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Ancient Celtic religion, commonly known as Celtic paganism, [1] [2] [3] was the religion of the ancient Celtic peoples of Europe. Because there are no extant native records of their beliefs, evidence about their religion is gleaned from archaeology, Greco-Roman accounts (some of them hostile and probably not well-informed), and literature from ...
In the 20th and 21st centuries, ideas about "Celtic Christians" combined with appeals by certain modern churches, modern pagan groups, and New Age groups seeking to recover something of ancient spirituality that they believe is missing from the modern world. For these groups, Celtic Christianity becomes a cipher for whatever is lost in the ...
The Celtic religion perceived the presence of the supernatural as integral to, and interwoven with, the material world. Every mountain, river, spring, marsh, tree and rocky outcrop was inspirited. [3]: 29 While the polytheistic cultures of ancient Greece and Rome revolved around urban life, ancient Celtic society was predominantly rural. The ...
After Celtic lands became Christianised, there were attempts by Christian writers to euhemerize or even demonize most of the pre-Christian deities, while a few others became Saints in the church. The Tuatha Dé Danann of Irish mythology , who were commonly interpreted as divinities or deified ancestors, were downgraded in Christian writings to ...
Druidry has been described as a form of Celtic spirituality, [31] or "Celtic-Based Spirituality". [32] Scholar of religion Marion Bowman described Druidry as the "Celtic spirituality" par excellence. [31] Some practitioners regard Druidry as a form of "native spirituality", [33] and it displays an affinity with folk religions. [25]
Some Neo-druid groups call anyone with an interest in Celtic spirituality a "druid", and refer to the practice of any Celtic-inspired spirituality as "druidry", [35] while reconstructionist groups usually regard "druid" as a culturally-specific office requiring long training and experience, only attained by a small number of practitioners, and ...
More tentatively, links can be made between ancient Celtic deities and figures in early medieval Irish and Welsh literature, although all these works were produced well after Christianization. The locus classicus for the Celtic gods of Gaul is the passage in Julius Caesar 's Commentarii de Bello Gallico ( The Gallic War , 52–51 BC) in which ...
Anam Cara is a phrase that refers to the Celtic concept of the "soul friend" in religion and spirituality. The phrase is an anglicization of the Irish word anamchara , anam meaning " soul " and cara meaning "friend".