By Val Wineyard
The Celts celebrated four annual festivals in their sanctuaries or nemeta (nemeton singular) with fairs and merry-making, and religious ceremonies.
The Celtic year began on the first of November and the festival called Samhain beginning the day before. It marked the beginning of the Celtic year with the approach of winter, taking place at the end of the season of trade and warfare. It was time to take stock of the livestock and decide which were to be slaughtered, and to measure the grain for feeding both animals and humans through the winter. For preserving meat the weather needed to be cool but dry - we can see the connection now with the Corbières custom of killing the pig on the 11th November.
After slaughter the animals’ bones were burned on huge bonfires. With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers extinguished all other fires. Each family then solemnly lit its hearth from the common flame, thus bonding the families of the village together. Often two bonfires would be built side by side, and the people would walk between the fires as a ritual of purification. Sometimes the cattle and other livestock would also be driven between the fires.
On this date the veil was at its thinnest between this world and the Otherworld. To some, the Otherworld became visible. Heroes were expected to walk through the ghosts; if they did not succeed, they would disappear until the next Samhain. Some tribes believed that souls of all who had died during the previous year were wandering without rest; now they could travel to the Otherworld.
It was thought that the Otherworld was the realm of the fairy folk and other supernatural beings, who would entice humans if they could. Wearing a mask, or disguising oneself with a whitened or a blackened face, meant one could evade the ghosts. It is still the custom in some once Celtic countries to set a place for the dead at the Samhain feast, and to tell tales of the ancestors.
February first, the first day of Spring called Imbolc, was sacred to the great goddess Brigit, Briget or Brigid, known to all the Celtic world. On her feast day of Imbolc, the universal Celtic fertility day, the Goddess Brigit kindles the fire in the earth, preparing the way for spring and the re-emergence of all green things. This stirring of new life is manifested by the first flowing of milk in the udders of ewes, a few weeks before the lambing season. With the goodwill of Brigit, cows never went dry; flowers sprang up in her footprints, eternal Spring reigned. During the festival agricultural tools were reconsecrated for use, the fire of the smith’s forge was blessed and talismans of rushes, Brigit’s Crosses, were made for the protection of homes. She is associated with healing; healing or sacred wells were named after her. She was also the goddess that supervised brewing!
She was the Triple Goddess of the great Celtic empire of Brigantia, which included parts of Spain as well as France and the British Isles. On Imbolc, she is revealed in her 3 aspects. As Muse, she inspires bards with the spirit of truth. as guardian of the forge and consort of smiths, she is the patroness of warriors. As the Lady of the Land who knows all herbs, she is the greatest of healers.
In today’s Languedoc, the Irish Saint Brigitte is associated with sheep and a pastoral economy. She lived in the 5th century and legend says, was baptised by St. Patrick. She is said to have founded the monastery of Kildare; she gave food to the poor and any food she blessed doubled in quantity. She is often pictured with cows or milkmaids and had the ability to change water into beer! And guess what, her saint’s day is the first of February.
The third festival, Beltaine, 1st May, worshipped the Celtic god Belenos, particularly loved in southern Gaul. Belenos was known as “the
Fountain of Barenton - dedicated to Belenosbright shining light.” He was frankly a sun-god, often portrayed as a face among flames, rather like the Roman Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun, although I have found no evidence to back up this idea; indeed, the Romans associated Belenos with Apollo. At least 31 inscriptions citing Belenos or Apollo Belenos have been found by archaeologists, more citations than any other Celtic deity. The “Fontaine de Barenton”, the spring that exists in the deep forest of Arthur in Brittany, began its life as a healing source in Celtic times, dedicated to Belenos. He lasted a long time; Ausonius, a poet writing in the late fourth century AD referred to sanctuaries of Belenos at Bordeaux.
The festival of Beltaine was concerned with fertility and magical rites to ensure healthy cattle and rich crops. It was the beginning of the Celtic summer. We know that Valdieu, on the Plateau de Lauzet near Rennes-les-Bains, was named after Belenos. It would be interesting to search there for the nemeton that must have been there, and imagine the great summer festival of Belenos, with his wife Anu by his side, ruling over the dancing people.
It must have been a wild party. Today, in southern France, you do not marry in May. It’s very unlucky, for you might marry a witch, it’s far better, they say, to wait until June. This story was put about to evade the knowledge that in early days, all the mating was done on the 30th April or the 1st May, and then one waited for a month to see if a pregnancy had ensued, before marrying.
In some Celtic countries, I read, there were traditions or processions which were originally held in honour of the festival’s leading deity. There are a few consistent characteristics. In each, there is at least one man dressed in women’s clothes or in a mixture of men and women’s clothes. Sometimes, there are two men, both fantastically dressed, but one is designated a man and the other his wife. In earlier times, people dressed in their best and decorated with ribbons would gather to escort the couple through the streets. One account speaks of the procession being followed by a "rustic comedy" in which the principal figures played a man and his wife being tempted to leave him and elope with another man.
I’ve seen this sort of thing in Languedoc take place at the Carnaval around March 21st, the first day of Spring, especially strange men with ugly “wives.” They cannot explain where this almost Punch and Judy custom came from. There is also much cross-dressing. On one occasion, young men dressed as girls were walking the streets, when other youths jumped off the carnaval floats and bundled the “girl” into a wicker cage on a large trailer towed by a tractor. When I asked people they just shrugged and grinned and said; “It’s what we do at carnaval time.”
Belenos was married to Anu. Early medieval historians confused Anu with Anna, the daughter of St. Joseph of Arimathea, I read. This took me completely aback, but further research brought a most interesting story to light. In Welsh mythology Ana figures in the ancient genealogies, particularly genealogy 10 of Harleian MSS 3859. These genealogies proved that most early British monarchs claimed descent from Beli Mawr, a pre-Christian “king” who was really the god, Belenos, who became mortal in the body of the king. The king married Anna (as Belenos married Anu), Anna being the daughter of Joseph of Arimathea and thus the cousin of the Virgin Mary.
They didn’t know at the time that Joseph of Arimathea was Jesus’s brother, not his uncle, for the doctrine of the Virgin being eternally virgin was well in place, and Jesus’s brothers and sisters were denied, although they are mentioned in the Bible.
Joseph was instrumental in getting permission from Pontius Pilate to take Jesus down from the cross and bury him in Joseph’s own private tomb. (You can read much more about this in my book, “Looking for Mary M.”) Then Joseph travelled to Britain, for he was already a businessman, dealing in tin and lead from the mines of Devon, Cornwall and Anglesey. At Glastonbury he made a beneficial bargain with the local king to buy “twelve hides of land” on which he built the first Christian church in Britain in 64AD.
Joseph had married someone called Anna in the Holy Land; their daughter was named after her mother. Presumably she joined her father far, far from home and according to Lawrence Gardner’s family tree in his books about the Sacred Bloodline, Anna was not married to Beli Mawr, but to his father, Bran the Blessed; Beli was her son.
But Bran died in 10AD; this puts Anna as far too old to be the child of Joseph of Arimathea, who was two years younger than Jesus. So I think Anna really did marry Beli Mawr, who was a Welsh king and not a god at all, around 44AD.
So what were the medieval monks thinking of? Converting Celtic Gods to Christian ones? Persuading people that Gods married to human beings and producing children was perfectly normal? In that case, Jesus’s case wasn’t unique then? What an insight this story gives us.
The Feast of Lughnasa on 1st August celebrated the harvest, the rounding-out of the year, connected with the god Lugus. In some regions, the celebration began 15 days before the 1st August, and continued until 15 days after it. (The hunting season began, as it still does, on “the glorious 14th.”)
Throughout Gaul, Lugus was universally popular, coming across the Pyrenees from Spain. Lugus was skilled in all the arts, associated with light and/or trickery, a web-site tells me. Trickery? That seems strange. He was also a threefold god; Esus, the God of the invisible world below ground, Toutatis, a god of war, wealth and fertility, also in charge of the rite in which victims were buried in a sacrificial lake, and Taranis, the god of the wheel and of transport. Pictures and carvings of Lugus show him with three heads; he was supposed to have had 3 fathers and possessed three phalluses; beside the regular one, was one on his head and another on his nose.
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In Roman Gaul the feast of Augustus the emperor was on this date of first August, in the town called Lugudunum - today’s Lyon. Augustus named the town in 18BC after Lugus. (This is not the only town named after him; there was also Lugones in Asturias, northern Spain, and Luguvalium - modern Carlisle.) Before long, Lugus merged into the Roman god, Mercury, with wings on his ankles, flitting up and down to Heaven with messages. Mercury was also most popular with the Romans and the Gallo-Romans.
Messengers have a lot of power; one can never be quite sure the message received is the one that was sent. This can explain the sense with Lugus that nothing was whatever it seemed to be, hence the trickery. On the Tarot cards much later, Mercury became the Magician. The Magician has everything in front of him on his table and if he appears in a reading for you, he can make life magic for you or, he can predict a salesman type personality who seduces you and then presents you with dead leaves in your hand instead of money. The trickery of Lugus. Fairy gold.
Many readers won’t need me to tell them these four great Celtic festivals, Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasa are those of the Witchcraft calendar. They still exist.
An excerpt from Val Wineyard's new book to be published early next year - “The Sacred River of Rennes-les-Bains.” The article particularly looks at how the Celtic customs have survived in our region of Languedoc. Val has also written two books about Mary Magdalene. You can see these and much more on her web-site; http//writingaboutrenneslechateau.blog4ever.com