The Gods of the Gaels
Hugh Malet describes how the Druidic gods were regarded by Celts very much as a neighbouring clan, endowed with a particularly powerful magic.
The daily life of the Celtic tribes that inhabited western Europe at the dawn of the Christian era was dominated by cultic beliefs, magical superstitions and a pantheon of gods which they revered. The Roman poet Lucan has left a vivid and macabre description of a Druidic sacrificial grove, its rotting wooden idols and branches smeared with human blood.
While Caesar and other early writers tell us a little of Druidic theology and priest-craft, of sacrifices on high places, and of wicker effigies packed with human victims destined to be burned alive. To this we must add the Celtic cult of head-hunting and the tribesmen’s propensity for drinking the blood of any dying member of the clan, in the belief that none of the collective tribal energy should be wasted.
Such was the darker side of early Celtic belief, based mainly on the delusive ideas of sympathetic magic, which the Gaels shared with most developing nations. In their mythology, however, they have left us an immensely valuable and rewarding legacy.
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