Celtic Polytheism

Druids, sacred groves, and a thin veil to the otherworld.

c. 800 BCE – 400 CE · Western & Central Europe · Indo-European Pagan

The Celtic peoples of Iron Age Europe honored a shifting pantheon tied to place, war, craft, and fertility, mediated by the learned Druid class. Much is known only through later Irish and Welsh literature and Roman accounts, but its seasonal fire festivals and reverence for wells, groves, and the otherworld survive in folk custom — and were consciously revived by modern Neopaganism and Wicca.

Key figures

• Lugh, the Dagda, Brigid
• The Druids

Texts

• Oral lore (later Irish/Welsh myth)

Beliefs

• A living otherworld beside our own
• Sacred groves, springs, and thresholds
• Cyclical time and seasonal turning

Rituals

• Seasonal fire festivals (Samhain, Beltane)
• Offerings to water and land
• Druidic rites

Grew from

• Proto-Indo-European Religion

Connections in the atlas

• The Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley)
• Púca
• Hellfire Club, Montpelier Hill
• Cantre'r Gwaelod, the drowned hundred
• Michael J. O'Kelly
• ? What was Stonehenge for?
• Avebury
• Esus
• Irish monks into Britain and Europe
• Sheela na gig
• The king who will return
• Anima and Animus