Celtic Trainers and Training

The religion of the Celts is THE quintessential Western religion, predating by 500 years the Middle Eastern religions from which Judaic, Christian and Moslem religions emerged. Nowadays, we must willingly suspend our disbelief to imagine shapeshifters moving into and out of animal bodies, or to imagine wise dragons, magical cauldrons or severed heads that can talk.

We Westerners may be far removed from our ancient roots. We are removed from the Celts not only in time, but in our involvement with living. Many of us are like aliens on our own planet, unable to survive without our modern artifacts. How many of you have stalked your food in the forest, with a starving family depending on your hunting prowess? How many of you have depended on your garden crops? When was the last time you helped a woman give birth to a child? When did your community last repel slavers or headhunters? Your remote ancestors would understand the Celts very well. Can you?

Imagine that the seasons as a gift of the gods, and that a special midwinter feast rejuvenates the sun. Imagine that the spirits of trees need gifts. Imagine making love below a sacred plant that never grows on the ground, to ensure healthy babies. Imagine celebrating each new Spring with symbols of fertility for the benefit of your crops.

Traces remain. Have you attended a Christmas feast? Have you decorated an evergreen tree at the winter solstice? Have you kissed under a sprig of skyplanted mistletoe? Have you given and received eggs and rabbits at the Spring Equinox? These Celtic rituals have been sanitized until little remains but empty stories for children to repeat.

In every culture people find ways to transcend conventional reality. In our civilized high-speed manner people use civilized high-speed drugs, and our city streets home the homeless results. Yet the "altered states" of Celtic tribes were never entertainment, nor ways to escape a boring life, but ways to find healing or "magical" powers, or some useful form of mystical or spiritual "enlightenment".

If magical powers benefited the Celtic community, the practitioner was honored and revered by the community as an important key for the community's survival. If the magical powers were only for the benefit of the user, the Celts distrusted and avoided such people.

Before the Romans introduced the Greek alphabet, we know little of a written Celtic language. Perhaps Ogham, a code of simple rune-like lines, preceded the use of the Greek alphabet, representing of silent finger signals used by hunters or warriors. The old stones are mostly silent. The Celts are known from archaeological studies, classical writers and folklore, which offer tantalizing clues to the beliefs of this once "world power".

Although the "Dark Ages" are indeed dark, there are glimmers of light from both ends of the time tunnel. And now, Celtic Path workshops offer experiential journeys into Celtic knowledge - recreating Celtic skills through interactive study and self-exploration.

The first references to the Celts are by the Greeks: the geographer Hecataeus (about 500 BC), speaks of the cities Nyrax and Massalia in the lands of the Keltoi. Hellanicus (about 500 BC) describes the Celts as practicing justice and righteousness and the historian Herodotus mentions the Keltoi tribe living around the Danube River in about 450 BC. Aristotle wrote that the Celts were from "beyond Spain", and Ephorus (about 350 BC) describes the Celts as "having the same customs as the Greeks" and being on the friendliest terms with them. Plato called the Celts "drunken and combative" and said that the Celts are barbaric - they sacked the Greek city of Delphi in 273 BC. The Celts were often described as tall and fair, and warlike and masterful. Caesar lists the Celtic tribes in Western Europe as the Belgae in the north and east, the Celtae in the middle and the Aquitani in the west and south of Europe.

Primarily traders and warriors, the Celts exploded from their Central European homeland in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ, and conquered Bronze-Age Europe. The Celts (Galatae in Greek - see Paul's Letter to the Galatians) were old allies of the Greeks. Celtic chiefs made covenants with Alexander the Great, swearing a Celtic oath "If we break this agreement may the sky fall on us and crush us, may the earth gape open and swallow us, may the sea burst out and overwhelm us". Compare this to the Irish "Book of Leinster" 1000 years later where the Ulster heroes declare "Heaven is above us, and earth beneath us, and the sea is around us. Unless the sky shall fall with its showers of stars on the ground where we are camped, or unless the earth shall be rent with an earthquake, or unless the waves of the blue sea come over the forests of the living world, we shall not give ground". The mystical "elements" were important to the Celts.

The druids and bards filled many roles in the Celtic world. They were the priests, diplomats and judges of a complex culture, and were profoundly respected, both by the Celts and by the ancient Greek and Roman historians. Celtic philosophy became the medieval code of chivalry, and is deeply embedded in our Western cultures today. However, the flames of Celtic culture dwindled following many invasions, and were nearly extinguished by the Christian church. Although the Celtic Church was a synthesis of Christian beliefs with the older religion, and kept Christianity alive during the Dark Ages, the later Roman Church showed little tolerance. The Celtic Church was disbanded.

Old Celtic techniques were labeled sorcery, and practitioners were stripped of dignity and power, and were feared and persecuted by the Roman Church. Practitioners were called wise-ards, and then wizards. Honorable wise-craft became illegal witch-craft. Roman Church missionaries replaced the traditional roles of the bards and druids. Celtic customs survived longer in rural areas of Wales, Ireland and Scotland but gradually faded into myth and folklore.

But we're still here - and we're coming back!