THE GODS IN THE HEAVENS

Did the ancient Celts see their gods in the stars?

The following is an extract from "Mythology of the Celtic People", a 1998 reprint of the 1912 volume "Celtic Myth & Legend: Poetry & Romance" by Charles Squire, detailing some interesting facts about an astral significance in the mythology of the Celts.

"The descriptions and the stories of the British gods have hardly come down to us in so ample or so compact a form as those of the deities of the Gaels, as they are preserved in the Irish and Scottish manuscripts.  They have also suffered far more from the sophistications of the euhemerist. Only in the "Four Branches of the Mabinogi" do the gods of the Britons appear in anything like their real character of supernatural beings, masters of magic, and untrammelled by the limitations which hedge in mortals.  Apart from these four fragments of mythology, and from a very few scattered references in the early Welsh poems, one must search for them under strange disguises. Some masquerade as kings in Geoffrey of Monmouth's more than apocryphal "Historia Britonum".

Others have received an undeserved canonization, which must be stripped from them before they can be seen in their true colours. Others, again, were adopted by the Norman-French romancers, and turned into the champions of chivalry now known as Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. But, however disguised, their real nature can still be discerned.  The Gaels and the Britons were but two branches of one race ­ the Celtic.  In many of the gods of the Britons we shall recognize, with names alike and attributes the same, the familiar features of the Gaelic Tuatha Dé Danann. The British gods are sometimes described as divided into three families - the "Children of Dôn", the "Children of Nudd", and the "Children of Llyr". But these three families are really only two;  for Nudd, or Lludd, as he is variously called, is himself described as a son of Beli, who was the husband of the goddess Dôn. There can be no doubt that Dôn herself is the same divine personage as Danu, the mother of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and that Beli is the British equivalent of the Gaelic Bilé, the universal Dis Pater who sent out the first Gaels from Hades to take possession of Ireland. With the other family, the "Children of Llyr", we are equally on familiar ground;  for the British Llyr can be none other than the Gaelic sea-god Lêr.. These two families or tribes are usually regarded as in opposition, and their struggles seem to symbolise in British myth that same conflict between the powers of heaven, light, and life and of the sea, darkness and death which are shadowed in Gaelic mythology in the battles between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomors.

The familiar shape of Cassiopeia, or is that Danu?

GODS OF THE SKY

For the children of Dôn were certainly gods of the sky.  Their names are writ large in heaven.  The glittering W which we call "Cassiopeia's Chair" was to our British ancestors Llys Dôn, or "Dôn's Court";  our "Northern Crown" was Caer Arianrod, the "Castle of Arianrod", Dôn's daughter;  while the "Milky Way" was the "Castle of Gwydion", Dôn's son. More than this, the greatest of her children, the Nudd or Lludd whom some make the head of a dynasty of his own, was the Zeus alike of the Britons and of the Gaels.  His epithet of Llaw Ereint, that is, "of the Hand of Silver", proves him the same personage as Nuada the "Silver-Handed". The legend which must have existed to explain this peculiarity has been lost on British ground, but it was doubtless the same as that told of the Irish god.  With it, and, no doubt, much else, has disappeared any direct account of battles fought by him as sky-god against Fomor-like enemies.

AERIAL BEINGS??

Here follows a fantastic quote, from Martin Brennan's "The Stones of Time", about Conn the Hundred Fighter watching the stars at Tara:

" . . . The manuscript is entitled 'The Magical Stone of Tara', and it states: 'one evening Conn of the Hundred Battles repaired at sunrise to the Ri Raith at Tara, accompanied by his three druids, Mael, Bloc and Bluicne, and his three poets, Ethain, Corb and Cesaire; for he was accustomed every day to repair to this place with the same company, for the purpose of watching the stars, so that no hostile aerial beings should descend upon Ireland unknown to him."

This passage could refer to meteors (shooting stars) or comets, but it's interesting nonetheless. Brennan doesn't state where one can read this manuscript, unfortunately. It's interesting that Conn should watch the stars at dawn - perhaps he is watching heliacal risings? It is yet another example of the great link the ancient people had with the heavens.

DIABOLICAL DEMONS FROM THE SKY

This is a quote from Charles Squire about the Tuatha De:

"In his [Eochaid O'Flynn] poem, preserved in the Book of Ballymote, he says:- "Though they came to learned Erinn, without buoyant, adventurous ships, no man in creation knew, whether they were of the earth or of the sky. "If they were diabolical demons, They came from that woeful expulsion;* (* Squire says i.e. from heaven) If they were of a race of tribes and nations, If they were human, they were of the race of Beothach."

Another Squire quote says: "What is probably the earliest account tells us that they [Tuatha De Danann] came from the sky. Later versions, however, give them a habitation upon Earth - some say in the north, others in the "southern isles of the world". . . . Whether the Tuatha De Danann came from earth or heaven, they landed in a dense cloud upon the coast of Ireland on the mystic first of May [Bealtaine] without having been opposed, or even noticed by . . . the Fir Bolgs."

This strain was uttered by the Morrigan and Badb, from the tops of the high mountains of Ireland, after the defeat of the Fomorians in the second battle of Moytura: "Peace Mounts to the Heavens, The Heavens descend to Earth, Earth lies under the heavens, Everyone is strong . . ."

The complete version of "Morrigu's Prophecy" can be found on this page.

More about the Tuatha Dé Danann