The
Ancient Celtic Otherworld
First Appeared in Ripples,
The Quarterly Journal of Shining Lakes Grove, Yule, 1995.
Few areas of Celtic lore are
more confused by the ravages of time and cultural intrusion than the phenomena
of death and the afterlife. The coming of the new Christian faith to Northern
Europe signaled a radical change in our traditional understanding of death and
rebirth as new characters and biblical theology were superimposed on aboriginal
mythology. This hybridization of belief systems created a uniquely Celtic
Christianity that, while greatly enhanced by popular folk belief, was in many
ways very different from our pre-Christian understanding of the world.
Much of the thinking that
resulted from this course of events has been passed down through the centuries
to us in folk tales and continues to distort our views of ancient cosmology
today. Many of these ideas even continue to be upheld and promoted by modern
Neopagan lore as tales are retold and studied for use in revivalist movements.
To gain a clearer understanding of our cosmological heritage we must attempt to
identify and remove these external influences of late history to reveal a
functional and internally consistent world view. While we can not hold out much
hope for a truly precise picture of our ancestors’ beliefs, these efforts will
carry us much closer to that goal.
The
Myth of the Sidhe Gods
The Gods and Goddesses of
our ancestors were seen as very powerful. They existed in this world and could
move freely between the realms. They were intimately tied to the activities of
the world and had an active role in daily events. Many were involved directly
in the very cycles upon which life depended.
When Christianity came to
the fore people slowly adapted their understanding of these older deities to
the new faith. A theology developed to explain the deities’ loss of power to
the Christians God which described them as being defeated and relegated to the
margins of the world. This belief was a continuation of our traditional view of
supernatural relegation. The Celtic Deities were forced to live underground in
the same way that they had once forced older pre-Celtic Gods to move out into
the Sea.
Today the myths that have
been passed through time to us contain stories of how the Gods were forced to
live beneath the ground in caves and burial mounds. They began to be referred
to as the Sidhe from the Gaelic term for under the hill . Stories abound of
fantastic underworld palaces where the former Gods, in diminished form, host marvelous
banquets for the dead and heroes of old. These themes are repeated in other
tales which picture these palaces as hostels or bruidhen. These accounts have
contributed much confusion to a clear understanding of ancient cosmology as
they unjustly cast most of the major Irish deities in the role of the Celtic
Otherworld God.
As the Christian view of the
sinister nature of death and the Otherworld took hold, attitudes toward the old
Gods became rooted in suspicion and fear. In late times our view of the Gods
became so diminished that they began to be thought of as fairies, sprites,
elves, dwarves, etc. These characters maintained their sinister and dangerous
nature until recent times when the New Age movement and modern Disney stories
turned them into cute but inconsequential playthings.
The
Schizophrenic Horned Man
A very popular figure in
modern day Neopaganism is the horned man, often given the name Cernunnos taken
from a single inscription in Gaul. This modern horned man is a strange mixture
of a number of ancient deities from Pan through the Green Man through Hermes
through Arawn to Gwyn ap Nudd created through the syncretic power of Wiccan
theology. He is seen as a representation of the wild and lusty force of nature
while at the same time embodying a sinister otherworldly soul hunter character.
I believe that some of the
content of this deity is the result of the collision of the ancient Welsh
Otherworld God Arawn with the Christian Devil which occurred as Annwn slowly
became synonymous with the Christian Hell. Other portions come from Gwyn ap
Nudd, who was once a Welsh hunter God but later became the leader of the wild
hunt where the forces of chaos and evil roamed the countryside seeking lone
travelers for the opportunity to snatch their souls.
As the aboriginal view of
death as a natural passage in the never-ending cycle of life was overtaken by
Christian concepts, the previously benevolent Otherworld God took on the
sinister and fearful characteristics of a demon. The festival of Samhain slowly
turned from a respectful honoring of those who had passed beyond into a time to
hide in our homes for fear of having our souls snatched away. Tales that once
told us how to welcome the honored dead into our homes were reversed to teach
us how to protect ourselves from them and bar them from our doors.
The horned man is indeed one
of oldest known deities of Western Europe. But far from being a soul snatching
Death God he was the protector of animals and the forest creatures. He was
intimately connected with the deeply spiritual, but hardly sinister, activity
of hunting and was honored widely as vital to the delicate dance of life. In
this original form he is a very appropriate deity for our modern movement at a
time when environmentalism is practically a spiritual imperative.
The
Sea God King of the Otherworld
The ancient Celtic
Otherworld had little to do with the underground. In fact, it is more readily
identified on the horizontal plane as outward from the center rather than
downward. It was associated strongly with the sea, and for this reason occupies
a place as a realm in the triad of land, sea and sky. The dead are envisioned
as living on beautiful islands or in magical lands under the surface of the
waves.
The Otherworld is a happy
place of peace and harmony, an idealized mirror image of this world. There is
no pain, sickness or aging as the dead enjoy beautiful music and endless
banquets of delight. The heroes of the ages entertain themselves with all sort
of sports and good-natured athletic competitions as all await their time of
return to this world.
The king and host of this
wondrous realm is a Sea God. For Shining Lakes Grove he has been identified as
Manannan mac Lir. His functional equivalent in the Welsh pantheon is the God
Arawn. Both of them are far from demonic characters. Manannan is a wise and
gracious host who has many wondrous abilities and possessions such as magical
horses who can stride on the surface of the ocean, a cloak of invisibility and
magical pigs.
Other
Otherworldly Characters and Concepts
The Irish Celts have a tale
of the first mortal ever to die. Just prior to their landfall upon Ireland, the
sons of Mil are stricken by a mishap. One of their number, a fellow named Donn
is drowned by the Goddess Eriu after he insults her. From this point on he
appears in the tales as the keeper of the first guidepost on the journey to the
Otherworld. The dead were believed to have briefly visited or passed by his
house just after the moment of death. This house is located on an island off
the coast of Ireland called TechnDuinn or House of Donn. This tale is
undoubtedly of ancient origin as it is present in other forms in the larger
body of Indo-European lore such as the Vedic Yama.
The battle hags of Celtic
lore are closely associated with death. They are often seen transformed into
ravens who hang around battlefields to feast on the gory remains. They are
closely associated with the destiny of warriors and are usually triple
Goddesses. Examples are Badbh, Nemhain, Macha and the Morrigan. They do not,
however, seem to have anything to do with the realm of the dead itself and
rather are mostly concerned with the moment of loss of life and possibly
transportation of the soul to that realm.
There are also female
characters who can be more readily seen as Goddesses of the Otherworld. They
are generally very beautiful women who have great regenerative and healing
powers. They are strongly associated with swans or songbirds with beautiful
plumage and magical voices. The Goddesses often have the ability to transform
themselves into the form of these birds. Examples of these Goddesses are Fand,
Be Lind, Fi Band, Naiv, Rhiannon and probably Epona. In later tales they were
seen as enchantresses who lured heroes into Otherworld adventures.
Living mortals also occasionally
entered the Otherworld. A large number of the tales that have been passed down
to us concern mortal adventures into the Otherworld and encounters with its
inhabitants. Bold heroes such as Pwyll, Cu Chulainn, Bran, Finn and Conaire all
found or fell upon a way to transgress the boundary between the worlds. These
tales provide a wealth of knowledge about the nature of the Otherworld while
pointing the way for modern practitioners to access and explore this realm.
This is particularly true of those tales surrounding the God Manannan mac Lir.
A final character that
should be mentioned is the Otherworldly dog or hound. As with many of the
Indo-European people, the Celts also had such beasts in their mythology. Kings
of the Otherworld such as Manannan and Arawn had special dogs which were red
and white or speckled in appearance. They served their masters as hunting dogs
or guard gods. When they were viewed by mortals they were seen as omens of
impending death.
Conclusions
for Neopagan Theology
Through the careful study
and adoption of the principals outlined above we will be able to cultivate an
understanding of death and the Otherworld that is much closer to that of our
ancestors. The concept of the Otherworld as a peaceful and benevolent respite
has important implications to our funerary and worship practices while
permitting us to evolve a much more balanced and less-fearful approach to the
journey beyond the veil.
The understanding of the
genealogy of the Sidhe God tales is particularly important to our revival of
faith in the old Gods. The fact that these Gods have been freed from their
underground prisons to rule the world again has great power to bring them into
our lives and show us their relevance to the interworkings of life. As we have begun
to learn in Shining Lakes Grove this belief that the Gods can be once again
seen and felt in nature around us has great power to intimately connect our
acts of love and worship to the ever changing force of life around us.