Celts - Tumblr Posts
“Scratch a bit at the thin topsoil of Irish Catholicism,” the saying goes, “and you soon come to the solid bedrock of Irish paganism.”... paganism and Catholicism in Ireland are joined twins that can not be separated. They are not opposites, as archaeologist Proinsias MacCana has pointed out, for in Ireland pagan ways and beliefs formed an “extraordinary symbiosis.” ...paganism and Christianity in Ireland need each other to live.
Patricia Monaghan, The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit
Cernunnos and Nodens
The duality of man
Two ancient Celtic gods who, thanks to the aural tradition of the Druids and the stabbing tradition of the Romans, we know very little about. But I've been thinking about what we do know about them and I have some speculation that has zero evidence but I'd like to share anyway.
To me they seem to be gods of different aspects of the same things. To quote Terry Pratchett, to be human is "To be the place where the Fallen Angel meets the Rising Ape," we aren't quite animals but nor are we divine. We have one foot in each camp.
Cernunnos represents our beastial side while Nodens represents our civilised side. Here's my reasoning:
Cernunnos is god of wildlife. Nodens is the god of dogs, our first domesticated animal.
Cernunnos is a god of fertility, or at least male virility. Nodens is a god of healing. One is the base lust that creates new life, the other is practiced learning that preserves existing life.
Nodens is a hunting/fishing god, as in the practical activities we do to sustain ourselves. Cernunnos is god of THE HUNT, as in the actual bloody thrill of the chase.
Another way to look at this last one would be; Cernunnos is a hunting god whereas Nodens is a war god. The two forms of violence man partakes in, one is arguably natural while the other man made. However, I feel the need to point out that Nodens isn't exactly a war god, he's a healer god, but the Roman soldiers in Britain associated him with Mars, a war god who from the perspective of a soldier had healer aspects.
"The ancient Celts saw the land as a living being, a Goddess, from which all else sprang. The land was a memory, an archive, a consciousness, and a conscience. To heal what is amiss in the present world, we must recapture the reverence of the world of the past and reconnect with our ancestral lands."
-Celtic Shamanism: An Awakening Landscape
Audio Dialogue With Jane Burns and Sandra Ingerman
echoes of the past.
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