is the doctrines of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham according to which, during the last Supper of our Celtic Christian friends, bread and wine preserve their own substances with which the substances of the body and of the blood of the demigod who is their lord, coexist.

We uns high knowers of the druidiaction of today, we are more pragmatic and we consider finally that all is a question of faith, the placebo effect shows it.

We also accept the opinion that the Hesus Mars of the Antiquity or the Setanta Cuchulainn of the Middle Ages is not corporally present in the drink of this cup of protection at the time of the communion, but present in the heart, the mind and the life of those who take part in this ritual.

At all events this elixir makes it possible to make a fresh start for a new fortnight. It is in a way and thanks to the gods we venerate, each time a new birth… 4).

VIII THE CELEBRATION OF THE COMMENSALITY.

Once this third epopteia or ostension of the grail and of the hierae carried out, the officiating member of the sodality orders therefore then to make circulating all around the believers on a silver plate a white towel and some water drawn from the spring or the sacred well of the sanctuary so that each one washes one’s hands with it (nowadays only for the believers located in the forefront).

He orders then to prepare in front of him if it is not already done the big wooden table having to be used for the ceremony of communion with the gods. It is a table in solid wood or a removable table posed on trestles then covered with a white tablecloth.

The various liturgical objects necessary are laid out on it ( finger bowls containing water from the sacred spring, etc.), as various dishes and drink (wild boar stag ale wine). The meat is cut out in thin

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slices and is laid out on a small piece of bread. Or straightforwardly on small pancake shaped breads. In short some pre-dinner toasts.

N.B. The original meat, the “meat from heaven” or “sweat meat” of certain texts of the quest for the holy grail * (some meat of slaughter dogs like in some Chinese restaurants) can nowadays be replaced by another type of preparation (horse, beef, mutton, pork, etc.).

In any case nowadays, this banquet of commensality with the gods is only symbolic, the true feasts proceed outside the sanctuary and after.

As in the case of the pilgrimage which took place in Savoy at Notre Dame De La Vie near Saint Martin de Belleville or Moutiers until the beginning of the 20th century, every September 8.

* Old French: La Queste du Saint Graal.

Come to this time of the ritual, the vate escorted by two ambacts carrying each one a lance of Lug and assisted by few other dagolitoi or believers, uncovers the cauldron full with barley ale or korma posed just before the gathered congregation.

This uncovering of the Olla will thus make it possible each one to reach the still completely shining with ale sacred cauldron. There is as of this moment a real existence of certain gods in the devogdonion sacrosanct space and everyone must feel this invisible presence. In a way the position of Zwingli on the subject, but with regard to the pagan world and not adapted to the Christian superstition surrounding the consubstantiation (or the transubstantiation).

This elixir makes it possible to make a fresh start for a new fortnight. It is in a way and thanks to the gods whom we venerate, each time a new birth…

The world of the outside becomes mantic, it is full with omens. The noises which arrive from outside change into knocks and murmurs. The ear listens up to behind the sounds; the neigh of the horses, the cry of the birds, acquire a prophetic power. The glance changes: it pierces the walls, and even that of the event to fathom far further.

The priestess acting as conhospita goes then towards the gigantic cauldron, provided with a skull cup (a crimped with gold circle skull comprising the inscription “nessamon delgu linda”) draws from its center some sacred drink, takes with her two hands the filled cup, turns back and raises it; to present it to the audience, who at this time bursts into a grail song known by the believers.

In order to give our readers a little idea of it here below that which was known in the South of France.

Editor's note. The holy cup in question was a silver grail that the maintainers of the Catalan language offered to the defenders of the Provence language at the time of a banquet which was held on July 30, 1867; in thanks of the welcome reserved to the poet Victor Balaguer who had to flee Spain at this time.

The conhospita presents the skull- cup at each verse (elevation).

CHORUS.

Holy cup

And overflowing

May you pour abundantly

May you pour in streams

The enthusiasm

And the energy of the strong people!

VERSES.

May you pour us the hopes

And the dreams of youth

Of the past the memories

And the faith in next year

May you pour us the knowledge

Of truth and beauty

And the other pleasures

That defy the tomb

May you pour us the poetry

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To sing all that lives

For this is the ambrosia

That turns man into a god

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Notice of the editorial board. The song of the holy cup can be replaced by the song of faithfulness or every other song of this type. The Celtic musics are hardly inclined to the use of harmonies, preferring generally unison, it is the Breton kan ha diskan, the Irish sean-nós, or the Welsh choral singing. The essence of the song in all these examples attaches little importance to accompaniment. The typical Celtic song is represented today by the famous Welsh popular choirs. And particularly the national anthem of Wales which is, of course, a good sample of them.

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With the last verse the audience bows respectfully, the conhospita pours some drops on the ground in the repository provided with this intention and recites the introductory formula of the rite of commensality.

- May the forces of the Earth, may the forces of Hornunnos and Setanta gathered together , welcome the homage that we pay to them , and grant us their benefits.

The druid officiating or the high priestess acting as fisher or maimed king then seizes again the branch of peace (craeb) and waves the little bells kind cowbells at the end of the wand. On this signal, by means of the cup of protection sovereignty, plunged as much of time than it is needed in the cauldron, the conhospita responsible for the grail makes the dagolitoi (believers) who ravel in turn before her,drink.

The druidicist to the conhospita.

Nata uimpi curmi da.

The conhospita to the druidicist.

Ibetis uci andecari biiete

This is the blood of Hornunnos and of the hesus Setanta Cuchulainn gathered together

Our eternally young lord of Muithemne

Poured to protect us

May their strength be with you,

Nert dé agus andé Sunartiu!

IX THE SENDING BACK TOWARDS THE TRUE (NOT SYMBOLIC, KIND SABAZIA) BANQUET.

The last sermon of the on-duty velede.

There can obviously be no question of us maintaining that the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), priests of a religion whose origins were lost in time immemorial, did not experience the drink offerings or feasts in the honor of the gods. Admittedly, at the time of the rituals of divertomu and atenoux, we consume barley ale or korma, but it is not for intoxicating us in a shameless way; it is in order to be able to communicate, thanks to this changed by the ritual drink, with the higher levels of the true world. It is not therefore some intoxication, or at least it is a sacred intoxication, what is not at all the same thing.

The god in the honor of whom these drink offerings are mainly performed out is also the master of the vegetation and, consequently, of any material or spiritual fruitfulness. He wears antlers which fall and grow back while increasing each year, to reduce themselves only with extreme old age, in the image of the trees in the forest. Hornunnos is in a certain WAY like the soul/mind of the plants. When the grain is crushed, he dies, tortured, for coming back to life, in the spring, into cereals on the ear.

By consuming alcoholic drinks containing ground grains, people thought then, during this “devogdonion” commensality meal between men and gods, to incorporate in oneself , through a kind of Eucharist, the very substance of the great Hornunnos. And this is why, by reference to the stag god,

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the ale was called cervoise. The cauldrons in which people prepared the sacred beverage seemed as magic objects of which handling and use were strictly reserved to the initiates, to the comrunos, and this ale, prepared in enormous cauldrons, was the subject of a ritual consecration.

But the explanation provided by these historians is a little short. The bitter cervoise is also the blood of the hesus Setanta Cuchulainn poured to protect us, we uns poor human beings. And unlike what the historians write, this potion is not solely made of a bitter ale (cervoise or korma). Our ates puts many other things in it. Mead, sublimated wine alcohol but also salt of dew, herbs of St. John’s eve.

This alchemical preparation gives this mixture learnedly proportioned by the vates the sublimation which is necessary.

People of one book and monolatrous people or other godless people of the same species, often accused our ancestors to devote themselves to disgusting and crude drinking s at the time of these sabazia. The Christian Taliban/Parabolanus St Colombanus for example, wrote shameful pages about those who danced or sang still some canticles around a wooden grail, at the beginning of the 7th century, in Austria 3).

However Colombanus of Bobbio has, in reality, in the most intolerant and racist way, heinously ransacked an end of druidic mass in the honor of Lug since such is the deity who matches Mercury in the interpretatio druidica of this religious fact.

To conclude the ceremony once everyone has taken communion in this way with the gods and as the gods, the druid officiating druid or high priestess acting as maimed king (cf. Nuada in Ireland) recites the prayer of the Sage.

O gods of Dana

Give me wisdom

With wisdom understanding,

With understanding great-sense

With great-sense great knowledge,

With great knowledge investigation

With investigation inquiry

With inquiry learning

With learning meditation

With meditation the scrutiny of everything

With the scrutiny of everything the poetry of life.

Nert dee agus andee. Awen!

Then the officiating person adds the following formula…

“I have some news for you

Go in the peace of gods!

Peace up o the sky

Peace from earth to sky

Peace on the earth and under the heaven

Force and prosperity to everybody! ”

Remind. On the solid wood table arranged in front of the member of the sodality acting as fisher king or maimed king, or/and on the long table set in the middle of the central aisle, presented as it is necessary, small pieces (small dice ?) of Galatian bread with thin slices of meat on them (for example some ham, but it can also be another meat); were placed at the disposal of the dagolitoi (believers ) who may take some of them in passing 5).

To finish four men carry the member of the sodality who has presided over the ceremony on the canecosedlon in the provided cella or sacrarium where he or her will be able to change.

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X. THE SABAZIA THEMSELVES IN THE HONOR OF THE GREAT HORNUNNOS (the true commensality banquet with gods).

“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, Geography III, 4,16).

The time of the druidic service is finished, begins that of the commensality banquet itself. To close the whole, in the honor of the god whom people don’t name occurs then, outside, the dance of the geese, or of the cranes; carried out by a group of young Namnetes, or Celtiberian she dancers (part of the ritual replaced today by traditional music).

People share the atebertas and the food offerings (various meats, pork butcheries, fruits, and so on).

At the time of the sacrifice of the ceremonies of atenoux and divertomu, part of the meat of the animal sacrificed by the vates (and of which the soul joined the universal psychic Large Reservoir then); was indeed roasted or boiled and then redistributed to the participants (legs of pigs, shoulders of lamb, and so on) with divine bread (panis divinus or Galatian bread ancestor of the Turkish pide bread?); whereas the rest and the bones were given up on the spot around the surface devoted to gods: skulls of the cattle, of the horses or of the pigs, the spinal columns, as well as the upper part of the legs (the lower ends were eaten).

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SUGGESTIONS OF SERMONS FOR THE DRUIDIC SERVICE.

JANUARY. I divertomu RIURI.

An example of sermon of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to St Hippolytus of Rome. Book I XX: Philosophumena.

“And the Celtic druids investigated to the very highest point the philosophy……an art; on the methods of which very art also we shall not keep silence, since also from these some have presumed to introduce Schools of thought [hairesis or heresy in Greek].

What reports to us here the most famous of the popes having spoken about druids, is therefore very clear.

There is not one druidic doctrine , monolithic, exclusive, but some druidic doctrines, close and united on the essential, of course, but able nevertheless of a very great flexibility, or of a very large diversity. A little like Hinduism in a way.

If it is a religion which lends itself rather badly to an overall talk, it is indeed the Celtic spirituality, and the reason for that is simple. There never was a Celtic religion established , codified, identical everywhere and in any point on the whole of the territory occupied by the Celts in the last centuries previous our era.

In spite of the rather general nature of the ethnographic excursus of the Book VI of his De Bello Gallico, Julius Caesar himself is unable to help pepper his speech with expressions such as among certain peoples, in some cities, or others; which indicate rather well the nature regional, even local, of some of the beliefs, or practices, that he evokes.

The differences in question could be not only regional besides, or according to the place, because if the clientelism affected the military relations, and constituted the cement of the big warlike confederations, there also existed in the field of the religion. The men were in debt persons or vassals of the gods, but, beyond, whole communities could be a vassal of the god or of the worship of a god of another community. The clientelism did not touch only the individuals, but also the tribes, even the whole peoples. Certain gods could therefore also be honored elsewhere as in their original area. Situation completely comparable with that of Hinduism which is not a religion, but a whole of several (close) religions.

The ancient druidic doctrine did not form a homogeneous unit. It was a hotchpotch of often antiquated and irrational religious beliefs since of shamanic origin, neighboring much more developed theories about life, death and Bitus (universe).

Our druidiactio must therefore take into account the following principle…

Non-uniqueness or non-homogeneity of druidism and in space and in time.

Whatever the base period chosen, indeed, we can only note differences according to the areas, as regards worship.

It is, moreover, false to believe or let believe (there, that becomes also some intellectual dishonesty) that druidism always constituted an immutable unit.

The expression “Eternal druidism” is only a poetic expression, or a question of style.

From the shamanism of the prehistoric wizards to the current or medieval neo-druidism, it has on the contrary often much evolved, even on considerable points of doctrine.

We must therefore accept that there were always several different Schools of thought among the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht); according to places or times, and also quite simply because of the fact that they always encouraged the individual searches through meditation and free examination. The famous search for the grail. From where the two options: reasoned knowledge or agnosticism… the famous cognoscere aut ignorare of Lucan.

Our druidiactio should therefore reject none of the variants in question, it will only try , while underlining them at times, to release the broad outlines of them (these which transcended the ages).

The innumerable attempts made to identify the appearance of the Indo-Europeans with that of an archeological civilization well characterized did not lead yet to a completely satisfactory result.

We do not know therefore, most of the time, with certainty and in an indubitable way, until when exactly the non-Indo-European components of the druidism g date back; we can only suppose that they go back to the earliest antiquity or that they are lost in the immemorial prehistoric time previous the arrival of the Celts in Europe; because all that we can write on this subject, with some certainty , it

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is that the Celtic populations belonged to the Western branch of the Indo-European family; who penetrated, while coming from the east or south-east, in vast territories inhabited by native populations rather well established to leave here sometimes substantial traces.

The Indo-European priests (spiritual) ancestors of druids, managed the best they could do the marriage of this Aryan religion with the various prehistoric shamanist religions. The plural is necessary , because there was not identity of these various worships which advocated sometimes, ways and paths very different from each other (see the text of Strabo in connection with the sacred prostitution of certain Namnetes women on a small island in the mouth of the river Loire); but unity only of their goal.

Of course rich of vital tensions syncretism ! Dialectical surpassing of the oppositions according to a social mediation inside the society which implies assent, negation and going beyond, the opposite positions. In other words: thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

The Celtic priests merged the deities as well as the worships of the populations subjected by their princes (the Atectai) with the Indo-European deities or worships fulfilling roughly speaking the same functions (at least, according to them, of course). This open-mindedness made it possible the integration of large fractions of the fourth social class, the plebs of the overcome populations.

The alchemy having been succeeded, many believers of pre-Celtic origin (therefore not Celts) ended up being joined the banner of the Indo-European religion thus modified. From where enormous differences being able to exist between the ancient druidism and the primitive Indo-European religion.

The primordial druids played a decisive part in the progressive melting of these various currents of tradition, which extended on more than a thousand years: selection or systematization role, normative or preserving role.

That enabled them to begin the synthesis of a profusion of knowledge about Man and environment, up to that point isolated. They were indeed at the same time the main representatives of the rising sciences, especially of medicine, mathematics and astronomy, as well as philosophy and civil law.

As the druidic synthesis was set up, centrifugal forces going more or less in contrary direction wEre also developed. Various tendencies or Schools, which we may almost call different worships, rather quickly ended up being formed then individualized . But they were in reality most often very limited differences of opinions, about questions of secondary importance, which remained unfamiliar to the lay believers, and which still remain so besides in the eyes of the current historians.

The king or the vergobretus respected all the religious Schools being able to exist, but, of course, felt particular obligations towards the “communal” or “basic” druidism.

The ancient druidic religion was in fact a collective of many worships rather different from each other. What explains its polymorphic nature, even its contradictions.

This diversity, however, had an advantage: it made it possible each one to choose the path which was best appropriate to him on the spiritual level (henotheism).

Such god had for one only a secondary importance (Lug, Hesus, for example) while the other adored him with deepest of the devotions as the higher deity or almost, or in every case as the true Lord of the World.

As the main character of the story entitled “The siege of Druim Damhghaire” (Mog Ruith) says it so well: De dhruadh, mu dhe tar gac nde. Said differently: “There are many gods, but my god is greatest and it is for me the one who is important.”Modern scientists call henotheism such an approach of the divinity.

Each tribe or each Celtic thought School had consequently its own form of religiosity, but these various worships were nevertheless all linked the ones to the others by some elements of communal tradition, or by all kinds of mutual influences.

These druidic worships could be thus classified according to the reciprocal degree of distance of each one.

It is thus there could have then fertile coexistence, esteem and mutual recognition, as setting on an equal footing between them, of the great Celtic worships.

Moreover, there was only surface diversity or contradiction. They were not exclusive divergences, but well rather only the innumerable forms of a same religiosity. Subjacent with all these diversities or contradictions (Lug, Hesus, Belenus, Hornunnos, the Mothers, etc.) there was indeed an including unity; insofar as all these forms of different worships sought to clear for Man, the Gdonios, a path towards the divinity or the hereafter; whatever is the definition given by the various druidic Schools of thought in question.

It was a search for the unit beyond the multiplicity of the worlds and of the appearances.

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Quite a difficult search for the Grail in reality, which will thoroughly change into nuanced monism (there always exist different truth levels) the original polytheism of the druidism (beginning of philosophy).

The fact that the contents of the current reflections of the new druidism are rather different, on certain points, of the ancient druidism, therefore has finally little importance. The gods do not cease speaking to Mankind, Ogmius the first.

When times change, the gods reveal new ways to their dagolitoi (to their believers), and these surface modifications are not disturbing if the truth subjacent under these changes of the external form remains unchanged…

End of this example of sermon of the velede on duty.

JANUARY. I atenoux RIURI.

An example of sermon of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Apuleius. Metamorphoses. Book III, chapter XXVII.

I was lucky to see in the middle of a pillar sustaining the joists of the stable, the image of the goddess Epona , in a kind of creche which was garnished and decked roundabout with fresh roses.

There was in Ireland, in Mag Slecht ( prostration plain ) a standing stone covered with gold and silver, surrounded by twelve other stone statues furnished with copper.

Its name was Crom Cruach or Crom Cruaich.

Another statue of this type (or then the same one?) also decorated with gold and silver is evoked in the Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee.

Although pre-Celtic and pre-Druidic, these representations of the divinity did not run up against the convictions of the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), apparently, since those let them remain.

The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) were never iconoclastic and they always accepted figurative art, including as regards the religion as the example of the fresco representing Ogmius, our Hercules to us, described by Lucian of Samosata, or these which then represented Epona according to Juvenal (Satire 8. around 155). prove it.

The ancient Celts considered important to devote many efforts to the decoration or ornamentation, without any debarment, of their sanctuaries.

Or druidism therefore approves all the forms of true art, if they are equipped with the necessary qualities.

“The statues and the pictures which express a thought strengthen the ideal by leading the mind towards the same goal, like the colored stained-glass windows by letting such or such energy of the light go through” (Henry Lizeray, the S.D.D).

“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.

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.

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For a long time I stood staring at this in amazement, I knew not 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 said 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’ (Lucian of Samosata. Introductory lecture, Hercules 1-7).

Art is a sensitivity, the attempt to express the search for the sense in a world torn or incomprehensible since the end of the Hyperborean times.Craftsmen and artists (Aes Dana in Irish language) constantly played an important role in the Celtic society, but after centuries of presence in the art world , the pagan ones are, alas! massively absent of it today.

That is due, of course, to the action of the Christianity, which dispossessed the paganism of its natural prerogatives in this field. Destruction of statues, temples, libraries, lynching of the opponents and of the intellectuals like Hypatia… with the complicity or the assistance of the police force, like in the case of the roughneck Pannonian soldier known under the name of St. Martin.

However there is no possible freedom in the world and in the minds , without art nor without culture. All the sociopolitical efforts end in dictatorship and alienation, if they leave no longer place to poetry, symbols, or play.

It is by art that man can step back in relation to reality, therefore through that, to better realize the conditions of his freedom. Art, it is the continuation of the sacred one through other means. And the sacred one, the nemetus, it is the Man.

End of this example of sermon of the velede on duty.

FEBRUARY. I divertomu Anaganti.

An example of sermon of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Lucian of Samosata. Introductory lecture, Hercules 1-7.

“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.

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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 said 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.

What is necessary to remind of this account of Lucian of Samosata? Several things; first of all, that the druidic mythology is quite as complex as that of the Greeks; it is only our ignorance of the nine tenths of its nature which makes us find it summary and illogical. Then it is necessary in each witness to take into account the interests or the psychology of the narrator. Greeks and Romans visited Celtica, but Lucian and Caesar did not seek the same information, the one took the time to question, to get information, the other was interested only in the military potential and the political alliances.

That does not mean that Caesar was badly informed; but mythology was the least of his worries and, moreover, he enjoyed underlining for his future readers, the cruelty, or the lack of culture of the Celts facing the advancing progress : the Roman legions.

Lucian, as a guest and a host, benefited from the instinctive sympathy of all the Celtic intellectuals in front of a Greek who, in addition, was a curious and open spirit.

It is also important to notice the presence in this allegedly barbarian and uncultivated country, of personalities able to discuss as equals in his language with Lucian of Samosata.

Nothing says that this scholar able at the same time to quote Greek lines of verse and to carry out a brilliant comparative mythology between Ogmius and Hercules is a druid but the presumption is rather strong. To designate his interlocutor, Lucian uses the word philosophos indeed. Philosophos is used in the sentence only as an adjective; but as a substantive, it is the word used by the Greek writers to designate generally the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht). Lastly, it should be noted that if the druid outclasses the Greek, he does not take advantage of that to try to convert him and it is perhaps the most important teaching of this text; the Celtic gods and the Greek gods are not opposed, such Jesus and Muhammad, but live each one their own mythology, in their natural environment, the one being able to borrow the aspect or the characteristics of the other without to be superimposed to him…”

What a lesson of tolerance!

In addition to the fact that Lucian of Samosata was a Greek and that he thought according to his culture or his lifestyle, that to still conclude from this account? Well, what follows.

Our aim is to render comprehensible what is really the druidism. There are two requirements for that.

The first, it is to well immerse oneself in its history. Many sincere celticists, coming from the Welsh initiatory derivation started again by Iolo Morgannwg (98% of the current neo-druidism); unconsciously marked by twenty centuries of Christian philosophy, or quite simply by the dominant ideology of our time and its politically correct language, even if it is more or less confusedly; prefer to deny the facts which are reproached to the ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), rather than to admit them.

However the truth, as often is out there!

It is not a question to deny the facts, but to seek to understand them. It is, of course, easier than to reject them as a whole. That requires much more, obscure and anonymous, work, much more audacity and courage also, far from the easily gleaned laurels. That pays less, but how many authentic treasures spring then under the hand of the obstinate spirit adventurers , devoting himself to this ungrateful and solitary work!

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It is druidism, less fashion than the ideal druidism that we have just evoked but which has on the latter an undeniable advantage, that at least to have really existed. We cannot always say the same thing about the brilliant intellectual reconstitutions of the fashion neo-druidism. The druidism resulting from its books is too good to be true!

The History is a social science, but which has its rules, escaping morals by no means. This is why it is important to initially meditate the history of druidism, and not the works of fiction which were published, in too great large numbers, alas, about it. Whatever the sometimes obvious sincerity of their authors.

It is necessary to meditate day and night the books of history written about it , to dream of it almost until becoming druid oneself through internalization. The druidism should not be felt (unconsciously) by us, as something foreign, but as the very expression of our deepest self.

It is particularly necessary to succeed in understanding from the inside the facts or the ideas that report to us , without understanding them always well, the historians (the true ones).

Even unconsciously let us cease considering the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) as primitive and ignorant savages, let us give them once the benefit of the doubt, and it will be seen that these actions can be explained in a completely different way.

Our second requirement is that it is necessary to succeed in finding the words to translate that in our language of men of the 21st century.

For the Greeks, it is necessary to speak Greek!

It is almost here a work of translation. And as in every translation, the word-for-word is not enough. That, it is historian work. It is sometimes necessary to know to go away from the model in order to restore the poetry and the force of the original, without, however, betraying it. It is necessary to know to put oneself in the shoes of a high-knower of the druidiaction two thousand five hundred years ago; admittedly, but it is necessary to also know to put oneself in the shoes of a man of the 21st century.

It is necessary to find the required words and by dint of detail “ mistakes ” , to manage to make comprehensible for our contemporaries the underlying truths of this great religion now submerged. It is not a question to restore in its last entirety what the ancient druidism was, that, it is some historian work ; that leaves almost everyone indifferent, apart from a handful of specialists.

It is a question of making reappear the great founding principles of the ancient druidism, and, beyond the questions of technicality or details, to do them literally reincarnate in our time. In other words, to keep the History, but to bring up to date the spirit of it, according to our time. Our goal is not the History for the History; but the re-actualization of the druidic principles which can still today, and more than ever perhaps, help us to live, whether it is together or individually.

Many things were written about druidism, and in particular many stupid things, all more absurd the ones than the others. It is important today to rectify these appallingly mistakes, so that our compatriots know finally what this great religion wrongfully condemned by the History wind, was really.

It is necessary to reconsider the old druidism according to the modern civilization , i.e., to reinterpret the requests of the today world in order to show how they can be pagan or more exactly druidic.

To build again a synthetic model of druidism in the current cultural categories. We need an offensive druidiactio, open, daring, which does not shut itself in pseudo-traditions hardly 4 or 5 centuries years old; but which tackles the new questions frankly, and which does not fear to do the self-criticism of the druidism itself; without for as much falling in the excesses of the masochist and suicidal self-detestation, so characteristic of the today Occident.

For that, it is necessary to take into account the most recent scientific knowledge, which is fundamental as a truth criterion.

The druidic knowledge must be, not the total self-knowledge and knowledge of the world (nobody can know everything), but the best key of every understanding of oneself and of the world, on all the levels.

In short! It is initially necessary to learn how to know the druidism from the inside (to put oneself in the shoes of a high-knower of the druidiaction of two thousand five hundred years ago we have said) in order to be well able to speak about it, to be able to explain it well. Therefore to read, read and read again… the good works about it. “Magic” initiation being not sufficient!

For explaining druidism well, it is necessary to speak to people in their language about it. For example, to speak about the druidism to the men of the 21st century with words of the 21st century, and especially with (natural, psychological, moral) easy to transpose in the past, current examples.

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In truth, we say it, therefore look at our faith with the eyes of this philosopher about whom Lucian speaks and then try to understand it from the inside instead of condemning it stupidly.

But especially, will be able to speak the language of our contemporaries to explain it or to make it comprehensible.

To the Greeks speak Greek to say it, to the Romans Latin, to the Jews Hebrew, to the Chinese the Mandarin.

As the very Christian John of Damascus known as John Damascene says it himself: “Since the divine Apostle says: 'But prove all things: hold fast that which is good” let us also find something in them worth carrying away and reap some fruit that will be of profit to our soul.For every craftsman has need, also, of certain things for the prosecution of his works, and it is also fitting for the queen to be waited upon by certain handmaidens. So let us receive such sayings as serve the truth, while we reject the impiety which exercised an evil tyranny over them” (Philosophical chapters 9).

Like, moreover, Solinus, quoted by Henry Lizeray in his S.D.D. says it, to whom we will leave the last word: “Pagan theology is to be interpreted with broadness of mind.”

End of this example of sermon of the velede on duty.

FEBRUARY. I atenoux Anaganti.

An example of sermon of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Cicero. Pro M. Fonteio. XIII-XIV, 30-31.

“Other nations undertake wars in defense of their religious feelings; they wage war against the religion of every people; other nations when waging war beg for sanction and pardon from the immortal gods; they have waged war with the immortal gods themselves.”

What Cicero reports to us here, is, of course, to put again in its context. Cicero was what we could call today a “crooked” lawyer and his pleading for Fonteius is really scandalous.

The Celtic society , although being completely immersed in the divinity, was nevertheless indeed secular-minded , because based on a very clear distinction between the beliefs and the knowledge, between the role of the king and that of his druids.

The former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) were not all besides priests in a strict sense of the word. They were especially initially and above all historians, poets, doctors, architects, lawyers, linguists, or others. In short, they were the intellectuals of the time, and only a small minority of them were devoted to the religion.

It is not appropriate to the druids of today, to the druids of the new druidism, to lean more in favor of the current which was formerly livened up by traditionalists like Celtillus, Orgetorix, Casticus, and which preaches a balance of power similar to that which is described by the king of the Belgians in the area of Tongeren, named Ambiorix; since such was indeed the nature of his authority, that the people had as much authority over him as he over the people (Caesar. B.G.V, 27). Not more than to ask you to adopt a style of government of the oligarchical republic type directed by a vergobretus.

The vergobretus was a figure of the Celtic society who had the presidency in many continental Celtic tribe-states, particularly the Haedui. Caesar informs us in several circumstances about his role in his Commentaries by designating him with the words princeps civitatis, principatus, magistratus.

Caesar indeed informs us that certain tribes or confederations of tribes were directed by a vergobretus, in opposition to others, governed by a king. This opposition is very clear. It seems that the cities controlled by a vergobretus shared with the Romans of the Republican time, the same aversion regarding monarchies. In the tribes in question, this aversion was such that every person aspiring to kingship on their lands was liable to capital punishment.

This aversion has its explanation in the collapse of the Arvernian empire a few decades earlier. With the fall of the empire of Bituitus, certain tribes indeed chose to form an alliance with Rome. At the time of Caesar , we therefore find these same pro-Roman Tribe-states placed under an oligarchical regime. Among the Aedui, Remi and Arverni, it is completely plausible that this system was installed immediately after the defeat of Bituitus. This political revolution did not impose itself everywhere, or at least not simultaneously.

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Elected each year, the vergobretus had the power of life and death, that to order the army for a defensive action. It was, however, forbidden him to leave the limits of the territory of his people: the laws of the Aedui prohibited to those who managed the presidency to cross the borders. He could not therefore command the army outside the borders, what obliged to appoint a general and made it possible to prevent that he monopolizes the power beyond the length of his mandate.

The vergobretus apparently was chosen among the most powerful characters and we found coins with their effigy among the Aedui (a stater with the effigy of Dumnorix for example?) and the Remi.

Some names of vergobretus reached us: Liscus (in 58), Valetiacus (in 53), Convictolitavis (in 52) at the Aedui; Celtillus (?) among the Arverni.

For the Lemovices, a name is probable: Sedullus, killed at the time of the siege of Alesia, is known as dux and princeps lemovicum, “military and civilian leader,” which probably corresponds to the title of vergobret.

The presence of the druids [thus defined, since they are only specialists as we have just seen it] mitigates only the absence of established ministers or government. There exists a whole literature of the “instructions” or precepts intended to the candidate king, or for the king who is just elected, to remind him of the ideal of the good government.We will say ta few words about it in our essay No. 25.

We say it and we say it again nevertheless with the certainty of the sure things, apart from the case of the vergobretus, the State, the Celtic res publica, it was the kingship. The king was, legally and in fact, de facto and de jure, the only political or military figure endowed with a real and durable authority on the whole of a given territory.

But the king did not control alone. He was assisted by druids [in the non-religious sense of the word since they were only scientists] of whom it is not difficult, by the examination of the texts, to draw up the specialization list.

Sencha: historian, antiquarian, genealogist, panegyrist. Brithem: judge, lawyer, arbitrator, and so on.

To refer nevertheless for example to the pieces of advice given by the Hesus/Hound of Culann to his adoptive son Lugaid of the red stripes.

This system established and guaranteed even the autonomy of public authorities (of the king) as regards the religious or cultic influences.

- Wordly power.

- Prosperity and entirety of the kingdom.

- Management of the society.

- Justice.

- Maintenance of balance and social coherence.

There was especially distinction of the spiritual authority and of the worldly power. It was the only distinction which was essential at the time and, as long as it is made, it was indifferent that the legislative , judiciary and executive, powers; are not entrusted to separate corps. It was indifferent also that the religious one, the policy and the economic one, are joint (but not mixed up) in time and space.

There was indeed, in the ancient Celtic society, and compared to Neolithic times of the king-priests or wizards (see the case of the nemet Hornunnos) progressive disassociation of the religious one from the legal one; the ancient druidism is indeed opposed to every theocracy and it never imposed over anyone the least obligation in this field.

Examples.

The druidic design of the marriage encouraged monogamy, but they also accepted polygamy (for instance in Great Britain). Same thing for the funeral. The druidism admitted the burial and the cremation equally, the only problem being then that of the spreading of the ashes (funeral urns or not?)

Another example: no obligatory official capital punishment in the druidism (only financial compensations), but acceptance of individual “revenges” if necessary to bring back the calm. Always possible indeed when the family of the culprit understands well that it is the strengthening of paganism if an ill deed is avenged – Senchus Mor, I, pages 8-9 of the pseudo-historical prologue -

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Intud i ngeindtleacht gnim olc mad indechur ; and like Queen Boadicea said it personally: “Heaven is on the side of a just revenge (Latin: Adesse tamen deos justae vindicate).

No food prohibitions either, but only gastronomical regulations, some buadha, for certain days (presence of ale or pork on the table). And so on! We can multiply the examples ad infinitum.

No constraint therefore, as regards druidism. In the presence of pluralism of convictions or difficulties, which can appear on the personal, family, social or political,level, the ancient druidism offered the possibility of different practices, which each one could choose with complete freedom without an useless culpabilization.

Conclusion.

This very clear distinction of the roles between the druids the kings and the vergobretus, still forms the best chance of the future and civic cohesion of the Society, on condition that we respect the spirit of it.

The monolatrous religions themselves, want to always impose on everybody, practitioners or not, laws rising from their particular ethical standards. This was true for the Parabolans of Christianity as those who caused the stoning death of the beautiful and unfortunate Hypatia of Alexandria according to the teaching of our Irish high druid John Toland. And history will recur if we are not on our guard. Everything is written in the books you have to read them, whether they are written in Greek Latin Celtiberian or Lepontic characters you have to know how to read them!

At the time when the demands from proselyte and claiming benefits new religious communities increase in our country, the reinforcement of the distinction between the role of the king and that of the druids of today is therefore a need.

Nothing could justify an even partial return to a previous setting. Quite to the contrary, it is even to a strengthening of this distinction and of this autonomy it is necessary to proceed, in order to secure harmonious ways of civic and social life for the common future of our future living together.

Now, over the decades, new political-religious forces, legitimate heirs or not to those which in 529 closed the Athenian schools, worthy heirs to the inventors of the Antikythera mechanism; have increased attacks on the spirit and content of the principle of separation between the king and his druids (between state and religion) resulting in the following disasters.

- Direct or indirect public subsidies to religious associations disguised as charitable or cultural associations.

- Wearing of external and ostentatious signs of religious affiliation in public space.

- Cultural war in the Gramsci way on the Web and Wikipedia or in the teaching.

–Multiplication of legal actions.

- Death threats on social networks.

- More or less successful attempts to separate the genres or not to eat the same thing as the others, as in the case of the Christians of Corinth in the first century of their era; when it is obvious that there can be no impure food when you are an esprit fort and that you can fearlessly for the future development of your soul /mind eat idolothytes. The pangs of Paul de Tarsus on this subject make a druidicist laugh.

All these political debates are absolutely contrary to the spirit of the principle of an absolute distinction between the role of the king and that of the druids. It is necessary to shelter the king and the public services against religious encroachment. Once again let us remind in a few words the good reflex in this field: it is the king or the vergobretus who must always have the last word.

“One of the prohibitions of the Ulaid was to speak before the king, but one of the prohibitions of the king was to speak before his druids (variant of the “Mesca Ulad” or “Intoxication of the Ulaid”).

The word precedence is deprived of every meaning in the context of the relations of the king and of the druid. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) speaks before the king, in one's official capacity, but he owes advice to the king.

Caesar does not seem either to have well understood the attitude of the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) regarding what he calls the regia potestas; a doctrinal speculation which, besides, was to hardly interest a general worried by immediate and complex political or military problems. The high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) never takes for himself the king function. The druid advises and the monarch acts, the spiritual authority never claimed (except in the sad counter-example of an exceptional case that of the druid Nede ) the exercise of the worldly power, and the druid orders nobody. They are not the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) who choose the king but the warriors [on the other hand, alas, in what was going to become France, it seems that they took part in the election of the vergobretus].

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The noun king in Italo-Celtic language, rix (Irish ri, genitive rig, Old Welsh and old Breton ri), is not used to indicate itself a religious notion; but only the regulating function considered from the point of view of the society, i.e., it comprises no religious principle, if the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) is not there to represent it.

The druid seldom forgets that he is at the service of the king. The king knows it and uses him very freely. We could name only a very restricted number of king-druids or druid-kings [Editor’s note. The priest-king or wizard Hornunnos, called Nemet in Ireland, being pre-Celtic].

There is, however, a druid - and not a warrior – the above-mentioned Nede, who ends his days tragically. He is mythical, of course, but it is not important; and it is characteristic of the Celtic interpretation of the Sovereignty that his essential , triple, moreover, fault, is neither the immoderation neither the ignorance, nor even the power thirst or hunger; but the fact of seizing the king power. This file (or druid) commits successively three serious errors.

1 - On the level of the first priestly function: he pronounces an unjust satire and he misuses thus his priesthood by claiming from the king a dagger that the latter cannot give him without breaking a prohibition.

2 - On the level of the second warlike (and royal) function: he usurps the civil sovereignty. The usurpation is worsened in our story by the pursuit and the death of the king: diminished physically by ulcers, he dies of shame.

The punishment of the druid will be therefore symbolically exemplary. He is killed by a shard of the rock which explodes and flames to punish him because of the death of the king he unjustly satirized…

If, on the historical level in Ireland, the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) had regarded himself as higher to the king, it is his place that he would have taken and that his Christian successors would have kept; and the political organization of medieval Ireland would have been very different, more theocratic than military. Like in Tibet. However we have no trace of any absorption of the warrior class by the priestly class similar to the Brahmanization of the Indian Kshatriyas.

In short, the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) are not civil servants strictly speaking, but they are specialists who help the monarch to rule. The king is not held to follow the advice of the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht), but the druid owes the advice to the king. A king cannot become druid and, conversely, a druid cannot claim the name or the dignity of the king. Only exception Nede in Ireland.

Some of the current remarks about secularity strangely remind of the never-ending revolts of the Celts, particularly of the Belgians, against the gods (see the Irish “Book of Conquests” with its furious combat between the gods of the goddess or fairy Danu (bia) and the (Fir Bolg) Gauls.

Our critical mind must remain awake and a secret revolt must mingle with all our assertions or all our thoughts! If God himself stood up , visible from all the multitudes [Editor’s note : case of the gods of the goddess or fairy Danu (bia) in the “Irish Book of Conquests” precisely]; the first duty of the Man would be to refuse obedience to him and to consider him as the equal one that you meet and with whom you discuss [Editor’s note: case of the Gaulish Fir Bolg in the Irish “Book of Conquests”]; but not as the Master you undergo. Here what the greatness and the beauty of our teaching are.

Of our druidic…. Teaching, we could add. Because finally what the veledae having composed the “Book of Conquests” say, with a secular emphasis before the word is invented, it is not another thing.

End of this example of sermon of the velede on duty.

MARCH. I divertomu Ogroni.

An example of sermon of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Lucan. Pharsalia I, line of verse 452.

“To you alone it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know.”

What Lucan reports to us here is therefore very clear. For the ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), what occurs in our world, resembles a big play of which only the rules were fixed as of the beginning.

We could not better define the action of the Fate or Tokade (Middle Welsh tynghed, Breton tonket, intended, old Irish tocad, fate, toicthech “fortunatus”, tonquedec in Breton language. The labarum is its

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messenger) which behaves more as a deus otiosus in general, than such a totalitarian tyrant style god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Let us not forget also this other great asset of the most genuine druidic thought: the gods withdrew themselves from this world (after the battle for the Talantio or for Rosemartha) and therefore they intervene no longer in it more constantly. Their interventions became exceptional. Nature and history form from now on a continuous whole with its own laws. It is what is called the occultation of the gods. The Romans, themselves, more timidly, speak about Pax deorum. A requirement for every scientific thought as Plotinus saw it well, whose philosophy is never but a purified (but not radically denied) polytheism.

The greatest evil of our time is that Science and Religion seem there two almost irreducible enemy sisters. Intellectual evil all the more pernicious as it comes from high and infiltrates in an underhand manner , but surely, in all the minds, as a subtle poison which you breathe in the air. A fish always rots from the head. However, every lack of intelligence becomes over time a sickness of the soul or of the mind, and thus thereafter a social sickness.

As long as Christianity did nothing but naively affirm the Christian belief, it could constitute a great moral force.

As long as the experimental science, openly reconstituted in the 16th century, did nothing but assert the legitimate rights of the reason and its unbounded freedom, it was the biggest of the intellectual forces. It renewed the face of the world, freed the Man from the ancient and traditional chains and provided the human mind with indestructible bases.

But since Christianity and Islam, being no longer able to prove their simplistic dogmas, before the objections of science, were locked up there as in a house without windows, opposing the belief to the reason as an absolute and indisputable command; since the Science, intoxicated by its discoveries in the physical world, disregarding the psychic and intellectual world, became materialist in its principles as in its end; since Philosophy, disorientated or powerless between both , in a way gave up its rights, to fall into a bottomless skepticism, a scission took place in the soul or the mind of the society as in that of the individuals. This conflict, initially necessary and useful, since it established the rights of the Reason and Science, ended up becoming a cause of powerlessness and hardening The Religion meets the needs of the heart, from there its invincible magic; the science meets these of the mind, from there its immemorial force. But for a long time, these two powers can no longer get along. The religion without proof and the science without hope stand upright, one facing the other and challenge themselves , without being able to overcome. Weaned from eternal horizons, most of youth fell into what its new intellectual guides call “…” [Editor’s note: put here, according to your choice, all what is currently regarded as smart and nice…] thus degrading the beautiful name of Nature. Because what they decorate with these terms is only the self-satisfied depiction of our social platitudes , in a word, the systematic negation of the soul and of the mind.

However the truth without sophisms was a completely different thing for the sages and the theosophists of the Ancient West. They undoubtedly knew that we cannot embrace it or to balance it without a minimal knowledge of the physical world; but they also knew that it laid especially in ourselves, in the intellectual principles, and in these of the spiritual life of the soul/mind. For them, the soul was only the divine reality key of the universe. By focusing their will in its center, by developing its latent faculties, they reached this living hearth they called the Fate (Middle Welsh tynghed, Breton tonket, intended, old Irish tocad, Fate, toicthech “fortunatus”, Breton tonquedec. The labarum is its sign) from which the energy radiating in the matter (the Grail) made understand the men and the beings. For them, what we call the Progress, i.e., the history of the world and of the men, was only the evolution in time and space, of this central Causation and of this Last thing.

You believe perhaps these theosophists were some pure contemplative ones, powerless dreamers, hermits perched on their columns like Symeon the Stylite, What a mistake! The world did not have greater men of action. They shine like stars of highest order in the sky of the souls. They are called Abaris, Olenus, Ambicatus, Momorus, Mariccus… They were powerful mind farmers , formidable molders of soul/minds, salutary organizers of societies. Living only for their ideas, always ready to die, and knowing that to die for the Truth, it is the supreme effective action.

Caesar: “They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many elements respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods.”

The ancient theosophy professed by the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht), formed generally a true encyclopedia, divided into four categories.

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- Theogony or science of the absolute principles, identical to the science of the numbers applied to the universe (sacred mathematics).

- Cosmogony, realization of the eternal principles in space and time, or involution of the soul in the matter (the world periods).

- Psychology; constitution of the Man; and also evolution of the soul (anatiomarus or bacuceus, even seboddu/ seibaros).

- Physics, science of the kingdoms of the earthly nature and of its properties.

The inductive reasoning and the experimental method combined, controlled one by the other in these various science orders , and to each one of them an art corresponded. It was , by taking them in the inverse order, and while starting with physical sciences…

1 a particular medicine based on the knowledge of the properties of minerals like the mysterious stone that they found in the head of a fish in the river Arar ( the Saone River in France, cf the Pseudo-Plutarch), plants and animals.

2 the arts corresponding to the soul/mind forces : psychoanalysis and psychiatry.

3 the theurgy, the supreme art , as rare as perilous and difficult, to put the soul/mind in conscious connection with the various orders of nonhuman superhuman entities.

We can see it, sciences and arts, the whole thing fits together,in this ancient druidism and rose from the same principle that we can call in modern language the evolutionary and transcendent spiritualism, the atheistic spiritualism. We may express as follows the essential principles of this ancient druidism: the soul is the primary reality. The matter is only its changing , transitory, expression, its dynamism in space and time.

The Creation is continuous like the life.

Mankind who summarizes and crowns the series of the beings, reveals all the divine thought of the Fate or Tokad. Condensing the whole nature in his body, he dominates it and rises above it, to enter by his awareness and his relative freedom the infinite kingdom of the Soul/Mind.

We hear here and there to speak about the medical studies and observations of this century about the animal magnetism, about the sleepwalking; and about all the states of the soul different of the wakefulness, from the lucid sleep to the ecstasy, through clairvoyance. Modern science yet did only grope in this field, where the science of the ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), could to be directed, because it had of them the necessary principles and keys.

The art to create or to shape the souls was lost; and will be found only when the Science and the Religion, refounded in a living force, apply to it together and by mutual agreement; for the greatest benefit of Mankind.

This time of intellectual regeneration and social transformation will come, we are sure of that. Already certain signs announce it. When the science will know, the Religion will can. But while waiting for that,what to do in this century which resembles the descent in a pit, on a storm evening, whereas the beginning of the ancient Celtic world had appeared as rise towards free tops on a beautiful summer morning? The Faith, the Celtic faith able to throw mountains over the Andernas or the Fomorians and to make the tops of them rolling down on the ground, is the courage of the mind which springs ahead, sure to find the truth. This faith is not the enemy of the Reason, but its torch.

End of this example of sermon of the velede on duty.

MARCH. I atenoux Ogroni.

An example of sermon of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to the first commentators of Lucan.

Commentary nº 1 of the lines of verses 454 to 458 of the Book I by Lucan.

“They do not say the Manes exist.” “Manes ess, non dicunt.”

Commentary nº 2 of the lines of verses 454 to 458 of the Book I by Lucan.

“The druids deny that the souls can perish or go to Hell.” “Driadae negant interire animas aut contagione inferorum adfici”.

“The late one, they burn him with his servants and his horses, and much of his furniture, so that he can still use them; this is why they go courageously to the fight and do not spare their life as if they were going to recover it in another part of the universe.” "Qui enim defunctis equos servosque et multam

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suppellectilem comburant quibus uti possint, inde animosi in proelia exeunt ne vitae suae parcunt, taniquam eam dem reperituri in alio naturae secessu.”

What report to us these anonymous commentaries on Lucan, found in Bern in Switzerland, is very clear.

The eternal hell was inconceivable for the ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht). Their indulgence for the human weaknesses was unbounded.

The point No. 25 of the small list annexed to the council of Leptines in 743 under the Latin title of indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum (of course, it is a question of condemning or of disparaging all that); goes besides clearly in this direction: it evokes the fact of imagining that every late is a saint.

And in 851, John Scotus Eriugena also noticed in his “on predestination”: God envisages neither punishments nor sins: they are fabrications. For Eriugena also, therefore, hell does not exist, or then he calls it the remorse.

The edifying Christian invention of the Siaburcharpat Con Culaind or fairylike chariot of the Hound of Culann [see the continental habit of the chariot graves] a text of the Lebor Na hUidre dating back to the 12th century (St. Patrick saving Cuchulain from the Hell); invents only half, because this apocryphal story is based in fact on the relationship between the Hesus/Hound of Culann and the druidic idea that hell does not exist.

And like in the case of the legend of Etain (see its Christianized version, the text entitled the Nurture of the House of the two milk buckets); the Irish monks in fact simply had to divert from its initial context [by inserting in it St. Patrick, etc.] an already existing pagan tradition; they present to us Cuchulainn as having triumphed over the Hells.

We found in continental Europe many graves dating back to the 4th century before our era, where the war chariot of the late was buried with the dead, undoubtedly so that the latter can use it in the hereafter.

The Gaelic poems mentioning the Hound of Culann rising after his death above Emain Macha in a fairylike chariot (Siaburcharpat/Soibrocarpanton); are thus only the literary development of this old Celtic idea, about the life of the dead in the hereafter.

The moral sanction does not appear in the pagan conception of the Celtic Elysium. This Elysium, land of happiness, youth and immortality, sometimes proves located in one or more remote islands, towards the West, sometimes under ground, in the kingdom of the fairies, sometimes under the waves of the ocean. Whatever its localization is, this area receives the most pleasant names : Land of youth, Land of living, promised land , Great plain, Plain of Joy. The landscapes are admirable there, trees and birds wonderful. An enchanting music is heard there; people are fed with delicious and almost inexhaustible dishes there. Mind and senses are equally satisfied there. It is not there, as some people believe it, a stay for the dead comparable with the Hades of the Greeks. It is on the contrary the country of the gods, of the fairies, of the immortal ones, and this participation of the human beings in the life of the gods does not appear, we repeat it, as the reward of an earthly life filled with good works. The eschatology of these texts in Ireland is deprived of any ethical meaning.

End of this example of sermon of the velede on duty.

APRIL. I divertomu Cuti.

An example of sermons of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Cailte/Caletius, one of the last Irish Fenians.

“Truth in the heart, strength in the arm and good speech art.”

This triad recorded in the Acallam na Senorach and placed in the mouth of the last of the Fenians at the time of his meeting with St. Patrick is very clear.

The strength in the arms but also the truth in the heart and the good speech. “Argute loqui” could have said on his side Cato the Elder.

In Ireland the noun with which people designated a confidant deserves to be noted. He was called…

- Either anmchara (old Celtic anamocaros), what means “friend of the soul.” A man without anmchara, said Comgall of Bangor, the Master of Columba of Bobbio, is like a headless body.

- Or liaig, what wants to say literally “doctor ” [of the souls ?].

The consequence of that is an active, full and whole, participation, of the bodies and of the matter, generally, in the life of the soul/mind.

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The human evolution, parallel and concomitant with the evolution of the Bitus or Universe, passes by the communal exploitation of the body and of the mind. The ancient high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht), indeed always endeavored to look after the minds as well as after the bodies and reciprocally. The ideal for them indeed, it was the bodily health (they were besides remarkable doctors), but also the moral health, in other words, a right, sincere, and veracious mind.

The ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), were not confessors administering a sacrament, but spiritual advisers, “friends of the soul/mind” or “doctors of the soul/mind”; and it is privately that you came to confide to them in order to ask them for advice, spontaneously, freely.

The big innovation of later Christianity was to make it an obligation for whoever wants to save one’s soul.

What changed everything and conferred to the Catholic priests an incredible and terrifying power , that to absolve , or not. A thing that the ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht),ignored completely; themselves who were true “friends of the soul/mind” i.e., some simple spiritual advisers (anamocaros).

The auricular confession, today usual in the whole catholicity, proves of Celtic origin.

On the Continent at the same time, the Christian penitence was public and followed by a solemn reconciliation. The Celtic Christian practice of the auricular confession was especially monastic at the beginning and therefore came perhaps (in the origin) from a very old druidic practice; the confidence granted to the Irish anamchara (the friend of the soul) , or to the Welsh periglor, by his pupils.

It was one of the essential conditions to progress in the chosen path , but the lay ones too, could, of course, have recourse to this soul/mind medicine spirit from the druid of anamocarus type. In the event of a fault against the ethics of his function, the anamocarus druid then asked generally the culprit to repair his wrongs, and the compensation was, of course, proportional to the caused damage. Everything was envisaged by the custom.

These laws not written in the beginning appear to us today strange and pernisckety. We find in them indeed this meticulous imagination sign of the Celtic genius as regards customary laws.

This system, very rigid for our time, was made more flexible through punishment commutation : the envisaged compensation could be commuted in a harder, but shorter obligation. We may see there, the remote origin of the Catholic practice of indulgences.

What is shocking in the system of indulgences, it is the fact of selling the absolution of the sins, not the indulgence in itself, which is on the contrary typically druidic. The eternal hell was inconceivable for the ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), let us remind of it!

The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) seem to have gone further and, therefore, to have accepted, in certaincircumstances, no longer the commutation of the punishments, but straightforwardly the commutation of the penitents: it is another person who fixes the wrongs or the caused damage. These druidic customs were admirable instruments of spiritual guidance, and made it possible to refine the moral conscience of the West.

Very Celtic in the spirit as in the form, they did not have less a universal vocation because of that, since they imposed little by little on catholicity, as the continuation showed it.

End of this example of sermon of the velede on duty.

APRIL. I atenoux Cuti.

An example of sermon of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Strabo. Book IV, 4,4. Geography.

“The Bards are panegyrists and poets; the vates, diviners and natural philosophers; while the druids, in addition to natural philosophy, also study moral philosophy. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) are considered the most just of men, and on this account they are entrusted with the decision, not only of the private disputes, but of the public disputes as well; so that, in former times, they even arbitrated cases of war and made the opponents stop when they were about to line up for battle. Moreover, not only the druids, but others as well, say that men's souls (psychas in Greek], and also the universe, are indestructible, although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them.”

What Strabo reports to us there about the end of the world is very clear. The ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), never believed that the world would go back one day to absolute nothingness. What they considered for our Bitus or Universe, they are new births, after more or less

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long periods of chaos, during which only fire and water would reign. Therefore, no absolute end nor creation ex nihilo besides…

End of this example of sermon of the velede on duty.

MAY. I divertomu Giamoni.

An example of sermons of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Justin. Book XXIV, 4,6.

“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 worship, 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."……

What Pompeius Trogus quoted by Justin, reports to us, is therefore very clear. It is not mankind who must impoverish itself in favor of the gods, but the gods who have to dispense their wealth to mankind…

End of this example of sermon of the velede on duty.

MAY. I atenoux Giamoni.

An example of sermons of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Caesar. De Bello Gallico. Book VI, 13-14.

“The druids are engaged in things sacred, conduct the public and the private sacrifices, and interpret all matters of religion ; to these a large number of the young men resort for the purpose of instruction. They determine respecting almost all controversies, public and private. Over all these druids one presides, who possesses supreme authority among them. Upon his death, if any individual among the rest is pre-eminent in dignity, he succeeds; but, if there are many equal, the election is made by the suffrages of the druids; sometimes they even contend for the primacy.

These assemble at a fixed period of the year in a consecrated place in the territories of the Carnutes, which is reckoned the central region of the whole of continental Celtica. Hither all who have disputes, assemble from every part, and submit to their decrees and determinations.

The druids do not go to war, nor pay tribute together with the rest; they have an exemption from military service and a dispensation in all matters. Induced by such great advantages, many embrace this profession of their own accord, and [many] are sent to it by their parents and relations. They are said there to learn by heart a great number of verses. They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many elements respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods. Accordingly some remain in the course of training twenty years. Nor do they regard it lawful to commit these to writing, though in almost all other matters, in their public and private transactions, they use Greek characters. They wish to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets: that soul/minds do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another…..”

What Caesar reports us there in connection with the Celtic children going to school for twenty years deserves all our attention…

JUNE. I divertomu Simivisoni.

An example of sermons of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Caesar. De Bello Gallico. Book VI, 13-14.

“ If anyone, either in a private or public capacity, has not submitted to their decision, they interdict him from the sacrifices. This among them is the heaviest punishment. Those who have been thus interdicted [from the sacrifices] are esteemed in the number of the impious and the criminal: all shun them, and avoid their society and conversation, lest they receive some evil from their contact; nor is justice administered to them when seeking it, nor is any dignity bestowed on them.”

What Caesar reports to us there in connection with excommunications deserves some explanations…

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JUNE. I atenoux Simivisoni.

An example of sermons of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Caesar. De Bello Gallico. Book VI, 18.

“All the Celts assert that they are descended from Dis Pater, 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 .”

What Caesar reports to us there on this subject must be somewhat explained…

JULY I divertomu Ecui.

An example of sermons of the velede on duty.

The druidism according to Strabo. Book III, IV, 6. Geography.

“Some say the Galicians 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.”

What Strabo reports to us there in connection with this nameless god … is very clear. Ancient druids…

JULY. I atenoux Ecui.

The druidism according to Ammianus Marcellinus.

Book XV, 9,8. Rerum Gestarum libri.

“Throughout these provinces, the people gradually becoming civilized, the study of noble sciences flourished, having been first introduced by the bards, the vates [Latin euhagis, the eubages > the ovates] and the druids. The bards were accustomed to employ themselves in celebrating the brave achievements of their illustrious men, in epic verso, accompanied with sweet airs on the lyre. The vates investigated the system and sublime secrets of nature, and sought to explain them to their followers. Among them came the druids, men of loftier genius, bound in brotherhoods [Latin sodaliciis, see sodalis]; their minds were elevated by investigations into secret and sublime matters, and from the contempt which they slightly entertained for human affairs they pronounced the soul/mind [Latin animas] immortal.

What Ammianus Marcellinus reports to us is therefore extremely clear. Ancient druids…

AUGUST. I divertomu Elembivi.

The druidism according to Athenaeus. Book IV, 154, d to e.

“ And other men having received some silver or gold money publicly, and some even for a number of earthen vessels full of wine, having taken pledges that the gifts promised shall really be given, and having distributed them among their nearest companions, have laid themselves down on shields, with their faces upwards, and then allowed some bystander to cut their throats with a sword."

What Athenaeus by following besides Poseidonius, he quotes, reports to us in connection with this kind of suicide, is very clear.

Ancient druids…

AUGUST. I atenoux Elembivi.

The druidism according to Diodorus of Sicily. Book V, 28.

“We are told, at the funerals of their dead, some cast letters upon the pyre which they have written to their deceased kinsmen, as if the dead would be able to read these letters.”

What Diodorus of Sicily reports to us there, in connection with the hereafter of the death among Celts, is therefore very clear.

Ancient druids…

SEPTEMBER. I divertomu Edrini.

The druidism according to Diodorus of Sicily. Book V, 31.

“Philosophers, as we may call them, and theologians, are unusually honored among them and are called by them druids [dronidas or saronidas even sarouidas, in the medieval Greek manuscripts].

It is a custom of theirs that no one should perform a sacrifice without a "philosopher"; for thank offerings should be rendered to the gods, they say, by the hands of men who are experienced in the nature of the divine, and who speak, as it were, the language of the gods….”.

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What Diodorus of Sicily reports to us there is therefore very clear. The druids so to speak, speak the same language as the gods, and they act as mediators between them and the mere mortals…

SEPTEMBER. I atenoux Edrini.

The druidism according to Diodorus of Sicily. Book V, 31.

“Among them are also to be found lyric poets whom they call bards. These men sing to the accompaniment of instruments which are like lyres, and their songs may be either of praise or of obloquy. Nor is it only in the exigencies of peace, but in their wars as well, that they obey, before all others, these men and their chanting poets, and such obedience is observed not only by their friends but also by their enemies; many times, for instance, when two armies approach each other in battle with swords drawn and spears thrust forward, these men step forth between them and cause them to cease, as though having cast a spell over certain kinds of wild beasts. In this way, even among the wildest barbarians, does passion give place before wisdom, and Ares stands in awe of the Muses.”

What Diodorus of Sicily in connection with the druids reports to us there, since the bards of this time was also druids, is therefore very clear. The druids often intervened as referees to put an end to the fights…

OCTOBER. I divertomu Cantli.

The druidism according to Diogenes Laertius. Book I, Prolog 6.

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

In Greek language…

“Sébein théous, kai mèdém kakon, dran kai andréian askéin.”

The druidic triad that Diogenes Laertius reports to us is extremely clear…

“Sébein théous” means to revere the gods.

“mèdén kakon” to abstain from wrongdoing.

And “andréian askéin” wants to say: to be a man, a true one…

OCTOBER. I atenoux cantli.

The druidism according to Diogenes Laertius. Book I, Prolog I.

“There are some who say that the study of philosophy had its beginning among the barbarians. The Persians have had their Magi, the Indians their Gymnosophists; and among the Celts there are the people called druids or semnothes.”

The gymnosophists, they are the Hindu yogis or fakirs. What Diogenes Laertius reports to us there, in connection with the druids he calls semnothes, therefore seems very clear. The semnothes , they are the great initiates who…

NOVEMBER. I divertomu Samoni.

The druidism according to Lucan. Book I, verses 444 to 462.

“And you, vates, whose martial lays formerly made immortal the powerful souls/minds [Latin animas] of those who died in the war.”

What Lucan reports to us is extremely clear.

Those who die in action, helped by the songs from the vates, go directly into the other world parallel to ours that people call heaven, after death…

NOVEMBER. I atenoux Samoni.

The druidism according to Lucan. Book I, verses 444 to 462.

“According to your masters, the shades of dead men seek not the quiet homes of Erebus or death's pale kingdoms; but the same soul/mind [Latin idem spiritus] governs the limbs in another world [Latin orbe alio] and the death is only the middle of a long live; if you know well what you sing. Happy the peoples beneath the Great Bear thanks to their error; 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, and this lack of care put to save a life which must be given back to you.”

What Lucan reports to us there deserves reflection. Ancient druids…

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DECEMBER. I divertomu Dumanni.

The druidism according to the ancient commentators of Lucan. Book I, line of verse 445.

“Hesum Mercurium credunt, si quidem a mercatoribus colitur, et praesidem bellorum et caelestum deorum maximum Tarnanin Iouem adsuetum olim humanis placari capitibus, nunc uero gaudere pecorum.”

“They believe in Hesus Mercury reason why he is particularly worshipped by the tradesmen, and they consider Taranis-Jupiter for the guardian god of the greatest gods in the Heaven. The custom formerly was to offer human heads in sacrifice to him, but now he is satisfied with cattle.”

What this anonymous commentator of the text by Lucan reports to us is extremely clear. Taran/Toran/Tuireann is the greatest of the gods and people today offer only cattle in sacrifice to him…

DECEMBER. I atenoux Dumanni.

The druidism according to Pomponius Mela. Book II, 18 to 19. De Chorographia.

“After they have led their consecrated human victims to the altars, they still graze them slightly, although they do hold back from the ultimate bloodshed. These men [the druids] claim to know the size and shape of the earth and of the universe, the movements of the sky and of the stars, and what the gods intend. In secret, and for a long time (twenty years), they teach many things to the noblest males among their people, and they do it in a cave or in secret places at the bottom of the forests. One of the precepts they teach—obviously to make them better for war—has leaked into common knowledge, namely, that souls/minds [Latin animas] are immortal and that there exists another life at the dead. Therefore they cremate and bury with the dead things that are suitable for the living. And long ago traders’ accounts and debts registers also accompanied the dead, in order to be balanced or honored in the other world and some individuals happily threw themselves onto the pyres of their loved ones as if they were going to live with them” !

What Pomponius Mela reports to us there is extremely clear… Ancient druids…

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ETIQUETTE OR PRECEDENCE (PROTOCOL).

Professor William A. Nitze of the University of Chicago having compared our Grail’s castle to the Irish Tech Midchuarta, we will say here a few words about it.

There existed among Celts buildings or rooms especially reserved for the banquets and often designated by a name referring to the most generally poured on the spot drink. The Curmitegos (from curmi = ale and tegos = roof or house) was for example the room or the building where was served the korma, a variety of ale.

In Ireland at Tara, it was the house of the mead enclosure, Gaelic Tech Midchuarta (tegio medugorto?).

The room reserved for the banquets was a rectangular building with tables laid out along the two side walls. Just behind a certain number of rather solid hooks were fixed at the wall in order to hang up there the shields of each participant.

One on the sides of this room was reserved for the greats of the kingdom, for the important characters, and the other for the persons in charge of their personal guard or the captains ordering their troop.

A nuance, of course, without interest nowadays since peace prevails in our societies.

Some very strange documents called in Gaelic language Tech Midchuarta left us specifications about the way with which the guests were placed in the room of the banquet, as about the nature of the pieces of meat which were served to them.

These manuscripts are the Book of Leinster, which dates back to the middle of the twelfth century, and the Yellow Book of Lecan, written around the end of the fourteenth century, both pertaining to the library of Trinity College , in Dublin.

The [square?] large room proves to be divided into five parts: the central zone is occupied by the fire, a vat and the lighting. The two adjacent to the wall parts on the right and on the left are these where the most important guests take a seat. The two sections which border the central zone, immediately on the right and on the left of the latter, are for the less important guests.

In the part of the hall which adjoins the wall on the right, the king occupies the fourth stall 1) or imdas starting from the back, the fourth stall starting from the back being apparently, in this part of the hall, the place of honor. In the part of the room which reaches the wall of the left side, the fourth stall starting from the back is reserved for the sui littri 2). It is the place of honor on the left, corresponding to the place of honor where, on the right, we find the king.

When the pieces of meat, beef or pork are cut out, entirely cooked , of which the waiters distribute the various pieces, best ones are reserved to the most important guests.

N.B. It is a habit without which new druidism can do very well , other than that in order to honor very particularly somebody.

The aire echta or fourth class nobleman received a ration of pork shoulder, muc-formuin, literally “the piece which is above the neck. ”

Once these good pieces distributed, the only a little distinguished pieces which remained proved to be the feet: the aire desa or fifth class nobleman divided them with some other characters of less importance.

Here what the Senchus Mor says about that.

The legs for the king and the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), the loins for the intellectuals or the men of letters, the legs for the young lords, the heads for the coachmen, the haunches for the ladies.

The other people managed as they could by eating the remains.

What nowadays could seem, of course, very impolite, except in case of absolute necessity (lack of food, seats, space).

What we therefore can deduce from all that. The banquet hall was organized as follows.

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Two series of long and narrow parallel tables , one on the right and one on the left, with in the middle a zone reserved for the fire, the lighting, the cauldron and the drink, as for the circulation of waiters.

The best places were these which were equipped with a bench and some kinds of individual box (some stalls?) along the walls in the back of the hall. Other guests closer to the entrance having to be satisfied with simple seats. The places of honor therefore were rather located in the back, but not completely. As we said it, they resembled kinds of compartments (imdas) a little similar to the choir stalls of the medieval abbey churches later; the Celtic monks being perhaps inspired by these conveniences for their own use.

Of course, in the event of absence of stall, a long bench leant against the wall of the room is enough.

The weapons, swords or shield, are hung above each stall by the personnel. These a little too warlike panoplies were perhaps then replaced by coats of arms in medieval art.

Order of precedence and piece of meat distributed.

To note: laymen and druids of various ranks (clí, sencha, cano, back, maccfurmid, fochloc, sui, ollam, anrot) are mixed or alternate according to traditional criteria which escape to us, but which was to have an explanation.

The best piece appears to have been the fillet, from which people distinguished two categories: the first, prim cruachait, were reserved to the king and to the most important religious person; the second category, lon cruachait, came down to the first-class nobleman, aire forgill. The noblemen of second and third rank, aire tuisi and aire ard, ate “some” thigh…

Colpa designates a secondary piece, of the leg or of the lower part of the leg.

N.B. In the Middle Ages there was no plate for that, meat was served on broad slices of bread. Some mega-toasts in a way!

Below therefore, on the right along the wall (from the back of the hall to the entrance).

Araid cuind dóib.

Seguinni muc formuin doib.

Airig forgaill lonchruachait doib.

Ruirig lon-chruachait doib.

Aire arrd loarg dó.

Airi désa loarg dó

Clí cam-chnaim dó.

Senchaid camchnaim dó.

Aire echta muc formuin dó.

Cano cam-chnaim do.

Airi desa & doss colptha.

Maccfurmid ampersir fochloc ir-chruachait doib.

Cuthchairi & midim ir-remurn-imda doib.

Rathbuige & obraige milgetan doib.

Below therefore on the left along the wall (from the back of the hall to the entrace).

Marcaig cuind doib.

Cruittiri million u.a. for muin doib.

Brithemain lonchruachait doib.

Suid littri lonchrua-chait doib.

Tanaise suad leschrua-chait doib.

Ollam filed loarg doib.

Anroth filed camchnaim doib.

Briuga cetach loarg dó.

Augtar saírsi roichnech dó.

Fádi & druid & commilid colptha doib.

Aeltaire & to sair cruachait doib.

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Then, less rank characters.

In the middle, immediately on the right of the central area where are the fire, the drink vat, the cauldron, and the lightings.

Rechtaire mael doib.

Fidchellaig colptha doib.

Deogbaire leschruachait doib.

Umaidid irchrua-chait doib.

Legi mael doib.

Luamairi milgetan doib.

Creccairi camchnaim doib.

Braigetori remur n-imda doib.

Druth ríg dromman do.

Dorsairi ríg. dronnna dóib.

Mairig & cladairi remur n-imda doib.

In the middle, immediately on the left of the central area where are the fire, the drink vat, the cauldron, and the lightings.

Rannairi mael doib.

Cuslennaig colpda doib.

Scolaige leschruachait doib.

Gobainn mael doib.

Tuathait milgetain dóib.

Carpatsaer camchnaim do.

Clessanaig colptha doib.

Cornairi & bunniri midi mir tond doib.

Rannairi & iascairi milgetan dóib.

Cairemain & toscairi remur n-imda doib.

(Tech Midchuarda. Book of Leinster, formerly Lebar na Nuachongbala).

Before the banquet itself begins, this large room was to be empty except for the three following people (a trimarcisia in a way).

The sencha druid or historian druid, the person in charge of the protocol and a herald charged with sounding horn.

The king of the kings and the province kings having taken a seat in the back of the large room then came the turn of the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) of higher rank (sui, ollamos).

Then the herald sounded horn first once and the squires carrying the shields of their master entered the hall in order to give it to the person in charge of the protocol; who, under the control of the historian or sencha druid, then hung them to the wall according to the rank of their owner, from highest to most subordinate.

The herald sounded second once and then it was the turn of the shields of the captains or of the commanders to be hung on the walls.

The interval between these shields, of course, was calculated in order to leave to each one a sufficient place to be at ease without encroaching on its neighbor.

The herald sounded horn lastly third once and there the guests could start to come in at a leisurely pace in order to settle in the place which had been reserved thus to them (each one recognizing his shield easily).

This system had the advantage of avoiding any rush or quarrel to have the best place.

The ritual banquet was reserved for men, as it suits for a specifically military ceremony and, let us say it, already feudal. But it is not a late feature, because it is thus in this counterfeit or parody of the feast in Tara that is the Bricriu’s Feast.

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The women were right consequently to a distinct banquet hall (nobody is forced to follow the habits and customs of the former druidism on this subject, but now it is true that with certain male guests, passions flare quite quickly; and that sometimes that is better, that can be a wise precaution).

N.B. Theoretically the places therefore are reserved to the participants in these banquets according to a precise protocol and not left to chance. Today, a simple card with one’s name posed on the table can be enough, of course, but to decorate the walls of the room in question of nicely emblazoned shields, is an idea. The very simple means to avoid all these precedence arguments being, of course, to resort to a celicnon i.e., to a circular banquet hall with tables laid out in a circle.

1) Today, the stalls are the wooden seats which are on the two sides of the choir of a church, and which are reserved to the clergy members.

2) Allotted to the bishop of the place after the Christianization.

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THE COMMENSALITY BANQUET WITH GODS FOR THE ELDERLY (the young people dance and party elsewhere).

FIRST SERIES OF FORMS THEREFORE, TO RECITE WHILE TOASTING.

The bard of the banquet.

I toast Liberty, Reason, the triple wish of the wise.

RESPONSE. Both now and evermore.

The bard of the banquet. Let us be called EQUALS AND BROTHERS.

RESPONSE. Companions too and friends.

The bard of the banquet. Let us banish strife,envy and obstinacy.

RESPONSE. Let us harbor sweetness,knowledge and politeness.

The bard of the banquet. Let jokes and mirth be our pleasures.

RESPONSE. May the gods and goddesses or fairies be propitious!

The bard of the banquet. We must not be bigoted to anyone’s opinion.

And here all clink their glasses together.

SECOND SERIES OF FORMS TO BE RECITED AT THE TIME OF THE BANQUETS.

The bard of the banquet. I toast wit, modesty, facetiae. Let us search out, diligently the causes of things, that we might live pleasantly, and die peaceably.

RESPONSE.

That, free from all fear, neither elated by joy, nor depressed by sadness, we might always release ourselves through reason.

The bard of the banquet. Let us greatly feed our minds, but sparingly our bellies.

RESPONSE.

It is just and good!

The bard of the banquet. Let us toast the Graces.

RESPONSE.

Let us toast the goddesses or good fairies!

Then each one clinks glasses with one’s neighbor before draining one’s glass.

THIRD SERIES OF FORMS TO BE RECITED AT THE TIME OF THE BANQUETS.

The bard of the banquet. I toast the ONE. All things in the world are one and one is all in all things.

ANSWER. Because GOD is all in all things, eternal, infinite, uncreated, immortal.

The bard of the banquet. In him, we live, we move, we exist.

RESPONSE. Everything is sprung from him, and shall be reunited to him, He himself being the beginning and end of all things.

The bard of the banquet. Let us sing a hymn upon the power of the BITUS or UNIVERSE. All things within the verge of mortal laws are changed. All nations in revolving years know not themselves, nations change their faces, but the whole of the Bitus or Universe is safe, and preserves its all, neither uncreated by time, nor worn by age. Its motion is not instantaneous, it does not fatigue its course. Always the same it has been, and shall be; Our father’s saw no alteration, neither shall posterity: it is God, who for ever is immutable.

ALL TOGETHER.

Whatever this is, it animates all things,forms,nourishes,increases,creates,buries, and takes into itself all things: and the same, of all things is the parent. From thence all things, that receive a being, into the same are anew resolved.

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NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR OF THE COMPILATION.

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Emerge then under the hand of Toland a whole series of a little outdated considerations about nature, and others a little more relevant on matter.

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The bard of the banquet.

All the things that are in the world are parts of the world, and comprised in an Intelligent nature, endowed with perfect reason, and with aiu (eternity); for there is nothing stronger to bring it to destruction: this force they call the Soul of the world, as also a mind, and perfect WISDOM, and consequently God. To this Providence they attribute, as it were, a certain prudent knowledge of all the things that are subject to it, and therefore suppose, that first and principally, it takes care of celestial things, and afterwards on Earth of what belongs to Man: this administration is sometimes called by them Necessity, because nothing can happen contrary to what it has appointed, as being a fatal and immutable continuation of the everlasting order. Sometimes it is termed Fortune, because it executes many things unexpectedly with regard to us, upon account of the obscurity and our ignorance of causes.

ALL TOGETHER.

God, diffused through all the mass, pervades the Earth, the sea, and deep of air: hence men, and cattle, herds, and savage beasts; all at their births receive ethereal life, hither again, dissolved, they back return; nor death takes place; but, all immortal, fly to heaven, and in their proper stars reside (VIRGIL: grandson of a druid).

The bard of the banquet. Now I toast those men and women among the Ancients, who taught or acted nobly.

RESPONSE. That they may benefit us by their example, as well as learning.

The bard of the banquet. Now I toast… names at the discretion of the bard of the banquet.

THIRD SERIES OF FORMS TO BE RECITED AT THE TIME OF THE BANQUETS.

The Bard of the banquet.

We must always wish that there should be a sound mind in a sound body, so death is never to be dreaded.

RESPONSE. Nothing more is to be wished for. And to effect this, we must use our utmost endeavors.

The Bard of the banquet. Let us therefore sing joyfully and tunably.

ALL TOGETHER.

The man is conscious virtue bold who dares his secret purpose hold, unshaken hears the crowd’s tumultuous cries, and the impetuous tyrant’s angry brow defies. Let the loud winds, that rule the seas, their wild tempestuous horrors raise; let Jove’s dread arm with thunder rend the spheres, beneath the crush of worlds undaunted he appears.

Follows under the hand of Toland some considerations much more dubious considerations on the Law or the laws mainly inspired by Lactantius, that says everything about them, and by Cicero.

Superstition says Tully (whose words are unquestionably true) overspreading nations, seized upon almost the minds of all, and took possession of the weakness of men. This is evident from my book upon the nature of the gods, and I have cleared it up to my utmost, in this dispute upon divination: for I flattered myself that I should not conduce a little to my own particular advantage, and that of my country, if I could find a means to root it out entirely. Not that it should be understood that by destroying SUPERSTITION, RELIGION is also destroyed, for it is a wise man’s business to uphold the institutions of his ancestors, and retain their rites and ceremonies;but what I intimate is that the beauty of the world, and order of heavenly things, force us to confess that there exists an EXCELLENT AND ETERNAL BEING, which should be the object of the contemplation and admiration of mankind. Wherefore, as the RELIGION is to be propagated, that is joined to the knowledge of NATURE, so all the roots of SUPERSTITION are to be plucked out, and cast away.

N.B. All is not false in this paragraph, but it is nevertheless to be used with many cautions. Because all the revealed religions claim to be compatible with the sciences of nature, even the Islam and its miracles (the miracle of the elephant, of the ababil birds, of the spider or of the dove at the entrance of the cave, of the moon divided into two, of Muhammad's travel to Jerusalem then to heaven, etc.) , therefore not to be superstitions.

FOURTH SERIES OF FORMS TO BE RECITED AT THE TIME OF THE BANQUETS.

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The bard of the banquet. He is as great a fool who weeps he shall not be alive a thousand years hence.

RESPONSE. As he who weeps, that he has not lived to a thousand years.

The bard of the banquet.To fame and custom only, funeral pomp and solemnities should be granted.

RESPONSE. They are therefore to be despised by us, but not to be neglected.

The bard of the banquet. Let’s toast some health!

RESPONSE. Come!

The bard. My humble service to the SODALITY.

RESPONSE. It shall go round in full bumpers.

Notices.

1) A not necessarily secret nor inevitably hostile to Christianity society despite all what people could write on this subject.

2) As for me, when I was young, such images seen on television made me think rather of members of the Ku Klux Klan parading behind their grand imperial wizard, but now, each one has one’s cultural references…

3) The population in this nice spot of Austria was indeed mixed to the full at the time (the interbreeding is a phenomenon which did not await for the journalists singing its virtues today, in the place of these of the social revolution as they did it in the years 1950; it is easier obviously, and that has fewer consequences; to exist), therefore it is certain that many “Welschen” were to remain there.

“At length they arrived at the place designated [Bregenz] , which did not wholly please Columban; but he decided to remain, in order to spread the faith among the people, who were Swabians. Once, as he was going through this country, he discovered that the natives were going to make a heathen offering. They had a large cask that they called a cupa, and that held about twenty-six measures, filled with beer and set in their midst. On Columban's asking what they intended to do with it, they answered that they were making an offering to their God Wotan (which others call Mercury). When he heard of this abomination, he breathed on the cask, and lo ! it broke with a crash and fell in pieces so that all the beer ran out. Then it was clear that the devil had been concealed in the cask, and that through the earthly drink he had proposed to ensnare the souls of the participants. As the heathens saw that, they were amazed and said Columban had a strong breath, to split a well-bound cask in that manner.”

4) As for the haoma/soma of the Irano-Indian Aryans. Is it necessary to add to it the communion wine, taken in a ritual way by the Christian priests? But it is in this case a fruit of nature taken during a spiritual or mystical experience, entheogenic (from the Greek “en-theo-genes” which generates god or spirit inside oneself); not a psychoactive product resulting from the modern industrial society (kind drug). N.B. There existed, of course, many other herbs or plants to be used according to cases. The psilocybe semilanceata, seems for example, being a relatively common sacred mushroom. It grows in groupS in the pastures, since September to November.

5) While using small olive picks or wooden toothpicks, even mini-skewers, for example. The communion using sacred bread (panis divinus ancestor of the Turkish pide bred?) was also known by the ancient Celts, at least among the Galatians in Asia Minor. They made bread with ordinary leaven, but also with brewers' yeast (foam formed by the fermentation on the top of the liquid).

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A famous Greek traveler, Posidonius, who was often invited to their tables, left us of the meal among the Celts a description contradicting somewhat the heavy ceremonial described below in the case of the Tech Midchuarta.

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It was perhaps a meal without religious connotations and pertaining rather to daily life. Or a difference of etiquette between the isles and the continent. It is up to each one to see because we will not claim here to solve this apparent contradiction that we will be contented to expound honestly.

What is certain, on the other hand, it is that in the case of a building of the celicnon type the table was round like that of Arthur.

But let us return to Posidonius. Around an extremely low table were laid out hay or straw bales, it was the seats of the guests. The dishes usually consisted of a little bread and of much meat boiled, roasted or spit roasted ; the whole served properly, in wood or terra cotta dishes among the poor people, copper or silver dishes among the rich people.

It was customary that the thigh of the animals served on the table belonged to bravest, or at least to the one who claimed to be this man; if somebody dared to fight with him over it, it resulted from that an all-out duel .

When the service was ready, each one chose some whole limb of the animal, seized it with his two hands, and ate while biting straightly the meat: it seemed a meal of lions. If the piece was too hard, man cut it up with a small knife of which the sheath was attached to the sleeve of the sword. People drank while passing one cup round , a cup made of terra cotta or metal, that the servants made circulate; they drank little at the same time, but while doing it frequently. The rich person had wine from Italy, they took pure or slightly diluted with water; the drink of the poor was ale and mead. Close sea and rivers, people consumed much roasted fish, which they spray with salt, vinegar and cumin; oil was rare and not very sought after.

In the pageantry feasts which were many, the table was round, the guests lined up in a circle around. Beside the more considered as regards valiancy, nobility or fortune, character , sat down the householder , and successively each guest, according to his personal dignity as his class; here is the circle of the masters. Behind them was formed a second concentric circle , that of the henchmen; a line carried the shields, the other line carried the lances; they were treated or ate like their masters.

The foreign host also had his place marked in the feasts. Initially, people let it be rested a little and be satisfied with his ease, discreetly, without disturbing him by the least question. But at the end of the meal, they asked his name, his homeland, the reasons for his travel; they made him tell the manners of his country, these of the regions he had traversed, in a word all what could pique the curiosity of a people…

This passion of the stories was so great among Celts that the traders come from far were accosted in the middle of the fairs, and bombarded with questions by the crowd. Sometimes even, the travelers were retained in spite of them on the roads, and were forced to answer the passersby.

N.B. As we have just seen it, the place of each one in the celicnon thus was probably also signaled by something of beforehand hung to the wall just like in a tech midchuarta.

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PLACES OF WORSHIP (THE ORIGINAL GRAIL CASTLE).

Druids always thought that it was possible to get in touch with the gods designed as forces of nature, in certain places and certain moments. The inscription found in Verceil (Vercelli) in 1960, in Italy, proves it. It is the offering of a ground (atos in the text) having to belong jointly to men and gods.

“Teuo-xtonion eu” the text specifies. This sacred space was perhaps to be a rectangle or a square of ground, delimited by four stone terminals.

Akisios Arkatoko materekos to… o. kot… atos teuoxtonion eu.

What means

Acisios the great master of coins (argantocomaterecos) gave (to… o. kot.) this sacred ground (atos) belonging to gods and men (deuo gdonion), jointly.

The basic diagram of the druidic sanctuary is therefore very simple.

Here how this kind of teuo-xtonion temple appeared generally. It was an open-air surface delimited by an enclosure and a ditch where a wooden structure was erected which defined a more reduced and covered space, a closed quadrangular construction, equipped thereafter with a broader and more open second one in order to form a gallery around the first. There were in this type of pertaining to worship spaces, specific to the hill forts, sacrifices of animals, horses, cattle, even Canidae as of some weapons deposits. And the notion of rites or of ceremonial which results from this, generates quite naturally the idea of the divinity. The direct contact with gods being possible here consequently an example of ritual intended for that………

a) It is in the beginning quite simply a space devoted at the same time to men and gods where the meeting between men and gods is possible (devogdonion in the Italian inscription of Verceil).

Originally a clearing (nemeton) around a sacred grove (tree of the world, cosmic tree).

This devoted space or sanctuary is carefully delimited by a wood palisade, a little similar to those which will be built by the distant descendants of all these Celts in America at the time of the conquest of the Wild West (see for example Fort Saint-Joseph in the Michigan).

This sanctuary, of course, is equipped with a monumental, very monumental, entrance, a little like the gate of a cathedral or the triumphal main door of a parish closes in Armorica.

c) The most important place of this sanctuary consisted of one or more (9?) sacrifice pits or ditches with in front of them a stone table (in the past a portal tomb): the cella, located in the back of the sanctuary delimited by a palisade. The whole, like in Libenice, in Czech Republic, close to Kolin, from the rest of the sanctuary by a cob or clay partition, possibly decorated with frescos like that which represented Ogmius, described by Lucian of Samosata.

This pertaining to worship installation will be protected soon by a roof supported by a certain number of colonnade-shaped wooden posts (fanum).

d) A sector of the sanctuary is arranged in a cemetery for the relics of the late dear to the community. It is then signaled by one (4 in Libenice) lantern of the dead .

e) Another one is intended to preserve or house a certain number of offerings of ex-voto or of other sacred objects (sacristy/sacrarium).

f) People find also not far an installation to cook sacrificed animals (in Libenice, it is in the circumvallation ditch) .

g) As well as a zone to consume them in a kind of ritual banquet.

Main decoration of this sanctuary: panoplies of swords, shields, armors, or lances, fixed on the walls…

Every sacred territory is a territory where one day a theophany, or a hierophany, took place, and which because of that became taboo, sacred, in short a sanctuary. Vrindavan, in India, is a sacred territory, because Krishna (another form of Vishnu) there spent his youth. A sacred space is also a place characterized by access restrictions. You do not enter anyhow, nor any time, a holy place.

Mecca is for example a sacred territory (haram), because, according to the Islamic tradition, one day Abraham pitched his tent there; and that the site of the haram was delimited by God himself, who made a wind blow, which drew on the sand of the ground the contours of the Kaaba (what is not historically true, of course, but now…).

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The more a territory is haram i.e., sacred, the more there are access restrictions; this is why if,possibly , non-Muslims are generally allowed to enter a mosque (apart from the prayer times); the access to the haram of Meccca, where the Kaaba, the central sanctuary of Islam, itself, is, on the other hand, is strictly reserved to the only Muslims.

In the center of the Hindu temples, there are always also a choir or a sacrosanct choir , a cella where the statue of the deity is, the garbhagriha (or Holy of Holies, in Sanskrit language). To be allowed to enter it, it is necessary to be a priest, i.e., a Brahman, in other words, to be subjected to purity rites more demanding than for the common people.

To circulate in the rest of the temple, on the other hand, the restrictions are, on the other hand, minimal.

This sacred surface, true divine property, was communal to men and gods during the time of the sacrifice (devogdonion). A place consequently where the meeting with the hereafter was possible.

The inscription of Vercelli in Italy, mentioned above, proves it.

Acisios Argantocomaterecos tosocote atos devo - xdonion.

Acisios Argantocomaterecos gave this [delimited by the four stones] atos to gods - to men.

It was consequently sacrilege to steal anything from there, in particular from the atebertas or offerings which were brought by the believers.

In Tolosa, the temple was sacrosanct, deeply venerated by the surrounding peoples: from there richnesses which had been piled up there, because of the great number of the offerings and of the fear which prevented from touching them “….And it is further said that the Tectosages shared in the expedition to Delphi; and even the treasures that were found among them in the city of Tolosa (Toulouse) by Caepio, a general of the Romans, were, it is said, a part of the valuables that were taken from Delphi, although the people, in trying to consecrate them and propitiate the god, added thereto out of their personal props; it was on account of having laid hands on them that Caepio ended his life in misfortunes; for he was cast out by his native land as a temple robber…..” (Strabo, Geography IV, I, 13).

“To him, when they have determined to engage in battle, they commonly vow those things which they shall take in war. When they have conquered, they sacrifice whatever captured animals may have survived the conflict, and collect the other things into one place. In many tribes-states you may see piles of these things heaped up in their consecrated spots; nor does it often happen that any one, disregarding the sanctity of the case, dares either to secrete in his house things captured, or take away those deposited; and the most severe punishment, with torture, has been established for such a deed” (Caesar, B.G. VI, 17).

They are here, of course, practices of former druidism. It is certain that the violation or the profanation of the temple or of a sacred place of today should in no case be sanctioned in the same way. Banishment or removal (like in the case of the proconsul Caepio) could be enough.

In its primitive design, the druidic sanctuary differs by no means from the Greek temenos or from the Roman templum. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), of the early time, in a more general way, and without there is no taboo on the divine figurations or images, did not represent their gods with anthropomorphic statues; so they did not need places which were, like in the Greco-Roman world, the shelters housing these gods.

The existence among the Celts of the independence time, of temples, i.e., of permanent and arranged in order to be protected from the bad weather, places of worship, is nevertheless indubitable.

Strabo. Book IV, IV, 6. “In the ocean, Poseidonius 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 […..] 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 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 account by Strabo is extremely clear. There was therefore at least a roof. What he describes then must be a human sacrifice with circumambulation around the temple, from the left towards the right, of course: deisil in Ireland. A little as in the pre-Muslim ritual of the tawaf around the Kaaba in Mecca besides, less nakedness. Because for the high-knowers of the druidiaction - druidecht - there was not one kaaba, but thousands of kaaba, as many kaaba than remarkable holy places.

The sanctuary of the Puy de Corent (to about fifteen kilometers in the south-east of the current town of Clermont-Ferrand, is an enclosure, a ground, that men carefully cut out to make it a devogdonion, a

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space communal to gods and men, a place where the meeting with them is possible. The whole located in the middle of a true urban area (a hill-fort).

It is a vast peribolos enclosed by a deeply implanted palisade, delimiting an approximately 43 m wide parallelepipedic surface, more or less directed according to the cardinal points.

Its entrance highlighted in the middle of its Eastern branch is in conformity with the orientation of the other sanctuaries known at this period. The crossing of the ditch was made easier by a wood runway being based on a series of posts.

Some time after an immense covered gallery made of wood and earth will succeed it. This new construction is based on an external wall made of posts laid out in quincunx and bound with cob, of one to two lines of intermediate posts and of a high internal colonnade of 12 X 13 wooden posts. Although a little wider (50 m from east to west), its layout reproduces that of the palisade accurately. This gallery housed partitioned spaces dedicated to the culinary activities, paved with shards of amphoras, and comprising each one a hearth, recognized on various places of its layout.

Two approximately 12 m long and 8 m wide small rectangular buildings, in light construction of wood and cob, were built on both sides of the entrance: perfectly parallel. One of them housed activities of slaughtering and sacrificial butchery, carried around a stone altar and a large pit comparable with the “hollow altars of the Latenian sanctuaries of the Belgian type.

These rectangular buildings too were surrounded on the left and on the right by ditches or wooden palisades, decorated with skulls and jaws of sheep attached in garlands. Their accesses were strewn with thousands of bones and shards of amphoras combined with metal kitchen utensils (cauldrons, knives, little forks).

These food leftovers are directly related to the pertaining to worship activity of the site. They correspond to tons of meat and hectoliters of wine, consumed within the framework of feasts of commensality with gods, like these of the somewhat mythical Bituitus and Luernius 2).

“Luernius, aiming at becoming a leader of the populace, used to drive in a chariot over the plains, and scatter gold and silver among the myriads of Celts who followed him; and that he enclosed a fenced space of twelve stades square, in which he erected casks, and filled them with expensive liquors; and that he prepared so vast a quantity of eatables that for very many days anyone who chose was at liberty to go and enjoy what was there prepared, being waited on without interruption or cessation.” (Posidonius of Apamea, quoted by Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 37,1-19).

Between these two buildings, in the axis of the entrance, four square pits of variable size were dug (from 0,50 m to 1,40 m wide); covered with a wood shaft lining and encircled with large shards of amphoras laid out in a crown as paving. They prove the existence of a zone reserved for drink offerings rites achieved on a privileged site, immediately visible from the entrance and even beyond, from the outside of the sanctuary.

This sanctuary presents a great interest on the architectural level. The limits of the enclosure also preserved many previous that time vestiges. Holes of posts datable back to the first Iron Age (750-500 before our era) and the Bronze Age (2 200-750 before our era), palisades of Neolithic time (3 500 - 2.200 before our era)…

Another spectacular step in the comprehension of the druidic temples was crossed with the bringing out of the first place of worship located at Gournay-sur-Aronde in “Belgian” territory.

Like all the sanctuaries of the classical world, it is a ground of a small surface (from 40 to 50 meters wide), of which the plan is rectangular. The entrance opened facing the rising sun precisely at the time of the summer solstice. Its access to men, animals and things, was strictly regulated. The separation from the outside and secular world was at the same time symbolic and real.

In the Vedic India, a new sacred space of quadrangular form was consecrated with a simple feature on the ground to each sacrifice. The ditch discovered on the site could be therefore the primitive shape of these symbolic installations being established definitively somewhere . A broad and rather deep ditch notified this cut between profane world and sacred world, but the wall which bordered it on the interior side masked the divine field, and the rites that were achieved there. This wall did not have a defensive function . This wall of wood and cob, carefully built, constituted a hermetically closed enclosure, of which the only access in fact was a monumental porch, a kind of airlock or triumphal arch, making it possible to cross the ditch then to enter ritually the sanctuary.

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In the Puy de Corent, the enclosure ditch delivered atebertas or offerings, characteristic of the sanctuaries of this period. Human skulls, combined with horse bones, fragments of swords or shields, fibulas, pearls, out of glass and bronze, a wild boar figurine, some parts of chariot.

After the Romanization the sanctuary of Corent was entirely reworked. Its buildings are dismantled then replaced by , of course “ solid” constructions, but which take over the initial plan of it. The wooden posts are removed, the partitions shot down and their foundations embanked, to make room for new , built, walls and columns.

Like other sanctuaries taken over at the Roman time, that of Corent profits from a simple “repairing” which does not modify basically its structure: a new built gallery, supported by a stone colonnade, succeeds the monumental wooden portico. The two rectangular buildings and the drink offering tanks located facing the entrance are also rebuilt, in the decades which are previous the change of era. Around the end of the second or at the beginning of the third century, the sanctuary is enriched with a new pertaining to worship building: in the axis of the entrance a large fanum with a peripheral gallery approximately twelve meters wide, will be set up.

Most extraordinary is that we have perhaps found a plan or a drawing of this temple, engraved on a stone. Probably the work of an architect druid. It is the fragment of a stone slab, engraved with enigmatic drawings, discovered in the rubble of the demolitions which were undertaken at the time in order to arrange it again.

The structure which it represents matches perfectly the plan of the Roman sanctuary, formed with a big main fanum preceded by two twinned buildings. But the precision of the drawing is not sufficient to establish if it represents the totality of the sanctuary and of its peribolos; only its principal temple, enclosed with a peripheral gallery, represented in cross-section; or still, the main door of the sanctuary, near which it was found.

THE ENSHRINEMENT OF THE WARRIOR REMAINS.

On the sanctuary of Ribemont, among the many types of bone layers present on the spot, two can be brought back to the practice of enshrinement of the remains. In the first case, isolated from place to place individuals seem laid out along the ditch fence. Often still provided with one or more weapons, they appear to be fallen from of a vertical support which left little trace, post, kind of tripod or quite simply a pike inserted in the ground. The second case is still stranger, it is the deposit which is called the “big deposit of headless corpses.” The corpses, upside down, of an about sixty warriors group, with their weapons, result from the destruction of a funeral installation, a kind of partly built big heap (even of air construction where dead appeared standing). The absence of skulls, the presence of many traces on the bones corresponding to wounds of which many were fatal, make us suppose that they are warriors killed in action, whose head had been taken from the battle field. The sample of weapons present, primarily some spear heads, not many swords, like their worn aspect, also confirm the feeling of a battle-field collection in which the prestige weapons are fewer than the projectiles…

In Ribemont the weapons form a very particular sample, an uncountable number of heads and butt spike of lance associated with rare shields or swords in their sleeves, where they are in a completely exceptional context. The weapons of Ribemont in a large number of cases are closely related to the remains of the corpses of the warriors who were their owners. In Ribemont the word “spoils,” like its Latin antecedent, does not indicate only the weapons, but also the body of enemy.

About this habit Caesar uses the word spolia (remains) and the Greek authors use the word tropaion (trophies). It appears to us preferable to speak, in connection with the druidic rite , of enshrinement of the remains.

A prohibition was put on these sacred deposits, in the Latin sense of the word, i.e., also a taboo. In Rome, a law had been passed, which people ascribed to the legendary Numa, a law which prohibited the repair of the trophies. It was supposed to leave time to control the memory, to erase the shame of the overcome, after a period that only the natural elements operated.

The Celts shared this design. So the grounds of the sanctuaries were covered with these split up , worn, remains, as the feet of the participants in the worship moved according to their various movements. The sanctuary of Ribemont gave us a spectacular image of these grounds encumbered with bones, iron pieces, various ornaments; on the contrary, the sanctuary of Saint-Maur where the

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grounds disappeared, showed a fence ditch changed into a dump of this dust of trophies, negligible metal fragments, corroded bones, all and sundry in the process of disappearance.

POSTMORTEM TREATMENT OF THE WARRIORS OF THE TRIBE KILLED IN ACTION.

Two quite different rites should be distinguished. The first case is that where the weapons are collected higgledy-piggledy with the bodies (it is then a rite of enshrinement of the remains). What we have just seen higher.

The second case is that where the weapons and the bodies are the subject of a different treatment. The weapons are separately displayed (anathemata) and the bodies of the warriors burned or cremated. They are to be then the bodies of the warriors of the tribe left victorious from the confrontation. The remains of the winners and of their mounts were introduced into the sacred enclosure to be buried solemnly there, or burned; after exposure then collective cremation of the desiccated bones (the heroes of the tribe-state killed in action being, indeed, like everywhere, particularly honored).

In Gournay-sur-Aronde the human beings were cut up, i.e., the limbs were separated from the trunk, but the operation stopped there. The limbs were not divided into pieces and the muscles were not taken. In Ribemont, on the other hand, people crushed long bones probably to extract marrow from them, but nothing proves that it was consumed; the more so as the thousands of other human bones collected on the site do not show the least trace of a decarnization.

THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF TRIBE-STATES OR PROPYLAEA (main door of the sanctuary or separation between a profane place, and a divine world, the sanctuary).

Many of the excavated druidic sanctuaries present a carefully arranged entrance: it is often an impressive building, and spanning the fence ditch, where the Celts fixed the skulls they had detached from the bodies of their enemies.

The building was erected on large wooden posts and had a stage where weapons, skulls of men and horses, or remains of chariots, were piled up. Obviously some trophies retrieved at the end of the battles, but these weapons devoted to the deity who had granted the victory, differ from the Greek trophy by their localization. The remains taken by the Celts were indeed brought back on their territory and were stored in devoted places, generally therefore some sanctuaries.

The victorious warriors cut out with their knife, as they were used to doing it, the skull of the enemies they had killed, skulls that they regarded as their personal property; but the rest of the bodies, the weapons, the horses, the remains of chariots, were brought in a place where a trenched enclosure delimited a sacred yard dedicated obviously to the deity who had supported the victory, and was to be thanked. The cadavers were then laid out according to their membership to such or such camp.

The cadavers of the overcome were then displayed in this vast wooden building located outside the sacred enclosure. Raised standing, without skulls and provided with their weapons on a kind of shelf, they were left there until they were dismembered naturally 1).

A little thereforelike in the case of the houses of the red branch of King Conchobar in Ireland 2).

Strabo IV, IV, 5. “We are told of still other kinds of human sacrifices; for example, they would shoot victims to death with arrows, or impale them (anestauroun) in the temples.”

The word anestauron means “to suspend or hang to a post.”

We may wonder if it is not quite simply the description of human trophies built with corpses of enemy warriors. As we already have had the opportunity to notice it, at the time of Posidonius, the building of gigantic human trophies was already become obsolete , it is therefore through an intermediate source, a Greek traveler of the end of the 3rd century perhaps, than the ethnographer knew this habit.

The author of his source or his adviser, of course, did not see the achievement of the rite which was to be done in the secrecy or the narrow circle of the comrunos (initiates); he saw only the result, fleshless corpses still fixed on posts, and it is therefore starting from this observation that he rebuilt a probably imaginary rite.

The verb “to impale” must consequently in this case only mean “to hang to a palisade” or “to piles,” and is to be the part of a rite of enshrinement of remains.

Caesar VI, 17. “When they have conquered, they sacrifice whatever captured animals may have survived the conflict, and collect the other things into one place. In many tribes-states you may see piles of these things heaped up in their consecrated spots; nor does it often happen that any one, disregarding the sanctity of the case, dares [……] take away those deposited; and the most severe punishment, with torture, has been established for such a deed.”

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Diodorus of Sicily book V, 29. “When their enemies fall they cut off their heads and fasten them about the necks of their horses; and turning over to their attendants the arms of their opponents, all covered with blood, they carry them off as booty, singing a paean over them and striking up a song of victory, and these first fruits of the battle they fasten by nails upon their houses, just as men do, in certain kinds of hunting.”

Strabo (Geography IV, IV, 5) adds a specification : “... when they depart from the battle they hang the heads of their enemies from the necks of their horses, and, when they have brought them home, nail the spectacle to the propylaea (i.e., literally “to the entrance porch of the temples”).

The text by Diodorus of Sicily is therefore to be corrected in this sense: the houses of the Celts about which he speaks THEY ARE (THE ENTRANCES OF) THEIR SANCTUARIES. See the case of Roquepertuse.

In Gournay-sur-Aronde , the triumphal arch was one of the two big buildings of the sanctuary. Built on six or eight posts, it had, according to any probability, a stage, and was provided with a roof. It is on its walls and the balustrades of the stage, that several hundreds of weapons were hung, but also human skulls and skulls of Bovidae. It is the perfect illustration of the passage by Strabo who affirms that the Celts hung skulls of their enemies to propylaea. The porch of Gournay-sur-Aronde is indeed a true propylaea.

1) The most extraordinary example is given to us by the “Belgian” site of Ribemont-on-Anchors. There, several tens of thousands of human bones and nearly five thousand weapons lay inside as at the periphery of a sacred enclosure with a rectangular plan. Sanctuary probably established after a great battle having taken place during the 3rd century before our era, and which opposed Ambiani Belgian immigrants to a group of Armorican Celts who controlled the backcountry of the English Channel. Several tens of thousands of warriors had to clash there, and several thousand probably perished.

2) The palace of Conchobar was splendid and had three principal halls: the house with the thousand colors (tete brec), the house of the Royal Branch (craebruad), and the house of the Red Branch (craebderg). The heads and the remains of the enemies of the king were in the house of the Red Branch.

THE INTERIOR.

The inside of the enclosure was mainly empty from construction. Space surrounding the center of the sanctuary materialized by one or more sacrifice pits, even some more or less buried wooden tanks, proving to be unoccupied, that made easier the achievement of the rites and especially the organization of the commensality banquets between men and gods.

Inside a sacred territory, there is always a zone of maximum sacrality where the access is subjected to very severe restrictions. The deities expressed their presence on earth through sacred wood , small groups of trees and shrubs planted then maintained inside the sacred enclosures. The word of lucus (loucos perhaps in Celtic language), of a specific use in the Latin language, also designated a sanctuary marked by a sacred wood, i.e., a landscaped artificially, worship place, a remarkable vegetable installation. These sanctuaries therefore took more after a botanical garden than after forests as that which will be evoked by Lucan in his Pharsalia, and which represented a primitive stage, quite former, that of the clearing in the large primeval silva. But we find nevertheless there the same reality : a sanctuary with trees.

In Gournay-sur- Aronde the choir or heart of the sanctuary was occupied by a “chthonian altar” type bothros, a Greek word meaning pit. At the beginning (3rd century before our era), the altar was only a simple pit and it is only during the following century that it was protected by a covering, in fact, a roof based on nine posts, sheltering the pit. The sacrifices of cattle dedicated to the underground deities were therefore to proceed inside the enclosure delimited by the peribolus, but in the immediate vicinity of such a cella even inside.

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In Gournay-sur-Aronde, it is next such a vegetable installation that the altar was, which, like all these which were discovered in the other excavated thereafter druidic sanctuaries, was of a quite particular nature. It was a, four meters long and two meters deep, pit , dug in the ground 1).

Such “hollow” altars are known in Greece where they are described as “bothros” as we saw it, i.e., they are intended to deities supposed to reside under the ground, to whom people offer whole victims. At the end of 4th or the end of the 3rd century before our era, the druidic altars had only this antiquated and simple shape; that of a pit carefully dug in the ground and which was to be closed by a lid intended to protect it from the bad weather. As time goes, these pits were equipped with a roof; a square or round building with a five to six meters side or diameter appeared then, looking like a Mediterranean temple, with the difference that the hollow altar occupied almost all the inside space.

The circumambulations called deisil, deiseil, deiseal in Gaelic language, Arabic tawaf in Mecca, were therefore to be carried out around this building (around the cella) and not inside.

In the Puy de Corent, it was a set of four covered with a wooden shaft lining , and with half buried, tanks, intended for the drink offering rites. This center of the sanctuary (its choir or its heart, garbhagriha in Hinduism) was not located exactly in the geometrical center of the surface delimited by the palisade and the covered gallery, but a few steps away from it in the axis of the entrance [unlike therefore the pertaining to worship complex in Libenice]; it was occupied by clusters of circular or square shaped amphoras: some bellies and necks, laid out around these small covered with wood cavities (some bascaudae?) These cavities therefore were probably intended for the drink offerings in the honor of the underground deities of the late (some of them delivered human remains). They remind of the vats filled with wine evoked in the feasts lavished by the famous Luernius.

In the Puy de Corent the traces of a mint were also located near the entrance. What shows that the issue of coins of then was placed under the control of the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), from where the interest of their symbolism for researchers. A coin minted on the site represents for example a fox (louernos, in Celtic language) perched on the wheel of a chariot. This emblematic animal is highlighted at the entrance of the sanctuary, in the form skulls exhibited with these of other carnivores like the wolf, the wildcat or the hound. The fox, designated by the Celtic word louernos which gave its name to the Arvernian chief, therefore probably symbolized the control exerted by his dynasty on the principal sanctuary of the Tribe-State.

ANATHEMATA.

The anathemata are sacrosanct deposits of prestigious panoplies generally fixed on the walls of the sacred enclosure of the temple. These anathemata, in Greece as on the site of Gournay-sur-Aronde, can be as well the weapons of the winner, invested with a sacred power, than these of enemies. Their relative good state and the presence of complete panoplies do not make it possible to decide between both possibilities.

“…Though at first he appears to have met with some reverse, and the Arverni show you a small sword hanging up in a temple, which they say was taken from Caesar. Caesar saw this afterwards himself, and smiled, but when his friends advised it should be taken down, would not permit it, because he looked upon it as consecrated thing….” (Plutarch, Life of Caesar XXVI).

The Greek word anathemata designates a deposit made in a consecrated space. The rite of which this deposit is a part is well specified by the word itself, resulting from the Greek verb anatithemi which means “to put on,” “to suspend .” It consists therefore in taking an object, in posing it on a monument or in hanging it in a temple and preserving it in the position where the rite placed it. In Greece the objects which can become anathemata are varied. The weapons of Gournay or Saint-Maur were sometimes still bound in stacks and showed that they had fallen from a support to which they were suspended.

SIMULACRA OR ARCANA.

The aniconism in a religion is the absence of material representations of the natural or supernatural world. The word itself comes from the Greek eikon, meaning representation, resemblance or image. The first philosopher having apparently thought of this problem, apart from the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) naturally, is a Roman writer of the first century before our era (- 116 - 27) named Varro. He was indeed convinced of the existence of various levels of truth as regards religion.

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The juxtaposition, in Varro, of an iconoclast temptation , and of a positive interpretation of the portraits of gods or goddesses, is explained by his design of a two-level religion. On the one hand, the effigies of the gods agreeing to the popular sensitivity, on the other the more demanding spirituality of the philosophers who would prefer to release themselves from them.

Yes, of course! But we should not lose sight of the fact nevertheless that an illustration makes more than a long speech, and we should not forget either the need for art and its laws in any self-respecting society.

The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) think that Ultimate Reality always overflows the shape which evokes it, but, for many other believers, the simulacrum or the arcana (the statue or the image) in a certain way also took part in the divinity.

Maximus of Tyre, Essays XXXVIII, on the images of gods, 8.

“The Celts, indeed, venerate Jupiter, but the Celtic statue of Zeus is a lofty oak ” [Editor’s note: in Illyria and therefore among the Celts in the area of Balkans, it was to be a beech, Celtic bagaios].

Diodorus of Sicily XXII, 9 (at the time of the capture of Delphi).

“Brennus, the king of the Galatians, on entering a temple found no dedications of gold or silver, and when he came only upon images of stone and wood he laughed at them, to think that men, believing that gods have human form, should set up their images in wood and stone.”

Caesar VI, 17. “Respecting these deities they have for the most part the same belief as other nations.”

The representation of the gods therefore started by being only symbolic from a simulacrum to a simulacrum, from an arcana to an arcana, it became little by little more figurative, because by no means that injured the convictions of the druids.

By “druids” it is undoubtedly necessary to understand, let us repeat it, not the druids druids themselves, but the artists or the intellectuals in relation with them, and gravitating in their circle of influence. What this quotation proves anyway, it is that the druids druids in a strict sense of the word were not iconoclast like the first Christians (parabolani) or Muslim (talibani).

There was for example in Ireland, in Mag Slecht (the plain of prostrations) a standing stone covered with silver and gold, surrounded by twelve other stone statues decorated with copper.

Its name was Croumba Crouca (Crom Cruach or Crom Cruaich).

Another statue of this type (or then the same one?) also decorated with gold and silver is evoked in the Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee.

Although pre-Celtic and therefore pre-Druidic, these representations of the divinity injured by no means the convictions of the druids since those were also interested in plastic arts. As we have already said it.

The mystical and inspired artists in question painted, moreover, apparently, large mythological frescos (as that which represents Ogmius and which astonished Lucian of Samosata, even these which represented Epona then in the Roman empire) or made various liturgical objects (voulges, labarons…).

The texts by Maximus of Tyre or Diodorus Siculus (about the attitude of Brennus) refer consequently to a phase. The text by Caesar to another one: the time when, without being some druids in a strict sense of the word, the artists carrying out these statues or the engraving of the coins were more or less placed in their circle of influence .

The existence of a fresco representing Ogmius is at least proved in the area of Marseilles, and the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) met by Lucian for the circumstance, apparently, was not offended because of it.

The celtomaniacs or the druidomaniacs of the type Iolo Morgannwg affirm that the original Celtic civilization did not know the anthropomorphic representations of deities.

In its very first phase, the gods therefore would have been regarded as soul/minds, and represented only by symbolic attributes (for example the thunderbolt symbolized Taran/Toran/Tuireann, the lance notified the presence of Lug, the sword that of Noadatus , and so on).

According to Tacitus the Germanic ones also took care not to represent their gods: “They don't consider it mighty enough for the Heavens to depict Gods on walls or to display them in some human shape.”

And according to Plutarch lastly, at the beginning, the Romans themselves had no painted or carved images of their gods. During the first hundred and seventy years, they built temples and built some chapels, but made no statue; judging that it was impious to bring higher realities closer to lower realities, and impossible to approach the god in another way than through the thought (Plutarch, Life of Numa, 8,14).

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According to these celtomaniacs or druidomaniacs, the anthropomorphic representation would have come from Greece via colonists settled in various points of the territory as in Marseilles. The influence of the Greek then Roman civilization “would have thus contaminated” the old system druidic.

This point of view, which dates back ultimately to the Roman Varro, is to be moderated for two reasons.

The first one is that archeological research showed that the contact between the Mediterranean world and the Celtic populations, goes back to very old times.

At the time of the princes of Hallstatt, the sculpture was already an important, evolved, art, very present, in the east of the Celtic world in any case… The South also delivered us many statues revealing well mastered techniques or an accomplished art. The dating of the statues of Entremont and Roquepertuse… must be moved back, because these statues are probably rather old.

The idea of a religious system “pure,” previous to the Greek “contamination,” is therefore more a dogma than a true thought about human nature.

The second reason is that the symbolic representations of the gods did not exist only at the beginning of the Celtic civilization, the symbolic objects also appear alongside the anthropomorphic statues of gods in the following stage of evolution.

Lucan describes in a sacred wood tree trunks coarsely carved to represent the gods: simulacra maesta deorum .

Lucan, Pharsalia, book II: “ Sinister effigies of gods 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 .”

Lastly, Caesar informs to us that there are rather many representations of Mercury: cujus sunt plura simulacra.

It is hardly probable that simulacra means statues; the word has, at the beginning, the vague sense of images, of symbolic indication. It is only later that these images evolved into a statue or statuette, kind Christmas crib figure in Provence for the poorest people.

Historically speaking, the druidic religion therefore went through quite distinct phases.

a) A naturalist phase: the worship takes place in the wilderness, without anything else than some summary arrangement of the places. A majestic oak left intact in a clearing assarted in the forest, type Irminsul or oak in Mughna, an arranged spring, a stone altar for the sacrifices, and so on.

b) A aniconic phase: the worship uses various more or less symbolic objects called simulacra by Caesar (a bronze mask driven on a wood post, a standing stone…)

c) A classical phase using paintings and statues out of wood, metal, or stone, to represent the deity.

These three religious sensitivities, these three pertaining to worship attitudes, are equally legitimate and please the gods equally. As for the higher Being of beings , let us not speak about him, he is completely indifferent (otiosus) to the question. It's a pity that the Meccan verse of the Quran about this subject ( 2,256 ) was revoked by later verses revealed in Yathrb/Medina (verse of the sword 9, 5 and verse of the fight 9,29). Because the abrogation of certain verses of the Quran by others indeed is the fifth true pillar of Islam. What makes all the more easier the taqiyya intended for media people.

No one therefore has the right to impose by the constraint or the popular pressure, one’s point of view in this field, this would be to one’s spouse or one’s children; criticisms and the remarks or the observations, which can come to mind, never must, never, go up to iconoclasm. On the other hand, of course, each one remains free to do what he wants for his own or for one's own benefit.

“They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many elements respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods .” (Caesar B.G. Book VI, 14.)

The Tokade or Fate is without color, taste, without odor, out of reach of the words and of the touch, without quality, immutable, motionless… we have said. This non-manifested being can be perceived only through his procreation, which is his sign.

In the center of certain sanctuaries, in Ireland particularly, stood up the menhir called Stone of Fal (Lia fail) , a male symbol, put on a rhombus (lausinca), a female symbol 2).

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The stone of Fal is a representation of the ambivalent and therefore dual nature of this deity (the fate). Beyond good and evil. However, “it is not the phallus in itself which is venerated, but the one whose this phallus is the sign, the (universal) Progenitor.”

In the Irish legend of the Colloquy of the Ancients (Acallam na senorach), the Stone of Fal is evoked as follows.

What that was out of the way attached to the stone of Fal ? Dermot inquired; to which Ossian made answer: any one of all Ireland who was accused, was set upon that stone: and then if the truth were in him he would turn pink and white; but if otherwise, it was a black spot that in some conspicuous place would appear on him. Further: when Ireland's monarch stepped on to it the stone would cry out under him, and the three arch-waves of Ireland answered it : as the wave of Clidna, the wave of Tuaide, and the wave of Rudraige; when a provincial king went on it, the flag would rumble under him; when a barren woman trod it, it was a dew of dusky blood that broke out on it; when one that would bear children tried it, it was many-colored drops that it sweated."

The stone of Phal represents in reality the fate but the Fate as Universe or World, the ground in which it is planted, the lausinca (the female organ) which surrounds it, represents the manifested nature, the universal energy. Sometimes it seems to emerge from the rhombus symbol of female energy, because the Tokade cannot create alone. The stone of Phal therefore represents the continual energy of the life and this is why it is possible to detect with it the traces of a time when the body and the sexuality did not represent the essential evil of which it was necessary to get rid at all costs. People tend to remember from it only the phallic aspect and to be unaware of the concept of fate – shown by many legends - which is inherent to it. People forget also its relationship with the cosmic pillar, which connected the earth to the sky. But that we have already said it, it seems to us.

The symbol of the stone of Phal (Lia Fail) is always composed of three parts.

The lowest part enclosed by the lausinca is made of earth from the country.

The second part is rhombus shaped (a sometimes special rhombus said golden rhombus) and holds back this earth a little like a gigantic flowerpot.

The third part is the menhir or the standing stone itself.

It is always rough, non-polished, and non-worked, but may sometimes be engraved from the bottom up , at least in Ireland, with an inscription in oghamic runes.

Many legends are linked to it (it appoints the kings or those who have to rule, it can shout or groan, etc. Finally, in short, see all what people could write in connection with the Stone of Scone in Great Britain).

Just as the Divine one became individualized into various gods, the human mind prefers an imperfect representation, but concrete (kenosis) to a more complete, but more abstract higher Being. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), although being aware of the limits of such a material shape to represent a superhuman entity (see the reactions of King Brennus in Delphi) think nevertheless that symbolism and beauty can insufflate to the statue the soul or the spirit or the divine spark or the fire tear which is missing for it.

The statue is a simulacrum or an arcana (Sanskrit word) symbolizing Hesus, danna Epona, or the gods like Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Lug, the belisama Brigindo Brigantia Brigit, even a mythological epic, and suggested to the veneration of the dagolitoi or believers.

The cosmic energy of the Pariollon (called Parinirvana in the Far East) having taken body and human figures, in the gods, in various places and times of History (certain persons saw them, heard them. They died or are risen from the dead. They were - they are always - at the same time preternatural , i.e., of spiritual nature, but at the same time also true men a little like us); the simulacrum or the arcana (the statue) holds a great place in the spirituality of the Celtic paganism ; after the prehistoric attempts of figuration on tree trunks and wood posts (with or without bronze masks), then on stones cut in the shape of wooden posts.

The statue or the sacred painting , like that which was described by Lucian of Samosata in the area of Marseilles (and which represented the Celtic Hercules called Ogmius) is a visible evidence of the impetus of Mankind towards the divinity.

Icons and statues are the visible signs of a sacralization of the matter made possible by the embodiment of the gods, we have said. They have a certain spiritual value.

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These symbolizations or representations of the divine one are proposed to the dagolitoi (to the believers) as support of meditation (arcana in Sanskrit) about the diversity of the aspects that “godhood can take.”

But once again, of course, let us repeat it, the simple mortals that we are could not have a visual image of the Divinity itself, in the fullness of its mystery.

And it will be therefore only in this perspective that true believers (dagolitoi) will be allowed and have to consider them.

The simulacra or arcana of the sanctuaries have their own life: the worship taking place in the sanctuaries (later temples) to the main statue, reproduced for example the lay rites of a day or of a royal round. An incumbent (or some incumbents) is attached to it, who is not always a member of the druidic sodality. Because every druidic sanctuary also had its appointed incumbents, of course.

It is what emerges from the text by Tacitus concerning the goddess or the fairy called by him (in interpretatio germanica?). Nerthus.

“None of these tribes have any noteworthy feature, except their common worship of Nerthus or mother-Earth, and their belief that she interposes in human affairs, and visits the nations in her car. In an island of the ocean there is a sacred grove, and within it a consecrated chariot, covered over with a garment. Only one priest is permitted to touch it. He can perceive the presence of the goddess in this sacred recess, and walks by her side with the utmost reverence as she is drawn along by heifers. It is a season of rejoicing, and festivity reigns wherever she deigns to go and be received. They do not go to battle or wear arms; every weapon is under lock; peace and quiet are known and welcomed only at these times, till the goddess, weary of human intercourse, is at length restored by the same priest to her temple. Afterwards the car, the vestments, and, if you like to believe it, the divinity herself, are purified in a secret lake. Slaves perform the rite, who are instantly swallowed up by its waters” (Tacitus. Germania. XL).

1) The sacrifices were to be achieved at the edge of this pit, in the bottom of which the victims were put down.

2) Lausinca. The female power is indeed symbolized by the rhombus. The rhombus is the symbol of the woman of whom it represents the genitals and, consequently, fruitfulness. A rhombus of which the ratio of the diagonals is equal to the golden section is a golden rhombus (its apexes are the middle on the sides of a golden rectangle).

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HIERARCHICAL ORDER OF SANCTUARIES.

Every place where a power was exercised was to have its religious guarantee, town, village, camp, aristocratic residence.

The places of worship therefore didn't stop multiplying or changing. A pagus sanctuary ( will be equal a county or a shire during the Middle Ages even a microregion as the welche land in the Vosges ) could become the main worship place of a civitas; another pagus sanctuary, because its proximity to several borders lent itself to that naturally, could become the sanctuary of a war confederation. On the contrary, an ancient sanctuary of which the origin was lost in the history of an indigenous population former to that of the pagus, could very well be forsaken for new settlements , established in a village in full expansion.

One of the better examples of druidic tradition temple is that of Titelberg in Luxembourg. Titelberg is large a hill fort of which the fortifications are mentioned by Wiltheim in his Luciliburgensia Romana. It functions still as a vicus (village) at the Roman time, without, however, equalizing the rank of Dalheim. The hill fort of Titelberg, contemporary of that of Corent and with equivalent status, housed a vast sanctuary identified with the first place of worship of the Trevirian Tribe-State, replaced at the Roman time by a gigantic fanum (rural temple). A stone relief of the Roman epoch represents an in semi-prospect small stone aedicula made up of a central building, adjoined by two smaller ones. Their roof is represented at the same time by a pediment and its plan viewed four sides. The door of the main building, by framed by two columns squares (perhaps originally some trees).

The Celts, in their religious practices, used initially very modest installations. A simple hearth set up on the ground (with or without andirons) , stone block driven in the ground, being used either as an altar , or as a divine representation (simulacrum, arcana), or still as a terminal to some sacred enclosure; as we see still some of them nowadays in India per tens of specimens around the monumental pagodas; and lastly an offering pit or ditch. Not forgetting a water point.This humble materiality was to be the common fate of many pertaining to worship most familiar installations, family altars, and altars isolated in the countryside or on the ways. Today, many of these vestiges remain, still hidden in the ground. And if we unearth them, there is little chance so that we recognize them. However it is them which marked out the daily courses of our ancestors, just like the most solemn processions once per annum.

There were six large types without counting the family, therefore, private, altars 1).

1. And, first of all, the primitive silva. Lucan. Pharsalia III, 399-452.

“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

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; 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 dark night controls the heavens, in anxious dread draws near the grove and fears to find its lord……

Spared in the former war, still dense it rose where all the hills were bare, and Caesar now its fall commanded.

But the brawny arms which swayed the axes trembled, and the men, awed by the sacred grove's dark majesty,

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held back the blow they thought would be returned.

This Caesar saw, and swift within his grasp up rose a ponderous axe, which downwards fell cleaving a mighty oak that towered to heaven, while thus he spoke: "Henceforth let no man dread to fell this forest: all the crime is mine.

This be your creed!"

He spoke, and all obeyed, for Caesar's ire weighed down the wrath of the gods.

Yet ceased they not to fear.

First the elm, then the knotty holly oak; Dodona's tree, the buoyant alder, and finally the cypress, witness of non-plebeian grief, Laid their foliage low, admitting day; though scarcely through the stems their fall found passage.

At the sight the people of the Celtica grieved; but the garrison within the walls rejoiced: for thus shall men insult the gods and find no punishment? Yet fortune often protects the guilty; On the poor alone, the gods can vent their ire.

Enough hewn down, they seize the country wagons; and the plowman, his oxen gone which else had drawn the plow, mourns for his harvest of the year.”

2. The nemeta (singular nemeton): the various worship places marking out here and there the countryside and other remarkable points in nature. In both cases, their description remains extremely delicate, it can be indeed a simple hearth, a simple stone used as an altar or divine representation, and of a ditch or pit for sacrifice near a spring . Every fifteen days, prehistoric men were accustomed to leave their caves and to go up on a hill to adore the setting sun, in a clearing of the forest especially arranged for this purpose under the oaks, not far from a source. This clearing constituted a sacred enclosure, generally materialized in the Neolithic era by twelve more or less arranged stones,see what people called Crom Cruach or Crom Cruaich in Ireland. Such were the first temples of our ancestors.

The gutuater or gutumater called upon Hornunnos the dark god of the forest, spiritual father of all the hunters gatherers . The vate dealt with the atiobertas (offerings), the velede harangued the assembled tribe, the shaman druid directed the whole. In the center of the clearing took center stage, shapeless, what they call a lex, i.e., a rustic stone altar ( or a wooden stock, a stump for example) even still a pit dug on the floor. Possibly the pariolos, a kind of cauldron or grail containing the drink of the great Hornunnos, the drink of the gods, the sacred cervoise beer. As for the atmosphere to see all what Eduard Schure could write about Ram and Veleda.

To penetrate the clearing, people entered from the east. In the middle also a big tree, an oak, like Irminsul or the yew of Mughna, to which skulls of men or animals were nailed, some anathemata, some bratou decantem ( ex-votos), etc.

3. The “lucus” (loucos perhaps in Celtic language) or sacred groves.

The former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), like all the Celts of early time, did not represent their gods through anthropomorphic statues; we have said; also they did not need a temple which is, as in the Greco-Roman world , their dwelling, in front of which were accomplished the religious obligations.

The grove, common in the ancient sanctuaries, had for the high-knowers of the druidiaction, the highest importance, it was the “sacred wood,” translation of the Latin word lucus, an embodiment of the divinity. The sacred wood which was at the same time the provisional residence of the gods and the link between the underground and heavenly world, made it possible the dagolitoi (the believers) to feel the divine presence, and to have with it an almost bodily contact. This sacred wood was thereafter symbolized by posts then columns erected around altars.

4. The fana (singular fanum): temples being used for vaster than the family human communities (villages, districts of towns,hill forts).

Recent excavations have just revealed that there were pertaining to worship plants, established in the very middle of housings of more or less great importance, sometimes even in the center of an aristocratic residence which gathered only a few tens of inhabitants. These worship places, true in the sense that they are clearly separated from the dwelling districts, in what they have a sacrificial installation, and show atebertas or offerings of the warlike type , or at least of the aristocratic type; cannot, however, be characterized as large sanctuaries in the usual sense of the word. Their number is, of course, much higher.

Specialists distinguish three types of them. Pertaining to worship zones inside simple villages. Reserved spaces on the hill forts or the public and pertaining to worship places of the aristocratic residences. The half-liturgical half-secular buildings (celicna).

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- Pertaining to worship zones inside the urban areas. Known in England for a long time (Bewcastle, on the Hadrian's Wall, in the Cumberland) the small Romano-British [or Gallo-Roman of course] temples are an excellent example of survival of the faith of our ancestors, with the help of a certain number of compromises with the occupier.

The white stone substructions in the middle of the large muddy plains are visible during winter, even by far! They appear in the form of two squares inscribed one in the other. The central square corresponds to the base of the cella, i.e., of the temple itself where the altars were placed overhanging the sacrifice ditch or pits (in front of and on each side). Caesar says to us that the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) honored their gods by walking around. That explains the presence of a peripheral gallery where the dagolitoi (the believers) sauntered around this pertaining to worship unit.

The external white square, quite discernible on the photographs, matches the base of this gallery.

The dimensions are rather constant. The overall width is about 14 m to 18 m wide. It happens that one on the sides is a little larger than the other (18 X 14,50 m for example).

According to the air photographs, the thickness of the walls which supported the cella and the thickness of the walls which supported the gallery are about identical. However, in several cases the external foundations are less marked, as if these fana (singular fanum) consisted of a central tower on which came to be pressed a simple external gallery with a shed roof. The only examination of the photographs does not make it possible to say if the central surface was paved or cobblestoned . In some cases front steps are perceptible. When the entrance is discernible, it is directed towards the rising sun.

The fanum (plural fana or fanums) is therefore the typical form of the Romano-British [or Gallo-Roman of course] temple. This type of temple is an evolution of the druidic sanctuaries , which out of wood at the beginning, were little by little monumentalized.

The fanum, of generally simple construction, kind roofed markets of the Middle Ages, has a cella (room housing the altar and the sacrifice ditches or pits which surround it, in front of and on each side); generally square, but which may be round or rectangular.

The external walls are decorated with painted frescos representing for example (like in the area of Marseilles according to Lucian of Samosata) the Celtic Hercules called Ogmius. The cella is surrounded by a roofed or not, gallery, which could be used for the ambulation of the dagolitoi (believers) around, who could thus approach the deity.

- The pertaining to worship spaces reserved to the warrior assemblies.

The warrior assemblies were these where the warrior attired himself in all his weapons, they indicated his hierarchical rank and showed his military past. If some of them were open to the whole of the fighters, all social origins included, the greatest number were reserved to the chiefs and were done in the secrecy, as Caesar implies it in several circumstances. These assemblies, whether they were only civilian or military, did not do without a certain religious scenery. At the time of the general plot of 52 before our era, the main leaders meet among the Carnutes, probably in one of their sanctuaries.

There they wear oaths above the standards joined together in a stack, what is, Caesar says, “more eorum gravissime caerimonia,” in other words, the most serious ceremony [and the most fraught with consequences]. In the village of Montmartin, close to Gournay, still in this “Belgian” zone, a public place was undoubtedly arranged for such meetings. Behind powerful walls decorated with weapons and human skulls (which have the marks of a conscientious and without apparent finality taking away of the tongue), a broad esplanade could receive a few hundreds of men under the aegis of a small temple.

- Half-liturgical half -secular buildings of the celicnon type. The last archeological publications concerning the monument of Ucuetis show that the celicnon was a two levels building, probably including a warehouse occupying the ground floor, as well as a circular meeting room with a round table on the first floor. The celicnon was consequently a room, in the first floor, reserved for the ceremonies of a particular group or of such or such trade association , to honor in it for example the god patron saint of the trade.

The celicnon is a kind of lodge or district urban temple, located downtown full and of which the main characteristic is to be without any ambulatory for lack of places; having only a cella at the ground floor (or upstairs, adjacent rooms housing in this case the necessary ritual material ). The large room is circular and if necessary like in Camelot an also circular table can be set up.

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In the cella of these lodges, the offering pit and the water point may be replaced by barrels. The cella of a lodge is also usually decorated with holly and mistletoe or frescos on the walls representing them. Walls on which various scenes of mythology, various figurations, like that,Lucian of Samosata saw in the area of Marseilles (the Celtic Hercules called Ogmius), are also represented and painted. The altar is a silver table, sometimes surrounded by carved pillars. In a corner simulacra, arcana, various statuettes or symbols, may take center stage. And in the chimney some sacred fire dogs (the andirons).

5. The mediolana (central sanctuaries). Singular mediolanum.

The political institution of the confederation which could be with several levels and with variable partners, supposes a great suppleness of the Celtic mind in its military and political concerns; some genius even, which is opposed in the clearest way to the reputation of obstinate and disordered nature that people made about them as of Antiquity. Such alliances, sometimes limited, sometimes ancient, of these vast communities, required cement. It was, as it will be seen, of primarily religious nature since they were worship places of another category and especially devoted for this purpose unlike the precedent ones.

The typical example is the Italian city of Milan. The druidic temple of mediolanum type is a fanum but still equipped with its sacred enclosure around. An enclosure materialized in the shape of a palisade or of a wall, with a ditch, the main purpose of which is to delimit the sacred space sheltering the burials reserved for the famous dead (placed under the protection of the deity); from the non-religious space 2). This separation sacred/non-religious does not belong exclusively to the Romano-British [ or Gallo-Roman] religion, because we find it as well among Greeks as among Romans.

It is therefore a sacred space which is also used as a cemetery or more exactly as a necropolis where the great heroes of the confederation, its soldiers killed in action, rest in peace.

A monumental gate of entrance, a little like the gates of a Romanesque church 3), or the triumphal gates of the Breton parish closes in Armorica to enter them.

At the back of the enclosure a generally square cella, but which may be round or rectangular, surrounded by a gallery, open or not.

Inside the cella a sacrifice ditch or pit topped by an altar.

On the right or on the left of this cella , but independent of this one, and still in the sacred space delimited by the enclosure, a little like a round tower in Ireland, a lantern of the dead for the cemetery part (the lantern of the dead is a very narrow small tower, topped by a lantern, at the foot of which are gathered the funerary urns. It is therefore a pagan columbarium) and on the other side, still regarding the cella, a sacred grove.

The druidic temple of mediolanum type is therefore a wooden construction with a thatched or branches roof, located within an enclosure symbolically delimited by a surrounding wall ( palisades and earth embankment ); of which dimensions range from 35 to 140 meters according to the importance of the tribe (80 X 80 meters at Holzhausen, 80 X 20 meters at Libenice).

On these palisades the various trophies (anathemata) of the warriors of the tribe are exhibited (skulls, shields, or others).

The cella is delimited by dry stone low or cob low walls bearing outside sumptuous mythological frescos (staging for example the god Ogmius).

People find there an altar and one or more sacrifice pit, even simple ditches, in other words, a place to put down the atiobertas (offerings). The sacrifice pits located in the cella of the temple can be down to 35 meters deep. Our ancestors dug them to get in touch with the underground deities. What is as logical as to try to come into contact with heavenly deities king angels. Around it the graves of the kings or of the great ancestors of the tribe and a spring or an “ordinary” well. The main door of the cella opens to the east. It is made up of two logs (wooden totems) decorated with various bratou decantem or ex-votos (skulls, weapons…)

Around the cella an ambulatory gallery square or rectangular shaped like the cella , generally open to the four winds (without a low wall of cob). It is there that the remains of the dagolitoi (of the believers) stand, in the middle of the columns or of the wooden pillars, carved like Romance capitals, and which symbolize the trees of the ancient sacred groves.

The whole in easily accessible places (crossroads , trade opportunities…) especially cleared for that (mediolanon) surrounded by some buildings for the pilgrims coming by far (inns).

This kind of sanctuary always appears isolated. In fact, it is in the center of a space which it overlooks and of which the surface always exceeds several hectares, even sometimes several tens of hectares.

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In the majority of the cases, it is distant from every settlement , but it can be on a way or in close proximity to it . In many cases also, the site of the sanctuary overlooks a water point, river, confluence, spring, but at a respectable distance of several tens even several hundreds of meters.

Their situation in the landscape is paradoxical if we compare it with that of the other human plants. They are, in their great majority, on the plateaus and always on dominant points. Not on remarkable eminences, but on the highest spot heights, these which make it possible to see a distant from a few kilometers, sometimes of more than one ten kilometers, horizon. These worship places being generally distant from each other of six or seven kilometers; it is very common that from one of them we can see one or more similar sites. Other criteria however were to prevail also in the choice of these places: residence of an indigenous [pre-Celtic] god, burial of a hero, remarkable building of a former civilization.

This idea of central sanctuary is extremely well conveyed by the toponym of Mediolanon which is the former name of Milan, or of about sixty other places in Europe. The word mediolanon is generally translated by “middle plain,” lanon (from the same stem as the Latin planus); but this interpretation does not take the religious symbolism, into account because there are some cases where this toponym is used for located on heights localities.

This design of the sanctuary in any case indicates a metaphysical and theological reflection of great scope.

The Celts who settled in these places, before delimiting clearly their respective territories, wanted in a way appropriate adapt them magically and in agreement with gods. The construction of the sanctuary, as a contact point ensuring the dialog between men and gods, marked definitively the territory; better than a terminal would have done it, because it indicated the property of the people in question, not only to the close peoples, but to the gods of the close peoples.

6. The drunemeta or vernemeta. Drunemeton or Vernemeton means “large nemeton quite simply.” They were large sanctuaries intended for vaster human communities: tribes, federation of tribes, regions, etc. Best known is the famous drunemeton of the Galatians where their 300 deputies met regularly.

Main features of this type of sanctuary. Presence of trenched enclosures lined with one or more palisades (the rites carried out in the sacrosanct space probably required the secrecy or at least to be performed out of the sight of those who were not allowed there; from where the need for raising a palisade around); presence of a monumental entrance porch being used as triumphal arch in relation to the palisades or the walls; of an altar as well as one or more sacrifice pits ; of a water point (spring or well), various relics and trophies (funeral urns built with human bones); as well as a cemetery…

Ways materialized by an often light spreading of small stones, connect the various pertaining to worship plants and, therefore, organize space on a hierarchical basis. On a side ritual surfaces and small pathways connecting them, on the other vaster spaces, in particular along the fence, reserved for the trophies, limited to specific operations: installations, partial cleaning. Between the two, light palisades gave perhaps a volume to this hierarchy of spaces.

a) The ditch. It is not sure that initially the ditch was lined by a palisade. It is what in both cases the palisade seems to indicate, which was built after and which is not there it would be expected to see it. In Gournay, very strangely, it includes the ditch, in Ribemon it is erected inside the ditch. The type even of fence used initially, a simple left opened ditch, suggests rather a symbolic and non-military function, that of a transition zone separating the sacred surface from an inhabited or farmed space.

b) The placing then of a wooden wall surrounding the sacred space constitutes another stage in the creation of the sanctuary. It is almost the founding document of it: the sacred space becomes indeed reserved. It is masked for whom is outside. From now on the sanctuary divides men, in two categories: those who enter the enclosure and become comrunos (initiates), those who remain outside.

c)The triumphal arch (the triumphal gate).

The third essential component of this kind of sanctuary is the triumphal arch being used as a front porch , in relation with a palisade or a wall. On all the pertaining to worship sites observed, the

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entrance of the enclosure shows indeed a more or less complex layout, from the simple pair of postholes which betrays the existence of a door to the more numerous vestiges left by a true building. This monumental entrance, which by its architecture was to resemble these of the Celtic hill forts, with its human skulls decoration, of course, makes us think of the text by Strabo, drawn from Posidonius: Book IV, 4,5.

“...They hang the heads of their enemies from the necks of their horses, and, when they have brought them home, nail the spectacle to the entrance porch of the temples” (the Greek text uses the word propylaiois).

This porch clearly indicates the importance of the crossing point which made it possible the communication between the non-religious world and the sacred space. Layouts of the building perhaps made it possible particular rites which conferred on it a role of hopper through which the participant in the worship purified oneself before entering the divine field. But on the subject the archeological investigation remains dumb. What we know, on the other hand, it is that this monumental building opening towards outside was richly decorated. It gave on its own and evocative image of the sanctuary.

The jumble of weapons discovered at its feet in the ditch is not the result of a simple deposit of spoils in the upper part of the porch. We are not sure besides that they are spoils. The weapons (swords, shields, sleeves, chains) suggest rather the image of a deposit of complete panoplies, perhaps taken from the enemy, but perhaps also offered by the winners to their god. These atebertas or offerings, of which some were still bound in stacks, was, for a good portion, displayed: they took part in the decoration of the porch.

The same applies to the skulls of Bovidae which had been detached from the rest of the corpse. A dozen human skulls, at least, appeared in this composition which illustrated war and sacrifice. In other words, all the symbolic system of a true triumphal arch. We are unable to help thinking of the triumphal gate of the Breton parish close even if that has nothing to do with. This monumental door or triumphal arch, generally very decorated, symbolizes indeed the entry of the righteous person in immortality. It emphasizes the notion of passage we find in all the rites related to death, resulting from the Celtic culture.

d) sacrifice ditches or pits. The sacrifice ditches or pits have two uses.

- The animal sacrifice, of an animal bull kind. We have the same thing in Greece and Rome.

- Drink offerings of liquids, drinks, even of plants or manufactured goods having a sufficiently fluid form to be able to be poured from a container. If these various materials left no identifiable vestige in the ground, the use of the drink offering among the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) is demonstrated by the discovery of containers which seem to have had this function. Archeologists found at the time of the excavations of this kind of sanctuary, various bronze basins, broad and flat, which could have had this function. We know one of them in the burial nº 3 in Tartigny, which could have been that of a druid.

e) The center of the drunemeton or of the vernemeton is a semi-underground room, a round or polygonal (for example octagonal) or square, cella, dug in a base or an artificial mound. This half underground cella or crypt is surrounded by a raised circulation or peristyle; either closed or opened by a whole series of painted, carved, pillars, being used as ambulatory for the circumambulation (deisil in Ireland, tawaf in Arabia in Mecca), sunwise; from where people can observe what occurs in the cella a little below.

The temple can be double or triple or quadruple. For example, two cellae surrounded by the same ambulatory gallery or the same peristyle. In Libenice, there were two of them.

Lengths and widths of the cellae: between 10 and 20 meters.

The external walls are decorated with painted frescos representing, we have already said it, Ogmius, in the area of Marseilles, as Lucian of Samosata reports it.

The entrance of this basement-level room stands towards the east. It is consisted of two enormous stone pillars topped by a lintel, stone pillars on which heads are carved.

You cross the portico by going down a rustic stone staircase leading to the cella, located below, a little as a crypt which would be basement -level we have said.

Inside kin the back of the crypt while going towards the west and before a basement window which lights it, an altar with columns stands (one on each side: they succeeded the original trees).

Man wonders well in which part of the temple there was the statue of the goddess or fairy Nerthus fairy evoked by Tacitus: “ In an island of the ocean there is a sacred grove, and within it a consecrated chariot, covered over with a garment. Only one priest is permitted to touch it. He can perceive the

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presence of the goddess in this sacred recess, and walks by her side with the utmost reverence as she is drawn along by heifers” (Tacitus. Germania. XL).

f) The altar overhanging the sacrifice pits.

g) The water point.

A well was discovered in the center of the sacred space in Ribemont, it dates back at least the beginning of the 1st century before our era. It is the one, currently, to indicate that water took part for a considerable part in the pertaining to worship activity. This water was used above all for the purification of druids and participants, but it could also be the object of an ateberta (offering) specific to the deity.

This sacred well can take the shape of a large stone basin where go down by steps. It can be even in certain cases, a true pool. People made there ritual ablutions as in the case of the sacred spring of Glanum in Provence.

A drinking water point (and if possible of running water, not a simple stoup) must therefore appear in the entrance of the temple or elsewhere in order…

- Firstly, to provide the water necessary for the most elementary ablutions.

- Secondly, to accommodate the offerings or ateberta carried out in coin shape.

- Thirdly, to refresh and quench.

In short as little as in Islam lands.

h) Funeral plants intended for the warriors of the tribe killed in action or for the great ancestors.

The graves of the kings or the great ancestors are around.

After the Romanization the sanctuary housing a druidic worship could also be, concretely, a large room or rectangular hall, long and narrow ; finished in the back by a half-cella (hemispherical therefore) playing the role at the same time as an ambulatory or a choir with a high altar, endowed with a diameter equal to the width of the room, and separated from this one by a rood screen. In short a plan of the basilica type.Or then it is to be a plan of the Pantheon type i.e., a large rectangular room (pronaos) with a transition building corresponding to the portico of the former Celtic palisade sanctuaries; and a large separated rotunda, as regards the inside, by a kind of rood screen.

With regard to the sanctuary of the Pantheon type, here what the Belgian writer Marguerite Yourcenar (Brussels, June 8, 1903 - Mount Desert Island, December 17, 1987) made the emperor Hadrian write, fictionnaly.

"This temple, both open and mysteriously enclosed,was conceived as a solar quadrant. The hours would make their round on that caissoned ceiling, so carefully polished by

Greek artisans; the disk of daylight would rest suspended there like a shield of gold; rain would form its clear pool on the pavement below; prayers would rise like smoke towards that void where we place the gods"(Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian).

Some examples of Pantheon all over the world: the Thomas Jefferson rotunda in the University of Virginia, the library of the Columbia University in New York, the library of the State of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, not forgetting, of course, the Pantheon in Paris.

NR. B. As we saw it, one of the principal ornaments of the druidic temples consisted of panoplies or armors, laid out throughout the walls, and called anathemata in Greek. It goes without saying, in the event of reconstitution of temples of this kind, that it would be necessary to carefully avoid firearms, and to use only stabs or armors; claymores (there are splendid ones) armors of crupellarius 4) and so on.

P.S.: Models of inscriptions to make affix in the worship places, in order to pay homage to the generous givers.

Model No. 1.

a)……… + b) dede bratoude c).

Model No. 2.

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a)………. + b) dede bratoude decantena c).

a) Name of the giver.

b) Name of the father (or the mother) of the giver.

c) Name of the concerned deity if possible in the dative.

NOTES.

1) Family installations (simple altar, kind creche, in a room or a chapel for richest…) The altar unearthed in the ruins of Argentomagus (France) is a very good example of Celtic private or family altar. It was found in a cellar which was to take the shape of a small temple. It is composed of a round table behind which two deities or to divinized ancestors sat. The highest statue (49 cm) looks like a man sitting on a cushion, he wears a torc around his neck and a second around his right arm, a snake rests on his knees. The second statue (42 cm) looks like a man sitting in an armchair, his two hands on his knees, with a purse in his left hand. The two statues, carved coarsely, were painted. Smallest was equipped with a tunic and of an ocher coat, the purse and the shoes painted in green, the other is dressed with a green tunic, wears breeches of the same color squared with red. Between both, a stone symbolizing a phallus like in the case of the crom cruaich or of the stone of Fal in Ireland, or of the Hinduist linga.

2) The word “profane” (who is not consecrated, who is not initiated, ignorant, comes from Latin profanum (of pro “in front of” and fanum “ consecrated place”).

3) At the end of the 9th century, the carved decoration appeared on the frontage of the churches, and symbolically marks the passage from the profane world to the sacred enclosure. Man will bring since much care to the ornamentation of the principal frontage which acquires thus a certain monumentality. You always enter a Romanesque church by the main entrance.

Example the very beautiful gate of the church Notre-Dame d'Echillais in France. The gate of the frontage is framed of two windowless arches. A demonic mask seems to swallow the top of the column on the left of the door. Higher , upstairs, eight windowless arches are laid out on both sides of the central window. Vegetable patterns, rectangular daisies, acanthuses grouped in spray, decorate the arcature of the first floor; the cornice is decorated with characters, animals and sun wheels. The small capitals are illustrated with imagination: a hurdy-gurdy player, hunter sounding ivory horn, bowman, blessing priest, lions, chimeras, heads of men and monsters. The higher cornice is carved with bird heads. Rich sculptures at the base of the four columns, on the curves, archivolts and capitals.

The memory of the Byzantines seems to worry even less the provinces of the Center where progress of the sculpture, in the 12th , is extremely fast: we can realize that, through the figures which decorate the Saint Ann portal in Notre-Dame de Paris, through these of the central door, through these of the northern portal of the Saint-Denis church or of the door of Saint-Etienne, in Sens , the cathedral of Chartres, by these still of the Notre-Dame church, in Corbeil, the level of originality reached by the sculptors. The expression of the heads is individualized, the craftsmanship is softened, the work of the chisel is varied, according to whether it is a question of treating nude or drapery; the style is full with nobility. The monumental sculpture never had more character than during this time of the Romanesque art. No doubt artists do not have yet all the experience wanted in the handling of the chisel: they give to the faces strange expressions, with projecting eyes, arched eyebrows. The characters have often false proportions, stiff attitudes. If they are plants or animals which are used as ornamentation patterns for the moldings, for the capitals; we find there again the Celtic influence in the distortion of the reality to arrive at fantastic types, very far away from nature: these extraordinary figurations, ewes, quadrupeds with the head of a woman, dragons, chimeras, adopted by the first Christian artists, had ended up responding the popular beliefs.

4) The crupellarius is a Celtic gladiator, known by the historian Tacitus. We know that he wore an integral armor, thus prefiguring the knights of the Middle Ages.

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THE INTELLIGENT TREK.

(Continental Celtic Cammino-randa “border way.”)

Other forms of paying homage to the gods always competed with the rites more complicated than these we evoked above.

The small list of pagan practices annexed to the council of Leptines in 743, under the Latin title of indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum (of course) gives us a half-dozen of interesting cases.

4. The small houses (the druidic temples known as fana, singular fanum).

6. The worship of the forests called nimidas (nemeton).

7. What people do on the rocks.

18. The “dubious” places that people honor as if they were holy.

27. The fabric dolls.

28. The statues that people carry processionnaly through countryside (like in the current Catholic worship of saints, or of the Virgin Mary).

THE SPIRITUAL GOAL TREK (French rando).

The trekking forms undoubtedly an exercise which makes it possible to deal with one’s body and to perceive its limits: we may even speak in this case of a true health education. Generally, the regular and moderate practice of the walk rehabilitates the cardiac or vascular sick persons, and also improves the control of the diabetes. The trekking encourages having a good hygiene of life, particularly among the sedentary people. Walk is beneficial to the people suffering from osteoporosis and it develops the aerobic capacities. Fortunately, the trek adapts to everyone and there are no age limits: the children can go hiking as soon as they can walk. An empirical rule is that you can traverse with the child as many kilometers per day than his age (six years = six kilometers). Around 14 or 15 years, the teenager can make the same trekking as the adults… but he does not always wish to do so. The old people are often limited by the evolution of an osteoarthritis. In this case, it is necessary to reduce the distance and to choose not very undulating grounds in a painful period.

The hiker must be equipped with good shoes, light, with soles which absorb the shocks. Broad pants are preferable to shorts pants to avoid the scratches and the sunstroke. In one’s bag, you need to envisage the necessary things in the event of weather change (pullover, raincoat…). To also take with oneself sun lotion, anti-mosquito product and a hat. For water, it is necessary to count at least 1,5 liters and some supply points to fill the flask; to have also food (energy bars, dry fruits, cookies) to avoid the hypoglycemia which disturbs vigilance and increases the risk of fall. Be careful nevertheless not to take along with you superfluous things, the weight of the rucksack should never exceed 10% of the weight of the body.

In every case, it is preferable to practice the trekking in groups of at least four people, one of them being able to alert the emergency services in the event of a problem.

It is preferable not to have big skeleton problems. The repetitive movement of the walk can handicap the people having knee or ankle troubles, and anomalies of the skeleton (X leg, flat feet…). They are not real contraindications, but that can limit the pleasure of walking. The people who suffer from physical handicaps can go trekking in pairs within the group with an able-bodied friend (sighted and blind men for example). It is necessary, on the other hand, to warn the allergic people: the hiking, of course, exposes to fauna and flora, therefore to pollen and to hymenopteran stings.

The hikers have especially ankle sprains. At the people suffering from osteoporosis, fractures can occur during the falls. The articulations suffer in the event of bad walk technique, all the more in the event of overweight or of unsuited journeys. To pay attention well. The bites of “big animals” are paradoxically not due to the wild animals, but primarily to the dogs, close or not to the dwellings.

THE TRAVEL THE WAY AND THE ARRIVAL.

In the case of a trekking with spiritual purpose healthiest is still to walk like we could see it, but the mountain stages can be performed on horseback or on muleback.

The lodging of the hiker is a duty (of hospitality).

The arrival into the sanctuary must be marked by…

- Some penitential (to go barefoot) or symbolic rites (bath in a river for purification).

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- Some devotions: to touch or kiss the sacred object, an “incubation” ( to sleep in the holy place or not far. Practice, very favorable to the dreams it seems).

- Some atiobertas: generally small money coins or amber to burn.

Even a small wine amphora, symbolizing blood, which you gives up as is or from which you pour the contents in a suitable place after having opened or to have broken is neck ritually. It is the famous Sanskrit “dadami dehi me” : I give you so that you give (the deity is therefore in a way forced to give tit for tat ), formula coarsely translated by the Latins with their “do ut des.”

- The atebertas or offerings can also be representative: chains, crutches or objects having the shape of the cured limb.

Beyond all these material aspects, this type of pilgrimage is especially a process of (spiritual) cure. In India, it is like purification, and the Hindus believe that to come in these places leads to the liberation of the rebirth cycle (samsara). What is a mistake, but that removes nothing from the value of the aforementioned pilgrimage.

The ideal is to go in one of the places having been the subject of pilgrimage before the Christian invasion. There are hundreds. Even thousands.

THE PARDONS OR TROMENIES.

Tromeny. Literally tour (tro) of the minihi (Latin monachia = monastic space in the Early Middle Ages). What matches exactly the camminoranda mentioned above. The hagiography of the Early Middle Ages shows tromenies as being foundation circuits. The tromenies circumscribe a more or less important parochial space. They correspond to the various “parish tour ” or “relic processions” we find in Western Europe, for example in Belgium at Mons (festival of the Ducasse) Nivelles and Gerpinnes, but with Armorican characteristics.

In the case of Locronan, the large tromeny (12 km) corresponds to a circumambulation around an ancient sacral space; the tour goes through the forest of Nevet, of which the etymology rises from nemet (“sacred”). The shape of the tour , the number of stations and its periodicity (every six years), refer obviously at the Prechristian time. It seems that it is the pilgrimage in Locronan which sanctioned the word tromeny for the other circumambulations of comparable nature in Western Brittany, through the bishopric of Quimper.

The other circumambulations are called, into Breton, Tro ar relegou (Tour of the relics), Tro sant Sane (Tro of St. Sane), Leo Dro (League Tour).

THE ROUTE OF AMBER.

Now some advice ! Go smart trekking (camminoranda). Do not rush on the paths of Compostela *, even if it is better than nothing but find again the paths of the amber or tin road.

From the Electridae or Friesian islands or even from the Baltic Sea to Aquileia or Padua in Italy.

As for the tin road, it started in Cornwall or Armorica and ended all along the Mediterranean, passing through the Rhone Valley.

Here is the real European pilgrimage, that of proto-Historic Europe!

In what regard to Old Europe still, the wells related to worship places were systematically listed. Some of them even do not seem to have relation with the Catholic worship. The French specialist Brigitte Caulier, counted more than six thousand wells indexed by clergy. These fountains correspond in no way to particular requirements in water, but are Celtic or pre-Christian places of worship.

These places are often identified by a trilogy megalith (or rock) /oak/spring. The wells have the initial role to cure the diseases, and thereafter integrated the official religions while preserving their sacred nature.

One of the strongly established practices in druidism is indeed the veneration paid to various sacred places, to the fords as to the river confluence (condate in Celtic language). An ecologist practice we find among the druids of the East under the name of tirtha.

Every river may symbolize the mother Water (Matra/matrona) of whom the simple contact washes stains (see on this subject the Sequana or spring of the Seine River and the Segais or spring of the Boinne). There is also the hydrotherapy of which the purpose is not only to look after the bodies, but also the minds, as the example of Grand in the French department of the Vosges proves it (these spas were also attended by the emperor Caracalla).

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The destination of the pilgrimages are therefore often some sanctuaries built near these healing springs, and attracting considerable crowds like Our Lady of the Life in Savoy (73), not only at the time of such or such a particular festival, but during all the year.

* Tenth-century Christian pilgrimage founded as always with this religion on various impostures: the discovery of the beheaded corpse of Saint Jacques and the Europeanism of its road network. When in reality it mainly concerned France. All of these routes ended at Camino Frances, starting at Puente La Reina (Spain).

Spanish friends, go instead to Cape Finisterre and see the sun set (Ara solis).

For lazy ones some other ideas of meccas to visit one or more time in one’s life.

SAINT-REMY-DE PROVENCE/GLANUM. Matrebo glaneikabo or matrebo rokloisiabo.

Water was abundant there thanks to the rain absorbed by the limestone and a “healing” spring was therefore venerated there by the Ligurians as of the 1st thousand years before our era. Glanis and the Mother Goddesses were honored there by the inhabitants. The temples established around the source and of the sinkhole show the chthonian nature of the devotions. The pilgrims went down some steps to a basin. By touching the water, they hoped to see their wishes to become reality.

Also let us add to this short list which is everything except exhaustive and for good measure, the nemeton of the Rütli or Grütli in Switzerland (on the day of the Lugnasade precisely); the spring of the Danube River *, of the Rhone, of the Rhine, of the Seine, of the Marne… St. Odile's Mountain (other interesting tromeny to go on ), The Donon in the Vosges, the Lerins islands in the Mediterranean Sea and many other places of this kind; but Lyons, shrine of the martyrdom of the druid Mariccus , is not bad at all either, as we could see it.

* In reality the Danube River has not one spring but two. The meeting of both form the Danube. The Breg River is the longest of the two brooks which are joined to form the Danube (the other one is the Brigach). It seeps out 1.078 m above the sea level in the massif of the Black Forest close to Furtwangen. Its spring is indeed , for the geographers, the true spring of the Danube, because the Breg River is a little longer than the Brigach. It is a natural site. After a course of 49 km, it joined the Brigach in Donaueschingen, beginning of the large river which crosses all Europe before flowing into the Black Sea. It is only 200 meters away that there is the spring of another brook is, the Elz River, from with the water will join, through the Rhine, the North Sea. The symbolic spring of the Danube is nevertheless in Donaueschingen as we have said it, because it is only from there that the river takes its name of Danube.

Iona is a small island located North-West of Scotland, in the Inner Hebrides, separated from Mull Island by a strait. Iona therefore , with its 4,8 km from north to south and its 2,4 km from east to west, extends on approximately 800 hectares. The highest point, Dun I, is 101 m. above the seal level. The island is supplied by its neighbor Mull , via a ferry which connects Fionnphort, its port, with the small urban area of Baille Mor.

This island was, of course, inhabited a long time before its Christianization; a Hill fort of the Iron Age, Dun Cul Bhuirg, for example was inhabited from - 100 before our era to + 300.

Before the arrival of Saint Columban on the spot in 563, the island was called in Gaelic language Innis nam druidneach, what means “druids island.” Some authors even think that it was the island evoked in the famous text by Plutarch about the disappearance of oracles.

We may think, on the other hand, that the island was perhaps left during the time of St. Columba , and known only by some Celtic hermits like St. Otteran, Odhran, Oran.

In 563, St. Columba or Columcille, left Ireland we don’t know truly with certainty following what, but in order to found on the island a monastery; placed under the double patronage of Conall mac Comgaill king of Dal Riada and of Brude mac Maelchon king of the Picts. This first monastery was burned by the Vikings in 802 and 806 (68 members of the community left their life there). In 830, the abbot Diarmait will transport the relics of St. Columba into Ireland in order to shelter them. The monastery will be rebuilt in 1203 for the Benedictines, by Reginald Mac Donald, master of Mull and Lord of the Islands, then will survive until the Reform and the destruction of the buildings on order of the Parliament of Scotland in 1561.

As much to prevent immediately, to go on Iona, it is necessary to rise early. It is necessary to leave the terminal of the car ferries ships located at Oban, in the west of Scotland. The first stage is the beautiful

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island of Mull. The ideal is to spend a night on the spot in order to have time to see also a little the charming small port of Tobermory, main village. You cannot indeed visit the two islands in one day.

One bus makes it possible to go towards Iona. It starts from Craignure, the terminal of the car ferries, a few minutes only after the arrival of the first ferry coming from Oban (it leaves Oban between six and eight hours in the morning and arrives at Mull approximately an hour later).

It takes more than one hour in coach to cross the 61 km which separate Craignure from Fionnphort, the small port from which the ferries for Iona leave. This ride in coach makes it possible to cross the island of Mull and to appreciate the beauty of it. The crossing then, to go to Iona, lasts only a few minutes, because the island is separated from Mull only by an arm of the sea.

While arriving at the port in Iona, Baile Mor, you can already take in a good part of the island. On the right are the Abbey of St. Columba and the old convent, on the left extend tiny white sand beaches.

Through its small size and its environment inciting to meditate , Iona is an ideal place for the contemplation. Many besides are those who come to spend a few days there even a season.

Everything on Iona inspires calm and peace. The white sand beaches and the turquoise water are a true dazzling for the eyes. If you leave aside one moment cold, sheep and wind (but that is a lot !) you would believe almost to be on an atoll in the South Sea.

This island looks truly an end of the land. This impression becomes obvious as from October when the hordes of tourists desert the island. It is besides in autumn and winter that certain associations, Christian or not besides, organize stays of several weeks on Iona. The foundation of our friends of Findhorn has for example a house there.

Oldest of the buildings of the island is the chapel which was built in the 12th century over the quite former grave, of St. Otteran, Odhran, or Oran. A companion of St. Columban , passably mysterious.

According to the Irish tradition indeed, St. Otteran, Odhran, or Oran, would have been abbot of Meath then would have founded Lattreagh. According to the documents, he is presented in turn as a companion, brother, or uncle, of St. Columban. The legends surrounding his death, which has occurred very little of time after the arrival of St. Columban (his grave was the first one of the whole island) are not very Christian. All that resembles much indeed a foundation sacrifice, like in the legend of Merlin (Merlin when he was a child was almost sacrificed to guarantee the solidity of the castle of Vortigern). Or then an ordeal in the style of that of the purgatory of St. Patrick on an island located in the middle of the Lough Derg.

In the case of the legend of St. Otteran , Odhran, or Oran, it would be a chapel. As St. Columban did not succeed, in spite of his prayers, in making it build, a mysterious voice would have explained then why it would be thus, as long as they would not have buried alive somebody in the foundations. Otteran would therefore have volunteered for this purpose. But little time after, his phantom would have left from one of the walls to say that hell does not exist, that heaven is not what people say, etc., etc.

Another legend ensures that it would be St. Columban, curious, who would have made opened again the grave of Otteran, Odhran, or Oran, a few days later; and that the latter , still living, would then have reported to him horrible things: hell does not exist, and so on.

At all events, what is certain, it is that, as a result, all the greats in the area wanted to be buried at his sides in the ground thus sacralized by his grave; and that the cemetery around the chapel was called Reilig Odhráin in his honor.

It is necessary to see this reilig Odhrain (relic of Oran), necropolis of the kings of Dalriada and of their successors, first kings of Scotland (of whom the famous Duncan I immortalized by Shakespeare) who were buried there to Donald Ban at the end of the 11th century.Rest here also four Irish kings as seven Norwegian princes. What tallies very well with a Lugnasade. Is missing only the Stone of Scone!

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We also find on the island several Celtic crosses, mixing Pictish patterns and Christian figures. A kind which is called besides “ Iona School” and which has spread in several other islands West of Scotland.

The two more beautiful Celtic crosses of the island are St. John’s cross and St. Martin’s cross. Their faces directed towards the east are very strange, and look hardly Christian there either, it is the least we can say.

St. John’s cross dates back the 8th century. The lower part (the foot) of this cross is divided into three panels, on which bosses and snakes are carved.

St Martin’s cross is even more complex and dates back to the 9th century. It stands between the chapel of St. Oran and the abbey.

Lower panel: 24 intertwined snakes, around 3 patterns we find on Celtic coins, namely 4 bosses laid out in a rhombus with one laid out in the middle (the labarum???)

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Upper part: still the same pattern, 4 bosses laid out in a rhombus with one in the middle (the labarum???) each one covered with interlacing. The central boss is surrounded by nine other small balls separated by spirals and laid out in the shape of a circle, a little like a pearl necklace.

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Under the central boss and above the lower boss, three other smaller bosses, laid out in a triangle with still interlaced snakes.

Under the lower boss same thing. Three other smaller bosses, laid out in a triangle, but reversed this time (with the base at the top), there still with some snakes, on the other hand.

All that makes us strongly thinking of the sign of the great goddess, or fairy if you prefer, called Rigani by the French archeologist Jean-Jacques HATT: three circles grouped in an isosceles triangle, or three capsules, or three cabochons, or three lentils.

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Above the central boss, in the final part of the cross, there are two pairs of long-tailed lions, above and below the higher boss. Their front legs are laid out in the form of an X…………...

Our French pen-friends pointing out to me that I favor a little too much the pilgrimage to Iona, in order to make no jealous people I would say very well also some words of another place which can be very well suitable for an intelligent “rando” as it is said in French .

The “not on the river areas territory” of Grand form a projection towards the Champagne, region to which they were attached formerly. The calcareous plateau of the Oxfordian, located at the southernmost end of the Meuse river cuestas, culminates around 400 meters above the sea level.

This carbonated formation was released then notched by the headwaters of the rivers Meuse, Marne, Ornain, and their tributaries. It forms powerful bedrock (approximately 90 meters), favorable to the formation of dry valleys (combes) and to the installation of karstic phenomena. The study of this plateau using maps, aerial photographs, satellite photographs; show that it becomes cracked , fracked by a whole of faults with combined direction; the water charged with carbon dioxide follows this network, and contributes to the formation of chambers of which the ceilings, when they are close to surface, crumble while creating sinkholes.

The Fairy Hole , in the Forest of Trampot, is made by two secant sinkholes. The water of the ground water sheet appears, in the upstream sinkhole, approximately 4 m under the ground; then goes down towards the downstream sinkhole, older, deeper, before disappearing in a vertical pipe which feeds the deep water located at the base of the carbonated massif.

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Halfway between Grand and Avranville, in the small valley of the Maldite, the spring emerges at the foot of a big willow, hygrophilous tree by definition . The invaluable liquid spouts out from a fault and gives birth to the perennial stream of the Maldite, river already mapped in the 18th century.

The topography of this site, located between three large valleys, supported an early human establishment. Various lucky finds dating back the final Neolithic era (- 2500 - 1800) were discovered in Grand itself, and close to the spring of the “Roises” in the north of the village. The presence of a bracelet with buffers and nodes (4th century before our era), of a fibula (25 - 100 before our era), both out of bronze, of several coins, of which a silver denarius; testify to the permanency of this territory use, in connection, probably, with the water points.

The shrine of Grand is mentioned on the Peutinger table under the name of Andesina, where it is combined with the label which designates the great hydropathic spas in the empire. Localization: Upper Germania.

Its building had to be done between the years 70 and 140 of our era. It comprised a1750 m. long enclosure with 22 towers and gates delimiting a sacred space, reserved for the deity of the sanctuary, to whom the pilgrims came to seek a bodily or spiritual comfort. This rampart delimiting the part devoted to the god includes thereby only public monuments.

The amphitheater of Grand is classified among the ten first ones of the Roman world.

Endowed with a capacity of 17.000 places, it testifies to the coming together of the pilgrims at the time.

“The big federal sanctuaries, like Grand, had acquired, perhaps as of the end of La Tene, a clear pre-eminence. They became at the Roman time important urban areas, thereby increasing their activity as meeting places and influence crossroads. The fugitive druids found here a refuge at the time of the persecutions. In consequence of the contacts which occurred there with the orientalized circles, attracted by the pilgrim crowd , new syncretisms appeared ” (Jean-Jacques Hatt).

The Gallo-Roman architects in Grand used their art of hydraulics and the experience of Celtic miners (meina is besides a Celtic word) to bring all the water of the parallel north and south karsts, towards the karst of the middle by creating underground aqueducts. These galleries follow exactly the argillaceous layer located at the base of limestone, to the resurgence located in the middle of the village. This explains that depth of the access wells (307 in all) and of the galleries, ranges between 2,50 m upstream and 14 m downstream. These galleries, built or not, arched or not, are sufficiently high to be crossed in standing position. The builders and the maintenance personnel could enter there by the many existing wells. The Gallo-Roman architects therefore used to organize the underground network of water conveyance , laid out in bayonets, the natural discontinuities of the limestone increased by distension and dissolving.

Fifteen kilometers of underground galleries transporting some water converge to the center of the sanctuary which occupies the resurgence of an underground river. Their function was to regularize the flow of the spring.

A bratou decantem (ex-voto) found on the site in 1935, has the inscription “somno jussus,” thus confirming the incubation practice. The pilgrims spent the night in the enclosure of the sanctuary, and expected the visit of the god through a dream.

In 213, the emperor Caracalla visited perhaps the shrine.

In 309, the emperor Constantine going to Trier turned away from his itinerary to visit the sanctuary. According to Christian tradition, it is in this temple of Andesina that Constantine would have converted to Christianity. According to the historians, it would have rather adopted there the sun worship, as the coins he mints at the time, dedicated to soli invicto, confirm it.

362: according to a medieval tradition, martyrdom of St. Eliphius and St. Libaria under the reign of the emperor Julian the Apostate. Libaria, one of the five children of a patrician family, converted to Christianity, would have been martyred to have refused to sacrifice to the gods. She would have been beheaded outside the sanctuary, on the edge of the former Roman way ranging from Grand to Soulosse. There she would have taken herself her head under her arm, like St. Denis in Paris and, going back into the village, would have washed it in the spring which was in the middle of the city, then would have “fallen asleep in the Lord.”

On these alleged persecutions, see our essay on, or more exactly against, Christianity. The hagiographic texts of the Middle Ages that are the Passion of St. Eliphius and his extension, the Passion of Saint Libaria, show us a first attempt at Christianization of the rites.

- Destruction of the pagan sanctuary.

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- Negligence of the amphitheater.

The legend affirms that if a disabled person drank water where St. Libaria had come to wash her head, he was cured.

The chapel known as “of the square” preserved until the 1789 Revolution a heap of bratou decantem (ex-voto) and of crutches of all shapes left by the patients in sign and gratitude for their cure.

EDITOR’S NOTE . OUR READERS ARE NOT FORCED, OF COURSE, TO TAKE LITERALLY THIS UMPTEENTH CHRISTIAN LIE IN THE FIELD.

What is certain, on the other hand, it is that the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) believed that the soul/mind, and therefore the life ultimately, laid in the head, not in the area of the heart as it is generally believed today; and that all kinds of rites and practices surrounded the head in their tradition.

With regard to the emperor Julian, here what History says to us.

He made Lutetia his capital and proved to be good civil servant and good soldier, repelling back the invasions of Alamanni and Franks.

Spontaneously or because Julian had pushed them to do it, his soldiers proclaimed him full emperor (Augustus) in 360. Constantius refusing the fait accompli , Julian marched against him towards the East. But there was no battle, because Constantius died in 361.

Become Master of the whole empire, Julian promulgated an edict of toleration authorizing all the religions; and he abrogated the measures taken not only against paganism, but also against the Jews, and the Christians who did not follow the creed of Arian inspiration which was in the good books of Constantius. However, he revealed t well quickly his preference for paganism and his hostility to Christianity. Law prohibiting the Christians from teaching traditional poetry (because it evokes gods they fight), favors for the cities which restore temples, indifference as regards the anti-Christian racism. However, he took no persecution measure, declaring only that he wished that the Christians admit themselves their mistake, but that it did not want to force them to do it.

In parallel, he wanted to reform paganism (morality of the priests, creation of charitable institutions).

He expressed his intention to return to an empire of less autocratic form and more in conformity with the republican tradition, but he ruled in a rather authoritative way. After having reorganized or having cleansed the administration, by reducing the personnel of the palace particularly as that which was assigned to the denouncement or spying, he settled in Antioch to prepare an expedition against Persia. He conflicted nevertheless rather quickly with the local population, on the one hand, because of his flaunted paganism, on the other hand, because his moral strictness was opposed to the practices of life which prevailed in this metropolis.

In the spring 363, Julian got into a vast military expedition which led him victoriously to Ctesiphon, capital of the Persians. But he must then to start a retreat , during which, on June 26th, 363, he was mortally wounded. The attention of the Christian as anti-Christian historical tradition , was focused on the religious policy of Julian. But it was precisely only a part of his policy and we may not say that it determined all the rest. So, in the administrative field, he hardly seems to have expressed a religious preference in the recruitment of the personnel.

Julian is one of the main Greek authors of the 4th century. He wrote letters, speeches, and a critical work against Christianity, The Against the Galilaeans. The latter , considered to be “devilish” by the later times, was destroyed or, at least was not preserved. Nevertheless we know a good part of it thanks to the Against Julian written by Cyril of Alexandria in the 5th century (the work itself of Cyril proves therefore that of Julian was still considered to be dangerous fifty years later).

A follower of neoplatonician philosophy, he nevertheless always insisted to specify that he was not arrived at the stage of full philosopher, and that he was in this field only a student. This is why he did not write philosophical work properly.

In his letter to the uneducated cynics , he writes what follows.

“Therefore, I say, let no one divide philosophy into many kinds or cut it up into many parts, or rather let no one make it out to be plural instead of one. For even as truth is one, so too philosophy is one. But it is not surprising that we travel to it now by one road, now by another. For if any stranger, or, by Zeus, any one of her oldest inhabitants wished to go up to Athens, he could either sail or go by road, and if he traveled by land he could, I suppose, take either the broad highways or the paths and roads that are short cuts. And, moreover, he could either sail along the coasts or,like the old man of Pylos, " cleave the open sea."

And let no one try to refute me by pointing out that some philosophers in traveling by those very roads have been known to lose their way, and arriving in some other place have been captivated, as though

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by Circe or the Lotus-Eaters, that is to say by pleasure or opinion or some other bait, and so have failed to go straight forward and attain their goal. Rather he must consider those who in every one of the philosophic sects did attain the highest rank, and he will find that all their doctrines agree.”

Well, Julian was quite optimistic and deluded himself very much!

Julian became very early a myth. Some authors, especially Ammianus Marcellinus and Libanius; made him a hero of toleration, virtue and energy, a man too great for his time, who would have succumbed under the blows of the (Christian, but not necessarily) pettiness and ill-will. Conversely, the Christian authors presented him as a frantic imbecile (Gregory of Nazianzus, who had known him when he was a student); a monster (the ecclesiastical historians who ascribe to him various profanation and some sacrifices); a perverse apostate (all the measures he took, including his edict of toleration are condemned, because contrary to the true faith). This image prevailed during the whole Middle Ages, although the character fascinated occasionally some oddballs.

In the 18th century, the philosophers wanted to exculpate him, as a champion of the enlightenment against the Christian obscurantism, and as a freedom champion against the absolutism of what they called “the Lower Empire.” Romanticism was impassioned in turn for the character, by seeing in his person a romantic man before the word was invented, misunderstood by his century and whose death in full youth gave the signal of the triumph of the second-rate minds.

In the 20th century, the three images, Julian the Apostate, Julian the philosopher and Julian the hero of a lost cause; are prolonged not only in the fiction literature of fiction, but even in the works of reflection (with sometimes some variants : a Julian atheistic philosopher hiding under a flaunted paganism , according to Alexandre Kojève).

But let us return to our sheep i.e., to the Christians of the low empire.

Let us remember simply that if Apollo was juxtaposed without problems with Grannus, Christianity itself was not established in the area without some difficulty (at the end of the 4th century); and that St. Libaria quite naturally inherited the virtues from the local pagan deity, thus carrying out the passage from the pagan worship of water to the Christian worship of the miraculous well. To more surely erase the pagan sanctuary, the Christians then built a church on the place itself of the resurgence of the springs.

1035: 1st written mention of the legend of St. Libaria.

1789: filling of the miraculous spring of Grand, re-ascribed to St. Libaria.

In 1967 and 1968, were found in the well No. 77, four ivory tablets, forming two diptychs; it seems that they were broken in an intentional way. They testify to the Egyptian tradition of the end of the Ptolemaic period or of the beginning of the Roman domination. The names of the decans are written down in old Coptic with Greek letters. These tablets are a testimony of the Eastern influences which are spread especially as from the end of the 2nd century.

Let us take this opportunity to point out some sure points on this subject.

First point. Druidic astrology is no longer accessible currently, there remain about it only too fragmentary bits and pieces or testimonies.

As Peter Berresford Ellis said it very well; what is currently sold in the trade under the name of Celtic astrology, or of Celtic zodiac, is a heresy or an intellectual swindle resulting from the reflections by Robert Graves about the Irish oghamic alphabet.

By heresy we want to only say deviating significantly from the ancient druidism such as it was designed and practiced in the center of origin of the Celtic peoples. i.e., somewhere in the north of the Alps in the 2nd thousand years before our era.

Second point. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) had about predetermination or fate a very flexible design, keeping a large autonomy to human freedom ultimately, at least with regard to details. This determinism therefore was in no way inescapable. It was a question at most of tendencies and not of harsh mechanisms . Some forecasts and not some predictions. In the sealed tablets of his horoscope the high druid Arborius had entrusted a secret to his grandson Ausonius, well this druidic secret is here.

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If an event is in no way contained in its causes, if for example it is a fully free act from a man, or a series of extremely rare coincidences, then no human being can predict it. Here what Reason dictates to us.

Those who would claim the opposite cannot be true high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), and we warn you against these false prophets. Astrology can only release the main theoretical tendencies of a character, of a man, and nothing more: future belongs only to gods and this for two reasons.

The first is that, given their place in the heavenly hierarchy, they can come to know things that human beings ignore. See on this subject what Muslim theology says about the jinns.

The second is that they have the capacity to intervene in the course of things, in one way or the other.

“Nor is the practice of divination disregarded even among uncivilized tribes, if indeed there are druids in Celtica, and there are, for I knew one of them myself, Divitiacus, the Aeduan, your guest and eulogist. He claimed to have that knowledge of nature which the Greeks call “physiology” and he used to make predictions, sometimes by means of augury and SOMETIMES BY MEANS OF CONJECTURE“ (Cicero, De divination, Book I, 41, 90).

A future can indeed be known through its causes. Men particularly gifted from the point of view of intelligence can manage to perceive and to guess the events to come, in causes difficult to take into account, and this more especially as their intelligence is large.

But the fact of having predicted and feared an event or to wish it can also, on the other hand, contribute to the realization of the aforementioned event itself, and consequently give the impression, wrong, of a prediction; whereas that was quite simply the cause, of course, distant, but the cause nevertheless, of the event.

Third point. And finally, as Lucan in his time said it very well, most important is that “To you it is given the gods and celestial powers to know OR NOT TO KNOW ” (Lucan. PharsalI. I. Lines of verses 444 to 462).

As our ancestors all were formerly brought up in the same way, in the same environment, with the same life experiments , the same daily contact with nature, it was then really possible to define for them some characters, or some personalities, through a horoscope. Nowadays, each one being brought up differently (parents, schools, teaching, working life, and so on) that is no longer possible.

All that show ultimately this horoscope found in Grand therefore, it is that many foreigners attended its temple then, attracted by the quality of the whisper of its prophetic or oracular water.

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One of the pilgrimages to also advise is that you can carry out while going to Edinburgh, in order to kiss or cherish there the stone of Destiny. It is a block of sandstone, coarsely rectangular (670 X 420 X 265 mm), weighing 152 kg. It is broken in two pieces since an unspecified date.

The stone of Destiny, or Stone of Scone, is the oldest symbol of the Scottish history. The kings of Scotland were established in Scone, close to Perth, since at least 877 or 878. This place was the seat of the Pictish kings since unmemorable times. A Scottish chronicler wrote in the 15th century that no king could rule over Scotland if he had not initially sat down on the stone preserved respectfully in the church of the abbey in Scone… ”. The last king of Scotland to have observed this rite was John Balliol, on November 30, 1292. 1).

Four years later, the king of England Edward I invaded Scotland, seized Scone, and carried the stone in England with the other symbols of the royalty. A throne was built especially to shelter the stone under the royal seat with the abbey of Westminster. Since 1307, all the kings of England, then kings of Great Britain, were crowned sitting on this throne, therefore on the stone. The kings of Scotland, as for them, continued to be established in Scone, but on a new throne, deprived from this Pictish symbol.

In order to celebrate the seventh centenary of 1296, the English government decided to give back to its country of origin this mysterious stone of Destiny. The transfer took place in November 1996; the day of the saint Andrew feast, on November 30th, the stone was therefore installed in the castle of Edinburgh, in the presence of the duke of York, son of Queen Elizabeth II.

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As in the case of the famous black stone in Mecca, a biblical, or pseudo-biblical, legend, was very early attached to it. The Stone of Scone would be the stone on which Jacob would have rested at the time of his famous dream in Bethel (Genesis, 28,11); it would have been then brought into Scotland by the not less mythical princess Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, via Scythia and Spain.

What is, of course, as in the case of the black stone in Mecca, impossible!

In the Irish legend of the Colloquy of the Ancients (Acallam na senorach), the stone of Fal or Scone is evoked as follows.

Some celticists suggested driving in it an equally symbolic sword , the sword of the kings of Dal Riada. Nice idea, but

that's not likely to happen any time soon. It would be necessary first in any event that this mysterious stone comes back already in its place of origin; which is not the abbey in Scone, but the fortified castle of Dunstaffnage (close to Dunbeg) built on an enormous rock; which succeeded a fortress of the sovereigns in the legendary kingdom of Dal Riada, Dun Monaidh, in the 7th century.

1) John of Scotland or John of Balliol (or John Balliol, in Scottish language Iain Bailiol), 1248-1315, was de facto king of Scotland from 1292 to 1296. He was the son of John Balliol and from Dervoguilla of Galloway. Initially ally of the king of England, he quarreled then with him and signed the treaty called Auld Alliance. The treaty was signed in Paris on October 23, 1295. February 23, 1296, the Scottish Parliament ratified it. This treaty provided that if one of the two States underwent an attack from England, the other would invade England, as the example of the battle of Flooden Fields in 1513 shows it. In 1326, Robert Bruce renewed the Alliance by the treaty of Corbeil. In the 14TH and 15th centuries, the treaty was called upon six times. And all the Scots were there admitted compulsory as French citizens until the revocation of this point of the treaty in 1903.

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Another hike goal , excellent for the health of body and mind: the mount St. Odile (German Odilienberg). The Mount St Odile is a Vosgean mountain, towering over the plain of Alsace and culminating at 764 meters above the sea level. Its spring is known to cure certain eye diseases. The monastery was founded about the year 700 when the father of St Odile, Adalric (also called Etichon), bequeathed the castle of Hohenburg to her. St Odile changed it into a convent.

The massif of the mount St Odile, as the discoveries of several excavations show it, was occupied since the Neolithic era. Flints and polished stone axes made it possible to make a first occupancy of the places go back to 4000 years before our era.

Many artifacts dating back to the Bronze Age were also unearthed and prove an enough important occupation for the period, between 1500 and 800 before our era.

On the other hand, the objects of the Iron Age (750 to 50 before our era) are much rarer and seem to show that at that time the massif was less inhabited.

It should be noticed that, according to certain archeologists, the gates of the wall called corridor gates (gates of Barr and Elsberg) were probably arranged during the Roman epoch; as certain repairs of the enclosure itself (cf the analyzes of wooden tenons with carbon-14 technique and by dendrochronology).

The wall surrounding the mount is a megalithic enclosure ten kilometers long in total, encircling the plateau to form as a rampart. Formed of approximately 300.000 cyclopean blocks, it is between 1,60 m and 1,80 m wide and can be 3 m high.

Currently two theses clash about it: the wall as a defensive enclosure and the wall as a pertaining to worship enclosure. The main characteristic of the wall construction lies in the use of dovetail tenons

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which are adjusted in the mortises cut in the adjacent blocks. These tenons secure the junction between the stones. This technique is single in Northern Europe.

A study relating to some of these dovetail shaped oak tenons, found on the wall, produced as a date the end of the 7th century (that is to say about the date of convent foundation). It is therefore a relatively recent date. However, that does not mean that the wall was built at that time, it could be a repairing of the work. Other authors think of a much older construction (Bronze Age).

Throughout the enclosure,you can observe several careers from where the stone blocks were extracted . The epithet of pagan was given to this wall by the pope Leon IX, in the 11th century.

The miraculous spring. This spring is known as miraculous, because according to the legend, Odile, first abbess of the monastery, would have struck the rock in this place to help a blind pilgrim who had been mislaid.

The water spouting out abruptly would have cured the poor wretch as soon as he had rubbed his eyes with this limpid and fresh liquid…

Since, thousands of visitors started to do the same thing for their tired eyes. Some would have noticed an improvement of their vision… Moreover every Easter Monday, a German laboratory of homeopathic products comes to take a few liters of this precious liquid in order to make with it a drug for the eyes. It is said that on this day its capacity is multiplied by ten. Dowsing measurements would have confirmed it…

At all events, this spring has that mysterious one that the geologists have not really explanations for its presence in this place; since the sedimentary faults and layers are tilted in a direction which would be unfavorable to its flow on this side of the mountain…

We know with certainty few things of the life of the woman who gave her name to this Alsatian Mecca (St Odile) and we can recognize easily in her a former fairy or solar goddess. Odile was blind but St Erhard, a monk from Ireland, bishop of Ardagh (traveling in Bavaria) then had a vision in which God ordered to him to proceed to her baptism. What he did a few days later and, at the time when holy oil touched the eyes of Odile, this one recovered the sight. The life of St Odile, or at least her legend, is known for us thanks to an anonymous text written a little before 950. Adalric her father would have apparently given to her the possession of his castle of Hohenburg, with the incomes and the grounds which depended on it. From where the monastery.

Some of our Irish pen-friends ask to us if time would not have come for them to again appropriate the holy places confiscated by the taliban/parabolans of Christianity like St. Patrick.

Our answer will be simple. If you feel able to do it, so go ahead! Do not hesitate! The druidic faith can make a mountain crumbling on enemy armies (see the deed of the famous Mug Ruith at the time of the battle of Druim Damghaire - Forbuis Droma Damhghaire-). However, better is worth avoiding the (Croagh) mountain of Patrick and to prefer to it the island located on the Lake Derg, the “lake of the Cave” in the summer months (from June 1st to August 15th). The knight Owein of Wales, the lord of Beaujeu and Louis of Auxerre, called Malatesta de Rimini, Johann van Brederode, the Hungarian Georg Grissaphan; came in this ancient place of druidic , and before megalithic, initiation, disgusted by the mercantile slides of Santiago de Compostela. In the purgatory of St. Patrick, they were made buried alive up to two weeks in a hole, to come out from it with the aislingi or most fantastic visions in the world . They left some written down accounts. All believed to be close to the end of the land, “finis terrae. And while you are at it, we advise besides to our friends to start with the spring of the Segais at Trinity Well (Tiobar na Trionaide).

Most of these meccas being related to the forces of nature WHICH IS UNIVERSAL, WHICH IS OUR MOTHER TO EVERYBODY, such examples of trekking with a spiritual connotation can be everywhere in the world, and on all the continents. We have therefore a very wide choice.

It is quite difficult to distinguish among the Indians in North America some sacred places clearly separated from the secular places since, among them as among their Celtic brothers, the whole nature was sacred: there was innumerable kaaba. Let us try nevertheless. Here some other examples therefore of pilgrimages to go.

The Great Serpent mound . In the south of the State of Ohio, close to the banks of a tributary of the eponymous river and in Adams County, is quite a strange construction. While rising a little above , we

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realize that these hills form in reality a unit representing very distinctly a snake, of which the head is drawn perfectly, what leaves no doubt as for a possible interpretation.

Its overall length is about 420 meters and the variations of the height of the hillock range from 30 cm to 100 cm. Even if this place is mentioned in the oral stories of the Adena cultures or traditions, it would seem, after carbon-14 dating, that the origin of this monument dates back to a period located around 1070.

Cahokia. The area of Cahokia will be inhabited only starting from the 6th century. Indians gather there in villages and live on products of gardening. They practice the coastal navigation on the rivers, feed themselves with seeds of reed canary grass (phanaris arundinacea) then of corn starting from the 9th .

The site of Cahokia, of a surface of 8.900 hectares, is near the confluence of three rivers: Illinois, Missouri and Mississippi, close to the urban area of Saint-Louis.

The town of Cahokia appeared about the year thousands. The buildings were gradually arranged on the top of a ground hillock, approximately 30 meters high, and with a final surface of eight hectares. Cahokia was the principal chief town of the civilization of the Mississippi from 950 to 1250. It extended over 12 km, but was left before the coming of the European people. The fall of the city remains difficult to explain.

Mount Shasta (indicated under the name of Mount Sisson until 1922) is a volcano. Its height of 4.317 meters makes it the second higher summit in the Cascade range , and the highest summit of California which is not in the Nevada Sierra. Mount Shasta has the characteristic to be 3.000 meters above the plain around.

The Native Americans, who lived in the area, thought that the mount Shasta was inhabited by the spirit chief called Skell, who was descended from the heaven towards the top of the mountain. Since then, many other worships were attracted by the mount Shasta. For the Achomawi people for example, a spring in this mountain would be formed by the tears of the deer, to avoid to them they cry when they are killed by a hunter.

Mount Shasta, the homonymous city located at the foot of the mountain, is the meeting place of all these different religions.

Not to mention the four sacred mountains of the Navajo Indians which are the Abalone Shell Mountain (San Francisco Peaks), the Turquoise Mountain (mount Taylor), the White Shell Mountain (Mount Blanca) and the Mount Hesperus (Obsidian Mountain).

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MATERIAL AND SYMBOLS.

THE SACRIFICE PITS OR DITCHES.

Once again let us repeat to it, for the former druids, the deities expressed their presence on earth through sac red wood, small groups of trees and shrubs planted then maintained inside the sacred enclosures. In Gournay-on-Aronde, it is near such a vegetable layout that the sacrifice pit was, which, as all these which were discovered in the other druidic sanctuaries excavated thereafter, was of quite a particular nature. It appears as a pit, four meters long and two meters deep, dug in the ground.

Among the Belgians of the 3rd century before our era, the sacrifice pit had therefore preserved the pure and antiquated form of the Indo-European olden days. This sacrifice pit , although being a simple hole dug in the ground, was the object of most attentive care. Its walls even had been covered with wood staves, like a barrel. It was probably closed by a lid out of the periods of sacrifices. Lastly, as the stratigraphic study suggests it, it was carefully cleaned after the stay of each victim. In India, this kind of sacrifice pit , the vedi, was after each new sacrifice conscientiously covered with several thicknesses of grass which were to constitute a bed for the deity.

The large central pit had therefore as a primary function to make the men and their gods communicate by the means of a victim which rotted slowly and of which the humors were supposed to feed the latter. Such sacrificial units are known in Greece where they are described as “chthonian,” i.e., they are made deities , considered to reside under the ground, to whom man offers whole victims. At the end of the 3rd century before our era, the sacrificial units therefore had only this antiquated and simple form; that of a pit carefully dug in the ground and which was to be closed by a lid intended to protect it from the bad weather. As time goes, these pits were equipped with a roof; then a square or round building with a five to six meters side or diameter appeared,looking like a Mediterranean temple, with the difference that the sacrifice pit occupied almost all the interior space.

VARIOUS TYPES OF LEX OR ALTAR.

The indelba of the Irish tradition (cf. the sanas Cormaic) are a problem.

Indelba : i. anmand na n-altora na n-idal sin. i. arindi dofornitis intib delba na ndula adortais and, uerbi gracia figura solis.i. figuir na grene.

Indelba: the names of the altars of those idols, the reason why they are called thus is they were accustomed to paint above representations of the elements that they used to worship there, for instance, the figura solis, i.e., the image of the sun.

Why this plural in the definition given by the glossary? The Irish language dictionary (old and middle Irish), as it, defines the indelb as an altar formed with four flagstones. Perhaps is it necessary then to think of something like the small standing stone circles called horgr in the Scandinavian religion.

However modest it is, a place intended for the worship at least shelters an altar, which is the only really essential pertaining to worship object.

The altar is of two kinds according to the nature of the sacrifices the druids carry out.

For the sacrifices of bloody type, intended for the heavenly gods, with division and consumption of the victims, the altar (bothros among Greeks) consists of a horizontal stone table, located in front the entry of the temple. Unlike the countryside indelba, this table is provided with one or more hearths raised on a base (some braziers) where the share of the gods is burned and where the shares of the men are roasted. See the altar coins , of Lyons, under the reign of Augustus and Tiberius.

For the sacrifices known as chthonian intended for the underground deities and for the great ancestors, they don’t use the altar but only the ditch or the pit going always with it (bothros in Greek language, what means hole).

The druidic altars overhang in general one or several sacrifice pits (a pit before, a pit on each side).

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a) The first types of altar , simplest, most rustic, these which were used by the prehistoric men, the lexs or the indelba, are very numerous: simple sacred stone, heaps of sacred stones (altarets in the Alps) tree stumps, etc.

b) A model of lex or indelb a little more complex is the altar type “Suevres.” It is the kind of lex or indelb (of altar ) which generally stood in the middle of the clearings of ancient nemetons.

c) The third type of altar, that even of the classical urban temples, is the altar known as of the four Celticas. A specimen of it was found in Lyons. It consists of an altar of the Suevres type, but flanked this time with two logs or two columns, in other words all that remains of the ancient sacred grove…

The text devoted by Strabo to the sanctuary (Geography. Book IV, 3) announces that it existed there two sanctuaries, one with a altar mentioning the sixty Celtic nations, the other located in a “large sacred wood”…

“The temple that was dedicated to Caesar Augustus by all the Celts in common is situated in front of this city at the junction of the rivers. And in it is a noteworthy altar, bearing an inscription of the names of the tribes, sixty in number; and also images from these tribes, one from each tribe, and also another large….”

It is difficult to identify the first one, but it is tempting to make a connection with a rigorously contemporary monument, the ara pacis augustae, devoted to Rome in the year 13.

One of the strong reasons of this comparison is that, in Rome, the inside of the wall is decorated with garlands which impose the parallel with the marmoreal decoration of which the pieces were found close to the Lyons sanctuary.

2,08 meters high , these low-reliefs unrolled an austere decoration of garlands of oak and sacrificial axes.

This reconstruction of the altar of the festival having to proceed each year in Lugdunum, involves the identification of the altar known as “noteworthy or axiologos in Greek” with the altar of the two columns having succeeded the original trees.

Of all the buildings of the Roman Lyons, this altar is that we know best. Its image appears about it on the reverse of the bronze coins issued as from year 10 before our era, and throughout all the Julio-Claudian dynasty, by the mint in Lugdunum.

What holds especially the attention, they are the two columns, bearing the Victories, which frame the altar. If, on the coins, the columns do not appear higher than the altar , it is in order to make to the Victories enough space to represent them with dignity. But in fact, these two columns, it seems well that we can still see them today.

In the 12th century, when the basilica Saint Martin in Ainay was set up, people went to seek for that in the Croix Rousse district , the materials given up by the Romans. Among other blocks,they brought two columns which, sawed through their middle, supported the cupola of the choir. A very old tradition and that Rabelais knew, has it that they are the columns of the altar of the Four Celticas and nothing makes it possible to question it. The columns were originally 9,47 meters high and had a 1,10-meter diameter at the base. But these shafts comprised base and capital which increased the total height around 10,50 meters. Some monoliths of this size, there was not to exist many of them.

Let us restore on these bases the Victories which the coins represent in ankle-length tunics , winged, bearing with their right hand a crown, and supporting with the left one, lowered along the body, a palm pressed on their shoulder. If the imperial bronze coins make it possible to have a rather precise idea of these deities, a distinguished chance gave of it a reduced bronze model which is a work of Art. The statuette is 0,28 meter high and provides a very faithful reproduction of the original statues. We can still admire the calm , without coldness, majestic without ceasing being gracious, religious without hieratism, attitude, of this work. The statuette crossed twenty centuries without suffering too much from the ravages of time. However, some distortions deteriorated its beauty: the large wings with their long quill feathers therefore had to be rectified.

It is not intact, however. The left-hand half-opens to hold a palm which has disappeared, while the right one lost the crown and the fingers which carried it.

But this loss is largely counterbalanced by a miraculous discovery made by the highways departments in January 1961. They tried hard then to explore a mysterious system of undergrounds, that people reached formerly by wells open to small distances of the sanctuary. The release of one of these wells revealed, in the embankment, higgledy-piggledy with other antiques fragments, half of a large laurel wreath out of gilded bronze.

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On 10,50 meters high columns, there were therefore 3,50 meters high statues, which increases the unit up to 14 meters. Since people could identify the material of the columns, a syenite coming from the careers of Mons Claudianus, in Egypt. The exploiting of it was not undertaken yet at the time of Augustus, and the blocks were therefore not brought back to Lyons before the reign of Hadrian. Their presence would constitute consequently the evidence of a restoration of the primitive building, set up three lustra before our era with the breakable material, brick or soft limestone, which, at that time, was the only one at the disposal of architects.

Everything surprises in this building. That it is as familiar for us through the reverses of Roman coins. That we have, of the Victories, such a perfect figure! That an astonishing chance placed in our hands a part of the crown they wore. But what astonishes more still, it is the appearance of this unit.

FAMILY OR DOMESTIC ALTARS.

As we already have had the opportunity to notice it in several circumstances even, the altar found in the ruins of Argentomagus is a very good example of Celtic private or family altar. He was discovered in a cellar which was to have the shape of a small temple. It is composed of a round table behind which two deities or two deified ancestors are sitting. The highest statue (49 cm) has the appearance of a man sitting on a cushion, he wears a torc around his neck and a second one around his right arm, a snake is on his knees. The second statue (42 cm) has the appearance of a man sitting in an armchair, his two hands on the knees, with a purse in the left hand. The two statues, carved coarsely, were painted. As we have already signaled it, the smallest was equipped with a tunic and an ocher coat, the purse and the shoes were green painted, the other was dressed in a green tunic, wore breeches of the same color squared with red. Between the two, a standing stone symbolizing a phallus as in the case of the Irish stone of Fal or of the Hinduist linga.

To notice: the height of the two statuettes is not adapted to the height of this stone round table.

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THE CELTIC ALTAR PIECES.

Notice crossed out by Peter DeLaCrau and restored by his heirs.

Typically Celtic custom, the creche of Nantosuelta or Epona (those the word “creche” embarrass may use instead the Latin word “aedicula” or even the Japanese term “kami dana”). It is a shelter where a humble statue of Epona and of her adoptive son takes center stage crowned with flowers. As we don't know to what corresponds exactly the aedicula the goddess Nantosuelta carries at the end of a pole in many of her figurations (a funeral urn? a hive?)Its most traditional representation today is, perhaps under the influence of Christianity, a stable. The stable reminds of the role of “mare goddess” of Epona, but certain crèches of Nantosuelta remind also sometimes of the cave where our initiations take place. Horses and bulls form also full part of this Nantosuelta’s creche. On our premises this bull is called termagant or tervagan (Taruos trigaranos), he is represented with three horns on his forehead and with three cranes near him. As there is not only Epona in this creche but also often other figurines, certain specialists call it “crib of Nantosuelta.”

Let those who do not know what to make to have their own creche of Nantosuelta take as a starting point some kami-dana or butsudan, the important thing being the wood used for that: it must be SOME oak.

In Japan the kami dana is a Shintoist family altar dedicated to the spirits (kami). The equivalent of the butsudan among Buddhists. The “kami-dana” can be dedicated to family “kami” (sorei) or more “important” “kami” as the kami of the mountains…

It is possible to see in the street some “kami-dana” dedicated to a particular spirit. These altars then are often called by the name of the spirit to whom they are devoted (Ebisu-dana, Kadogami-dana, Kojin-dana, Toshitoku-dana…). These richly decorated altars are manufactured out of wood. Their positions and orientations are particularly studied. For instance, the “Kami-dana” must be turned facing the east or facing the south.

The kami dana preserve behind their double door the daily offerings of the believers. They generally consist of water, fruits, alcohol. The deposited food is to be changed daily, but can be consumed

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thereafter. When the family receives from an outsider a gift, it is possible to put this present in front of it as in offering, before using it.

The Japanese “kami-dana” has the shape of a Shinto temple which would have been miniaturized.

The “butsudan” resembles a cupboard which, in addition to the offerings, shelters the genealogical research of the family as well as a small Buddhist statue.

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In 1223, the Frenchman Francis of Assisi, whose mother was from Tarascon, works out the first living nativity … In a mountain cave , he brings together the farmers of the place who brought small ass and a russet-red ox, knelt in true straw, and which surrounds three wooden statues representing the Virgin, Joseph and the Child.

Canticle of the Sun or of the creatures.

Most high, all powerful, all-good Lord!

All praise is Yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessings.

To You, alone, Most High, do they belong.

No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures,

Especially through my lord Brother Sun,

Who brings the day and You give light through him.

And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!

Of You, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;

in the heavens You have made them bright, precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,

and clouds and storms, and all the weather,

through which You give Your creatures sustenance.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Water;

she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire,

Through whom You brighten the night.

He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth,

Who feeds us and rules us,

And produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of You;

through those who endure sickness and trial.

Happy those who endure in peace,

For by You, Most High, they will be crowned.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death,

from whose embrace no living person can escape.

Woe to those who die in mortal sin!

Happy those she finds doing Your most holy will.

The second death can do no harm to them.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks,

And serve Him with great humility.

As we have had already the opportunity to say it, the Neapolitan creches appeared in Italy between the 15th and 16th centuries, are the first modern creches.

The decoration was formed by ruins of pagan temple, and the characters of the richly decorated colored statues sometimes reached the human size. The 18th century is the golden age of the Neapolitan creches which is distinguished from all the others. It is not resulting from the intimacy of the common people, as in Provence. Its spectacular character and its scenographic richness are possible only thanks to the activity of several artists and craftsmen (architects, sculptors, painters, goldsmiths, ceramists, tailors, and so on).

The Provence creches, themselves, on the other hand, take as a starting point the local life. The craftsmen evoke typical characters of the area or village even some late ones of the family. They date

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back only the 18th century. The Christmas crib figure (“santoun,” small saints in Provence language) who represents trades of then: the miller, the grinder, the washerwomen, or others,were also added in Marseilles.

OBJECTS USED FOR THE WORSHIP.

We live in a mysterious Universe (the Bitus of the druids), where all the things and all the beings are linked between them by invisible connections. In order to really know, thoroughly, the least thing, it is necessary to know “Everything.” The events of our life, the natural phenomena are controlled by precise superhuman laws, which we can know through intuition, partially. Each fragment of the process of becoming is inexpressibly related to the mystery of the Procreation of the Bitus or Universe. For this reason, all the philosophical Schools and the spiritual paths sought to approach, as much as possible, the mysteries of the Universe as a whole.

Every energy from the invisible universe has a formal correspondence on the physical level. By applying certain specific concentration methods , we can enter in resonance with the various beneficial energies of the Bitus or Macrocosm through certain geometrical constructions (planar or three-dimensional) in order to galvanize or to amplify in our being these energies. Examples.

AMBER.

Amber is a matter which challenges the tangible reality. Of fragile appearance, it seems apart from the time, which seems to have a hold neither on its color, nor on its consistency. Whereas the mineral universe tends “to petrify” all what the past leaves as traces of life; amber itself is as a permanent paradox.

Fossil containing some fossils, it is an element of the mineral kingdom, while preserving characteristics related to the plant.

Its malleability before the era of the plastic, reserved to r him a favored place in the consideration of Mankind. Even remelted the amber preserves its physical and chemical props.

There is amber in the Maryland, and in Alaska as in Canada in the province of Saskatchewan. There is amber in China (Mukden), in Japan (Kuji), in Thailand, in Vietnam and in Malaysia. In Burma, amber can be vinous yellow , red, green, or sometimes even blue: it was formed between the Eocene and the Oligocene one. In the Arabic peninsula, amber dates back to the Cretaceous.

Its use around the former amber roads is noted as far as Italy.Amber combustion releases a particular odor which perfumes since Antiquity the temples dedicated to the gods.

For the Phoenicians and the Etruscans (funerary rites with amber), it was a symbol of eternal strength and life.

With the Romans, amber in all its forms will take various senses, but the perfume produced by its combustion was reserved for the Jupiter temple, in order to express the rise in a “nectar” reserved for the first of the gods, according to them.

As of this time the idea asserts itself that amber establishes a subtle bond between the individual soul and the universal soul, by materializing the solar, spiritual and divine attraction.

A matter like amber combining so harmoniously chemical influence and physical influence is rarely found. Its action on the wellbeing of man does that, since Prehistory, magic and therapeutic ascribe to it innumerable virtues. Its calming power comes in first. The tooth aches thus will find a beginning of appeasing, which, of course, will not avoid the curative intervention of the dentist if necessary, but which will make the life nevertheless easier.

Without going so far as to make it a panacea, one can say that the wearing of amber, generally, brings to the organism a real preventive wellbeing, so much on the nervous level than on the biological level.

Collars for a small child.

When an infant cuts one’s teeth, his jaws are the object of intense pains which disturb his life. An amber collar thus will calm his growing pains and will calm his nerves of a child confronted with an unknown stress. Beyond the calming effect, the wearing of this collar will balance the newborn, thus supporting his adaptation to the life he begins. N.B. In Germany and Switzerland, it is still proposed in pharmacy.

Collars for an adult.

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Considering its lightness, you feel little the presence of an amber collar. If the women rattier themselves in collars without complex, current manners do not authorize too much the men to the same thing.

Let us remember therefore while finishing this short report that the first collars sported by the human beings were intended to the warriors.

So, let those who hesitate to wear an amber collar have no complex. Let they finally dare to wear an amber collar, they will not regret it. By slipping it under their shirt, the men too can also, therefore, very discreetly, to profit from its benefits.

The tumultuous life of our time causes stress and anguishes. It was necessary to await for the recent discoveries of the electron physics to begin to understand how amber generates electricity. Amber is an ideal answer to this kind of discomfort.

THE TORC or buffer collar.

A regulator of the bio-electromagnetic balance and of the biological rhythm, the torc had as the property to discharge the body with its static electricity and with the ions harmful to the good work of organs. Manufactured by hand with polarized metals, it channeled the alpha and beta waves which control the nervous system and the circulatory system. This buffer collar therefore had beneficial effects on the organism, in particular with regard to the nervous excitation and the joint pains.

The bronze dodecahedrons. The dodecahedron is a three dimensions geometrical figure, that is to say a regular polyhedron with twelve equal pentagonal faces. The object in question is hollow and openwork. Each face is bored with a circular opening of variable size (0,9 cm to 2,6 cm). Ten openings are surrounded by concentric circles. The two larger openings, placed on two opposed faces, show no trace of decoration.

If the dodecahedron is not a rare object, it is not current either, from where its interest.

The function of the dodecahedron intrigued generations of archeologists. Decorative elements, play, or gauge, were particularly evoked. The most trivial assumption is that they could be objects intended to support torches. The assumption was also put forth that it could be an object used for pertaining to worship purposes. Some people are tempted to interpret it today as being an instrument in relation with astronomy. The twelve faces would represent the twelve months of the year, the thirty edges the days of the month. According to a recent interpretation, the dodecahedron would make it possible to determine a fork of dates in relation with the vernal and autumn equinoxes.

The cross of Suqellus also known as labarum. Simple X representing the spokes of a sun wheel. The striking god (Suqellus) is always represented in the aspect of a mature man , bearded, holding in a hand a mallet which evokes the world of the dead , and in the other a symbol of fertility, olla or cauldron; he often wears a suit decorated with astral symbols (some kinds of cross of St. Andrew or St. Patrick) and he is accompanied by a dog. Christian recovery: the cross known as of St. Patrick or St. Andrew in Scotland precisely.

The ROUELLE (old French roelle roel = caster or small wheel). A sun wheel. The Celtic equivalent of the hammer of Thor among the Germanic people. We do not know why the yellow star of the Jews in the Middle Ages was called "rouelle" because the traditional explanation makes it rather an allusion to the pseudo thirty pieces of Judas.

Contrary to many assertions, the sun wheel is not an exclusively sun symbol. It is above all a symbol of the World where the Center is spread until the periphery. The sun wheel forms a symbol of the World in its Unity, its Principle (center) and its manifestation (cosmic wheel). Indeed, the Principle being Totality, Everything emanates from it and everything goes back into it. The origin of this druidic “yantra (or mandala in Buddhism)” is badly known. It would seem that the division of a geometrical figure or of a territory in four is largely universal in the representation of the “divine one” and, more largely, of harmony. The sun wheels are spiritual reproductions of the order in the world and people often link them in this sense with the four cardinal points. Like in the case of the labyrinth with which the specialists sometimes noted a certain relationship, it is the center of the axes of the sun wheel which always visually attracts.

What is certain, it that such a sacred quadripartition proves to be known throughout antiquity as the constitution (tetrarchy) of the Galatian territory , described by the Greeks, proves it. Strabo, Geography XII, 5,1: “Such, then, was the constitution of Galatia long ago … The Council of the twelve Tetrarchs consisted of three hundred men, who assembled at Drunemeton, as it was called…”

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According to the Irish tradition; the god (or the goddess, even the fairy) of science, was combined with the west, the god (or the goddess) of war was combined with the north, the god (or the goddess, or the fairy) of prosperity with the east, the god (or the goddess, the fairy if it is preferred) of music,with the south; the sovereignty of the four being located at the center (see the division of Ireland in five provinces evoked by Fintan in the Irish legend entitled: the settling of the manor of Tara).

In the Mahayoga of the Buddhist Vajrayana, such a yantra (or mandala) also represents a place of divine dwelling, a perfect field of deities in the waking state, or Buddhas. The main deity is in the center of the yantra (or mandala), surrounded or not by a procession of other deities. Each aspect of the divine residence and of the deities dwelling there is highly symbolic : it is designed to develop in us the qualities necessary to reach the other world.

The sun wheel, or how to find the divinity in oneself, how to be in harmony with oneself and with one’s objective. The center of the sun wheel is the favored place, the axis of the mental and physical universes where the dagolitus can realize his life. Everything revolves around this center, because the sun wheel is the wheel of life, an image of the Bitus or universe emerging at every moment from the unique center. It is the same on high and in below, outside and inside.

The One, center of the sun wheel, escape every intellectual representation. It is living in each one of us, but neither the will nor the intellect can make us become aware of it. Every circle is composed of a center and a periphery. The faculty to understand disappears in the center of the sun wheel; out of the center, the things become understandable. Whereas the circumference is perceptible by the senses and is defined in time and space, the middle, the center remains a, timeless, spaceless, mystery, escaping every representation. Every form derives from the point, but the point itself has no form, the point is without dimensions.

In the druidism, this mysterious middle represents the beginning and the end of all that is. The central point is therefore the essence of every sun wheel, in it are reconciled the opposites, in it the opposites are abolished.

The universe is a sun wheel, as well as the eye, the crystal of snow, the brain, the test or the envelope of the sea urchins; and finally let us not forget that our body, just like the wheel, is itself also a sun wheel (when it spreads out its limbs).

Kind of sacred circle in miniature, this figuration reflects the concentric structure of the universe and is used as support for the meditation or the prayer. The sun wheel thus leads the dagolitos or believer on the blooming way. The sun wheel is used as support for the one who wants to think out, it is a representation of our basic nature.

The four or six or eight spokes rouelle (wheel).

The sun wheel is especially widespread in the shape with four, six ,or eight spokes, particularly in the Hindu and Celtic traditions. One of the oldest sun wheels with eight spokes and with a triple square or more precisely a triple circle (smallest representing the center or hub) was found engraved in the stone of a cave located not far from Val Camonica in North Italy.

The 4 (or 8) spoke sun wheel represents the development of the Principle in the plane of the cardinal (and intermediaries) points.

The six-spoke wheel corresponds to the planar representation of the development of this Principle in the space located by the four directions of the horizontal plane (cardinal points) and the two directions of the vertical axis (nadir, zenith)

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The wheel of Destiny or Tarabara is witnessed in a certain number of Breton churches or chapels. Its symbolism is that of the human evolution and involution, at the same time as the expression of the chance.

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The triple square. In Suevres in France about 1800, they discovered close to the church Saint-Lubin, a stone block 1 meter 50 X 0,95 m, coarsely squared, and of which a leveled face had a strange engraving; three encased ones in another, squares, crossed by a vertical axis and a horizontal axis in their middles.

There is also a triple square engraved on the figurine of Venus (at the height of her knees) discovered in 1887 in Fegreac with behind the following trademark: “REXTVGENOS SVLLIAS AVVOT.” To note: the lady wore a bra.

The triskelion also spelled triskell, triskill (from the Greek “triskeles” which means “with three legs”) is a symbol representing three human legs ( first type triskelion matching the figure known as triquetra,

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from Latin triquetrus = triangular); or three intersected spirals (second type triskelion); or any other symbol with three protuberances evoking the symmetry of a cyclic group. It is the Celtic symbol par excellence. It represents three spirals which diverge starting from the same central point. Its first representations go back to the time of La Tene (second Iron Age, 5th – 2nd century before our era). It is particularly present on the flag of the Isle of Man.

Many meanings were put forward without any can be favored.

Its representation can be dextrorotatory, in this case it is a positive and beneficial symbol; if it is levorotatory, the interpretation is contrary.

Some high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) consider nevertheless that its orientation has no importance.

The magic cauldron. Symbolic representation of the cosmic and bubbling cauldron which alternatively brings the world to the existence and destroys it: Pariollon.

The Grail. See above.

The skull cup. “There was a vast forest called by the Boii, Litana, and through this the consul was to conduct his army. The Celts cut through the trees on both sides of the road in such a way that they remained standing as long as they were undisturbed, but a slight pressure would make them fall. It was there that Postumius fell whilst fighting most desperately to avoid capture. The Boii stripped the body of its spoils and cut off the head, and bore them in triumph to the most sacred of their temples. According to their custom, they cleaned out the skull and covered the scalp with beaten gold; it was then used as a vessel for drink offerings and also as a drinking cup for the priest and ministers of the temple” (Livy. Roman history, XXIII).

The whole skull or sacred heafod.

In Welsh mythology, Bran the Blessed (a nickname, of course, late and due to Christian influence) organizes a military raid against an Irish king, who ends in a general massacre. The Welshmen win the war, but only seven of them survive the battle. Bran himself dies because of a wound to his foot and before dying orders that his head is cut then buried in London. During the 87 years which follow, the seven survivors will have a long discussion with the head of Bran which will continue to speak.

N.B. If Bran is presented to us in the mabinogi of Branwen as a human but completely exceptional hero, other legends make him a god of the Next World, at the same time soothsayer, musician and warrior.

As we have had many times the opportunity to notice it, the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) believed therefore that the soul/mind and consequently the life ultimately, laid in the head, even in the brain, and not in the area of the heart, like it is still believed generally today. From there the importance of the rites and practices which surrounded the head in their tradition, and all the legends concerning cephalophorous saints.

This word indicates a whole category of characters who, having been beheaded ,get back on their feet, take their head between their hands, and setoff to reach the place where they wish to be buried.

It is a frequent topic in the Christian hagiography, and St. Denis, the patron saint of Paris, is the most famous example. Beheaded on the hill of Montmartre, he went to the current site of Saint-Denis to be buried there. We can also mention Saint Piatus in Belgium, saint Ceraunus (Paris), saint Caraunus (Chartres), Saint Libaria (Grand), some legends which develop, beyond some variants, according to a rather often recurring pattern.

The saint, for example, tends to cross a river, to pass on the other side of the water, before climbing a slope or reaching a high place (unless he comes from there). He washes there readily his head in a fountain, and poses it on a stone which remains marked with its blood. There a female character possibly undertakes to give him the last offices. The place, the stone and the fountain, because of that become sanctified , therefore become supports of devotions (unless, as it is probable, that the legend reports a posteriori a pre-Christian worship).

The fossil sea urchin. The fossil sea urchin comes within the general symbolism of the world egg. Pliny besides calls it ovum anguinum, snake egg, and he links it directly with the druidic doctrines, which he compares with superstitions, of course.

“There is another kind of egg, held in high renown by the people of the Celtic provinces on the Continent, but totally omitted by the Greek writers. In summer time, numberless snakes rolled up on themselves and become artificially entwined together, from the viscous slime which exudes from their

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mouths, and from the foam secreted by them it results a ball: the name given to it is "snake’s egg." The druids tell us that the serpents eject these eggs into the air by their hissing, and that a person must be ready to catch them in a cloak, so as not to let them touch the ground; they also say that he must instantly take to flight on horseback, as the serpents will be sure to pursue him, until some intervening river has placed a barrier between them. The test of its genuineness, they say, is its floating on water, even though it is set in gold. But, as it is the way with magicians to be dexterous and cunning in casting a veil about their frauds, they pretend that these eggs can only be taken on a certain day of the moon; as though, indeed, it depended entirely upon the human will to make the moon and the serpents accord as to the moment of this operation.

I myself, however, have seen one of these eggs: it was round, and about as large as an apple of moderate size; the shell of it was formed of a cartilaginous substance, and it was surrounded with numerous cupules, as it were, resembling those upon the arms of the polypus: it is held in high estimation among the druids. The possession of it is marvelously vaunted as ensuring success in law suits, and a favorable reception with princes; a notion which has been so far belied that a Roman of equestrian rank, a native of the territory of the Vocontii, who, during a trial, had one of these eggs in his bosom *, was slain by the god Claudius, and for no other reason, that I know of, but because he was in possession of it” (Hist. Nat. 29,52-54).

N.B. New druidism. The wearing of these various amulets (fossil sea urchin or others ) is unadvised WITHOUT THE REQUIRED MIND SET, WITHOUT THE INNER MIND SETS WHICH ARE NECESSARY, because that becomes then a vulgar superstition. And this deviation of the religious feeling and of the practices can affect the worship that we celebrate in the honor of the gods, when fear and ignorance replace confidence and science.

The stone, of Fal, Turoe (of Killycluggin) of Castlestrange, or the Crom Cruach, Crom Cruaich, etc. represents the Universe. The ground in which this stone is planted, the lausinca (the female body) which surrounds it, represents the manifested nature, the universal energy. The stone of Fal (of Turoe-Killycluggin, Castlestrange, and so on) is supposed to come from one of the islands located in the north of the World, Thule (Falias in Gaelic language). With regard to the stone of Fal, the hesus Cuchulainn will break it with a blow of his sword, because it will not roar under him when he puts his foot on it in order to become king of Ireland.

Corresponds to the perilous seat of the Round Table instituted by Arthur. The best knights appear in it side by side in perfect equality with the king. Only a seat is prohibited there, which remains empty as long as the “good knight,” perfectly pure, the one who is intended to conclude the search for the grail, will not have come to occupy it. All those who settle there unduly are struck down instantaneously and disappear in the depths of the ground.

Corresponds to the linga or lingam of the Hindu tradition. This phallic symbol representing the original creative principle, constitutes a reminder of the former prehistoric worships of fruitfulness. Its carved image proves, in its stylization, very far away from nature. The lingam resembles in fact a section of column, and sometimes reminds of the Mediterranean omphalos symbol.

In Ireland, this kind of stone was revered as a symbol of the procreation power of nature. However, it was not the phallus in itself which was adored, but the one the phallus of whom was the sign.

The stone, of Fal, of Turoe (of Killycluggin) of Castlestrange, or Crom Cruach (Crom Cruaich), sometimes appears as emerging from the rhombus symbol of female energy as we said it, because nature cannot create alone. The stone of Fal, Turoe-Killycluggin or Castlestrange, therefore represents the continuous energy of the life and we can detect in it the trace of a time when body and sexuality did not represent the essential evil from which it was necessary to get rid at all costs. Let us repeat it once again because repetere = ars docendi; we tend to remember only the phallic aspect of it and to ignore the notion of destiny – witnessed by many legends - which is inherent to it. People also neglect its relationship with the cosmic tree or pillar, which connected the earth to the heaven, while exceeding infinitely the one and the other. But that it seems to us we have already said it.

The symbol of the stone of Phal is always composed of three parts.

The lowest part enclosed by the lausinca is made of the earth of the country.

The second part is rhombus shaped (a sometimes special rhombus known as golden rhombus) and holds back this earth a little like a gigantic flowerpot.

The third part is the menhir or the standing stone itself.

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It is always rough, unpolished, and is not worked, but can sometimes be engraved bottom to top, at least in Ireland , with an inscription in oghamic runes.

Many legends are attached to it (it appoints the kings or those who have to reign, it can roar or scream, etc. Now, in short, see all what people could write in connection with the Stone of Scone in Great Britain or the idol of Crom Cruaich in Ireland).

In the Irish legend of the colloquy of the Ancients (Acallam Na senorach), as we have had already the opportunity to mention it above, the stone of Fal or Scone is evoked as follows.

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Models of inscriptions, to engrave on the pertaining to worship objects in order to pay homage to the generous givers (same thing as for the worship places, see higher).

Model No.1.

a)……… + b) dede bratoude c).

Model No. 2

a)………. + b) dede bratoude decantena c).

a) Name of the giver.

b) Name of the father (or the mother) of the giver.

c) Name of the concerned deity if possible in the dative.

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LAY CLOTHING.

(Ideas or suggestions for the ambacts or the assistants, in short, what the Christians call deacons)

Appearance of ancient Celts.

The Celt gave to his hair, which was generally… a fiery-red color, either by washing them with lime water, or by frequently coating them with a caustic pomade, made up of tallow and of certain ashes [soap]. He had very long hair, sometimes hanging loosely over his shoulders , sometimes raised then bound in a tuft on the top of his head. The common man let his beard grow; the noble ones shaved their face, except for the upper lip, where they maintained a thick mustache. Several of their tribes dyed their bodies with a bluish substance; some were tattooed.

The beer barm which was used as leaven for the bread was also considered as excellent cosmetics, and the Celtic ladies frequently washed their face with them, in order to maintain the freshness of their complexion.

To have a beautiful military dress, to preserve oneself a long time fit and nimble, was not only one point of honor for the individuals, but also a duty towards one’s tribe. Young people therefore went regularly to measure their waist with a belt left in the house of the political leader of each village, and those who exceeded the official stoutness, severely reprimanded as idlers and intemperate, were punished with a serious fine.

In the beginning, the manner of getting dressed of our forefathers was as simple, as wild, as their way of life. During the summer months , they were almost naked; on winter, they got dressed with the skins of the wild beasts. Such was, like in all the countries, the first time of our clothing fashion.

Second time. The clothing communal to all the tribes was at the same time simple and convenient, and was composed almost universally of breeches or pants, a tunic and a sagum.

The principal piece of the male costume is therefore a pair of long johns, the breeches (bracae). It was big, hanging loose and with multiple folds or narrow and tight. It was generally ankle length,and was attached above the foot.

Over the breeches, man wears a tunic or a shirt put on by his head. It is often held up by a belt which makes it possible to shorten its length by making it puffing out around his waist. Very often, this clothing is supplemented by a scarf.

Over this clothing, the Celts wore a striped sagum (sagum virgatum), like the tunic, and decorated with flowers, discs, varied ornaments, figures of any species, stripes of purple color, silver and gold embroideries. It was a kind of opened cape, with or without sleeves, covering the back and the shoulders, and fastened under the chin with a metal hook. People also used in this case a coarse wool blanket , called, linna or lenna.

Poorest replaced the sagum by a wild beast or sheep hide. The reindeer, animal more widespread in Europe formerly than it is it nowadays, gave its name to the clothing that made with its hide by the peoples living in the Northern regions, and this name was extended to similar clothing made with the hide of other animals. The reno was a coat furnished with thick hairs, rainproof, which covered the shoulders and at front fell to the middle of the belly. Specialists tried to recognize it, but without sufficient evidence, among the costumes of the Barbarians represented on the columns of Trajan and Marcus-Aurelius. The Romans adopted it as overcoat against the bad weather.

The Celts covered their head with a hood of fabric or hair, ancestor of the beret. The cucullus was a hood which made it possible to be protected from wind and rain, and which was a apart of many clothing. It was worn originally by children and farmers.

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The Atrebates had coats called cucullus or bardocucullus, with a capuche or hood , travel and winter clothing, of which the use became later general in Italy, according to this line of verse by Martial: Gallia Santonico vestit te bardocuculle.

This cowl was different from what it became, because the cowl designated quickly the clothing as a whole, cape plus hood. It formed then on the chest like a big band. The side of behind was divided into two long strips which you could roll up around your belt. Saint Jerome and Cassian speak about the cucullus as belonging to the monastic habit.

The caracalla was a kind of hooded tunic, formed of several fabric strips sewed together. The caracalla, such as the Celts wore it, short and loose, so as not to obstruct either the movements of the body nor the walk, was well appropriate for the military life.

In order to accommodate it for civil uses, Antonin had it made wide and dragging. During a few days' trip to Rome in 213, to celebrate games and distribute food or money to the praetorians and the people, he included in his gifts a free distribution of caracallas. Everyone wanted to try on these new tunics, which were called Antoninian. From the city, the fashion spread to the provinces, and the Antoninian became part of everyday life. A simple and inexpensive garment, it later served as a model for the costume of the Christian cenobitic monks in the Egyptian Theban desert. In private conversations and secret correspondence, the son of Severus was called Caracallus or Caracalla. History itself, in spite of its seriousness, consecrated this nickname.

The Greeks and the Romans had a series of outer garments, often both military and civilian, which, although they had different names, had a great analogy between them: The lacerne was a thick, sleeveless garment, usually with a hood, which was worn over the tunic to protect against rain or cold.

In spite of the confusions which we have just noted, the texts of the authors make it possible to establish differences between these clothing; but these differences are rarely marked enough so that we can recognize them with certainty on the figurative monuments. Among the Romans, the lacerna was initially a military coat that the soldier carried over his armor; at the origin, it was even exclusively military. Lacerna, or a similar garment, is found on the shoulders of many of the barbarian warriors depicted in the ancient bas-reliefs....

The figures above allow us to understand, at first glance, how practical this military coat was, lending itself, during the action, to all the movements and attitudes of the fighter whose arm and shoulders remained completely free. At rest, the lacerna, instead of being thrown on the back or on the shoulder, fell forward on the chest, which it defended from the cold, as well as the back and the shoulders; like the civil lacerna, it could be equipped with a hood [CUCULLUS] which protected the soldier from the rain. From the military costume, the lacerna passed into the civil costume of the Romans at a time that is difficult to specify. The use was not yet admitted at the time of Cicero..... it is around this period and at the beginning of the Empire that we see the use of lacerna becoming generalized and being subjected to regulatory attempts. For civilians, as for the military, lacerna was an overcoat. A winter coat, it was dark in color, made of thick wool, intended to guarantee cold and rain, and, for this purpose, equipped with an adherent or mobile hood [cucullus]. Like our modern overcoats, lacerna was not kept in circumstances that required ceremonial dress.

Shoes.

The caliga (Latin caliga) was an ankle boot made up of a hobnailed leather sole. It was laced very high and was opened at the front. The top was made of a leather part in thin straps which left the toes free, but surrounded the ankle and the foot in a leather net. They are especially the farmers and the soldiers who wore these robust and well ventilated half-boots. Druids also perhaps . Later the monks.

Poorest generally walked barefoot. However, in winter and in rainy weather, then they put shoes of which the top was out of leather and the sole out of wooden, that our forefathers had invented apparently, and that for this reason consequently people called gallicae, what we translated by clogs.

Outfits of the women.

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The Celtic women were tall, beautiful and strong, those of the rich class wore red blusher. Their costume was composed of a loose and folded tunic, without sleeves or with narrow and long sleeves, girded above the hips, leaving the top of their chest uncovered, and falling down to the feet; the rich persons decorated it with stripes of purple and gold.

Over this tunic, at the waist of which they attached an apron-shaped piece of cloth , they put on, in winter mainly, coats similar to these of the men, and which were fastened on the shoulder, or some kinds of short capes long enough to hide the arms as well as the hands, and not very different from the short cape of the bishops.

A very simple square headdress was posed on their hair, which was separate on the face, and attached behind. It is at least the hairstyle the sculptors gave to the goddess or fairy Nehalennia. Some women had a long veil or shawl which did not hide the face, but only part of the forehead and behind the head, from where it came back to cover the shoulders and the chest. The folds it formed were perfectly arranged with the braids of the hair and the draperies of the coat.

In Bonn in Germany, two of the matronae aufaniae have a strange hairstyle resembling a big straw hat.

If the Celts borrowed their dressing from the Romans after the conquest, the Italian people had adopted, a long time before, the majority of clothing manufactured in their country: the linna or lenna (cover), the sagum, the bardocucullus. It was the same thing under the reign of the emperors. The Celtic fashions penetrated then into the Roman armies, and there were legion’s leaders dressed like Indutiomarus or Ambiorix. During his stay beyond the Alps, the emperor Antoninus, son and successor of Severus (211), was seized by a passion for a clothing of the country, called caracalla. Not only did he adopt it for his personal use, but he also wanted to equip with it the common people of Rome.

To adapt it to civilian uses , Antoninus made it manufactured loose and trailing. During a few days’ travel in Rome in 213, in order to celebrate games there and to distribute supplies or money to the praetorians and to the people, he made a free distribution of caracallae included in his gifts. Everyone wanted to test these new tunics that they called antoninian. From the town the fashion reached the provinces, and the antoninian was introduced into the usual practice. Simple and inexpensive clothing, it was used later as a model for the habit of the Christian cenobitic monks in the Theban Egyptian desert. In the talks of the intimacy, in the secret correspondences, people called the son of Severus only Caracallus or Caracalla. The very History , in spite of its seriousness, sanctioned this burlesque nickname, which remained definitively.

The legionaries also adopted the caliga (the emperor Caligula owes to it his nickname) and the Roman shoemakers worked out a model of it for women called caligae muliebres, similar to the caliga of men, but without the nails.

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PRIESTLY VESTMENTS.

The druid quite simply clothed with a white dress is a simplistic image on which it is hardly need to stay, because the reality was, of course, more complex than this silliness. The only reliable accounts on the matter come to us from Ireland.

Forbuis Droma Damhghaire (the siege of Druim Damhghaire).

“It was then that a comrade of his arrived,Gadhra, from Droim mhic Chrianai. He was the son of the sister of Banbhuana, the daughter of Deargdhualach. It was for the purpose of helping and assisting Mogh Roith that he had come. On that day, his appearance was beautiful as he presented himself to Mogh Roith and the men of Munster….he wore a gray-brown mantle around him, hung about with talons, bones and horns. A buck goat and a ram followed him about and all who saw him in this guise were seized with fear and trembling".

All that made think strongly of the clothes of Merlin according to certain texts. This coat hung about with bones and horns looks rather shaman indeed.

Imacallam in da thuarad (the dialog of the two sages).

Description of the ceremonial dress of the primate of the druids in Ulster: FERCHERTNE.

“Three were the colors of the robe, to wit, a covering of bright bird's feathers in the middle: a showery speckling of white bronze (findruine) on the lower half outside, and a golden color on the upper half”.

White bronze is the traditional Irish name of electrum.

The color of the birds is not stated , but it could be, in spite of the inaccuracy of the text precisely, it is a dress of feathers of birds of the next world, in other words, of swans. And this detail could give an account of a part of the legend of Merlin in the Arthurian stories. The color of the dress would be then made up of two tones of the white combined with the solar color of gold.

Clothing of the druids of the preferred son of Ailill and Medb in the story entitled “the wedding of Maine Morgor” (Irische Text. Ernst Windisch).

Three druids went in front of them, and they having bands of silver on their heads, and speckled cloaks on them, and carrying shields of bronze with ornaments of red copper.

Concerning the silver bands around their head , see the example of the sons of Tuireann.

“They put the velede’s tie (ceangal fileadh) on their hair” (the fate of the children of Tuireann. Oidhe Chloinne Tuireann. § 47).

Also let us note the case of the hesus Cuchulain in the wooing of Aemer.

“He had a ring of bronze on his brow which prevents his hair from falling over his face. Patins of gold on both sides of the back of his head to confine his hair. A shoulder mantle with sleeves about him, with openings at his two elbows. A rod of red gold in his hand with which he keeps the horses in order. Meanwhile Cuchulaind had come to the place where the maidens were. And he wished a blessing to them. Aemer lifted up her lovely fair face and said…..”

In connection with the carrying of a shield , see the example of the Aeduan druid Divitiacus.

“The chief of the Aedui came to the Senate, informed it of the situation, and when invited to sit with it, claimed less for himself than was conceded and gave his whole speech leaning on his shield (scuto innixus)” (Speech of thanks to Constantine).

See also the dress of the primate of Ulster, Cathbad (at the time of his arrival to Slemain Midhe), i.e., a blue and purple cloak (a sagum out of tartan therefore); held on his chest by a leaf-shaped pin decorated with gold interlacing and yellow sandals. A long sword on his shoulder.

The dress of the high druid of the Ulaid, Sencha, in the story of the cattle raid of Cooley (at the time of his arrival to Slemain Midhe): i.e., a loose light gray cloak held on his chest by a white bronze pin similar to a leaf (a sagum) with a white hooded shirt under.

The dress of the high velede of the Ulaid , Ameirgin in the text of the legend of the cattle raid of Cooley (at the time of his arrival to Slemain Midhe): i.e., a made of thousand pieces of fabrics, different and of all colors,cape (a sagum) over a blue shirt with braids and beautiful red-gold buttons, decorated with white-bronze wires well interlaced. The shield which he carried then was decorated with five gold circles.

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The dress of another great velede of the Ulaid, Ferchertne (at the time of his arrival to Slemain Midé): i.e., a dark blue cape, gold wire braided; held on his chest by a gold pin (a sagum) with a silk shirt. Lambskin sandals as shoes and in his right hand a sparkling dirk of which the ivory handle was decorated with gold rings.

Or that of his two companions: some red capes held on their chest by a silver fibula, purple sandals and dagger with white handle.

For the rest , they had neither lance nor sword, because it was their assistants who carried them.

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N.B. According to what Pliny reports in connection with the snake’s egg (Hist. Nat. XXX, 52: in fact, a fossil sea urchin), it was to have one fixed on the sagum or the coats of all these druids. “They tell us that the serpents eject these eggs into the air by their hissing, and that a person must be ready to catch them in a cloak, so as not to let them touch the ground.”

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The Irish monks, who succeeded the druids, were often dressed in a white tunic and in a cowl (hooded clothing) in coarse wool fabric.

Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia as for the habit.

“Suitable clothing shall be given to all monks,dependent on the climate. In cold regions more will be required than in warm. All this will be decided by the abbot. However, in temperate regions, we believe that each monk will make do with a cowl [cucullus] and tunic [tunica], heavy for winter, light (or worn) for summer. He should also have a scapular [scapulare] for labor and caliges [caligae] for the feet. Monks shall not complain of the color or texture of their clothing. It shall be whatever is available in the surrounding countryside or whatever is cheapest. The abbot shall see to fit so that the clothes are not too short but properly sized to the wearer. When new clothes are handed out, the monks shall turn in their old ones. These will be stored in the wardrobe for the poor. Each monk needs only two each of tunics and cowls, so he will be prepared for night wear and washing. Anything else is superfluous and should be banished. Shoes and other garments will also be returned when replaced. Those who must travel will be given long johns [femoralia= breeches]. Afterwards these are to be washed and returned. On these trips they should have better quality cowls and tunics than usual; these are to be returned after use .”

What became with the 5th council held in Aachen in 817.

Alioquin hoc omnino provideat , ut camisias duas et tunicas duas et cucullas duas et cappas duas unusquisque monachorum habeat , quibus vero necesse est , addatur et tertia ; et pedules quatuor paria et femoralia duo paria , roccum unum , pellicias usque ad talos duas , fasciolas duas , quibus autem necesse est itineris causa , alias duas ; manicas quas vulgo wantos appellamus in aestate , et in hieme vero muffulas vervicinas ; calciamenta diurna paria duo , subtalares per noctem in aestate duas , in hieme vero soccos ; saponem sufficienter et uncturam.

What gives us (translation with reservations my 7 years of Latin are a long way off).

Two shirts, two tunics, two cucullus, two copes, three if necessary, four pairs of stockings, two pairs of breeches, a rochet, two heel-length fur-lined coats, two pairs of puttees, two other pairs in case of travel, a pair of gloves for summer as one of mittens for winter, two pairs of shoes for the day, two pairs of thongs to get up during the night in summer, two pairs of slippers for the same use in winter, some soap in sufficient quantity as well as ointment.”

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N.B. As already noticed in addition, a certain number of rituals were to be carried out bare feet, in order to make it possible the celebrating person to remain in touch with the mother earth . Particularly at the time of certain pilgrimages, but also at the time of the ceremonies of consolamentum carried

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out by the vate, or during the preparation of the body of the late one. When you surprised on the night by a phantom or a ghost, it was necessary, in Brittany, to take off one’s shoes quickly, in order to be “man from head to toe”; the Catholic priests being responsible for warding off ghosts were to also act bare feet to be “man from head to toe.” Nowadays it is only advised to have nothing synthetic around one’s feet, only natural things (leather, wood, wool…).

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THE CELTIC TONSURE.

Which is the origin of the Celtic tonsure? It is probably of insular invention. The druids of Ireland wore a tonsure indeed. According to a manuscript of the Collectio canonum Hibernensis, they mowed even the former part of their head “de aure ad aurem,” except for a hair tuft they let grow on their forehead. And this tonsure was perhaps not an exclusive privilege of the high-knowers of the druidiaction. It was to exist also in other classes of the former Celtic society: the warriors of the Breton king of Vanes Waroch II for example, were mowed. According to Gregory of Tours (the queen Fredegund sends him Saxons from Bayeux after having made their hair cut in the way of the Bretons).

Patrick’s efforts were unable to make the “Roman” tonsure prevail. It is therefore probably to some national tradition * that must be attached the tonsure which distinguished the Christian clergy of the islands. The Bretons come in Armorica kept the use of the insular tonsure. In Landevennec, it remained in force until 818; date to which Louis the pious, following his victory over Morvan in Priziac, enjoined the abbot Matmonoch to substitute to the insular monastic customs the rule of St Benedict , and to the Celtic tonsure the Roman corona.

On the shape of this Celtic tonsure, two opinions emerged among the modern ones. The ones claim that the front part of the head, in front of a line “going from one ear to another,” was completely close-cropped, while in the back of this line the hair was preserved abundant. According to other authors, the Celtic clergy was well long-haired behind, but the frontal part was not completely bald, a half-crown of hair, “going from one ear to another,” grew above the forehead.

* These tonsures were to fit within the framework of a vaster religious rite. An account of the battle of Ticinus shows us a Celtic chief indeed devoting his hair to Mars Gradivus (Silius Italicus. Punica. IV. 201).

The cut hair was to be dedicated to certain gods, by the Celtic warriors, but also by the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) from this class.

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APPENDIX No. 1.

RETURN ON THE KEY TIME OF EVERY DRUIDIC SERVICE: THE BANQUET OF COMMENSALITY WITH THE GODS.

As we have had already the opportunity to say it, but repetere = ars docendi, to drink and eat are acts so charged with sense and emotion that they are often related to events having nothing to do with the need to feed oneself. The rites around the meal therefore have a meaning much major than it is generally believed. A certain vision of the existence is handed down there, a certain sense of the sacredness can also be felt in this sharing. The human “feeding” not only includes bodily food, but also the food of the mind. It is perhaps why nutrition was surrounded by rituals and mysteries. The idea of food underlies the idea of sacrifice. The sacrifices, communions, and festivals , from time immemorial, suggested the interdependence of human beings , gods and nature. The meal is besides sometimes an opportunity of prayer, not only of thanks giving , but as a communion rite.

To eat therefore proves one of the basic sources of the social structure. The importance attached to all what concerns food is such that it is not astonishing that food is one of the dominating elements of cohesion of a society. Which is the constituted structure of sociability: association, brotherhood, learned society or of thought, which does not express or does not strengthen the bonds linking its members by a regular user-friendliness, whatever is the periodicity, would be only the annual banquet? The convivial pleasure, by its festive and cordial nature, cements the cohesion of the group, consolidates the relations which link the members of a structure, which is thought as a body.

This cohesion of the group reassures its members by taking up a duty of protection. Indeed, the rituals around food ensure permanency, attenuate tensions, clear up mistrust, make easier the exchanges, help to work or control the daily life as the human relations.

Thus the intergenerational handing down of the values and customs of a society is guaranteed, in a context where individualities develop, where the obligations with respect to the relationship are formed, where the habits of the group are reinforced. Whereas the socialization integrates the individual and his group in a place, the intergenerational handing down inserts him in time, the past, the present and the future. The rituals carry on from a generation to the other, while changing according to the time and the place where they are practiced. Permanency is ensured, but the sclerosis avoided, by actualization in a given time and a place.

Through the meal, a group always communicates something in connection with itself: its philosophy of life, its vision of the community, its attitude towards the others… For example, to toast in order to celebrate a success or to emphasize a particular event, conveys several information; in addition to the simple pleasure of raising one’s glass, to clink glasses with the other people present, to tell an anecdote about the celebrated person, to taste drink served and the cocktail snacks which go with it. A certain vision of the sense of the life is thus shared. The way in which we treat the food and the way in which we consume it are expressions of our purposes or of our values. Just like the language, the meal is a means by which, in all its ambiguity, the system of relations of the group is expressed, through the codes in use. The dietary habits are a sign of the ethnic, religious and community membership, as well as of the social status, and persist many years after the immigration in a new culture. A long time after clothing, language and behavior, were assimilated , the old dietary habits constitute the ultimate vestiges of the former culture.

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For the record.

The druid is the representative of the god: he guarantees the validity of the sacrifice but it is generally not he who immolates and cuts up the beast. If it is a priestess who officiates, she never immolates the animal herself: she uses the services of a vate for this.

After an animal is killed and butchered, the fat-coated skin and bones are burned with herbs on the altar of the gods. Among the meats, the best pieces (such as the liver and the kidneys) are grilled on spits and placed on the sacred tables: these are the portions reserved for the staff in the sanctuary (fanum etc.) and direct participants in the sacrifice who consume them on the spot, during sacred

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meals in the fanum outbuildings. The other meats are boiled in a large cauldron and then distributed or sold on the markets.

The current drinks were ale and mead. But when the king of a province or county (average area of a county at the time I don't know but in Nova Scotia today it is 3000 km2 or 4000 km2) was rich enough, or when there was there a high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) or an enough powerful fairy to perform the miracle (of which we know few examples); people drank wine, luxury food products, invaluable and rare in Ireland. King Muirchertach will experiment it a few days before his death.

Galatian Bread receipt. Five deciliters of whole-wheat corn flour, 2 deciliters of ebullient water, 25 grams of fresh (beer) yeast , 1 table spoon of cooking salt, 1 table spoon of honey, 6 deciliters of sieved corn flour , 2 deciliters of tepid water. In a large bowl, to pour ebullient water and 2 deciliters of whole-wheat flour. To add the 3 deciliters of whole-wheat flour and the 6 deciliters of sieved flour. To knead the paste. It is necessary that it falls apart from the fingers. To let rise 2 hours. To put the ball on a flat stone and to wait half an hour before making the bread cook in the hot oven (200°) for one hour.

Pork and wine, beer and mead, also give access to the aiu ( eternity). May people dream more pleasant and more substantial food, even if they are only the illusion of a fugitive moment, the simple reflection of a sacred intoxication? Their consumption involves, however, risks, because the visits and the pleasure of the beings and things of the Other World are neither harmless nor free of charge.

“……..The descendants of Tadg son of Cian, when the partaking of the magical feast was ended, kept watch over the king that night. When he rose on the morrow he was as if he were in a decline, and so was everyone else who had partaken of the wine and the fictitious magical flesh which Sin had arranged for that feast ” (Aided Muirchertaig meic Erca - the violent death of Muirchertach son of Erc).

There is no need therefore too much explain the “weakness of the Ulaid ” with which all, except Cuchulainn, were affected during the festival of Samon (trinouxtion samoni = the All Souls' Day). They have, for five days and four nights, or five nights and four days, not more strength than a woman in labor. The participation in the aislingi or divine visions had its material counterpart.

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Here roughly how could take place a banquet of Samon. The text from which we extract the description belongs to the Ossianic cycle. It is the Bruiden bheg na hAlmaine or “the little brawl at almhain .” Few stories emphasize so much the key role of the official bard at the time of a solemn festival, the sumptuous generosity of the sovereign and his distinguished guests, the joy and the abundance which reign everywhere. If thereafter the things go wrong and that it is necessary to have recourse to a herald because of the quarrels and the sword blows, no high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) will be responsible for that. It will be on the contrary the druids and the filid who will calm the anger and will put an end to the violence like often. This text is relatively late and the manuscript dates back to the 17th century. But if the language of it is the middle Irish, the habits could be those of the time of Latene somewhere on the Continent at the time of the Celtic expansion.

“…thither came moreover the Fenians of all Ireland ; then Finn sat in the chief captain's seat at the fort's one mid-side, the mirthful Goll mac Morna at the other, and under either of them the chieftains of his own folk ; after which every man of the company, according to his degree and patrimony, sat in his own appointed and befitting place, even as everywhere and at all times previously had been their use and wont.

Altogether marvelously then the servitors rose to serve and to supply the hall : they laid hold on jeweled drinking horns, studded (every flashing and elaborate goblet of them) with fair crystalline gems and worked with cunning workmanship in shining patterns, and to those good warriors all were poured strong fermented drafts of smooth luscious liquors: then merriment waxed fast in their youths, audacity

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and spirit in their heroes ; in their women, kindness and gentleness ; in their poets, knowledge and the gift of prophecy.

Straight and promptly now a crier stood up and, for the inhibition of serfs and pilferers, rattled a coarse iron chain ; a long one of antique silver he shook to check the gentles and chief nobles of the Fianna, likewise their erudite by profession, and all listened hushed in silence.

Fergus Truelips, Finn's poet and the Fenian's, rose and before Finn son of Cumall sang the songs and lays and sweet poems of his ancestors and forbears. With the rarest of all rich and costly things Finn and Ossian, Oscar and mac Lughach, rewarded the bard wondrously ; with this he went on to Goll mac Morna and in front of him recited the bruidhne or "Forts,’ the toghla or "Destructions,’ the tána or "Cattle-liftings,’ the tochmarca or "Wooings,’ of his elders and progenitors: by operation of which artistic efforts the sons of Morna grew jovial and of good cheer.”

As we have already had the opportunity to say it, but repetere = ars docendi, etymologically speaking, the toast was in the beginning a simple little bit of roasted and pasted bread, dunked in beer or another drink. In Europe, people generally clink glasses with a glass of alcohol (beer, wine, cider, etc.) however you can do in the same way with a glass containing no alcohol. To toast is especially, the opportunity to prove to the other (the former enemy or the future family) that the drink is not poisoned, by drinking it the first. The toast gives your blessing to the reconciliations, the reunions.

But the toast is also marked by the union of the word and of the gesture, of the speech and the shock. You clink your glass with that of the neighbor, as if it was wanted that a little liquid is exchanged between both glasses. It is besides this double knocking of glass which would be at the origin of the expression Chin ! Chin!

John Toland himself advises speeches a little less poetic and a little more philosophical, at least for the festival of Beltene which is the festival of the high-knower of druidiaction (druidecht). Besides nothing prevents from doing both.

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APPENDIX No. 2.

INDIVIDUAL RITUAL INTENDED TO CONJURE TARAN/TORAN/TUIREANN.

Foreword.

Celtic mythology has nothing alarming because it does nothing but stage fights of gods who are only a succession of allegories to be deciphered. Terror occurs only when man recreates these titanic or divine fights, when he makes all the force torn off to the higher worlds go down in the consecrated circle.

The man stands then in the center of the ritual circle in the way of a lightning rod which channels the lightning. He changes himself during his experiments which have, in truth, one purpose: to make the simple practitioner a “lightning bearer” (Jean-Paul Bourre).

Study of the ritual itself (excerpt).

The storm is a weather phenomenon we often have the opportunity to meet during the summer months.

The Ancients regarded it as a manifestation of the deity as an extremely powerful contribution of force, which it was possible to call upon, to channel, even to use.

Several rites or rituals were developed with an aim of arriving at the result concerned. We deliver to you here one of them , which will enable you to try out the force of the storm, manifestation of the “gods”, and which requires only basic elements in practice.

The most suitable weather for this operation is that during which the storm breaks and begins to move towards the place where you are. The purpose will be to call upon the power of the storm in order to increase through it the energy which is specific to you, and to direct it towards the selected goal.

As a preliminary you will have determined a place cleaned for the ritual, the ideal being, of course, the open air , “teuo-xtonion” our text says , even if an opened room, with a good sight on the phenomenon, can be enough.

This ritual will be more effective during the night, but the day can also be appropriate. You will also try advantageously the day break and the twilight as particular moments, interesting for several reasons. We recommend to you, however, at this stage, to try out several moments, and to take on for example those which seem more to correspond to you. Let us notice, however, that, in the majority of the cases, it is the storm which will call you and not the opposite. Choose, however, a true storm, your feeling will be only more intense because of that.

Storm can kill! It is therefore necessary to take adequate precautions to achieve this rite. Choose the place of the performance beside a thicket of trees or some objects taller than you, so that the lightning can be attracted elsewhere. Use no longer, as soon as the storm is close, metal objects nor even rectilinear objects pricking up towards the sky. It is therefore surer to achieve the totality of the ritual before the storm comes above you (the lightning preserves only what resembles to it) and to put oneself then in harmony with the forces of nature by other means which will not be strictly ritual, like breathing, touch with the divine forms, etc.

That being said, when the storm arrives, place you in the center of the ritual surface.

You will put down the required or selected weapons: symbols of each of the four elements placed according to the suitable direction. You will get dressed as you wish.

Think, however, that all that you will use risk to get wet. Therefore envisage the things consequently.

In the center of the ritual surface, take the chosen weapon [a lance, for example…] and delimit a circle around you and of your altar, equipped with an about ten meters diameter. You traverse it clockwise by tracing using your weapon an invisible border which you will visualize in the form of a light and bluish fog.

You will be able, if you judge it good, to place before beginning the performance, a nine knotted rope which will delimit your circle of protection (Gaelic caim, Old Celtic cam).

In this case, visualization and the layout will be superimposed on this one. Come back in the center of the surface before your altar and facing the north (the tuath side). Raise the selected symbol and pronounce aloud…”

The text chosen for the protective prayer (caim) to Taran/Toran/Tuireann is placed here.

O you Flash Thunder and Lightning

The Mighty Three

My protection be

Encircling me

Because you are around

My life, my home

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Encircling me

O Sacred Three

The Mighty Three.

For the practical and concrete continuation, see Moira. C.D.D… PO box 68. 33034 Bordeaux cedex. France.

Moira to which we still give again the floor to conclude.

“While keeping your arms raised, inspire deeply, while fixing your mind on the fact that breathing fill up you with the power and the light of the storm itself. Then project your awareness, according to the technique which you control, in the stormy cloud, in order to be at one with them.

Take the character of the storm and when your conscience will be united with it, focus you on the aim of your “magic” (sic) performance if you chose one of them.

If not let you go to this archetypal union with the force.

When this union is felt, focus again on your body and start to generate in you this power with which you contacted. Join your awareness with your mind with each flash, and equate it to the spouting of your power which is projected, bright and luminous. You attract the power of the storm then itself and it is not only a question of you.

Become strongly aware of this identity between the light of the flashes and the increase in your power.

It is advisable to create a true energy exchange between you and the storm. So, with each flash, you generate the power which you focus towards the possible goal selected. It is possible to couple this almost biological process with a breath in. Then with the clap of thunder you release your force, for example on the breathing out. In this way, more the storm approaches, more this cyclic movement of exchange is accelerated.

You can continue as a long time as you wish it, without, however, exceeding the time beyond which your concentration would tend to be lost. It is not the length which is important, but the intensity expressed by this “magic” act (sic).

Also beware of the storm itself and of the risks we evoked. The lightning preserves only who resembles it.

As soon as you think that mental construction was sufficient, visualize last once the mental image of what you aim, then release it on a clap of thunder, and cross your arms on your chest, the left one on the right one.” Recite, in conclusion, some prayers for Taran/Toran/Tuireann we will add.

Moira. C.D.D… PO box .68. 33034. Bordeaux cedex. France. For more detail, see again Moira therefore, with which we will leave the last word.

“Leave the place now before the height of the storm makes you flee, then go and eat. Although this rite is designed for isolated individuals, you can, of course, use it with several other persons, by taking the same precautions.”

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APPENDIX No. 3.

VARIOUS RITUALS.

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

WHAT TO DO AS REGARDS WORSHIP WHEN YOU WANT TO BE REALLY CELTIC MINDED? (According to our fellow-member Alexei Kondratiev.)

Daily life of the believer (living not far from a spring or of a sacred tree, a sanctuary or a temple of course) at the end of Antiquity.

Firstly: the worship of the ancestors. To honor the memory of the deceased of one’s close family (Uenia). Domestic Worship by definition and to perform out at the house around an altar kind creche, aedicula, or kami dana. Even a simple stone round table with some santons (statuettes) laid out around, like in the excavations of Argentomagus. If possible in a cellar being able to act as a crypt, or beside a chimney, or in a corner of the apartment especially arranged for this purpose.

The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) think the Ultimate Reality overflows absolutely the shape which evokes it, but, for many other believers the simulacrum or the arcana (the statue or the image in Sanskrit language) takes part in a certain way indeed in the divinity.

The veneration of the simulacra or arcana concerns as much the private worship as of the public worship; the rites having as object the domestic simulacra or arcana is performed in each residence. The host is the ordinary celebrant, nevertheless, in his absence, another family member may compensate him. All these rites are accompanied by prayers. For the hearted or minded Celt, the simulacrum or arcana (the divine image) is more than a simple representation.

Secondly: the patron gods of one’s profession (cerda). The Christians took over the idea by finding patron saint for everything. The worship can be celebrated within the family, but also within the corporation or of the company. That they are celebrated daily or periodically within a company is as difficult today as to say one’s five prayers per day in the factory when you are Muslim. We call celicna (singular celicnon) the stage rooms, reserved for such uses. To honor in it the guardian god of the trade, for example.

The tables of the celicna have to be round.

Thirdly: the spirit, genius, or soul, of one’s people. It is a question of honoring this vital entity, but in connection with the panceltic deity taking up this duty (goddess of the victory in the event of aggression by an enemy stronger than oneself for example).

Fourthly: forces of nature, water, trees. A land is maintained in life by the gods or the goddesses, or fairies if this term is preferred, of fertility, of abundance… Whatever the people, the nation, or the tribe, who lives at this place. You must therefore combine in the same homage…

And the goddess or fairy personifying the fertility, the abundance, as well as the prosperity of her area, in general some water (for example, the river which crosses it).

And pan-Celtic deities (see the Panth-eon).

The sacrifices of commensality with the gods, bloody (i.e., involving eating an unspecified animal, ritually slaughtered with the assistance of various celebrants type vate or other; like at the time of the festival of the Eid al-Adha in Islam) and the big druidic rituals; of course disappeared little by little with the Romanization and the Christianization of the minds. Various forms of homage to the divine one (from the simplest rites: anthems, or ceremonies inside a temple, a fanum even a celicnon…) replaced the more complicated rituals being held outdoors; for example, the bloody sacrifices carried out inside or outside the large sanctuaries of the Belgian type, and particularly those of cattle entirely consecrated for the (underground) deities.

Rites carried out by the common people this time; the public figures and the rich Romano-British or Gallo-Roman people having preferred to betray and flatter the authorities by adopting the customs of their occupiers (everyone does not have the moral fiber of a Mariccus or of a Calgacus).

“Some people seem to be yielded without much reserve to the rules of the syncretism and, even if their way of giving thanks to Pluto or Minerva kept its originality, even if they were reluctant in the circumstance before the official naming of the gods; it was there no subject of concern for the Romans” (Maurice Bouvier Ajam, French historian specialist in the period).

The homage (anthem or ceremony inside a fanum in the countryside or inside a celicnon downtown) therefore replaced little by little the sacrifice.

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It was perhaps to be expressed using atebertas or various offerings. What could it occur for example in the year 68 of our era somewhere in a territory occupied by Rome and where the first Christians already began to arrive??

Because if Christianity is attested in Western Europe in Lugdunum about the year 150 (see the case of Pothinus) it had to exist before in the country particularly in its “montanist” form (some kinds of Christian talibans called parabolani).

The Apostles would have sent seven of their disciples or even a much greater number, to found Churches up to the banks of the Rhine. Specialists quote Valerius in Trier, Martial in Limoges, Austremonius in Clermont, Gratian or Gatian in Tours. They quote in the same way for the Rhenish countries, in Trier, Eucharius, of whom Valerius seems to have been only the successor, Crescens in Mainz (or Vienna), Maternus in Cologne, Clement in Metz. They also make go back the apostolic age the Church of Auxerre, as that of Perigueux, with the Bishop St. Front.

About the apostolate of St. Lazarus [in Marseilles and Autun. Editor’s note] of St. Magdalene, and St. Martha in Provence [in Tarascon more precisely for St. Martha. Editor’s note] to see Duchesne, Origins of Christian worship, chapter XXVI. The author distinguishes judiciously : “St. Pothinus is the first bishop whose name was preserved. It is not in so far as he is the most former bishop or that this country did not receive the enlightenment of the Gospel as of the time of the apostles. One thing is the known facts, another thing the actual facts. Christianity must be as old in this country as in the countries of similar geographical location, Africa for example” (Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte fur Studierende. France - X. Kraus. Volume I).

If we understand well the various traditions on this subject (in particular the treatise about the Trinity that is ascribed today to St. Caesarius) there would have been Christians in this area of the world therefore as of the end of the 1st century of our era. “The city of Arles had St. Trophimus, a disciple of the apostles, for its founder, that of Narbonne St. Paul, that of Toulouse St. Saturninus, that of Vaison St. Daphnus. These four disciples of the apostles founded Churches in all the country, so that their see was never occupied by heretics” (Treatise about the Trinity ascribed to St. Caesarius).

What could it occur for example in the year 68 of our era somewhere in a territory like that but occupied by Rome, we have said ? Now well perhaps something as what follows.

After he went in his usual place of worship on the morning before beginning his day; the druidicist burns (a little following the example of the Parsis besides) some amber pearls; or lights a candle thrust in a bronze dodecahedron in the entrance of the cella of the temple; where take center stage, beside the altar, on a pedestal or fixed on a post, even on a stone pillar the simulacrum or the simulacra (Sanskrit arcana or statue) of the gods or goddesses 1), or fairies, if this word is preferred; and brings seeds to them: barley, corn, intended to be burned too, like some incense. Bread, fruits, apples, nuts or hazel nuts, honey [according to St. Patrick indeed, in Ireland, before him, people offered honey, of which they consecrated a part, and of which they ate the rest?] beeswax, salted butter, pancakes, small parts of fabrics, etc., etc. The whole, either laid down at the foot of the altar or on it, or thrown in a sacrifice pit, according to the local habits and customs. On the feast days, he also brings as Arrian notices it, in the honor of the hunting goddess, some coppers of small change, by slipping them into a trunk arranged for this purpose in the temple or by throwing them in a water point in this place.

With regard to the fountains, springs, lakes, or sacred wells, the atebertas are also indeed generally some coins; but also various representations of parts of the human body (anatomical bratou decantem like in the spring of the Seine River or in Chamalières). With regard to the sacred trees, they are small pieces of fabric which people hang to the branches.

Specialists also bring to our attention the use of small wine amphorae, symbolizing blood, which people give up as is or from which they pour the contents in a suitable place (the sacrifice pit ?) after having opened or to have ritually broken their neck. Perhaps by a gesture similar to that which consists in “cracking open” a bottle of champagne, nowadays.

It is the famous Sanskrit “dadami se dehi me” : I give you so that you give (the deity then is in a way obliged to give tit for tat), expression coarsely translated by the Latin with their “do ut des.”

In short, what is called puja in Hinduism.

A part of these atebertas or offerings was ritually destroyed by the members of the druidic Sodality taking care of the place, gutuaters or gutumaters (by throwing in a sacrifice pit or cremation), but the rest was, of course, consumed on the spot, or was redistributed to the needy. Were there then abuses or cases of personal enrichments from not very scrupulous druids? That is possible, but not in the case of the family of Ausonius anyway. “Nor must I leave unmentioned the old man Phoebicius, who, though the keeper of Belenus' temple,got no profit thereby.”

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Lastly, certain ceremonies were preceded or followed by the erection of a stone monument, like the crom cruach or the stone of destiny, known as stone of Fal in Ireland (Stone of Scone in Great Britain); with many oblations and deployment of a vast symbolic system; for example, in the case of the lay out of certain country sanctuaries or of certain tombs (engraved stones of Castlestrange, Killycluggin-Turoe).

For a long time, steles decorated with complex patterns are also known on the Continent, in Saint-Ann (Tregastel) and Kermaria (Finistere). They bear, the first a vertical curvilinear decoration, the second conventional patterns of the early Latenian art, of which a swastika and some leaves of mistletoe. The recent discovery also in the Finistere, of two decorated steles, in Kerviguerou (Melgven) and Keralio (Pont-l'Abbe) involved a re-examination of the many monuments collected or located since the 19th century. Eleven in all , by counting those of Tregastel and Pont-l'Abbe, proved to bear decorations, now strongly eroded following the arenization of the granite, what explains why some of them could remain so for a long time unperceived.

This kind of stone was revered as a symbol of the procreation power of nature. We can see in them the trace of a time when body and sexuality did not represent the essential evil of which it was necessary to get rid at all costs.

However, it was not the phallus in itself which was worshipped , but the force of which the phallus was the sign.

As we already saw above but repetere = ars docendi; the menhir of Fal, of Turoe (Killycluggin), Castlestrange, Kermaria. Represents the life, the ground in which it is planted, the lausinca (the female body) which surrounds it, represents the manifested nature, the universe. Sometimes this kind of stone seems to emerge from the rhombus symbol of female energy, because the Tokad cannot create alone. The stone of Fal (of Turoe-Killycluggin, Castlestrange or Kermaria) represents therefore the continuous energy of life. Its relationship with the cosmic pillar or tree, which connected the earth to the sky, while exceeding infinitely the one and the other. is generally neglected

The symbol of the stone of Phal or of Killycluggin (Turoe) is always composed of three different parts.

The lowest part enclosed by the lausinca is made of the earth of the country.

The second part has the shape of a rhombus (a sometimes special rhombus known as golden rhombus) and holds back this ground a little like a gigantic flowerpot.

The third part is the menhir or the standing stone itself.

In Ireland, it can be engraved.

Many legends are linked to it: it designates the kings or those who have to rule, it can shout or roar, and so on. In short, to see all what could be written in connection with the Stone of Scone in Great Britain or the idol of Crom Cruaich in Ireland.

Here what John Toland in his History of the druids of 1728 says.

“The chiefest idol in all Ireland was Crom Cruach, which stood in the midst of a circle of twelve obelisk on a hill in Brefin, a district of the county of Cavan. It was all over covered with gold and silver, the lesser figures on the twelve stones about it being only of brass….The legendary writers of Patrick's Life tell many things, not less ridiculous than incredible, about the destruction of this temple of Moysleet (Magh-Sleucht), or the Field of Adoration, in Brefin.”

In the Irish legend of the colloquy of the Ancients (Acallam na senorach), the stone of Fal or Scone is evoked as follows.

What had remarkable therefore this stone of Fal? Asked Diarmait the son of Cerball.

If somebody were accused of something, answered Ossian, and that one made him sit down on this stone, if he had told the truth, he became white and red, but if he had lied, a black and quite visible spot appeared on him.

When the true king of Tara sat down on it, the stone roared under his feet and the three waves of Ireland responded it as in echo: the wave of Cliodhna, the wave of Tuaide and the wave of Rudraige.

Whatever the enemy king of a province which sat down above, on the other hand, the stone howled or thundered under his feet.

Whatever the sterile woman who sat down above, she was covered with a fine mist of black blood; but when it was a fertile woman, she was covered with mist of all the colors.

N.B. People tend to remember only the phallic aspect and to ignore the notion of destiny - shown by many legends - which is inherent to it .

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The “domestic worships” in which the house is regarded as a sanctuary. Unlike what the accounts of the ancient authors let to us think, who develop the social facts more than the individual behaviors; unlike also what the archeology, which unearths only the largest sanctuaries or those of the vastest communities; reveals to us; Celtic spirituality had to be first an individual matter.

For the authentic druidism, the worship, even if it is performed preferably for Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Matrona, Hesus, Ogmius, Lug, etc. (henotheism) does not have to be sectarian for all that. The triad reported by Diogenes Laertius, “to revere the gods to abstain from wrongdoing and to be a man a true one” (Lives and opinions of the eminent philosophers. Book I, Prolog 6) is indeed extremely clear, the honors must be distributed among the various gods and not reserved for one.

Certain Schools of the Wicca advise and recommend therefore the joint invocation of several great deities at the time of the daily private ritual: Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Matrona, Hesus, Ogmius, Lug and so on…

For the majority of the individuals indeed, the supremacy of the Impersonal Including Everything is more theoretical than personally felt; and the crowd of the divine beings of the Panth-eon or Indo-European traditional pleroma increased with that of the local deities; in practice wins over the tendency to the philosophical and thought out monotheism of the druids druids.

The rites surrounding the statuette representing the fairy of the home or the matres nessamae * of the family, were also practiced in each dwelling. They were then performed by the father or the mother on the altar of their house, without the assistance of any other celebrant, with some exceptions. They were to consist of daily small atiobertas (offerings), of corn, barley, or amber, in the producing areas of this resin of fossil pine, and so on…to certain deities; intended to be burned (like in the case of the Parsis and of their sacred fire in India). All these rites were to be accompanied by more or less long prayers, of course, and some circumambulations: Gaelic deisil.

The Celts indeed placed their domestic altars so that they can go round it , unlike the Romans who placed them against a wall.

We can, of course, pray everywhere, but to have a specific altar dedicated to the gods to the goddesses or to the fairies proves to be preferable for every self-respecting pagan. This altar is a at the same time personal and sacred site, because the one who wants it can arrange it at will and add to it as many arcana ** and simulacra (statues, objects or symbols) that his heart wishes it. He may lay out these statues of gods in the order he wants, but this one will have to be well considered.

As we already have had the opportunity to say it, the altar found in the excavations of Argentomagus is a very good example of Celtic private or family altar. It was unearthed in a cellar which was to have the shape of a small temple. It is composed of a round table behind which two deities or two divinized ancestors were sitting. The tallest statue (49 cm) appears as a man sitting on a cushion, he wears a torc around his neck and a second in his right hand, a snake rests on his knees. The second statue (42 cm) has the appearance of a man sitting in an armchair, his two hands on his knees, with a purse in the left hand. The two statues, carved summarily, were painted. Smallest was equipped with a tunic and an ocher coat, the purse and the shoes painted in green, the other is clothed with a green tunic, wears breeches in the same color, squared of red. Between the two, a small standing stone, symbolizing a phallus like in the case of Crom cruach or of the Irish stone of Fal, even of the linga.

In Japan, the kami dana is a shinto family altar dedicated to the spirits. The “kami-dana” can be dedicated to family “kami” (sorei) or more “important” “kami” like the kami of the mountains…

It is possible to discover in the street some “kami-dana” dedicated to a particular spirit. These altars then bear often the name of the spirit to whom they are devoted (Ebisu-dana, Kadogami-dana, Kojin-dana, Toshitoku-dana…). These richly decorated altars are manufactured out of wood. Their positions and orientations are particularly studied. For instance, the “Kami-dana” must be turned facing the east or facing the south.

The Japanese kami dana house behind their double door the daily offerings from the dagolitoi or believers. These offerings generally consist of water, alcohol, fruits. The put-down food has to be changed daily and can be consumed thereafter. When the family receives from an outsider a gift, it is possible to put it in front of the kami dana a little as an offering before using it.

* Known as proxumae by the Romano-British people- or the Gallo-Romans.

** Sanskrit word. The shape in which you pay homage to a deity.

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1) Because beside the higher Being we may always also honor partial or limited forms of this one, of course, but also taking part in his holiness.

Note crossed out by Peter DeLaCrau and restored by his heirs.

The modern druidic family altar could be at the same time a butsudan and a kami dana out of oak. The Japanese “kami-dana” has the shape of a Shinto shrine which would have been miniaturized. The “butsudan” resembles a cupboard which, in addition to the offerings, preserves the genealogical research of the family (ihai) as well as a small Buddhist statue.

Some suggestions of decoration. Put for example on these doors on the internal side even in the back, the rouelles or sun wheels or other symbols with three or four spokes, like a triskelion, a labarum, or a swastika. Even some frescos like that which represented the god Ogmius according to Lucian of Samosata, some statuettes or some statues like those of the three Bethen in the cathedral of Worms in Germany. These symbols can as well be drawn, painted, or engraved, as carved, the support being less important than the meaning. Not to forget to envisage one or two spots to place here candles, or an amber vaporizer.

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APPENDIX No. 4.

NOTICE ABOUT THE OITO (OR TAKING THE OATH ).

Tongoitos, Oitos, from where Gaelic oeth, Welsh tyngu.

The oito or oath being nothing but a geis that you give to yourself we will also say a word about it within the framework of this Auraicept Na n-Éces to uns high-knowers of the druidiaction (these some notes intended for the schoolboys of druidism: the more serious thing of university level will come afterwards).

The oito is a solemn formula, with almost stereotyped expression, the words of which vary only in the details. It is a commitment taken in front of the Deity, normally coupled with the acceptance of a punishment in the event of breaking if the promise was positive (I swear to do this or that); or of transgression if it was a prohibition for oneself.

More generally the oath is in a way a cosmic alliance to which one resorts to give more weight still to his word. The man who takes oath puts his word in an order which exceeds his person, and therefore he will take responsibility for the breach of this order, if the oath is broken.

It is himself who will undergo the punishment that such a misdeed is logically to attract on the culprit. The oath thus seems the symbol of solidarity with the divine, cosmic, or personal, being, who is called upon as guarantor.

The contents of an oath can therefore be similar to that of a geis. One is spontaneous in a way and comes from oneself; the other is given or notified by a high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht).

Our research made it possible to find only two or three different types of oath.

The oath-taking on the gods, the oath-taking on the natural elements and the oath-taking on the family, which therefore seems too to have been almost sacred among the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht).

The oath forms on the gods begin generally thus…

“I swear by the god on whom my community swears” or if you want, less word for word: “I swear by the god upon whom my tribe calls upon.”

“Touongo adge deuu iomtouongeti ma touta.”

In medieval Gaelic, it became the very repetitive form:

“Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath.”

Reference is thus made to the guardian ancestor god of the tribe in question, to the local “toutatis.” Deity also taking care of the respect of contracts and oaths: a remit among others.

The form most usually used in the texts telling the history of the Hesus = Cuchulainn is this one: “I swear it by the gods whom I worship and whom my tribe worships.”

The oath-taking on the natural elements.

The elements play as guarantors to whom you ask possibly to punish the perjurer.

According to the legend of the cattle raid of Cooley, in particular the dialog with which Medb tries to decide Ferdiad to fight Cuchulainn; the oath was taken with one’s right hand and by calling to witness or as guarantee the sea, the earth, the sun and the moon.

Or then the sky and the stars, according to these two other excerpts.

“The sky is still above our heads, the earth beneath our feet, the sea all around us.”

“And if the sky with its showers of stars does not fall upon our heads, if the ground does not burst open under our steps in a great earthquake, if the blue bordered sea does not cover the fringe of our forests.”

The complete form to use by all true-hearted and minded Celts, because a hearted and minded Celt could not swear on a book, of course, was therefore to be stated as follows.

“Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath.

By the gods whom my nation worships:

The sky above our heads

The sun and the moon

The earth beneath our feet

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The sea all around us

I swear it.

May the sky with its showers of stars fall upon my head 1).

May the ground burst open under my steps in a big earthquake

May the blue-bordered sea come over the surface of our lands and forests

if… (verb corresponding to the action that you commit yourself to do, or not to do)! ”

The form of oath on the family or the social link was to be stated thus.

“By the sacred ensigns of our battalions

May a roof be no longer offered to me

May my parents close their door in front of me

May my children close their door in front of me

If… (verb corresponding to the action that you commit yourself to do, or not to do) ! ”

The whole with the three fingers of one’s right hand stretched out towards the sky (the thumb, the fore finger and the middle finger , a little like in the case of a hand of justice, or slightly isolated) the arm folded up or stretched out according to a 45-degree angle.

Among the Celts and Germanic people, the sword appears to be regarded as the most manifestation of the power of the god whom the warriors called upon. The most undeniable historical example of this habit that 1000 years later the frightening fighters of the Highlands of Scotland still followed is in the commentaries of Julius-Caesar. Book VII, chapter 67: “The cavalry unanimously shout out, “That they ought to bind themselves by a most sacred oath, that he should not be received under a roof, nor have access to his children, parents, or wife, who ....”

THE HIGHLANDS’ OATH NOW.

I swear by this sword, the sword of Noadatus Nodons Nuada

[By this triple key ]

Touongo adge deuu iom touongeti ma touta

Tongu do dia toingeas mo tuath

By the gods whom my people worship,

The sky above our heads

The sun and the moon

The earth beneath our feet

The sea all around us

To adapt from now on the acts of my life as well private as public to the golden rules of the Round Table, to remain faithful to our community as to its Primate inter pares, and to defend our Faith.

If I do not it

May the sky with its showers of stars fall upon my head

May the ground burst open under my steps in a big earthquake

May the blue-bordered sea come over the surface of our lands and forests.

May I no longer find a shelter somewhere

May I never see my wife [my husband] and children, father, mother, or relation;

May I be cursed in all my undertaking, family and property;

May I be killed in battle as a coward and lie without pagan burial worthy of the name , in a strange land,

Far from the graves of my forefathers and kindred.

Yes, may all this come across me if I break my oath.

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APPENDIX No. 5.

ORGANIZATION OF THE ANCIENT DRUIDIC OLLOTOUTA.

The land is before everything the property of the god who resides in his basement or in one of the installations that man built for him, sacred wood, nemeton, temple; and not to such or such private individual.

Some human beings, incumbents and conservators of the sanctuary, are responsible for the management of this ground, its maintenance, and perhaps certain other forms of management . They are the gutumaters or gutumaters.

But the organization of the ancient druidic Ollotouta was probably double: territorial and functional.

Specialized druids, gutuaters/gutumaters (in Latin aeditui in Ausonius, antistes in Livy) indeed dealt with the daily care to dispense on the temples (sanctuary, healing spring or fanum). Maintenance of the roof (each year?), of the altar , of the sacred treasures, some simulacra or arcanes (Sanskrit arcana), the statues, and so on.

Organization therefore concerning these druids (vates, veledae, or gutuaters/gutumaters attached to a temple: aeditui or antistes in the Latin texts.

From the simple vicus (parish) to the large intertribal confederation (Belgica, Celtica, or others: Cispadana, Comata, Narbonensis, Lugdunensis, called valland (i.e., territory inhabited by “Welches”) then by the Germanic peoples) through the pagus (county in Ireland, cantref in Wales, shire in England, gau in Germanic dialects) or the bailliwick… these gutuater/gutumater druids (aeditui according to Ausonius, antistes according to Livy) were organized in a territorial way. Each one, within the framework of this very flexible hierarchy, was the head of a very precise geographical area.

Examples of gutuater or gutumater druids attached to a particular temple.

“Patera, nobility of what can be said, as your famous word was flourishing still lately, and that in my youth I saw you in your old age, you shall not lack the tribute of my sad dirge, teacher of mighty rhetoricians.

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. Your father and your brother were named after Phoebus.”

“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 Burdigala by his son's help” (Ausonius. Commemoratio Professorum Burdigalensium IV, 7-9).

This text proves, in passing, that some high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) after the Roman conquest, transformed themselves into professors and teachers.

2. It happened, of course, that members of the society of then have with certain gods more intimate bonds than with others. The shoemakers had for example as patron saint (the Christians would say) the god Lug himself. The inscription discovered at Osma in Spain proves it which is read as follows.

LVGOVIBUS

SACRVM

L.L. VRCI

CO. COLLE

GIO SVTORV

M. D.D.

What means…

L.L. Urico donated this to the triple Lug on behalf of the guild of shoemakers (collegio sutorum).

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

But the Lug of the Arverni - see the gigantic statue that Zenodous had carved for him - is not the Lug of the village of Canetonnum (canetonnensis) is not the Lug of the Irish legends, but, however, all have many remarkable characteristics in common.

Same situation besides with the current Christianity and its innumerable more or less whimsical saints, not counting the Virgin Mary for the Catholics (the Lady of Lourdes, the Lady of Fatima, Loretto, etc., etc.)

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Because there are always the original features of the kept chosen divine form which generally fix the devotion of the dagolitoi (of the believers), even if, theoretically, they regard it as the simple relative manifestation of a more general deity. There were always restricted communities devoting themselves to the worship of a divine form considered as most important for them, although this shape of the deity is only in reality a secondary manifestation.

The One God Being includes the multiple and founds it. The aiu (eternity) supports the time. The deities are as many powers of the Divinity which is One, just like in a company, the president delegates his prerogatives to co-workers. But for many, whose attention and enthusiasm are focused by this particular shape of the deity, this attachment appears secondary.

The various local or particular to such or such group worships , reject nothing of this design of the universe, but perform a choice among the adopted elements.

The original features of the chosen divine form (we have the exact equivalent of this druidic polytheism under the name of ishtadevata in India) for example the talents of a shoemaker of Lug; focus the attention of the dagolitoi (of the believers); although they are only a simple relative manifestation of the higher Beig.

A particular worship therefore rejects nothing from the more general pan-Celtic contribution ; the believer simply performs a choice among the adopted elements. Thanks to the druids, he always admits nevertheless the whole of the principles of the common religion.

The traditional druidic worship, even if it is often dedicated to Lug, has no sectarian nature. The decreed honors are distributed among the various gods, the path of the third function (that of the shoemakers for example) to reach more easily the heavenly parallel next world, is not favored there; it is constantly pointed out that it is often, of course, easier, but also longer than the two others.

As we could see it, the high-knowers of the druidiaction took care of the unity or of the 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 regulate the various problems disturbing the lay society (war between clans or others); and also by maintaining international large training centers (example that in the island of Mona in Great Britain).

It could nevertheless exist, that was tolerated, as we have just seen it, more restricted communities devoting themselves to the worship of a divine form capturing their attention.

- Either locally (case for example of the protective deities of such or such place, from smallest to largest): fairy or goddess of the forests, god of such or such mountain, genius of a town, triad of fairies symbolizing Ireland…

- Either racially or ethnically speaking: the god of such or such family, clannish, tribal, group. From the Matres lubicai or nessamai (Latin proxumae), true guardian angels or good fairies of the families, to the innumerable clan or tribe teutates.

- Or socially: the fairy or goddess that the soldiers honor particularly, the god whom the blacksmiths in the town of Alesia honor (GOBEDBI DUGIIONTIIO UCUETIN IN ALISIIA) the god that the shoemaker honor in Osma, etc.

Piety can be entirely rallied by these particular manifestations of a more general deity, but the druids druids (of high levels) connect always nevertheless these specific manifestations to the major figures of their Panth-eon, even more.

3. Organization concerning the independent druids, i.e., especially not attached to a healing spring, a temple, a sanctuary, or a tribe; but itinerant or dealing with people coming from the most various horizons, for example with women. The Gaelic word muintir, muntar montar, Old Celtic manutera, means something as a group , troop, household.

These druids that, not have a well-delimited territory. They exerted their authority over various human groups spread a little everywhere. Including on other territories that theirs, where they had the appearance of an enclave. The druidic religion was before everything an individual or personal piety let us not forget it!

The persons in charge of these fixed or itinerant communities were often members of the various ruling families.

Of course, they had the necessary resources for that (lands, relationship, money, power…) These high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) were organized on a hierarchical basis, in functional way and according to the number of disciples or pupils (10, 100,150, or more) of whom they were directly, or indirectly, persons in charge.

The pair abbot + monk succeeded the pair druid + daltaios (disciple) . It is indeed the type of organization which survived in Celtic Christianity under the (Latin) noun of familia or manutera.

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It could be for example, some disciples (daltaioi) or sympathizers (some dagolitoi) living a little like the future culdees (ceiliioi deui in Old Celtic) and gathered in various places here or there. Or then some simple dagolitoi (believers) following the druid in his travels. Or then some various foundations of a same abbot like Noibo Columba of Iona; or of Bobbio.

The druidic sodality indeed had traditional rules which could also be lived in a great diversity of different teaching. And according to forms leveling the difference between druids and lay persons (of 2nd or 3rd function).

They prayed, meditated , but also carved the wood or the stone of the statues in the sanctuaries.

By “druids,” it is undoubtedly necessary to understand, let us repeat it, not the druids druids themselves, but the artists or the intellectuals in relation with them and moving in their circle of influence. What the quotation of Lucian of Samosata proves in any case, it is that the druids druids in a strict sense of the word were not iconoclasts like the first Christians (parabolani) or Muslim (talibani).

Let us hammer home here to insist what we already noticed in several circumstances.

There was for example in Ireland, in Mag Slecht (the plain of prostration) a standing stone covered with silver and gold, surrounded by twelve other stone statues decorated with copper.

Its name was Croumba Crouca (Crom Cruach or Crom Cruaich).

Another statue of this type (or then the same one?) also decorated with gold and silver is evoked in the Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee.

Although pre-Celtic and pre-druidic, these representations of a deity in no way ran up against the convictions of the druids since those were also interested in the plastic arts.

The mystical and inspired artists in question painted, moreover, apparently, large mythological frescos (as that which represented Ogmius and which astonished Lucian of Samosata) or made various liturgical objects (voulges, labarons…).

To these various basic paradruidic communities women could be associated. That is to say just at their side, like in the case of the college of Kildare having started by housing noiba Brigit in Ireland. The description of his church by Cogitosus a few years later clearly shows that it was a community of both men and women. Such double monasteries (monks and nuns) are also reported in England (Hartlepool 640) Coldingham (same time) and Whitby (in 657).

Either structured in autonomous colleges organized like the barrigenai of the island of Sena. Or those in the island of the Namnetes (see the description of Dionysius the Periegetes, inhabited earth lines of verses 570-579 and of Strabo, Geography IV 4,6).

They were nevertheless to be more or less controlled by the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), because we badly imagine them in a state of complete independence with respect to their male counterparts, or on an equal footing with them, at the time (because we speak well here about the former druidism and not about the new one).

4. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, these ancient high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), formed a kind of congregation. They were indeed “sodaliciis adstricti consortiis” “bound in a brotherhood” of the type sodality (Ammianus Marcellinus. Book XV, 9,8) directed by an elected primate inter pares.

“Over all these druids one presides, who possesses supreme authority among them. Upon his death, if any individual among the rest is pre-eminent in dignity, he succeeds; but, if there are many equal, the election is made by the suffrages of the druids” (Caesar. B.G. VI, 13).

A primacy (a princedom) therefore rather clear, even if it was especially the authority of a “primus inter pares.”

5. Annual councils.

The druidism not being a religion based on a written down revelation, but rather having to be philosophical and well thought out, that involves indeed a continual exchange of ideas or experiences. The councils were not to be therefore exceptional as among Christians, but at least annual.

Caesar. B.G. VI. 13. “ These assemble at a fixed period of the year in a consecrated place in the territories of the Carnutes, which is reckoned the central region of the whole of continental Celtica. Hither all who have disputes, assemble from every part, and submit to their decrees and determinations. This institution is supposed to have been devised in [Great] Britain, and to have been brought over from it into continental Celtica; now those who desire to gain a more accurate knowledge of that system generally proceed thither for the purpose of studying it.

Many embrace this profession of their own accord, and [many] are sent to it by their parents and relations. They are said there to learn by heart a great number of verses; accordingly some remain in the course of training twenty years. They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many elements

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respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods.”

6. If the king is subjected to prohibitions in sometimes incalculable number, the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) himself undergoes none of them , apart from this, essential: never to be mistaken. If the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) puts forward a wrong sentence , it is him who will be punished by the gods. He falls ill or he is disfigured, the land of the tribe or of the kingdom becomes sterile. The high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) therefore is well advised not to be mistaken. The Celtic societies expressed towards him the most extreme severity in this field.

A kind of or druidic disciplinary committee or of sodality board, called Bratuspantion, was probably charged with punishing the druids unworthy of their function (that could happen!) without awaiting for the divine punishment. If not to what the organization which characterized them then and we have just evoked: a congregation headed by a primate whatever his Celtic noun (Latin principatus ) etc. could well have been useful.

Of these disciplinary actions, we have various traces in the Irish documentation. An Irish canon , ascribed to St. Patrick, is therefore designed: “Quicunque sub gradu ceciderit, sine gradu consurget. Whoever fell while in orders, shall rise without being in orders.”Foreword of the Senchus Mor: “There are four dignitaries of a territory who may be degraded: a false-judging king, a stumbling bishop, a fraudulent poet, an unworthy chieftain who does not fulfill his duties. Dire-fine is not due to these.” Atat ceitheora sabaid tuaite noda desruithethar i mbecaib : Rig gubretach, Epscop tuisledach, file diubartach, aire eisindraic nad oiget a mamu. Ni dlegaiter doib dire.

N.B. If the druidic congregation in a strict sense of the word (sodality) enjoyed a determined constitution (tocas olloutoutas), with a primate in the lead, as we have just seen it; the lay people, themselves, could have more various forms of organization: elective kingship (one or two kings, simultaneously) regency (one or two vergobrets, replacing the king. A kind of presidential system). And it goes without saying the neo-druidism does not have the role to encourage its believers to campaign for the one rather than the other.

Among the few hundreds of divine names we can count, we find initially the very great god-or-demons, the metaphysical and pan-Celtic god-or-demons. Those whose myths play a considerable role in the deepening of the handing down of the druidic knowledge.

There is then the impressive mass of those who are honored locally and whose, so we know with less precision the nature and the merits.

In order to improve its pedagogy, the neo-druidism made a selection in the crowd of these divine characters.

A distinction was therefore made between the god-or-demons whose festival is to be celebrated by the whole of the druidicists, and the others.

Are extended to the whole druidic Ollotouta the festivals of the god-or-demons having truly a universal importance (for example Epona…).

The celebration of the other god-or-demons is left to the discretion of each country or each area, even of each community or manutera (muintir in Gaelic language): Gallicanism.

N.B. The Gaelic word muintir, muntar montar, Old Celtic manutera, means indeed something like group, troop, household.

Each country or each area may register in its calendar (of festivals or of honors) the god-or-demons still worshipped traditionally on its territory.

Among the god-or-demons whose festival is to be celebrated by the whole of the druidicists, the neo-druidic reflection (magi-sterium) also worked out a classification by order of importance, according to the value it wanted to allocate to each one of them.

But of course, each one may, in his personal capacity, to honor more particularly such or such god-or-demon, whatever the rank at which the druidiactio placed officially placed his festival. Either they appear in the calendar of the Ollotouta or in the calendar of the more restricted communities in question.

The devotion consists in devoting oneself to a god-or-demon. It is attested before the battles. The warriors devote their weapons to the god-or-demon of war or the blacksmith god-or-demon. They can offer hair to him.

The authentic god-or-demons indeed form a society of an extreme diversity. Every man, every woman, can find among them the one who matches best one’s temperament, one’s situation, one’s

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vocation. The blacksmiths had for example a very particular devotion for Gobannus, or Ucuetis, as the inscription in Alise-Sainte-Reine proves it.

Martialis Dannotali ieuru Ucuete sosin celicnon etic gobedbi dugiiontiio Ucuetin in Alisia.

We call therefore dugiiontii therefore those who are devoted to the worship of such or such god-or-demon.

The celicnon was, on the other hand, a kind of premises being used at the same time for worship, banquets as storage of material. The rooms were circular and if necessary people laid a round table there.

Note: when the neo-druidic magisterium proposes a god-or-demon to the honors of the dagolitoi (of the believers), it does not guarantee therefore all the apocryphal aspects of which the centuries sometimes embellished his legend, especially in Ireland.

At the “female” level, the druidism was led to triple the divine one, in accordance besides with the oldest way of thinking of the inhabitants of this country. Inscriptions of the pot of Lezoux: Rigani Rosmerti-ac (FOR the Queen AND for Rosemartha).

This gave us therefore three main categories of divine one for women.

1. On the most antiquated level of the microcosm the Mother-Earth and the other more or less underground mother goddesses (Litavis: the earth as a whole; Talantio/Tailtiu the farmed land or clearing, also personified by the goddess, or fairy if it is preferred , Rosemartha).

2. On the celestial and cosmic level or on the level of the universal macrocosm, the principle of the universal matter symbolized by the Rigani.

3. Between the two, on the transitional median level, that of mankind (level that in turn and for more clearness in the talk, we were led to admit, as our distant ancestors have done it, besides, all that is very Celtic) the female central great goddess (Brigindo/Brigantia/Brigit or other).

Each one of the main divine categories of this female triad besides had to be itself tripled.

Let us summarize!

Worship of latria. In the lead come the divine festivals prevailing over all the others. Twelve god-or-demons are thus honored there. In addition to the Tokad or Fate, the par-god (the cosmic cauldron), Taran/Toran/Tuireann, the cosmic great mother goddess called Rigani, and the female median great deity called Brigindo/Brigantia/Brigit, whose worships are in a way present everywhere; there are well ten of other god-or-demons.

But let us not forget either the particular cases that are the Nemet Hornunnos, the Hesus Cuchulainn, Vindosenos/Fintan, Mongan, the Eponas and Mariccus (worship of hyperdulia).

Worship of dulia. The third category of god-or-demons festivals is called “honors” by the gutuaters or gutumaters and it relates to a more significant number of deities, or of names of god-or-demons. Because they are in reality often the same god-or-demons, but honored for different functions. Examples…

Baudemagu and Ucuetis (very specialized aspects of Gobannus, the aspect “temperer” of the blacksmith god-or-demon or the patron saint of this decisive action if you like), and so on.

But it can also be the multitude of the elementals or egregores, matres or teutates, invoked by the gutumaters or gutuaters.

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APPENDIX No. 6.

REFLECTION ON THE PRINCIPLES AND THE STRUCTURES OF THE DRUIDIC OLLOTOUTA .

We call touta or Ollotouta the Celtic-druidic community.

In iarnberle or berla féne language, in other words in Old Celtic, touta meant something like “people, the people, the clan, the tribe, the nation.” The prefix “ollo” means “totality,” “all,” and therefore forms a strengthening of the including nature of the touta. This prefix also evokes obviously a certain notion of geographical expansion. The touta is indeed naturally intended to concern as a priority (but not exclusively) all the descendants of the Celts, wherever they are (Old Europe but also America, Australia, South Africa, etc.), it has in this sense a universal vocation.

But the word evokes especially the truth fullness which is entrusted to the touta and which makes it able to superhumanize the whole Man at the same time as all the men. The nature “ollo” of the “touta” appears in the capacity it has to welcome in their diversities, the aspirations and the situations of the most various men; to join together in the unity but without reducing them, the infinite variety of the as well individual as social.human cultures and realities , Admittedly, all is not yet accomplished. The new druidic knowledge did not reach yet the totality of the spiritual heirs to the Celts, nor the totality of their life, on earth, inside each country.

However, by the power of the sacred fire which was conveyed to it, the touta is able to establish its druidism in the various cultures in question; so that it is a force of conversion of the today slowed down in second-rate truths, lines of thought or value systems.

By this druidiactio of which it is an agent, the Ollotouta is able to make open out in the cultures what matches the true one of the human being. To say that our touta is ollo, it is to affirm a fact, but it is also to define a task: a duty of opening and enlargement of the Celtic-druidic community which, like the former society , must be able to federate a multitude of different families.

Universal through its birth and through its mission, the Ollotouta, by establishing itself in the variety of the cultural, social, or human, backgrounds, takes in each area of the world different faces or expressions. Conversely, the local communities can exist authentically only in their full relationship to the Ollotouta of which they are, in a determined place, the figure and the realization.

This relation involves the communion of each local community, the whole of the federation being livened up by a primate inter pares.

The Primate indeed guarantees the cohesion of the druidic knowledge of the sodality, his homogeneity as well as the communion between the particular local communities.

In the exercise of his responsibility of the president of the Ollotouta, the Primate inter pares is always in communion with the other high-knowers (archdruid or high druids, and so on) as with the whole Ollotouta. Every druid, through his ritual ordination, can take part, in union with the Primate and the other high-knowers, in the responsibility of “rix” of the Ollotouta (the one indicates the direction to be followed). The Primate inter pares has the possibility, according to the cases, to exert this responsibility personally or collegially. The communion of the local communities is tied thus around the Primate, who guarantees the legitimate diversities (Gallicanism), but also guarantees at the same time that , far from harming the unit, the particularities are advantageous for it.

The living paradox the Celtic-druidic community forms is translated in the very name with which it designates itself, touta or Ollotouta. The Celtic-druidic community is the people of the peace with the god-or-demons. Unlike the case of the Romans, indeed, in the druidic mythology, the peace there is between gods and mankind (pax deorum in Latin) or between men and gods; results more from a retreat of the latter (cf the druidic principle of the concealment or occultation of the gods); that from a jealous tyranny on their behalf exerted on the human beings. From where the word of pact, more precise perhaps than that of peace; even if it is indeed the same thing: to be in peace finally on the question of the gods. And through his sacrifice on the standing stone in Murthemne, the Hesus Cuchulainn sealed this pact with his blood.

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The ideal social organization, according to Henry Lizeray, in his S.D.D. would the following one. “The unit, it is the individual or the man; the couple, the family, i.e., the husband, the wife and the children who are born from them; the triad is the borough or tribe formed of three families; the tetrad is the city, joining of four boroughs. In short, it is the State reduced to its simplest terms.” A center is, however, necessary to these four boroughs, a fifth province, as in Ireland.

The pagi are well targeted small natural areas. The native land of Iolo Morganwg in is a very good example of them: the vale of Glamorgan. But Anglesey too. Let us add that if our friends in Ireland want to call “counties” their pagi to them, the Welshmen cantrefi, the Englishmen shires, the Germans gaue, the Canadians of the Nova Scotia counties, why not?

The bailiwick is a portion of the Ollotouta entrusted to a high druid, so that with the assistance of the other high-knowers or using vates, veledae and gutuaters/gutumaters; he is the “regulus” (terminology of Tom Mac Crossan, rix, touta, etc.).

List of the bailiwicks in Ireland.

Momonia (Munster), Lagenia (Leinster), Conacia (Connaught), Ultonia (Ulster). It is up to our friends on the spot to settle the delicate problem of the fifth bailiwick.

List of bailiwicks in Cornwall.

Cornubia (Cerniw).

List of bailiwicks in Wales.

Venedotia (Gwynnedd), Demetia (Dyfed), Venta Silurum (Gwent), Powys, and others.

List of bailiwicks in Scotland. Votadinia (Lothian), Damnonia (Strathclyde), Novantia (Galloway), Selgovia (Solway: the kingdom of Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio, patron of Merlin, last pagan king in the area), Caledonia, and others.

List of bailiwicks in England (Britannia superior).

Cantia (Kent), Dumnonia (Devon). Etc., etc.

Nonexhaustive lists and given only as an indication.

The bailiwick, bound to its high druid and by him gathered in the spirit of the peace of gods, constitutes a kind of particular touta, larger than the ordinary one, in which is concretized obviously and for all the Celtic druidic Ollotouta.

Within the framework of the bailiwick, and therefore of the Ollotouta, exist various types of more restricted communities. In these communities, often smaller and more modest, distant from each other, the divine one is quite as present. Among these basic communities of the touta it is necessary to mention the vicus in particular; a village or district, local community of druidicists , a vital cell of the bailiwick, which gathers in the unity all that is in it of human diversities, while inserting them in the universality of the Ollotouta.

Notes of Peter DeLaCrau found on a loose sheet and inserted into this place by his heirs.

REMARKS IN CONNECTION WITH THE BAILIWICKS REGROUPINGS.

In Ireland, the case is simple, one regrouping of bailiwicks: Ireland.

In Great Britain 5 regroupings of bailiwicks: Wales, Scotland, Britannia superior * (Camulodunum/Colchester then Londinium/London), Britannia inferior * (Eburacum. Today York). With a particular case: the Cornwall , considering its surface.

* Logic would have imposed the opposite, but like it is said traditionally: they are crazy these Romans!

As regards the Old continent, my French-speaking pen-friends suggest me, with regard to the regroupings of bailiwicks, to take into account, as in the case of the Great Britain, the old linguistic

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borders: valland or welchland of langue d’oil, valland or welchland of langue d’oc, valland or welchland of Arpitan language (French-speaking Switzerland, Aosta in Italy… apart from some exceptions).

With the special cases which are…

The Basque Country (Let us leave them alone or let us them be reunified!)

Catalonia. Why separate Northern Catalonia and Southern Catalonia? Let us let them be reunified, let us make it a very beautiful and very luminous valland or welchland.

Alsace. Could constitute a bailiwick with several gaue (the Sundgau for example).

Lorraine. There it is a difficult case, a little like Brittany, because there are two Lorraine. Lorraine of Romance language and Lorraine of Germanic dialect.

Alsace and Lorraine of Germanic dialects could form alone a valland very well (the valland or welchland being a territory where people speak some Celtic languages, but also Latin languages …. a name would never be so well bore in their case). The Rhenish valland or welchland for example. The rest of the Lorraine (the dependent on France Barrois, etc.) would be then to attach to the Oillitan valland or welchland.

Flanders of Flemish language. Without wanting to mix us with the Belgian quarrels, let us recognize to the Flemings the right to be reunified and to speak the language they want from Dunkirk to the Netherlands. Provided that they grant to the speakers of the Walloon, Picardy, Lorraine, or Champagne languages, and to the inhabitants of the suburbs of Brussels, the same rights.

N.B. Walloon is a word of the same family as valland. It is the name of the Celtic tribe of the Volcae, then extended by the Germanic people to all the Celts (walha), and to end to the more or less Romanized Celtic tribes.

REMARKS IN CONNECTION WITH THE ARTICLES 19 TO 22 OF THE FOLLOWING TACOS OLLOTOUTAS (CONSTITUTION).

Let us insist, of course, on the personally selfless nature which should characterize every politician worthy of the name; whereas today, it should be admitted well, like formerly for the caste of the lords during the Middle Ages, or worse, the caste of the middle-class men become masters of fiefdoms, politics became a means of personal increase in wealth. Like already said somewhere: “Nothing is worse than the local tyranny; nobody can escape it , because each one is known of the master. If the character of the lord is vitiated by idleness, cupidity or ignorance [one would believe oneself today] if his temperament is violent, the “private citizen” suffers from him constantly.”

The new master race of today they are the executives or high level politicians. To be executive or to be involved in politics is even nowadays become one of the good means of growing richer personally. It is enough to have no scruple, to lie through one’s teeth , to be intellectually coward, but to be full enough of his own person (to have an oversize ego it is said today) to believe oneself essential. Having had in my family (by marriage ) a deputy and mayor having brought nothing fundamental to the nation or to the people, but, on the other hand, having left the little world of the policy much richer than when he had entered it, I am well placed to know it.

However every human community worthy of the name has an interest in entrusting to handpicked men or women the responsibility for the good performance and the good progress of the following fundamental public activities.

To feed (solid food or liquids). To provide clothing. To provide housing (they formerly called briugu in Ireland the civil servant or the steward responsible for carrying out these first three activities).

To treat (bodies and soul/minds). To protect (against the external aggression). To educate (children or populations). To produce (or to get, what is necessary to the aforementioned activities). To administer justice. To perpetuate (to take care at least of the renewal of the generations).

................................................................................................................................... .........................

The whole thing under the leadership of a vergobretus (executive power) in charge of coordinating the activity of these various sacred ministries.

.............................................................................................................................................................

Remarks in connection with the verb, “to educate.”

It is, of course, question here of an education in the broader sense, i.e., of quality. It is a question of handing down the basic values constituent of any human community: philosophy, culture, ethics, sense of the sacrifice (devotion), history of the religions, custom and habits, etc., etc.

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In quality, but also in quantity. Fewer and fewer men or women are to be blinded by religious obscurantism, fanaticism, intolerance, ignorance of the (real) conditions having presided over the birth of World and Mankind … Thus let us repeat it once again: to enlighten or release Mankind also forms a duty worthy of the Round Table.

The ideal would be this ministry, or at least the specialized structure of these ministries, set itself each year targets in precise figures to reach.

Although not appearing top of the list, this ministry (the word ministry is well that which is right considering its object) is paramount and its direction should be entrusted only to a member of the community endowed with very serious human qualities.

A man or a woman for example very different of the executives of the French Post office of the end of the 20th century (or of beginning of the 21st ); who were neither very intelligent, nor very educated (weak general knowledge); shameless with respect to their subordinates, but coward or courtiers with respect to their own superiors to them (in short only worried to build their career without worrying about the others or the interest of the community).

Other notes of Peter DeLaCrau found on a loose sheet and inserted into this place by his heirs.

Some people keep on harping on to us today about the status of the orphans in Islamic land. Muhammad it is said , having been an orphan, would have devoted much attention to their education and their fate.

It is over and above the fact that we also we have our own chivalrous traditions in this field (the defense of the weak and of the oppressed precisely) very different from the simple fosterage.

The top priority of every self-respecting society was always to ensure its future, and, therefore, the training of the new generations. Here for example what the French historian Michel Rouche says (General History of teaching and education).

In the Neolithic era.

The building of the houses, the making of the tools, of the pottery, was the result of a training which we may suppose based on observation, imitation, and various initiations according to the periods of the life of then. It is a question of taking part according to one’s age in the handling of the tool. The child acquires the habits of the adults through his direct participation. He thus learns how to hunt, gather, fish. Later to farm. In the same for the vital activities inside the house.

The society was then made up priests, warriors, farmers. The handing down of the culture is oral. The sense of the secrecy important. It is a traditional society.

The education of the warrior of then is especially made in order to acquire bravery. Young men learn the art of war and of hunting. The warriors fight naked, it is some provocation, it is some bravado. They stick out their tongue to frighten the enemy; it is at the same time the symbol of the word and an intensification of the drives

For the noble and future tribe chiefs, religious, moral, legal, schooling, and knowledge of the History.

Institutions.

A class of teachers who are scholars, professors, and not priests. They know cosmogony, sciences, law, and have authority on justice.

They ensure the observation of the religious rites. Science and religion are mixed. It is a time when the knowledge is total. To note: progressively, this knowledge will be dissociated then to divide itself in various disciplines. They had a code language for the preservation of their knowledge. This language has a magic role. It is used to evoke the destiny of the dead , the survival of the soul/minds in an island where nothing dies!

“Letter kills! ” For them the oral retransmission is more living. For certain exchanges like the trade, or the public and private accounts, on the other hand, they write in Greek letters. The eloquence has a great importance as well in the policy as for poetry. Every three years, there is a great contest of eloquence and poetry in Lyons. In 39, Caligula, to recover the event, organizes a contest of Greek and Latin language. The bards are specialized in the religious or warlike hymns which are composed in verses. The topics relate to the explanatory myths, the genealogies of the great families, their origin as well as the high feats of the tribe.

Poets and chroniclers, they are the guardians of the history of the clan and tell the legends. They are the memory of the people. They were hierarchically classified according to their power of memorizing. Some could tell 50 stories.They have a good knowledge in laws, magic and music. The soothsayers, who are seldom women, achieve the sacred ceremonies, know the sciences of nature.

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As regards family education, at the noble ones they were polygamous, the small children were brought up by nurses and then were placed at a foster father on the maternal side (Gaelique athair altroma).

The placement was done before the child was seven years old. They learned how to keep the herds, to hackle hemp, to cut wood.

The girls rotate the grinding wheel of the mill, make cereals drying.

The maiden learns the embroidery.

The young man learns horsemanship, playing chess, hunting, swimming.

These many children are, for the foster father, some defenders, and form true communities.

The main thing is the bodily and metaphysical survival characteristic of the traditional societies. It is a time marked by the wars, among others the invasion of the Romans and later of the Arabs. Within this framework Charlemagne little by little will build Europe thanks to various conquests.

N.B. The French republic in this field worked out an interesting concept, that of war orphan.

Law of July 29, 1917, article L 461.

The Republic adopts the orphans

1º Whose father or breadwinner was killed, either in action ; or on overseas theaters of operations , subsequently to the war of 1914.

2º Whose father, mother or breadwinner, died of wounds or diseases, contracted or worsened, because of war.

The community must deal completely and directly the care and the education of the orphans or abandoned children. Whatever are the reasons of that besides, because the knowledge and the culture of each individual can contribute to the maintenance, even to the improvement, of the society (they can become engineers, inventors, magistrates, pedagogues…)

Guiding principles.

Teaching of the basics (to learn how to read, write, count). More general teaching. Co-education. The life in society equipped with a minimum of civilization being based on the obvious complementarity being able to exist between men and women, it is important to learn very early how to mix with the people of the other sex, while respecting them or trust them.

Ethics. Philosophy. Physical training. Training of a trade. Self-subsistence. The orphanage or the establishment dealing with all these young people must produce itself the maximum of things necessary to their food. Everyone must also be, moreover, a little farmer, stock breeder or gardener, even mason, electrician, etc., etc.

Because it goes without saying these establishments must be all the opposite one of a Rumanian hospice or of a Quebec asylum like that of Duplessis, but some machines intended to manufacture (republican) elite. They must constitute a chance and not a flaw. A window display of the community, not a prison.

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APPENDIX No. 7.

AN EXAMPLE OF STATUTES TO BE FILED IN EVERY COUNTRY WHERE THAT WILL BE POSSIBLE SO THAT NO BOGUS SECRET COMES TO COVER WITH ITS VEIL WHAT MUST BE DONE IN A DEMOCRATIC WAY IN PLAIN SIGHT IN THE MOST TOTAL TRANSPARENCY.

TACOS OLLOTOUTAS.

Preamble.

Tacos of 02/05/1926: there will never be any druidess in the Druidic Ollotouta. 280 votes for 11 votes against 9 abstentions.

Tacos of 02/05/1946: the female equivalent of the gutuater within the association will be designated by the name "gutumater.” 182 votes for 88 votes against 30 abstentions. The female equivalent of the druid within the association will be known as "priestess.” 121 votes for 119 votes against 60 abstentions.

ARTICLE 1.

The Union of associations AND individuals known as “Druidic Ollotouta,” simultaneously an association with worship purpose and a religious congregation; is a union of associations and individuals having as object the defense, the modernization, and the development (rebuilding) of the Celtic paganism, as well as the free exercise of its worship, everywhere in the world. It is a question of releasing spiritually the Celtic nation in the broad sense of the word.

Concretely and locally in the case of Old Europe, the purpose of the Union is also to restore or maintain the places of worship of Celtic-druidic origin (churches and chapels built on the site of a Romano-British or Gallo-Roman temple, for example). The associations joining the Union will be designated under the various names of valland or welchland 1) bailiwick, country in the sense of pagus or county , federation of clearings or groves , clearings or groves, but also manutera or muintir 2), college, etc., etc.

Notes.

1) Velchland or every other suitable name: Britannia, Callaecia, Lusitania…

2) In Ireland, the various foundations of the same saint abbot formed what they called his familia (Irish muintir, from the Old Celtic mantera/manutera, what literally means “the household” of this saint. Into this manutera fell the foundations made, through ages, by the coarb or successors of the first abbot. Territories thus belonging as a freehold to these monastic families or these on which, because of material even spiritual services to the populations, they exerted as a kind of protectorate, receiving there some offerings, taking there some tributes; formed the fairche of the holy founder . They were kinds of abbatial dioceses including rich domains spread through Ireland, located sometimes even beyond the sea, and landlocked in the episcopal dioceses.

St. Columba while leaving Ireland was accompanied only by twelve monks; but the disciples were not long to come in great number in the island where he had been withdrawn: lona. Other monasteries or hermitages were organized in the close islands, in Ethica (Tiree), Elena (Islay), Himba (Canna), Scia (Skye). These establishments formed with these in Scotland and Ireland, that the holy founder had not ceased directing, a vast monastic confederation that the texts designate with the names “ muintir Columcille,” or “family of Columcille.”Unlike many Irish abbots of the same time, the abbot of Iona was, however, never a bishop. He exerted nevertheless over the churches and the monasteries of the adjoining countries a jurisdiction comparable with that of a metropolitan primate . This state of affairs still existed in favor of his successor at the time of the Venerable Bede. That island, this author says, has for its ruler an abbot, who is a priest, to whose jurisdiction all the province and even the bishops, contrary to the usual method (ordine inusitato), are bound to be subject, according to the example of their first teacher, who was not a bishop but a priest and monk.

These associations or manuteras (Old Celtic word which means something like a group, troop, household, we have said) commit themselves at least to pay annually a contribution which will be determined by the internal rules.

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Will cease belonging to the Union without their departure being able to put an end to its existence, the adherent associations which will give their resignation; and the associations struck off for every reason applicable to the individuals (association having by its intrigues affected the honor or the esteem of the worship and religious Union, or others).

ARTICLE 2.

Heiress to the last druid of the court of the great Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill according to Urard Mac Coise (10th century). Heiress to the great movement of the druidic revival started by John Toland in 1717 on the international level and more recently of the druidic Church of Henry Lizeray founded in 1885; the druidic Ollotouta has as code of conduct the following basic great principles.

- Compatibility with (serious) historical truth.

- Compatibility with (current) science.

- Priority reference to the past civilization of the Indo-Europeans in general and of the Celts in particular. To any other, apart from exception.

ARTICLE 3.

Compatibility with historical truth.

Within the framework of the sodality (congregation) or in every activity in connection with it (in its publications for example), nobody must imply or to affirm things contrary to serious historical truth (being the subject of a broad consensus among the specialists). Unless presenting that clearly and unambiguously, as a work of fiction, having no historical claim.

Two illustrations.

You have the right to write a play on the promised in marriage of St. Patrick teenager. You do not have the right to affirm that the future St. Patrick ad a promised in marriage, because that, we know strictly nothing about it!

The human sacrifices existed among the former high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht); to deny that as a whole or partially (for example by blaming for that a minority, or a majority, but deviating, and so on); is an anti-scientist attitude (from the point of view of historical Science) which is neither serious nor honest, and which shows on the behalf of the one who is blameworthy of that , a total inaptitude to understand the human soul; as well as too great a sensitivity regarding the dominant ideology or the politically correct. What it is necessary, it is to well provide the context for these human sacrifices. All the nations practiced them , including the Romans, the Greeks and the Hebrews; they were not so numerous than that, they were the fact of volunteers or of people sentenced to death thus agreeing to redeem themselves. Our ancestors were by no means like us today afraid by the death, for them it was only a passage, etc., etc.

It is not a question also in the association of speaking of Atlantis, of Jesus a druid, of the Celtic Galileans, of Ram druid and Celt, of God with a capital letter and in the singular, of OIW… except, of course, in order to explain that it is false, that the Welsh triads have nothing to do with the druidism of before the Christian era, and so on. It remains possible nevertheless to adopt an originally non-Celtic-druidic vocabulary, rituals , or ideas… , if it is more useful and if that appears judicious.

ARTICLE 4.

Compatibility with current science. Same principle. Nobody must, within the framework of the association, or in connection with it (in its publications for example) affirm things obviously contrary to the current scientific truth. It should be no longer unceasingly a question of the Aliens , of hollow Earth, of Atlantis, or of other baloneys in this kind. The parapsychological problems (pendulums, tellurism, divination, clairvoyance, unexplained cures, yoga, or others) can be approached, but with the greatest caution.

- According to the elementary rules of the scientific approach (critical mind, checking of the material proofs, experiments being able to be renewed, no possible faking and so on)

- While connecting everything at most with the past Celtic civilization (use for example of bronze dodecahedrons).

ARTICLE 5.

The priority reference to the past culture of the Celts or of the Indo-Europeans in general.

The order of the priorities in the positive cultural frame of reference of the association is the following one. References to the past civilization of the Celts in general, 70%; of the Indo-Europeans, 20%; of the other pagan peoples, 10%.

N.B. Within the framework of Old Europe, if the Autochtons or Natives or Aboriginals can be regarded as pre-Celtic people; then the percentages could be the following ones.

References to the last culture: - autochthons and natives, 40%; - Celts in general, 30%; - Indo-Europeans, 20%. It is for example only within the framework of these 20% that members will be allowed to speak about Ram, on condition not suggest he was a Celt or a druid.

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- Other pagan people, 10%. And it is for example only within the framework of these 10% that members will be allowed to speak about megalithic monuments, etc., etc.

ARTICLE 6.

The druidic Ollotouta is not a cultural organization. The activities as well as the reflections of its members must be especially, firstly and above all, of a pertaining to worship, religious, metaphysical, parapsychological, or philosophical, nature, in the highest sense of the word.

Thus no poetry, mathematics, music, literature, care of the body… Or then in a very secondary way, for example in the publications of the association, and for better making known the past Celtic-Druidic civilization (history, archeological discoveries…)

Every member of the druidic Ollotouta must rather be able to answer questions of the kind: “Why to be non longer a Christian, why not be Muslim, etc.? ”

ARTICLE 7.

The defense and the actualization of the Celtic Tradition.

It is necessary for the universal religiosity communal to all the men, to have popular national or ethnic, incarnations, different; and to have forms worship varying according to peoples, ethnos groups or nations.

ARTICLE 7 (a).

To try in this country to make revive the best aspects of the true metaphysics and of the true spirituality of our ancestors, their love of life, is a mission in hostile or ungrateful terrain. There is neither money, neither honor, nor mysterious power, to gain in this fight, only bad strokes, treasons, disappointments, failure, expenses, martyrdoms and media crucifixions ( sniggers, not very witty jokes, incomprehension and apparent ridiculous one, disavowals and withdrawals); or some charges of all kinds (swindle, Leftism, Communism, Fascism, racism, utopism, lack of serious, and so on). Like during the time of McCarthy. Not forgetting, of course, the attacks “ad hominem” or the allusions to private life.

ARTICLE 8.

The resistance against the religious totalitarianisms resulting from monotheisms in the biblical sense of the word, i.e., in reality monolatrous , is also one of the purposes of the sodality. It is a non-positive role, but of the utmost importance: to warn our fellow citizens against the dangers or the debatable values resulting from the religions monotheistic in the biblical senses of the word (i.e., therefore in reality monolatrous). This fight of ideas has as an aim the protection our fellow citizens from the danger, for Mankind, these three mass religious ideologies represent, and to actively protect it from them.

ARTICLE 9.

The association is also a brotherhood , i.e., a place of mutual aid and solidarity or mutual support. All Celtic neo-pagan must regard as fellow country men or countrywomen, as compatriots of the same little homeland, brothers or sisters of the same spiritual village, the other sincere neo-Celtic pagans, and act consequently, by helping them and supporting them for all the things of the life as a priority.

ARTICLE 10.

The druidic Ollotouta must, moreover, be the standard-bearer of the imprescriptible rights of the local Celts and of their descendants, and their representative to the public authorities, a little like the assembly of the Confluence formerly (in Lugdunum on August 1st). To the princes who govern us.

One of the purposes of the congregation is to fight racism and anticeltism and to assist the victims of antipagan, anti-druidic, anti-Celt, discrimination.

All that without bullying nor violence, without inappropriate political slogans, without insult, and covered with a normal dress (except in the case of the use of the ritual garments naturally), because we will act in a nonviolent and legal way. But this one will be nevertheless active: intervention to the personalities, articles in the parallel press, Web… and in the extreme cases for example, but in these cases only and if it is necessary; marches in various towns, wall inscriptions campaigns, hunger strikes…

N.B. In France this article to be put between parentheses to be admitted.

ARTICLE 11.

This action of defense of the identity as of the rights of the people to be themselves (Sinn Fein) will be in no case to be mixed up with an unspecified political action. To vote for or against such or such candidate, such or such party; to fight for the increase, the reduction or the keeping of the salaries; for or against such or such governmental measure (except those which would affect us directly of course); doesn’t fall within our competence.

In the same way, the question of the equality or inequality of the human beings concerns us in no way, that concerns science and politics by no means our action. Only will be allowed, by exception,

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the stances tending to support implicitly and in the background the keeping or the perpetuation of the national identity (right to be different).

ARTICLE 13.

The Ollotouta is opened to all spiritually Indo-European neopagans if he is sincerely interested in the authentic druidism, designed as a religion of the most advanced of our ancestors.

ARTICLE 14.

Except in case of emergency the double obedience or dual membership Ollotouta-Christianity, Ollotouta-Judaism, Ollotouta-Islam, is not advised. Every member of the druidic Ollotouta must be on the contrary, as for the content completely detached from these three philosophical-religious ideologies (as for the format, it is another problem).

The dual membership with another association dealing more or less with Celtic spirituality is allowed, in certain cases, but not encouraged.

ARTICLE 15.

The association is composed of active members: ordained priests , and who have a rank in the major orders (druids) or minors (veledae, vates, gutuaters/gutumaters); and of minor members (the disciples dalta or mabinos), but also of associated members (members of nonterritorial associations, or without precise territorial base, called muintir in Gaelic language).

*The Gaelic word muintir, muntar montar, Old Celtic manutera, means something like a group, troop, household.

The druidic Ollotouta indeed admits within its strcuturres the communities or manutera (Gaelic muintir) specialized in a pertaining to worship field (veneration of such or such great initiate, honors to be paid to such or such quite wrongfully forgotten deity, or other).

The disciples (dalta or mabinos) and the associated members are not full members. They have a consultative and not a deliberative role . Their rights and their duties are determined by the rules (staff regulations).

You remain theoretically a disciple three years. A little more or a little less according to the cases and according to the decision of the high-knower of the druidiaction in charge. This three-year period constituting a probationary period which can be prolonged, if the disciple obviously did not reach the necessary level yet to reach the higher stage.

ARTICLE 16.

The various means of testing the sincerity as well as the good faith of the candidates are determined by the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) responsible for the initiations, and after agreement of the Primate inter pares. Il is a question of knowing to where can go, for the cause of the druidic neopagan Revival , the one who will therefore then to become a member , or to be ordained druid. That will go from the financial effort (contribution) to the physical tests ( a 20 km walk with a rucksack and some blisters on one’s feet, even especially moral and psychological, inspired by these which were inflicted to the future Fenian warriors. The purpose of some of these tests will be indeed, in addition to the essential control of knowledge, to see up to what point the candidate or the applicant can face the adversity, the affronts, the being ridiculous. These ordeals will remain possibly a secret between “the initiator” and the comrunos (“the initiate”) if they are too hard on the moral and psychological level. And in this respect, it will be about race in the spiritual sense of the word ,in the sense in which it is understood for example in the expression “the race of poets,” and not of race in the biological senses of the word (phenotype).

ARTICLE 17.

The ranks regularly awarded in another group dealing with Celtic-Druidic spirituality can be accepted if there is not incompatibility, according to a degree equivalency system .

Ordinations (druids, veledae, gutuaters/gutumaters, vates, or others) can be proposed by the regional or local persons in charge , but will have to be beforehand explicitly approved by the Primate inter pares , at least by delegation.

ARTICLE 18.

The amount of the contributions is fixed by the Primate inter pares after consultation of the annual general meeting.

ARTICLE 19.

The druidic Ollotouta is managed by a committee called “Council.” This council is composed of the persons in charge (or delegates) of each valland (or walha as in the names of Wales and Cornwall), of each college, each federation of clearings or groves ( manutera, or muintir in Gaelic language, word which means something like a group, troop, household); joined together at the time of the general meeting of May 1st (May 1st, not August 1st).

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The number of its members is therefore variable and depends on the number of the vallands or welchlands as well as of the clearings or groves (in activity). The General meeting chooses among the members of the Council of the welchlands vallands or walha, an executive board (trimarcisia) of three members, a president (primate), a secretary, a treasurer (argentodan). The Primate will have to be obligatorily druid to be elected.

ARTICLE 20.

This trimarcisia or board will be allowed to associate, by co-optation, co-workers at various posts, subject to ratification of their choice by the following general meeting.

These co-workers delegated to more specialized tasks (for example delegated to the organization of the training seminars, delegated to the drop-off in bookstores, the interventions in the media, and so on) will be thereby equated to members of the board (enlarged board called Round Table in order to emphasize the eminent republicanism but also equality of its members).

ARTICLE 21.

Considering the contents of article 9, one of the concrete activities of the executive board of the sodality will have to be therefore the material and moral support of the community, or of the members of the community, as their economic or cultural development; including and even particularly that of its new members. This enlarged board, called “Round table” will be authorized in this intention, to maintain or to purchase some grounds, houses, companies, to build, to transport… Food, furniture, pupils, and so on… In the name of the druidic Ollotouta.

ARTICLE 22.

The executive board is elected for three years. The outgoing members are re-eligible. The members of this board will remain members of the Council of the welchlands vallands or walhas and will constitute only the executive board of it. Their Primate will chair the directors Board of this name. The decisions and the orientations are taken by the majority or unanimously.

ARTICLE 23.

Organization concerning the druids (gutuaters/gutumaters, vates, veledae) attached with a temple (aeditui or antistes in the Latin texts).

The basic cell (parish) is the vicus (village, small town or district). This fiefdom is managed theoretically by a gutuater (by a velede or a vate if necessary).

Several vicus (vici) forms a pagus. County in Ireland. Cantref in Wales. Shire in England. Gau in Germanic dialects. Pays in France.

The person in charge of a “pagus”: druid.

The person in charge of a bailiwick, fiefdom made up of several pagi (counties-cantrefi-shires-gaue-pays) or of a region: high druid.

The person in charge of a welchland, valland or wahla (fiefdom made up of bailiwicks or several linguistic, ethnic, areas called colleges): archdruid.

Enthronement is the name of the ceremony through which a druid is made officially responsible for such or such fiefdom: vicus, pagus (county-cantref-shire-gau-pays) bailliwick, welchland or valland, etc.

ARTICLE 24.

The druidic Ollotouta is therefore a federation gathering various druidic colleges. Welsh druidic college, Irish druidic college, Scottish druidic college, Cornish druidic college, Breton druidic college, English druidic colleges, oillitain druidic college (countries of langue d’oil) Occitan druidic college, arpitan druidic college (French-speaking Switzerland) and others… In America, in Australia, in South Africa… in short in all the countries where descendants of Celts settled… colleges all autonomous.

This autonomy and this federalism in no case are to undermine the loyalty due to our sodality (congregation) and its Primate inter pares. Each member of the sodality (congregation) must, of course, to remain loyal towards it until the end, like a soldur, whatever the difficulties encountered (on the condition of these characters in Antiquity see Caesar. B.G. Book III, 22).

ARTICLE 25.

Is ollotoutal what relates to the whole druidic Ollotouta. Freedom remaining our principal demand the druidic Ollotouta accepts nevertheless worships or practices limited geographically (peculiar to a territory) or sociologically (peculiar to such or such corporation, to such or such trade). Example shoemakers or blacksmiths and so on.

ARTICLE 26.

The druidism accepts the existence of several levels of truth therefore of several levels in the worship. From the simple veneration of the heroes killed in action for the defense of the homeland or the great initiates coming back on earth to help Mankind (dulia); to the worship in a strict sense of the word of the great deities of our Panth-eon or pleroma; through the simple honors (hyper dulia) granted to such or such god.

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Article 27.

Organization concerning the independent druids, i.e., especially not attached to a healing spring, a temple, a sanctuary, or a tribe, but itinerant or dealing with people, coming from the most various horizons, for example women.

The druids of this category (gyrovagues) do not have a delimited territory. They exert their authority on the various groups spread a little everywhere in the country and founded by them (manutera, muintir in Gaelic term what means something like a group, troop, household).

This component of the druidic Ollotouta is therefore organized in an autonomous and nonterritorial way.

The person in charge of this basic pagan community (grove, ialon or clearing) is his magalos (abbot), not the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) responsible for the fiefdom in which this community is. See note No. 2 article 1.

Naturally, several clearings or groves can gather according to their specialties, or their affinities, under the authority of an ard magalos (general abbot) designated by the base to direct this federation of groves/clearings or manutera (Gaelic muintir); which is equivalent in this case to the welchland (or Britannia or Callaecia or Lusitania etc.) of an archdruid.

In spite of this de facto autonomy, these druidicists must nevertheless, here also like true soldurs, to remain faithful and honest in everything towards our Sodality (Congregation) as to its Primate inter pares. The honor, it is also the loyalty!

ARTICLE 28.

Every member of the druidic Ollotouta who will have succeeded in bringing back or in converting to our faith men or women up to that point very distant from our ideas or from our spirituality; will be automatically the person in charge for them, whatever their residence and the place where they live, in accordance with the article above; and will have to give an account of their behavior (principle of the manutera).

ARTICLE 29.

The fourth religious order composing the Sodality (Congregation) is the pagan Culdee Order (from the Gaelic language dee = gods and cuil = servant, slave). It is to be juxtaposed with the Major order made up by the druids, with the Minor order composed by the vates, veledae or gutuaters/gutumaters, and with the gyrovague druids.

The pagan culdees are disciples not having wanted to remain in the world as vates, veledae, gutuaters/gutumaters or druids, campaigners; but prefer to withdraw themselves from it to live in communities with several (cenobitism) like in the case of the famous oak church of noiba Brigit in Kildare. The pagan culdees pray and contemplate, but also paint the frescos of our temples (see the Ogmius of Lucian of Samosata or the representations of Epona), make the various worship objects (lance of Lug, voulges, labarums…) the carved wood pillars of our lodges and of our temples.

The entering this Third Order (conditions, rituals…) is determined by internal rules (staff regulations) supervised even approved by the Primate inter pares. The ritual dress too.

Exactly under the same conditions as for the men (equality of rights, duties and status), this pagan culdee Third order may also welcome within its activities women; who are then structured in communities organized like the nine sisters in Avalon, the Gallisenae in the island of Sena, the island of the Namnetes, or others. Druids and magalos (pagan culdee abbots) are equal in right and dignity.

ARTICLE 30.

The resources of the Sodality include the contributions and the product of various events, as well as the gifts, legacies or generosities. The expenditure is ordered by the Primate inter pares who represents the congregation in justice and in all the acts of the civil life (but he can delegate).

The Sodality will be allowed in particular to acquire the real estate useful to its activities as to its cause. These real estates will then be assigned by the Primate inter pares or his delegate who will use them in the best of the common good (keeping of the direct management by him, assignment of the good to such or such establishment of the congregation, decentralization of management, etc.).

ARTICLE 31.

Internal rules will be written down by the President (Primate) to fix the various points not envisaged by the statutes (hierarchy, ritual clothes, detailed territorial organization, discipline, oaths, establishments of the Sodality, places of worship and so on).

ARTICLE 32.

As we already saw it above, an Irish canon , ascribed to St. Patrick is therefore designed: “Quicunque sub gradu ceciderit, sine gradu consurget. Whoever fell while in orders, shall rise without being in orders.”And there are (the foreword of the Senchus Mor says) “four dignitaries of a territory who may be degraded: a false-judging king, a stumbling bishop, a fraudulent velede, an unworthy chieftain who does not fulfill his duties. Dire-fine is not due to these.” Atat ceitheora sabaid tuaite

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noda desruithethar i mbecaib : Rig gubretach, Epscop tuisledach, file diubartach, aire eisindraic nad oiget a mamu. Ni dlegaiter doib dire.

We will not speak here about the case of the clan chieftain or of the state functions since we are not involved in politics (too much nauseating) but about the case of the predecessors of bishops, in other words, about druids and veledae become einsindraic (unworthy).

A council of the Sodality or the Order having disciplinary power is therefore instituted under the name of Bratuspantium or Bratuspantion to punish in a way or in another the members of the sodality having been at “fault,” having “failed” in their duty. It will have the power to punish every breach in the deontology or the professional ethic: the venal druids of the type magus miracle worker, healer and clairvoyant - the whole against money cash - or others. The punishment will range to the final exclusion (elude) and to the prohibition of claiming the name of druid (within the community).

ARTICLE 33.

The status of active or associated member of the congregation is lost by resignation (it will be made no obstacle to the resignations and it will be very easy to leave the Ollotouta) or by removal returned for various reasons. Non-payment of the annual contribution. Non-sincerity of the conversion. Obvious non-comprehension of the druidic idea. Breaches in the discipline of the Rule. Repeated or unjustified absences in the annual meeting. Serious reasons. Etc.

Or for all the other reasons reported by the traditional texts: “There are seven proofs which attest the falsehood of every king: to turn a synod out of their lis (fort), to be without truth, without law, etc..” (Ancient Laws of Ireland IV, page 52).

ARTICLE 34.

Only are concerned therefore with these statutes the vates, veledae, gutuaters/gutumaters and druids, on the one hand, and the pagan Celtic monks, on the other hand; as, in a way, the independent ones and the disciples (mabinos).

The simple dagolitoi or believers of the druidic Ollotouta are not members of the Sodality (Congregation), but nevertheless have a certain number of rights. For example, that to get the assistance or the spiritual and ceremonial assistance, of the authorized members of the druidic Ollotouta, at the various times of their life: birth, wedding, funeral… etc. Moreover they can be consulted in various circumstances.

ARTICLE 35.

The flag and emblem or official symbol of the druidic Ollotouta are the labarum or cross of Suqellus (an X also called sign of the victory).

ARTICLE 36.

HISTORICAL REMINDER FOR YOUR INFORMATION.

RANKS OR DEGREES OF THE MEDIEVAL IRISH DRUIDIC SODALITY.

The last druids having profited from a without gap (uninterrupted) traditional derivation are signaled not in the Gallic village of Asterix in France but in Ireland in the Court of the prince Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill (O' Neill) king of Ailech from 943 to 980 and Ard Ri Erenn from 956 to 980. At least it is what we can deduce from the existence still at the time, in the repertory of the great Irish “poets,” of the imbas forosnai of the teinm loida and of the dichetal do chennaib, however prohibited by St. Patrick (cf. the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach by Urard Mac Coise, a poet having lived in the 10th century).

A first but not very clear “hierarchical” list , even passably confused, is provided to us by the text entitled Crith Gablach (Brehon law “Branched Purchase”). We find there the seven ranks which follow…

Eces, anruth, cli, cana, dos, rnacfuirmidh, fochluc. A poet, great stream, ridgepole, shelterer (bushy tree), song of composition, novice.

The clearest list is that of the Senchus Mor, in connection with the restrictions brought by St. Patrick on their activity.

“But Patrick abolished these three things among the poets when they believed, as they were profane rites, for the Teinm Laegha and Imus Forosna could not be performed by them without offering to idol gods. He did not leave them after this any rite in which offering should be made to the devil, for their

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profession was pure. And he left them after this extemporaneous recital, because it was acquired through great knowledge and application ; and also the registering of the genealogies of the men of Erin, and the artistic rules of poetry and the Duili sloinnte, and Duili fedha, and storytelling with lays.

viz., the Ollamh with his seven times fifty stories, the Anruth with his thrice fifty and half fifty, the Cli with his eighty, the Cana with his sixty, the Dos with his fifty, the Mac-fuirmidh with his forty, the Fochluc with his thirty, the Drisac with his twenty, the Taman with his ten stories, and the Oblaire, with his seven stories.”

N.B. It is to be missing a level between Cana and cli, that which corresponds to 70 stories.

Perhaps the eces of the previous list.

The bards have names specific to their function, considering their very lay and very profane side, but which change nothing in the content of the problem. The hierarchical list of the Irish bards, by the very fact of its existence, is the concrete proof that the bards formed part of the sacerdotal class formerly; but Ireland did not treat her bards with the consideration of which her surrounded her filid, because a shift in function due to the Christianization involved their decline. The list of the Irish medieval bardic ranks is provided to us by the manuscript H. 2,12 of the Trinity College in Dublin, with some variants of the Book of Ballymote and of the Laud 610 of the Bodleian library in Oxford. It is, of course, incomplete. The grade located above ollam bairdne in particular is missing.

BASE BARDS (DOERBAIRD). Through “base” it should be understood that it is not a question of national bards but of local bards, bound with such or such family.

Longbàrd, lower ranked bards receiving in a glass a mouthful of any drink consumed during the feast taking place in the celicnon.

Drisiuc, driseoc, an abbreviation or variant of drisbàrd, “thorn bard ,” allusion to the satirical function of the ancient druids.

Rindaid. The verb rindaid usually has the meaning of “carves, or engraves,” by allusion to the function of a satirist of the bard, and which can only bring it closer to the filid.

HONORABLE BARDS (SOERBAIRD).

Culbàrd . Welsh cylfeird, “cul = defense or shelter.

Bobàrd “cattle bard” (owner of cattle).

Tuathbard “bard of the tribe or county.”

Bàrd lorge “branch bard” by allusion to the function of a genealogist of the bards bound to a great family.

Tigernbard “Lord’s bard.”

Anruth bàirdne “champion of bardic composition.”

Rigbàrd “King’s bard” or ollam bairdne “doctor in bardic composition.”

VATES.

It is not conceivable that the medical studies did not last several years or that people did not require from the student of many efforts before authorizing him to exert his art. We are therefore well- founded to suppose that the ranks or degrees of the veledae (filid) were also logically those of the vate (faith) and of all other specializations. However, as we have no treatise of medicine, all this part of the priestly organization escapes to us.

FEMINIZATION OF THE RANKS.

Example.

Eces (“poet”) i.e., ecsmacht-ces (“who has no difficulty”), the one that no difficulty or impossibility can stop; or the one for whom nothing is difficult. From where his name: nemces (“without problems”) or ecsmachtces (“the one who meets with no difficulty”). At least in Ireland. But it is a little dithyrambic.

The feminine was bainecces. Bain means “woman” in Gaelic language. There were thus at least women of this rank in the former druidism.

ARTICLE 37.

WITH REGARD TO THE DRUIDIC OLLOTOUTA HERE WHAT WE PROPOSE.

TERMINOLOGICAL REMIND.

Atta = Teacher.

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Comrunos (Gaelic oblaire, Old Celtic aballarios). Lessons 2, 3, and 4, learned, first degree, knowledge being equivalent to seven texts. Symbolization: 2 apples.

Ollamnas = Doctorate.

NON-DRUID ( = DOERBARD) SIMPLE VATES VELEDAE OR GUTUATERS (FEMININE GUTUMATERS).

Taman, lessons 5, 6, and 7, learned, second degree, knowledge being equivalent to ten texts. 3 apples.

Drisac, lessons 8, 9 and 10 learned, third degree, knowledge being equivalent to twenty texts. 1 bronze palm.

Fochloc (apprentice), lessons 11, 12 and 13 learned , third degree, knowledge being equivalent to thirty texts. 2 bronze palms.

NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE PUPILS (SOERBARD)….VATES VELEDAE OR GUTUATERS/GUTUMATERS.

Mac Fuirmid , lesssons 14, 15 and 16 learned, fifth degree, knowledge being equivalent to forty texts. 3 bronze palms.

Dos, lessons 17, 18 and 19 learned , sixth degree, knowledge being equivalent to fifty texts. 2 bronze palms 1 silver palm.

Canta, lessons 20, 21 and 22 learned, seventh degree, knowledge being equivalent to sixty texts. 1 bronze palm 2 silver palms.

Eces, lessons 23, 24 and 25 known , eighth degree, knowledge being equivalent to seventy texts. 3 silver palms.

Clitos (ridge pole) lessons 26, 27 and 28 known, ninth rank, knowledge being equivalent to eighty texts. 2 silver palms 1 gold palm.

Anderatacos (Gaelique anrad, anruth) lessons 29, 30 and 31 known, tenth rank, knowledge being equivalent to a hundred and seventy-five texts. 1 silver palm 2 gold palms.

Ollamos, doctor, lessons 32, 33 and 34 known , eleventh rank, knowledge being equivalent to three hundred and fifty texts. 3 gold palms.

THE DRUIDS DRUIDS… ALLOWED HAVING PUPILS OF CYCLE BEGINNING.

Sui: Sui littri or more exactly sui druidecht of course, great sage, lessons 35, 36 and 37 known, twelfth rank, knowledge being equivalent to seven hundred texts. Exceptional and above function. Three stripes/hazel or filbert rods.

To cross these degrees a different initiation is each time necessary, at least in theory, but the three brooks which make this great river are especially…

- General knowledge.

- Knowledge as regards Celtic civilization.

- Reflection: i.e., establishment of links between various elements on the face of things independent.

N.B. “Over all these druids one presides, who possesses supreme authority among them. Upon his death, if any individual among the rest is pre-eminent in dignity, he succeeds; but, if there are many equal, the election is made by the suffrages of the druids ” (Caesar. B.G. Book VI, 13-14).

ARTICLE 38.

IN SHORT. As we could see it in the Irish or Scottish rite, the nine ranks or degrees of the vates, veledae or gutuaters/gutumaters are the following ones.

Student, pupil, disciple: dalta. Rock bottom. Symbolization: 1 apple.

Starting grade: aballarios (from abala: apple). A new vate, velede or gutuater/gutumater or comrunos, begins by being aballarios. The aballarios is the one who is not yet entitled to palms, but to apples only (two).

2nd degree or rank: taman (3 apples).

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3rd degree or rank: drisac (1 bronze palm).

4th degree or rank: fochluc (2 bronze palms).

5th degree or rank: mac fuirmid (3 bronze palms).

6th degree or rank: dos (2 bronze palms 1 silver palm).

7th degree or rank: canant (1 bronze palm 2 silver palms).

8th degree or rank: eces (3 silver palms).

9th degree or rank: clitos = ridge pole (2 silver palms, 1 gold palm).

10th degree or rank: anderatacos (1 silver palm 2 gold palms).

11th degree or rank: ollamos (3 gold palms).

The 12th degree of this hierarchical order being that of druid druid or druid sui.

Tacos Ollotoutas!

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APPENDIX No. 8.

OBLIGATORY FORMALITIES ( books, clothes and other objects).

“No one was admitted into the Fian until he had become a velede, and had made up the twelve books of the veledae” (Keating. History of Ireland).

Watch out watch out! This material (books, objects, clothes, rites, documents) is imperative. No lack will be tolerated!

Nobody obliges you to become a disciple, velede, vate, gutuater/gutumater or druid, of the druidic Ollotouta.

But if it is what you want, then it will be necessary for you to have the corresponding material.

A) FOR THE DUBBING: cape and white clothes, dirk.

FOR THE NAME CEREMONY (CONVERSION TO CELTIC PAGANISM, PAGAN BAPTISM, CONFIRMATION OF DRUIDIC FAITH): sagum (plaid) with the six colors, egg of snakes in a bouget or sporran, subscription to the official central media.

Not forgetting your initiatory name in Old Celtic language chosen by you.

C)TO BECOME ASSOCIATED MEMBER (disciple/dalta/mabinos) after pagan baptism and dubbing or another name ceremony (conversion, confirmation…)

1.Signature of the statutes duly filled out.

2. Books, CD-ROM or USB sticks, of the first part of our small basic library.

3.Beret (civilian and not military) + cowl or cape for the ladies + white cord with nine knots (and tassels).

4.Sagum (plaid) out of tartan (dress for the ladies).

5.Egg of snakes (micraster = fossil sea urchin) in a bouget or sporran (leather purse or holder) to wear on one’s chest or at one’s waist.

6. Labarum, or cross of Suqellus.

7. Shoes of the type caligae, sandals, wooden-soled shoes, or leather moccasins.

8. Initiation (test of characters, ordeals).

9. Payment of a contribution of… (name of the monetary unit of the country) each year.

D) TO BECOME VELEDE, VATE OR GUTUATER/GUTUMATER.

Watch out watch out! Generally, no one cannot be ordained a velede, vate or gutuater/gutumater, if he did not cross all the ranks of the normal channel, i.e., pagan baptism and dubbing or another name ceremony. Let us remind, moreover, that velede, vate and gutuater/gutumater, are not interchangeable specializations.

If you are interested especially in psychology, in the moral comfort of the others, choose vate (green).

If you are interested especially in the rituals, in the ceremonies, in the precise details, choose gutuater/gutumater (red).

If you are rather a historian or a literary person, a philosopher, a poet, then choose velede (blue).

Obligatory purchases therefore to become a velede, vate or gutuater/gutumater.

1. Books, CD-ROM or USB sticks, of the second part of our small basic library.

2. Beret (civilian and not military).

3. Sagum (plaid) in the six royal colors (dress for the ladies).

4. Cowl with a hood marked with the cross of Suqellus (X) or capes for the ladies likewise.

5. Stripes on one’s shoulders (goose foot shaped, gold, silver or bronzes, according to the degree).

6. Labarum, cross of Suqellus or wheel of Taran/Toran/Tuireann in saltire, with matched cord.

7. Belt or white rope with nine knots and two tassels.

8. Egg of snakes (micraster = fossil sea urchin) in a sporran or bouget (leather purse or holder) to wear on one’s chest or at one’s waist.

9) Voulge with a druidic slat (or scepter of Nantosuelta likewise for the ladies) engraved with Celtic runes.

10. Dirk and caligae, or wooden-soled shoes (even leather sandals or skin moccasin for the ladies).

11. Checking of knowledge.

12. Ordination.

Blue cowls and berets for the veledae, green for the vates, red for the gutuaters/gutumaters.

White rope with nine knots and two tassels.

E. TO BECOME DRUID.

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Watch out, watch out ! Generally, no one could not be ordained a druid of the Ollotouta if he did not already climb all the necessary steps: pagan baptism and dubbing or another name ceremony, initiation (admission as a disciple), ordination as a velede, vate or gutuater/gutumater…

1. Books CD-ROM or USB sticks of the corresponding part of our small library…

2. White beret (civilian and not military).

3. Sagum (plaid) in the six colors of the royal clans.

4. Cowl with a white hood marked with a red cross of Suqellus (X) or cuculla (white cape for the ladies).

5. The three gold goosefoot shaped stripes on one’s shoulder.

6. Belt or red nine knotted rope with two tassels.

7. Torc (or amber necklace for the ladies).

8. Labarum, cross of Suqellus or wheel of Taran/Toran/Tuireann in saltire with a matched cord (red).

9. Egg of snakes (micraster = fossil sea urchin) in a bouget (leather purse or sporran) to wear on one’s chest or at one’s waist.

10.Voulge with a druidic slat engraved with Celtic runes or scepter of Nantosuelta likewise for the ladies.

11. Caligae, wooden-soled shoes or moccasins + dagger + viriolae (engraved leather bracelets) around the wrist.

12. Ordination.

N.B. It is required from you an initiatory name which will follow you during your lifetime . This initiatory name will have to be imperatively selected among the Old Celtic anthroponyms (ex: Boduognatus, Hesunertus or Esunertus, and so on); it will not be too known a name. No Boudicca or Calgacus among us!

Its bearer will have to know the meaning of it and will have to be able to explain it. Moreover, an interview or a meeting, several hours or several days long, with the Primate inter pares, or one of his representatives, of course, is always to have taken place before.

May our gods guide you in this search for the grail (it will not be easy to gather all that), it will be your first initiatory ordeal.

RITUAL SYMBOLS AND CLOTHES.

Female sex.

Beret, cuculla (cape) with white bronze braided hem, hood marked with a cross of Suqellus and with gold braids. Goose foot shaped stripes on one’s shoulder. Scottish dress tight at the waist by a white and with pompoms (tassels) nine knotted rope.

Amber necklace. Labarum. Cross of Suqellus or wheel of Taran/Toran/Tuireann in saltire with matched cord. Egg of snakes at the waist in a sporran (leather purse or holder). Leather bracelets (viriolae) decorated around their wrists. Leather sandals (of the Galatian type) or skin boots. White cuculla for the priestesses and finally, for the most confirmed elements, scepter of Nantosuelta but with a druidic slat engraved with Celtic runes.

Male sex.

Beret, sagum (plaid) out of tartan, cowl tight at one’s waist by a white and with pompoms (tassels) nine knotted rope., hood marked with a cross of Suqellus and with gold braid. The (goose foot shaped) stripes on one’s shoulder.

Torc. Labarum. Cross of Suqellus or wheel of Taran/Toran/Tuireann in saltire with a matched cord. Dagger in the belt. Wrists bands (viriolae) out of decorated leather.

Egg of snakes on one’s chest or at the waist in a bouget (leather purse or sporran), the cuffs as well as the hem of the cowl braided with white bronze.

White cowl for the druids.

Caligae, moccasins, or wooden-soled shoes and, for the high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) experienced finally, voulge with a druidic slat engraved with Celtic runes.

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APPENDIX No. 9.

PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA (WEB OR OTHER).

GENERAL RULES FOR ALL THE CATEGORIES OF SUBJECTS OR TONE OF THE ARTICLES TO BE BROADCAST IN THE MEDIA OR PUBLICATIONS DEPENDING ON THE OLLOTOUTA.

1.All these articles or subjects will have to refer in the following priority order…:

- to Celtic civilization in general.

- Possibly to Indo-European civilization (known formerly as Aryan).

- Even, but very exceptionally, paganism in general (religions neither Jewish neither Christian nor Muslim ).

- Or then referring to no particular cultural context (abstract, general, valid for all the human beings, articles).

N.B. It goes without saying if there were a local Celtic civilization (Scotland, Ireland, Spanish Galicia, Brittany, etc.) these subjects will have to be also firstly dealt with.

2.The contents will not have to contradict historical and scientific truth.

3. The exceptions to this principle will have to be duly justified, to be rare, and logically accepted by all the parts; or at the very least it will be necessary to show well it is there, not an assertion, but assumptions, opinion columns, modern choices.

4. The director of the review or the person in charge of this activity nevertheless will be allowed, in the interest of the publication, to make exceptions if they can be useful: for example acceptance of articles or programs off topic, but being able to lead to a bringing together or even to a conversion to our ideas later on, etc.

COMPLETELY EXCLUDED SUBJECTS, TONES OR STYLES.

1.Articles or programs favorable to the other non pagan religions, particularly Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

2.The politicking (call to vote for such or such). N.B. Even the policy in the noble senses of the word: solidarity, friendship between all the men, universal fraternity… These values are noble in themselves, but they concern true policy.

3.Non-critical articles or programs on the flying saucers, the aliens, Atlantis…

SUBJECTS, TONES OR STYLES, EXCLUDED, BUT WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF SOME EXCEPTIONS.

1.The subjects or political tones even in the noble senses of the word are excluded we have said, but will be allowed nevertheless, in exceptional circumstances, the articles or programs which can contribute to notably improving precisely, the knowledge of our members, or readers, or sympathizers, in the broader sense of the term; with regard to Celtic civilization in general, even the local Celtic religion.

3.The subjects or tones referring to the medicine of the body are excluded.

SUBJECTS, TONES OR STYLES, allowed UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS.

1. Noncritical articles about religions, of course pagan, but non Indo-European (provided that there is not too much of them: example the Finnish Kalevala, the Egyptian myths).

2.Non-critical articles on the non-Celtic Indo-European religions (provided that there is not too much of them).

3. Various types of clairvoyance.

4. What is pre-Celtic (megaliths, mathematics, shamans, prehistoric priests, and so on).

Provided that there is not too much of it, and that is clearly distinguished from the Celtic civilization itself.

5.Historical, but old (before 1700) Celtic Christianity provided that is done in a critical way (in order to show its errors for example).

6.Articles referring foreign to the Celts cultural concepts, but on incontestably known by them topics; provided that we don’t have really sufficient sure and precise details on the way in which the Celts practiced these techniques. For example, astrology. In this case, it will be quite clear that it will not be necessarily the Celtic way to see the things, that we tackle thus this subject only because of lack of authentic elements, and so on.

REQUIRED SUBJECTS, TONES OR STYLES.

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a) Religious in higher sense of the word, i.e., connecting Mankind to the cosmic powers, in the broader sense (relations of the vertical and transcendent type). Examples: mystic, metaphysical, cosmic philosophy (purpose of the life, place of Mankind in the Universe…) metapsychical and paranormal , unknown powers of Man, education of the character: appetite for effort, sense of the sacrifice, heroism…

b) Religious in the usual meaning of the word, i.e., all what concerns directly or indirectly the Celtic supernatural. Tales and legends about the Other World, the mysterious islands, the travels, the fairies or the giants, the gods, heroes (in the meaning where they are demigods or at least men, of course, but achieving superhuman feats), druids… In short Celtic mythology and local mythology in Old Europe (insofar as it is of Celtic origin).

Not the other Celtic mysteries.

That makes, of course, 80% of the literature and it remains very little things to the non-druidicist celticists.

Is this our fault to us if the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) played such a part in the formation of the Celtic literatures, and if the druidic designs are found there everywhere?

The central media or the central and official publication of the druidic Ollotouta will be therefore also… a media; a very specialized media, of course, but a media nevertheless; informing its readers, listeners, or televiewers, about the various events (demonstrations, books, reports, or others) concerning more or less closely the neo-druidism and celticist paganism. Information about the associations, the spectacles and other news will be therefore welcome.

For any information about the druidic Ollotouta write to…

Peter DeLaCrau. Dr. Hesunertus Primate of the druidic Ollotouta. B.P. 13. 93301. Aubervilliers cedex. France.

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APPENDIX No. 10.

SHORT DRAFT OF THE GODS LANGUAGE (OF THE ANCIENT CELTIC LANGUAGE).

Professor Jacques Lacroix has listed a thousand words of Celtic origin in our language, which is both a lot and a little (the 1000 irreducible ones. Lemme Editions. Chamalières).

The weakness of the written pieces explains why it is very difficult to reconstitute the morphology of the original Celtic language. It appears about certain that there existed at least five cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and instrumental. The existence of a locative is supposed for the declension of the –o stem The vocative is not absolutely certain.

The declension, for what we know, represents a kind of intermediary state Greek and Latin. The –o stem, the best testified (which is equivalent to the second Latin and Greek declension), is declined as below (the declension of the instrumental plural is dubious).

The examples selected are the word uiros = man (male) and nemeton = sanctuary (neutral).

Singular. Plural.

Nominative Uir-os Uir-oi >-i

Accusative Uir-on - om Uir-us.

Genitive Uir-i Uir- on.

Dative Uir-ui >-u Uir-obo

Instrumental Uir-u Uir-obi < us?

Nominative Nemet-on Nemet-a.

Accusative Nemet-on Nemet-a.

Genitive Nemet-i Nemet-on.

Dative Nemet-ui Nemet-obo.

Instrumental Nemet-u Nemet-obi.

The –i genitive appears to be an innovation communal to the Western Indo-European languages (Latin, Celtic). The expected Instrumental plural is in – us but - obi forms are testified (messamobi, gandobi).

The –a stem, which is equivalent to the first Latin and Greek declension. It is doubled with i/ia stems which we find in Sanskrit. These stems are declined as below.

The examples selected are the words Touta = “people, tribes” and Rigani = “queen” (Latin Regena).

Singular. Plural.

Nominative: Tout-a Tout-as.

Accusative: Tout-an > im Tout-as.

Genitive: Tout-as > ias Tout-anon.

Dative: Tout-ai > e > i Tout-abo.

Instrumental: Tout-a? > ia Tout-abi.

Nominative: Rigan-i Rigan-ias.

Accusative: Rigan-im Rigan-ias.

Genitive: Rigan-ias Rigan-ianon.

Dative: Rigan-i Rigan-iabo.

Instrumental: Rigan-ia Rigan-iabi.

The other vocalic stems are little testified, but we can reconstruct them.

Uatis “soothsayer”; mori “sea.”

Singular. Plural.

Nominative: Uat-is Uat-eis > es ?

Accusative: Uat-in, - im Uat-is.

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Genitive: Uat-eos > os*? Uat-ion.

Dative: Uat-e Uat-ibo > ebo.

Instrumental: Uat-i* Uat-ibi > ebi.

Nominative : Mor-i Mor-ia.

Accusative: Mor-i Mor-ia.

Genitive: Mor-eos > os*? Mor-ion.

Dative: Mor-e Mor-ibo.

Instrumental: Mor-i* Mor-ibi.

Magus “boy, servant”; medu “mead” (neutral).

Singular. Plural.

Nominative: Mag-us Mag-oues.

Accusative: Mag-un Mag-oues.

Genitive: Mag-os < ous Mag-uon.

Dative: Mag-u < ui? Mag-ouibo.

Instrumental: Mag-u Mag-ouibi?

Nominative: Med-u Med-ua?

Accusative: Med-u Med-ua?

Genitive: Med-os Med-uon.

Dative: Med-u Med-ouibo?

Instrumental Med-u Med-ouibi?

As for the verb and its conjugation, it is even more badly known. It seems that the Celtic language, following the Greek example, preserved from Indo-European the – mi and –o verbs . The Celt would have, like the Greek, five moods: an indicative, a subjunctive, an optative, an imperative and an infinitive (in the form of a verbal noun) and at least three tenses: present, future, preterit.

The first ten ordinal numbers.

1 Cintuxso (Welsh cyntaf, Breton kentan, old Irish cetae, modern Irish cead = first).

2 Allos (Welsh ail, Breton all, old Irish aile, modern Irish eile = other).

3 Tritios (Welsh trydydd, Breton trede, old Irish treide).

4 Pentuarios (Welsh pedwerydd, Breton pevare, old Irish cethramad, modern Irish ceathru).

5 Pimpetos (Welsh pumed, Breton pempvet, dialectal Breton pempet, old Irish coiced, modern Irish cuigiu).

6 Suexos (Welsh chweched, Breton c’hwec'hvet, old Irish seissed, modern Irish seu).

7 Sextametos (Welsh seithfed, Breton seizhvet, old Irish sechtmad, modern Irish seachtu).

8 Oxtumetos (Welsh wythfed, Breton eizhvet, old Irish ochtmad, modern Irish ochtu).

9 Nametos (Welsh nawfed, Breton navet, old Irish nomad, modern Irish naou).

10 Decametos (Welsh degfed, Breton dekvet, old Irish dechmad, modern Irish deichniu, Celtiberian dekametam).

Syntax.

Celtic syntax is still almost unknown. Specialists recognized some coordinating conjunctions, perhaps some relative, and demonstrative, pronouns. The order of the sentence appears to be subject/verb/complements.

Examples.

Conjunctions and coordinating adverbs.

- K: and. Coordinating suffix between two syntagmata of same nature (verbs, nouns).

Ak: coordinating conjuction + instrumental use : “with.”

Eti (adverb): also, again (cf Latin etiam). Preposition (cf Latin idem or item).

Etik: and also. Introduces a clause relating to the instrumental or a last list element.

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Extos, exter*: but.

Koetik: too. See etik.

Newe*: or.

- We: or. Coordinating suffix.

Toni (adverb): then; afterwards, next; in addition, moreover (cf: then, dan, dann in Germanic languages. Latin tum).

Adverbs.

Moxsou: soon, early.

Nou: now.

Sindiu: today.

Sindesi: yesterday.

Sin (di) noxti: this night.

Prepositions and prefixes.

AD: “towards, to”. Preposition + accusative (English At) adomi (cf Welsh At, old Irish At “to”).

Ambi: “around, close to; about” (cf Breton em, Welsh am, Irish im).

Ande: “under”; (cf Breton dan, Irish ann).

Ap: “with” (cf Breton a, Welsh a).

Are: “in front; because of.” Preposition + dative (cf Breton er, Welsh er, Irish air “on”).

Au: “of, from.” Preposition + genitive/dative (cf Welsh o “of,” Irish o).

Di: “of, from (distance, separation)”; (partitive) “of”; “without.” Negative or intensive prefix; preposition + dative (cf Breton di, Welsh y, Irish dI).

Enter, entar: “between.” Preposition + accusative (cf Breton entre, Welsh ithr, Irish to eidir).

Eri: “by, in the name of, for”; “around” (cf Breton er “because”, Welsh er “for,” Irish air “because”).

Es: “out of, without.” Preposition + dative (cf Breton eus, Welsh ech, Irish as).

In, eni: “in.” Prefix and preposition + dative and accusative (cf Breton en, Welsh yn, Irish and).

Issou: “below, at the foot of, beneath.” Prefix and preposition + dative (cf Breton is “low, below,” Welsh is, Irish is).

Kanta: “with.” Preposition (cf Breton gant, Welsh gant, Irish gan “without”).

Kon, kom: “with, together.” Prefix (cf Welsh cyf, Irish comh).

Medio: “in the middle of, within” (cf old Irish mide).

Ouxsi: “above, in the top of” (cf Breton us, Welsh uwch “higher,” Irish os).

Raco: “in front of, before” (cf Breton araok “before” , dirak “in front of,” Welsh rhag).

Sepos: “except, beyond, in addition to” > “without”. Preposition + accusative (cf Breton hep “without,” Welsh heb “without,” Irish seach “in the past”).

To: “to, for.” Preposition + dative (Germanic zu). Cf Irish do “to”).

Tre, tri: “by, through.” Prefix and preposition + accusative (cf Breton tre, Welsh tre, Irish tri).

Ver: “on.” Prefix and preposition + dative and accusative (cf Breton war, Welsh gor, Irish for).

Verto: “against, towards, close to”; “in order to, for, towards” (cf Breton ouzh, Welsh gwrth, Irish fri).

Vo: “under”. Prefix and preposition + dative and accusative (cf Welsh go, Irish for).

In 1997, in Châteaubleau, small village located about sixty kilometers away in the south-east of Paris, was discovered a tile dating back to the 3rd century. However this tile comprises a text written in Latin cursive in an extremely careful form. The 11 lines of this text were probably written in order to be able to be read in a public place (to announce engagement?) Below the detail of this text (reading from the great French linguist P.-Y. Lambert).

nemmaliIumi beni uelonna incorobouido

memma

neIanmanbe gniIou apeni temeuelle Iexsete si

ateIanmanbe

sueregeniatu o quprinnopetamebissi Ieteta

genintu quierinnopetamibissi

miIiIegumi.suante ueIommi petamassi Papissorei

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suninitesi IegiIinna anmambe Ieguisini

suniaetesi Ieguisinc

siaxsio u beIiassunebiti moc upiIummi ateri

mot upiIusemateri

xsi Iadore core muana IegumisinebeIassusete

Indore Iegumisin’

sue cluio u sedagisamo cele uiro Ionoue

IIobiIe beliassusete re gu Iexstumisendi

Iso nigu

miosetingi PapissoreibeIasssetemetingise

PapissorebeIassusitemetingise

tingi beIassuretere garise Iexstumisendi

gruse

Notes.

In italic between the lines or in second position, another possible reading.

The I capital letter of our current alphabet transcribes a long i (i longa in Latin) i.e., a i vowel + i consonant.

The two crossed “s” transcribe the tau gallicum or affricate consonant ts/st.

Nemmaliiu mi benin uellona incoro bouindo….

Let us outline a translation:

Nemmaliiu mi: I ask for or I call…

Benin: a woman…

Uellona: to marry…

Incorobo uindo: having cattle as a dowry.

As the proverb says it: Mantalon siron esi (the way is long).

Some words of Celtic origin now…

Ambassador, beak, bran, brave, budget, car, cream, change, glean, gob, palfrey, piece, truant, valet, vassal.

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APPENDIX No. 11.

THE TRUE OGHAMS.

(From the Celtic runos-runa, Irish run, Welsh rhin: secrecy, mysteries.)

Below some crossed lines found by the children of Peter DeLaCrau.

Considering the abuses of many charlatans on the matter: realignment and specifications.

Rune comes from the Celtic runo and means secrecy or mystery. The comrunos is the one who studied the runes, who was initiated. The prohibitions or the curses written in “runic” letters therefore were engraved on stone steles in North Italy, on tablets of yew wood called fidlanna in Ireland (from fid wood and lanna small planks).

End of the lines found crossed out by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau.

The first alphabets which the Celts used themselves in the 7th century before our era were the one to which the Lepontics had recourse and the one which was used by the Cisalpine Celts in Italy. Both derived from the alphabet known as Etruscan. The main difference between the two being the direction of certain letters (sinistroverse or dextroverse).

The Lepontic language was the language of the Lepontii, a language spoken in a part of Northern Italy since the 7th century before our era to the 3rd century before our era. Sometimes also called Cisalpine Celtic, it is regarded as being a continental Celtic language.

This language is known for us only by some rare inscriptions written in the alphabet of Lugano, one of the five main varieties of old Italic alphabets, derived from Etruscan. These inscriptions were found in an area centered on Lugano precisely, including the Lake Como and the Lake Maggiore in Italy. Similar writings were used to note the Rhaetic and the Venetic languages . The runic alphabet with 16 letters of the Germanic languages (the Scandinavian futhark) probably derives from an alphabet of this group.

Although the language is named from the people of the Lepontii, which occupied a part of Rhaetia (Switzerland and Italy), in the Alps; the word is currently used by many scientists to designate all the Celtic dialects of ancient Italy.

This alphabet by chance is very close to ours with regard to the writing (IN UPPER CASE LETTERS), but these letters do not transcribe the same sounds, on the other hand.

Correspondence between the upper-case letters of the Latin alphabet and the Cisalpine alphabet.

A is written F (a little tilted towards the right). Name of the matching rune: ansuz.

B see P.

C is written K.

D see T.

E (a little tilted towards the right with a vertical axis exceeding a little downwards). Matching rune: fehu.

F see U.

G see C.

H does not exist.

I is written I. Name of the matching rune: isaz.

J does not exist.

K = K or C. Name of the matching rune: kaunan.

L (the bottom line going up slightly towards the right). Name of the matching rune: perth.

M is written M (in fact more exactly a kind of W upside down). Name of the matching rune : eihwaz.

N is written N (slightly tilted towards the right with the line oblique and the second vertical line shorter. A kind of zigzag all in all). Name of the matching rune: haglaz. There too visible adaptation to wood engraving of this cisalpine letter usually cut in stone.

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O is written O. Name of the matching rune: ingwaz. Among the Germanic people, the glyph was obviously adapted to the engraving on fidlanna (on wood tablets). The drawing of the Cisalpine letter remained adapted to stone engraving.

P or B. Let us say a first part or half of N (no capital letter available). Name of the matching rune: laguz.

Q see K.

R is written D (well yes, at least in Cisalpine, in Lepontic D is written backwards). Matching rune: thurisaz

S is written S (more or less angular more or less in zigzag fashion). Name of the matching rune: sowilo.

SS. A kind of angular bow tie with a small vertical line in the middle. Name of the matching rune: dagaz.

N.B. According to Professor David Stifter (see the conclusion of his study entitled "Die Funktion von san im Lepontischen") this letter gave the rune dagr of the Germanic runic alphabet. Why not ?

T is written X. Name of the corresponding rune: gebo.

U is written V. Name of the matching rune: uruz.

V see U.

W does not exist.

X is written Y (with a small vertical bisector in the middle of the two higher branches). Name of the matching rune: algiz.

Y does not exist.

Symbolism.

First family.

Fehu (E). Cattle, money, richness, fertility. This rune also symbolizes the primeval fire, at the origin of everything.

Uruz (U and V). The aurochs (Celtic urus), the bull, the primary vital force.

Thurisaz (R). Giants, violence and strength.

Ansuz (A). God, sacred post, tree. This rune symbolizes especially inspiration, awareness.

Kaunan (C, G, K). Torch, coracle, boats.

Gebo (T and D). Gifts and presents, sacrifice and offerings.

Second family.

Hagalaz (N). Hail, storms, harmful magic of the weather.

Isaz (I). Ice, cold and misfortune.

Eihwaz (M). The horse (Celtic mandus) soul of the sun chariot.

Perth (L). Divination, chance.

Algiz (X). The ambivalence of the life, the crossroads.

Sowilo (S). Sun, light, heat and fertility.

Third family.

Laguz (P). Water, sea, lakes and springs.

Ingwaz (O). Fertility, pregnancy.

Dagaz (SS). Day and luminosity, at the origin of the sacred fire.

The runes f, a, g, i, t, m and l, almost show no change compared to the Italic alphabets, and are generally regarded as identical to the letters F, has, X, I, T, L and M of the latter. It is also largely accepted that the runes u, r, k, h, s, b and o correspond respectively to V, R, C, H, S, B and O.

The runes of which origin is dubious are either new creations, or adoptions of Latin letters otherwise unused. Richard L. Morris Odenstedt suggested that the 22 letters of the classical Latin alphabet (except for K which was then ignored) were used for that (z starting from Y, w from P, j from G, i from Z). Only the rune p would have been an innovation due to the Germanic peoples. There exist

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nevertheless dissension concerning the following runes: e (E?), n (N?), w (Q or P?), i and z (both come from Latin Z or Y ?) and d.

To these adapted to their culture letters, the Germanic people have combined a certain number of ideas. The rune Algiz (Y) symbolizes for example Hornunnos, the Hart, the Moose or Alces of Tacitus.

The question is: were these ideas suggested by the shape of the letters or their sound? As we could see it with the case of the Cisalpine alphabet indeed, a same glyph can note a completely different sound. R and T of our alphabet transcribing D and X in the Cisalpine alphabet, for example.

Tacitus described us the way in which people used the runes to know the future. The method had had to be borrowed from the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), through the Lepontic alphabet as regards the runes themselves.

You cut out small planks of trees (fidlanna or coelbren in Welsh language of today) which you then engrave with letters of the Lepontic alphabet . These fidlana or coelbrenn are then scattered on a white cloth similar to that which was used for the gathering of the mistletoe. The vate or soothsayer chooses three of them randomly and these three fidlana give the answer.

As in the case of our modern tarot (of which certain cards are, by the way, quite strange: the hanged man, the wheel of fortune, and so on) all depends on the commentary art of the clairvoyant in question.

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APPENDIX No. 12.

POSTSCRIPT: THE HISTORIA REGUM BRITANNIAE.

Robert de Boron's romance of Merlin, whether in verse or prose, provides the bulk of our documentation on the character until Thomas Malory.

But this is not the earliest mention of the character; the earliest mention is in the Historia regum Britanniae.

The Historia regum Britanniae is a Latin manuscript written between 1135 and 1138, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a monk resulting from a French family (in Armorica) settled in Wales.

It is not a historical document (unlike a peace treaty, a decree, an edict, a law, etc.) but a literary chronicle. It is not either a direct account, but a compilation, of legends, supposed to cover several centuries. It is a question for Geoffrey of Monmouth to give to the sovereigns of his time a prestigious, but mainly fictitious genealogy, of course. The founding myth is taken from the Greek mythology and begins after the Trojan War.

The contents of the work do not fall within the historical category, we have said. Let us say it is a legendary history of the kings of the island of Britain (“Britain” designates here the current Great Britain and not the continental Brittany located just opposite) since Brutus (the founding myth) until Cadwaladr.

It is the first appearance of outstanding characters such Merlin or Uther Pendragon.

Near to the chronicle, the text briefly presents to us a hundred reigns. The author claims that it is a translation of the Britannici sermonis liber vetustissimus, a manuscript in Breton language of which the existence is generally disputed.

Preface and dedication…

“Now, whilst, I was thinking upon such matters, Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man learned not only in the art of eloquence, but in the histories of foreign lands, offered me a certain most ancient book in the British language that did set forth the doings of them all in due succession and order from Brute, the first king of the Britons, onward to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo, all told in stories of exceeding beauty. At his request, therefore, I have been at the pains to translate this volume into the Latin tongue.”

Today History is a social science which requires exactitude (as far as possible) and strictness. In the 12th century, the approach is different , History is subordinated especially to politicks (see the dedication).

Geoffrey of Monmouth builds “a history,” fills holes, but to say he is a forger would be anachronistic. For the contemporaries, it was not legends, it was the genealogy of their sovereigns.

In the Middle Ages, undeniable events are cruelly missing. The historian as the chronicler, therefore needs much more imagination than the intellectuals of our time, but it is enough for him to be credible.

The plausible one is quite different today from that of that time, as regards the form we noticed, but undoubtedly not about the content… All and sundry praise their readers. See the current speech on the (obligatory) interbreeding from the French intellectuals. This civilization of panty liners, gay marriage (strong-arm) repression of the psychological violence or ready for a fight in the mud paratrooper women, is defended tooth and nails by the French intellectuals, so much big are their cowardice (you say “conformism” when you are politically correct) or their servility in front of the powers, all the powers, whatever they are. But perhaps they are also materially or financially honest (let us not speak about the intellectual honesty); because when a wise man shows the moon with his finger, the French intellectual looks at the finger.

N.B. As for the statistics about the immigration which would make, it appears, the History be included in the category of the hard sciences, there is nothing more perverse. It is enough to see what the politicians currently in government in France do with them.

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They use them, if necessary by manipulating them or by truncating them, without shame, to tell stories (they say to do “storytelling” when they want to appear smart today). There is no objective history and we will never say to what point the caste of the journalists or of the media people in fact played a part in the dramatic misleading of our civilization or more modestly of our societies, starting from the second half of the 20th century. Established through the chances of their trade in a site strategic for every society wanting to be democratic and non-aristocratic; that of the control of the information spread in the direction of the masses; they loosely benefitted from that to move insidiously and masked while proceeding to a co-optation of the information while letting people believe they were impartial. While concealing or driving back to the bottom for example certain facts. As an example, the demonstration which took place right in the heart of the provincial France, in Limoges, Friday, September 17, 2010, to the appeal of the Islamic organization Sirat Alizza, in order to burn the Penal code. The least which we can say it is that this very symptomatic information, however, would it be only on the symbolic level, was hardly resumed by the big media of the day or the following day; nor by the national politicians, usually so prompt to be moved when a little enthused clergyman threat to burn the Quran.

Or on the contrary by making other information go up then while repeating them ad infinitum, with as a result that you can't see the forest for the tree (for example in the field of the profanation of cemeteries). Even while manipulating or by twisting the words in the way of the newspeak of George Orwell and not by calling a spade a spade, so that they correspond to their personal generally accepted ideas, and thus misinform on the contrary the public in these fields. Example: every person feeling no sympathy towards Islam, hesitating to convert to Islam, distinguishing very lucidly on the contrary the big difficulty of this religion, and not hesitating to say it, to even announce its opinion on this subject; is by definition equated by them with a racist of extreme right-wing, the two words obviously forming a pleonasm in their mind. Even when this person is neither racist nor of extreme right-wing in a strict sense of the word. Even when he is non-racialist, even when he is rather of the left-wing.

However, as Caesar had very well noticed it (VI, 20), “Those tribes-states which are considered to conduct their commonwealth more judiciously, have it ordained by their laws, that, if any person shall have heard by rumor and report from his neighbors anything concerning the commonwealth, he shall convey it to the magistrate, and not impart it to any other; because it has been discovered that inconsiderate and inexperienced men were often alarmed by false reports, and driven to some rash act, or else took hasty measures in affairs of the highest importance”….

It is true that all these prophecies by Merlin are quite disconcerting have we have said. Indeed, and here is a sample.

HISTORIA REGUM BRITANNIAE.

Book I.

Preface and dedication (chapter 1).

“Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man learned not only in the art of eloquence, but in the histories of foreign lands, offered me a certain most ancient book in the British language that did set forth the doings of them all in due succession and order from Brute, the first king of the Britons, onward to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo, all told in stories of exceeding beauty. At his request, therefore, I have been at the pains to translate this volume into the Latin tongue.”

Chapter III.

After the Trojan war, Aeneas, flying with Ascanius from the destruction of their city, sailed to Italy….

Book VII.

Prolog (chapter I).

I had not got thus far in my history, when the subject of public discourse happening to be concerning Merlin, I was obliged to publish his prophesies at the request of my acquaintances, but especially of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, a prelate of the greatest piety and wisdom. There was not any person, either among the clergy or the laity, that was attended with such a train of knights and noblemen, who his settled piety and great munificence engaged in his service. Out of a desire, therefore, to gratify him, I translated these prophecies, and sent them to him with the following letter.

Chapter II.

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The regard which I owe to your great worth, most noble prelate, has obliged me to undertake the translation of Merlin's prophecies out of the British into Latin, before I had made an end to the history which I had begun concerning the acts of the British kings. …

Let us pass over the typically Christian slavish flattery (or hypocrisy others will say), that Geoffrey shows towards his hierarchically superior (you’d think to hear French journalists questioning their president) and let us come to what is important for us…

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Beginning of the prophecy (chapter III).

As Vortigern, king of the Britons, was sitting upon the bank of the drained pond, the two dragons, one of which was white, the other red, came forth, and, approaching one another, began a terrible fight, and cast forth fire with their breath. But the white dragon had the advantage, and made the other fly to the end of the lake. And he, for grief at his flight, renewed the assault upon his pursuer, and forced him to retire. After this battle of the dragons, the king commanded Ambrose Merlin to tell him what it portended.

Upon which he, bursting into tears, delivered what his prophetical spirit suggested to him, as follows.

Woe to the red dragon, for his banishment hastens on. His lurking holes shall be seized by the white dragon, which signifies the Saxons whom you invited over; but the red denotes the British nation, which shall be oppressed by the white. Therefore shall its mountains be leveled as the valleys, and the rivers of the valleys shall run with blood. The exercise of religion shall be destroyed, and churches laid open to ruin. At last the oppressed shall prevail, and oppose the cruelty of foreigners. For a boar of Cornwall shall give his assistance, and trample their necks under his feet. The islands of the ocean shall be subject to his power, the house of Romulus shall dread his courage, and his end shall be doubtful. He shall be celebrated in the mouths of the people and his exploits shall be food to those that relate them.

After this short allusion to the future Arthur (the wild boar of Cornwall), the young Merlin still in trance continues to prophesy…

After this, shall the red dragon return to his proper manners, and turn his rage upon himself. Therefore shall the revenge of the Thunderer show itself, for every field shall disappoint the husbandmen. Mortality shall snatch away the people….The remainder shall quit their native soil, and make foreign plantations. A blessed king shall prepare a fleet, and shall be reckoned the twelfth in the court among the saints……Albania [Scotland?] shall be enraged, and, assembling her neighbors, shall be employed in shedding blood. There shall be put into her jaws a bridle that shall be made on the coast of Armorica. The eagle of the broken covenant shall gild it over, and rejoice in her third nest. The roaring whelps shall watch, and, leaving the woods, shall hunt within the walls of cities……….. Cadwallader shall call

upon Conan, and take Albania into alliance. Then shall there be a slaughter of foreigners; then shall the rivers run with blood. Then shall break forth the fountains of Armorica, and they shall be crowned with the diadem of Brutus. Cambria shall be filled with joy; and the oaks of Cornwall shall flourish. The island shall be called by the name of Brutus: and the name given it by foreigners shall be abolished. From Conan shall proceed a warlike boar, that shall exercise the sharpness of his tusks within the Gallic woods. For he shall cut down all the larger oaks, and shall be a defense to the smaller. The Arabians and Africans shall dread him; for he shall pursue a furious course to the farther part of Spain (Timebunt ilium Arabes et Africani, nam impelum cursus sui in ulteriorem Hispaniam protendet, en latin ; do I have well understood ?)

There shall succeed the goat of the Venereal castle, having golden horns and a silver beard, who shall breathe such a cloud out of his nostrils, as shall darken the whole surface of the island. There shall be peace in his time and corn shall abound by reason of the fruitfulness of the soil. Women shall become serpents in their gait, and all their motions shall be full of hubris (mulieres incessu serpentes fient, et omnes earum gressus superbia replebuntur).

Chapter IV.

Three springs shall break forth in the city of Winchester, whose rivulets shall divide the island into three parts. Whoever shall drink of the first, shall enjoy long life, and shall never be afflicted with sickness. He that shall drink of the second shall die of hunger, and paleness and horror shall sit in his

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countenance. He that shall drink of the third shall be surprised with sudden death, neither shall his body be capable of burial. Those that are willing to escape so great a surfeit will endeavor to hide it with several coverings: but whatever bulk shall be laid upon it shall receive the form of another body. For earth shall be turned into stones; stones into water; wood into ashes; ashes into water, if cast over it.

Also a damsel shall be sent from the city of the forest of the Canute to administer a cure, who, after she shall have practiced all her arts, shall dry up the noxious fountains herself with the wholesome liquor, she shall bear in her right hand the wood of Caledon, and in her left the forts of the walls of London. Wherever she shall go, she shall make sulfurous steps, which will smoke with a double flame. That smoke shall rouse up the city of the Ruteni, and shall make food for the inhabitants of the deep. She shall overflow with rueful tears, and shall fill the island with her dreadful cry. She shall be killed by a hart with ten branches, four of which shall bear golden diadems…

After these things shall come forth a heron from the forest of Calaterium, which shall fly round the island for two years together. With her nocturnal cry, she shall call together with winged kind, and assemble to her all sorts of fowls. They shall invade the tillage of a husbandman, and devour all the grain of the harvests. Then shall follow a famine upon the people, and a grievous mortality upon the famine. But when this calamity shall be over, a detestable bird shall go to the valley of Galabes, and shall raise it to be a high mountain. Upon the top thereof it shall also plant an oak, and build its nest in its branches. Three eggs shall be produced in the nest, from whence shall come forth a fox, a wolf, and a bear. [ wink to our French readers: we are not, however, as it happens in a story of Sylvain and Sylvette ] The fox shall devour her mother, and bear the head of an ass. In this monstrous form shall she frighten her brothers, and make them fly into Neustria. But they shall stir up the tusky boar, and returning in a fleet shall encounter with the fox; who at the beginning of the fight shall feign herself dead, and move the boar to compassion. Then shall the boar approach her carcass, and standing over her, shall breathe upon her face and eyes. But she, not forgetting her cunning, shall bite his left foot, and pluck it off from his body. Then shall she leap upon him, and snatch away his right ear and tail, and hide herself in the caverns of the mountains. Therefore shall the deluded boar require the wolf and bear to restore him his members; who, as soon as they shall enter into the cause, shall promise two feet of the fox, together with the ear and tail, and of these they shall make up the members of a hog. With this he shall be satisfied, and expect the promised restitution. In the meantime, shall the fox descend from the mountains, and change herself into a wolf, and under pretense of holding a conference with the boar, she shall go to him, and craftily devour him. After that she shall transform herself into a boar, and feigning a loss of some members, shall wait for her brothers; but as soon as they are come, she shall suddenly kill them with her tusks, and shall be crowned with the head of a lion…..

The twelve houses of the star shall lament the irregular excursions of their guests; and Gemini omit their usual embraces, and call the urn to the fountains. ….Virgo shall mount upon the back of Sagittarius, and darken her virgin flowers (ascendet virgo dorsum sagittarij & flores virgineos obfuscabit en latin : do I have well understood ?). The chariot of the moon shall disorder the zodiac, and the Pleiades break forth into weeping. No offices of Janus shall hereafter return, but his gate being shut shall lie hidden in the chinks of Ariadne. The seas shall rise up in the twinkling of an eye, and the dust of the ancients shall be restored. The winds shall fight together with a dreadful blast, and their sound shall reach the stars.

Book VIII.

Chapter I.

Merlin, by delivering these and many other prophesies, caused in all that were present an admiration at the ambiguity of his expressions. But Vortigern above all the rest both ….

End of the prophecy of Merlin and return to the history of the kings of Britain.

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Book XII

Chapter VI

Therefore it is not to be wondered that such a degenerate race, so odious to God for their vices, lost a country which they had so heinously corrupted. For God was willing to execute his vengeance upon them, by suffering a foreign people to come upon them, and drive them out of their possessions.

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Notwithstanding it would be a worthy act, if God would permit it, to restore our subjects to their ancient dignity, to prevent the reproach that may be thrown upon our race, that we were weak rulers, who did not exert ourselves in our own defense. And I do the more freely ask your assistance, as you are of the same blood with us.

Chapter XIV

He was succeeded in the kingdom by Cadwallader, his son, whom Bede calls the youth Elidwalda. At first he maintained the government with peace and honor; but after twelve years' enjoyment of the crown, he fell into a fit of sickness, and a civil war broke out among the Britons….

Chapter XV.

During his sickness, the Britons (as we said before), quarreling among themselves, made a wicked destruction of a rich country and this again was attended with another misfortune. For this besotted people was punished with a grievous and memorable famine; so that every province was destitute of all sustenance, except what could be taken in hunting. After the famine followed a terrible pestilence, which in a short time destroyed such multitudes of people, that the living were not sufficient to bury the dead. Those of them that remained, flying their country in whole troops together, went to the countries beyond the sea….Cadwallader himself, in his voyage, with his miserable fleet to Armorica, made this addition to the lamentation…. Return, therefore, ye Romans; return, Scots and Picts! Behold, Britain lies open to you, being by the wrath of God made desolate, which you were never able to do. It is not your valor that expels us; but the power of the supreme King, whom we have never ceased to provoke.

Chapter XVI.

Cadwallader arrived at the Armorican coast, and went with his whole company to King Alan, the nephew of Salomon by whom he was honorably received. So that Britain, being now destitute of its ancient inhabitants, excepting a few in Wales that escaped the general mortality, in the thickets of the woods. From that time the power of the Britons ceased in the island, and the Angles began their reign.

Chapter XVII.

After some time, when the people had recovered strength, Cadwallader, being mindful of his kingdom, which was now free from the contagion of the pestilence, desired assistance of Alan towards the recovery of his dominions. The king granted his request; but as he was getting ready a fleet, he was commanded by the loud voice of an angel to desist from his enterprise. For God was not willing that the Britons should reign any longer in the island, before the time came of which Merlin prophetically foretold Arthur. It also commanded him to go to Rome to Pope Sergius, where, after doing penance, he should be enrolled among the saints 1). It told him withal, that the Britons, by the merit of their faith, should again recover the island, when the time decreed for it was come. But this would not be accomplished before they should be possessed of his relics, and transport them from Rome into Britain…. and then at last would they recover their lost kingdom.

Chapter XVIII.

Then Cadwallader, renouncing worldly cares for the sake of God and his everlasting kingdom, went to Rome, and was confirmed by Pope Sergius: and being seized with a sudden illness, was, upon the twelfth before the kalends of May, in the six hundred and eighty-ninth year of our Lord's incarnation freed from the corruption of the flesh, and admitted into the glories of the heavenly kingdom.

Chapter XIX.

As soon as Ivor and Ini had got together their ships, they with all the forces they could raise, arrived in the island, and for forty-nine years together fiercely attacked the nation of the Angles, but to little purpose. For the above-mentioned mortality and famine, together with the inveterate spirit of faction that was among them, had made this proud people so much degenerate that they were not able to gain any advantage of the enemy. And being now also overrun with barbarism, they were no longer called Britons, but Gualenses, Welshmen; a name derived either from Gualo their leader, or Guales their queen, or from their barbarism. But the Saxons managed affairs with more prudence, maintained peace and concord among themselves, tilled their grounds, rebuilt their cities and towns…..

The Welshmen, being very much degenerated from the nobility of the Britons, never after recovered the monarchy of the island; on the contrary, by quarrels among themselves, and wars with the Saxons, their country was a perpetual scene of misery and slaughter.

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Chapter XX.

But as for the kings that have succeeded among them in Wales, since that time, I leave the history of them to Caradoc of Lancarvan, my contemporary; as I do also the kings of the Saxons to William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntingdon. But I advise them to be silent concerning the kings of the Britons, since they have not that book written in the British tongue, which Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Brittany, and which being a true history, published in honor of those princes, I have thus taken care to translate.

END

1) What need we have to be saints?? Here is the typical trap of Christianity or of the good apostles: be saints, be saints! Turn the left cheek, do what I say, do what we say (but especially not what we do: especially do not like us)! The triad reported by Diogenes Laertius is amply sufficient for our morals: “To revere the gods, to abstain from wrongdoing, and to be a man, a true one” (Diogenes Laertius. Book I, Prolog 6).

Commentaries by Peter DeLaCrau.

Unlike the prophecies of the Sibyl which are immediately understandable for the reader, those of Geoffrey remain indeed very obscure.

The long series of vaticinations inserted into the very middle of the Historia regum Britanniae or History of the kings of Britain, went down in history under the title of Prophetia Merlini or prophecy of Merlin, but in the beginning it could be made up independently, and in France furthermore (see the Life of St Goeznovius, the Livre des faits d’Arthur and the Historia britannica).

What is sure, it is that these “Celtic” vaticinations were spread early, independently of the chronicle of Geoffrey, and that today they are preserved to us at the same time integrated in the Historia regum Britanniae, but also as an autonomous writing.

One of the first commentaries is that which specialists ascribe to the named Alan of Lille . He is dated between 1167 and 1174 (it is not only one of the oldest interpretations of these enigmatic vaticinations we have, but still one of the rare complete commentaries we have).

From the start, Alan poses the principle the animals have to be taken figuratively , because they designate men.

“We bring to the attention of the simple reader once for all that in this book, according to the way of speaking of the prophets, are designated by animal names; snakes, birds, wild boars, wolves, foxes, lions, oxen, bulls, goats, asses, hedgehogs, dragons, grass snakes, herons, owls, and other animals of this kind; not animals, or snakes or birds; but some kings and princes or tyrants. That, of course, because of the similarities being able to exist between them.”

Alanus ab Insulis , nevertheless resorted , as regards the symbolism of the staged animals ,to the Bible. However it is the animal symbolism of the Celtic tradition that it would have been necessary to use (possibly) to decipher this text.

a) “Ad haec ex urbe Canuti nemoris eliminabitur puella…”

Let us not forget that the family of Geoffrey was originating in France (in Armorica). It is to be wondered whether this mysterious virgin having to come from the “canute” forest mentioned by him higher, is not quite simply the Maid of Orleans (canute = carnute? Canute = chenu, in French?) In any case, it is well like that it was interpreted later, to the great displeasure of Englishmen, by equating this “chenu/canut” to the old French word chesnu, meaning “oaken.” In other words “the oak wood.”

And as it is impossible that it was really an anticipation, that simply means that it is in this case a late interpolation due to certain later copyists, and inserted in this way in the original text.

b) Calaterium nemus corresponds perhaps to the forest of Galtres, but it is perhaps also the mistake of a copyist for caledonus nemus (the forest of Caledonia). In any event, the Latin of Geoffrey of Monmouth is not very clear, and my seven years of study of this language are far away.

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c) What is curious nevertheless, it is that the author of this text, apparently well announced the intervention in the conflict of Du Guesclin (the eagle belonged to the coat of arms of his family).

Dabitur maxillis ejus frenum quod in armorico sinu fabricabitur. Deaurabit illud aquila rupti foederis et tertia nidificatione; gaudebit.

There shall be put into her jaws a bridle that shall be made on the coast of Armorica. The eagle of the broken covenant shall gild it over, and rejoice in her third nest. The roaring whelps shall watch, and, leaving the woods, shall hunt within the walls of cities………..

What seems well to correspond to the tactic used by Du Guesclin (trick and guerilla).

d) The end of this prophecy, in a vision perhaps inspired by the druidic doctrines about the destruction and the renewal of the world, but finally that would nevertheless astonish me much considering the time and the ambient Christianity, evokes the houses of the star to be upset, the twelve signs of the zodiac going to war, and the virgin mounting upon the back of the Sagittarius.

It is true that the kings of England then used bowmen, but these bowmen precisely were Welsh, what makes therefore this interpretation contradictory with the Breton hope.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

What we are, this in what we believe. Page 002

Short history of druidism and Ollotouta Page 007

The rituals Page 010

The oath of the Atectos Page 016

Venial (family) ceremonies Page 018

Anmenacton or confirmation of the Celtic amphidromia (naming ceremony) Page 022

Virolaxton or dubbing Page 033

Engagement marriages and other unions Page 042

The chain of life Page 051

Baptism of fire or consolament Page 054

Obsequies Page 061

Cemeteries Page 073

Lifting elude or ne litom Page 075

Naming ceremony of the type confirmation (of enlightened by reason druidic faith) Page 083

Confirmation of return to Celtic paganism Page 092

Priestly rituals Page 101

The comrunacton or Initiation as a disciple Page 102

Notices about the Celtic chess Page 115

Ordainment as male female velede, vate, or gutuater. Page 118

Handing-over of craeb (palm) Page 125

Ordainment of druid or priestess Page 128

Enthronement Page 133

Ollototal ceremonies Page 139

The druidic calendar Page 140

The Spell book of Celtic witches Page 141

Trinouxtion samoni (oenach) Page 142

Ambolc or St Brigit’s day Page 151

Beltene or festival of the vervain (oenach for the druids) Page 158

Lugnasade (oenach) Page 168

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Winter solstice: Matra noux or Epona’s day Page 181

The ten nights of Grannus ( end of December - beginning of January) Page 191

Summer solstice: the festival of Taran/Toran/Tuireann Page 200

Autumnal equinox: Bron trogain Page 209

Vernal equinox: ver sacrum Page 212

Other fires Page 216

Sacrifices Page 218

The sacrifice rituals Page 221

The human sacrifice Page 225

The druidic service Page 231

Suggestions of sermon for the druidic service Page 242

Places of worship Page 268

The hierarchical order of the sanctuaries Page 279

The smart trekking Page 287

Material and symbols Page 299

Objects used for the worship Page 303

Lay clothing Page 309

Priestly clothing Page 312

Celtic tonsure Page 315

Appendix No.1 : return about the key time of every druidic service Page 316

Appendix No. 2: Ritual intended to conjure Taran/Toran/Tuireann Page 319

Appendix No.3: various rituals Page 321

Appendix No.4: Notices about the oito or the oath taking Page 326

Appendix No.5: Organization of the ancient druidic Ollotouta Page 328

Appendix No.6: Various reflections about the principles and the structures

of the druidic Ollotouta Page 333

Appendix No.7: Proposals for the druidic Ollotouta of today Page 338

Appendix No. 8: Obligatory formalities Page 348

Appendix No. 9: Media of the druidic Church Page 350

Appendix No.10: Short draft of the language of gods Page 352

Appendix No.11: Celtic runes Page 356

Postscript: Historia regum Britanniae. Page 359

Afterword in the way of John Toland Page 366

Bibliography of the broad outlines Page 369

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).

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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.

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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.