A Brythonic Pantheon
by Megli
The following is a list of God types, drawn from comparative Indo-European religion and culture, with examples of known names/titles which have been very useful:
Some of these names/titles will be very local while others will be more widely known. Discussion on deities is likely to be ongoing for some considerable time but I think in the list above we have a core framework to work with. I think it worth emphasising that what many think of as names for various gods were titles and if you understand the title you have an insight into the nature of the deity.
- The Mare-Mother: (Epona) [the same as 'Our Lady of the Land', below?]
- Sulis/Briganti/'Minerva' : possibly a sun goddess, 'Our Lady of Light'?)
- Our Lord of the Tribe: (Toutatis) (often the same as the War God?)
- Our Lord the Manyskilled: (Lugos)
- The Divine Blacksmith: (Gobannonos)
- Our Lord the Ploughman: (Ambactonos)
- The Holy Youth: (Maponos)
- Our Lady of the Land: ('Sovereignty', Rosmerta, perhaps Donu/Don)
- The Wheel-god of Heaven/The Thunderer: (Taranis?) - the same as the 'Allfather'?
- The Horned One: of wealth and regrowth: an underworld god? (Cernunnos, ?Caesar's 'Dis Pater') - is HE the 'Allfather'?
- A War God: variously named (Cocidius, Belutucadros, Camulos etc)
- Local nature spirits: called 'the Mothers' and their male associates, 'the Hooded Ones'
- Our Lady of the River: (Sabrina, Matrona, Deva, Cluta, Verbeia: ?also Donu, given the number on Donu/Danu river-names on the continent)
- Our Lady of the Well: (eg Coventina)
- Our Lord of the Wood: (Rigonemetis, 'Silvanus')
- Our Lady of the Glade: (Nemetona)
- The Divine Druid/Wizard/Poet: (Vitionos?)
- Our Lord of Waters: (some good evidence for this one: Nodons, and in Ireland Nechtan and the 'rex aquarum', or 'Waterking', mentioned by Patrick)"
Some of these names/titles will be very local while others will be more widely known. Discussion on deities is likely to be ongoing for some considerable time but I think in the list above we have a core framework to work with. I think it worth emphasising that what many think of as names for various gods were titles and if you understand the title you have an insight into the nature of the deity.
An Indo-European Perspective of the Gods
by Deiniol Jones
Much of this work draws upon Dumezil's 'Tripartition' theories, this underpins most of the comparative mythology work on Indo-European cultures. A summary of this framework can be found here. In addition, Ceisiwr Serith's pages in reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion are worth reading on thier own merits, but the sections of more importance and relevance here are "What was the Proto-Indo-European Ideology?" and Proto-Indo-European Deities"
1. The Gods of the First Function: the Religo-Magical
The two gods of the first function (juridical and magico-religious) are Lugus and Noudons - who, as we all know, show up as Lugh and Nuada in Ireland, and Lleu and Lludd/Nudd in Britain.
In his book Mitra-Varuna, George Dumézil introduces a string of paired first function gods accross the Indo-European world: both are heavily associated with the sky. One is concerned with law and justice, the other with punishing infractions of the law. While both have martial aspects, they're not warriors in the sense of foot soldiers: they win through guile and trickery rather than through sheer strength and bravery. One is missing a hand, the other an eye. As cross-cultural identifiers, we can use the labels Law-God and Magician-God.
The two deities Dumézil chooses to illustrate this comparision are, as suggested by the title, Mitra and Varuna, the Law-God and the Magician-God respectively. However, given that Vedic mythology isn't generally on most pagans' reading lists, a comparision which is slightly more familiar would perhaps be the Germanic Woden and Tiw, with Lugus corresponding to Woden and Noudons to Tiw. In fact, in Lady With a Mead Cup, Michael Enright speculates that the elevation of Woden to the status of pre-eminent god among the Germans is down to the influence of Lugus-worshipping Gauls on the other side of the Rhine. (Other possible homologues are Zeus-Poseidon, Dius Fidius-Jupiter, Cocles-Scaevola, Romulus-Numa note that the romans tended to euhemerise a lot of their inherited mythology.)
In Ireland, Nuada loses an arm and has it replaced with one made of silver. In Britain, we have Lludd of the Silver Hand- whether this epithet is "original" or simply borrowed by mediaeval Welsh scribes from the Irish I don't know. Tiw, the one-handed god of Germanic myth is concerned with the oaths and the law. It's also relevant that the weapon associated with Tiw was the same as that associated with Nuada: both carry swords. Nuada is king of the Tuatha Dé Danann in peacetime: the rule of Numa in Rome was marked by peace.
While Noudons/Nuada/Nudd is largely ignored by both neopagans and academia alike, reams and reams of literature have been written about Lugus/Lleu/Lugh- my favourite overview is Alexei Kondratiev's. Suffice it to say that the links with Woden are fairly obvious: both are berserkers, both magician-trickster types, both punish oathbreakers. Both are rulers during the time of war, both are gods who decide on the apportioning of sovreignty, both carry a spear. Lugus fits the Magician-God role well.
There are a couple of interesting dissonances in this complex of compared deities, however. Noudons seems to have had a fairly close association with the sea. Not only are the British temples to Nodons situated near the mouth of the Severn, but Nudd/Lludd seems to have been identified with Llyr: Creiddylad is stated to be the daughter of Llyr in some sources, in others she's the daughter of Lludd. We've also got the whole Fisher King thing. However, in Vedic India, it's Varuna (the Lugus-equivalent) who's associated with the oceans and waters. It seems that one god took possession of the daytime skies, the other took the night sky and the sea. In India, it was Varuna, the Magician-God who took the night sky and the sea, while Mitra took the daytime sky. However, in Rome it's the other way around: the Magician-God Jupiter (who also continues the PIE sky-father *Dyeus Phter) took the daytime sky, while Dius Fidius got the night. I suspect that it's the more prominent of the pair who gets patronage of the daytime- which would be Lugus among the Celts.
A couple of other attested Celtic deities which I reckon can be safely identified with Lugus (or at least Lugus' function) are Belenos and Esus. The first connection is known from the name *Lugu-belenos, which gives Llywelyn. The second is probably a bit more speculative, and is based mainly on the iconography of the Boatmen's Pillar in Paris.
Noudons I personally connect with Tigernonos, mainly due to the sea-connection
The two gods of the first function (juridical and magico-religious) are Lugus and Noudons - who, as we all know, show up as Lugh and Nuada in Ireland, and Lleu and Lludd/Nudd in Britain.
In his book Mitra-Varuna, George Dumézil introduces a string of paired first function gods accross the Indo-European world: both are heavily associated with the sky. One is concerned with law and justice, the other with punishing infractions of the law. While both have martial aspects, they're not warriors in the sense of foot soldiers: they win through guile and trickery rather than through sheer strength and bravery. One is missing a hand, the other an eye. As cross-cultural identifiers, we can use the labels Law-God and Magician-God.
The two deities Dumézil chooses to illustrate this comparision are, as suggested by the title, Mitra and Varuna, the Law-God and the Magician-God respectively. However, given that Vedic mythology isn't generally on most pagans' reading lists, a comparision which is slightly more familiar would perhaps be the Germanic Woden and Tiw, with Lugus corresponding to Woden and Noudons to Tiw. In fact, in Lady With a Mead Cup, Michael Enright speculates that the elevation of Woden to the status of pre-eminent god among the Germans is down to the influence of Lugus-worshipping Gauls on the other side of the Rhine. (Other possible homologues are Zeus-Poseidon, Dius Fidius-Jupiter, Cocles-Scaevola, Romulus-Numa note that the romans tended to euhemerise a lot of their inherited mythology.)
In Ireland, Nuada loses an arm and has it replaced with one made of silver. In Britain, we have Lludd of the Silver Hand- whether this epithet is "original" or simply borrowed by mediaeval Welsh scribes from the Irish I don't know. Tiw, the one-handed god of Germanic myth is concerned with the oaths and the law. It's also relevant that the weapon associated with Tiw was the same as that associated with Nuada: both carry swords. Nuada is king of the Tuatha Dé Danann in peacetime: the rule of Numa in Rome was marked by peace.
While Noudons/Nuada/Nudd is largely ignored by both neopagans and academia alike, reams and reams of literature have been written about Lugus/Lleu/Lugh- my favourite overview is Alexei Kondratiev's. Suffice it to say that the links with Woden are fairly obvious: both are berserkers, both magician-trickster types, both punish oathbreakers. Both are rulers during the time of war, both are gods who decide on the apportioning of sovreignty, both carry a spear. Lugus fits the Magician-God role well.
There are a couple of interesting dissonances in this complex of compared deities, however. Noudons seems to have had a fairly close association with the sea. Not only are the British temples to Nodons situated near the mouth of the Severn, but Nudd/Lludd seems to have been identified with Llyr: Creiddylad is stated to be the daughter of Llyr in some sources, in others she's the daughter of Lludd. We've also got the whole Fisher King thing. However, in Vedic India, it's Varuna (the Lugus-equivalent) who's associated with the oceans and waters. It seems that one god took possession of the daytime skies, the other took the night sky and the sea. In India, it was Varuna, the Magician-God who took the night sky and the sea, while Mitra took the daytime sky. However, in Rome it's the other way around: the Magician-God Jupiter (who also continues the PIE sky-father *Dyeus Phter) took the daytime sky, while Dius Fidius got the night. I suspect that it's the more prominent of the pair who gets patronage of the daytime- which would be Lugus among the Celts.
A couple of other attested Celtic deities which I reckon can be safely identified with Lugus (or at least Lugus' function) are Belenos and Esus. The first connection is known from the name *Lugu-belenos, which gives Llywelyn. The second is probably a bit more speculative, and is based mainly on the iconography of the Boatmen's Pillar in Paris.
Noudons I personally connect with Tigernonos, mainly due to the sea-connection
2. The Gods of the Second Function: the Warrior
Thanks to ample studies of the Vedic Indra and his homologues in other IE cultures, there's actually a lot we can say about Taranis. In fact, it's difficult to know where to start.
"Taranis", as a word, is derived from Proto-Celtic *taran-, meaning "thunder", which is his main attribute.
In the literature, one of the most solid inter-group correspondences we have is the Indo-European second function god who, in most cases, controls thunder and lightning. The corresponding deities can be listed here: Indra in India, Perkunas among the Baltic tribes, Perendi in Albania, Thor or *Thunaraz among the Germans. In Greece and Rome, thunder and lightning have been taken over by a first-function deity, but Mars and Ares still fit in the general paradigm.
As such, we can reconstruct the Celtic Taranis as a god of war, warriors and thunder. Unlike Lugus and Noudans, strength and hardiness are his attributes. Like most of the deities listed above, Taranis is associated with the oak (a tree which is sturdy, strong and resistant to lightning): in Miranda Green's The Gods of the Celts, she describes what are termed "Jupiter Columns" (here's a really cool picture of one), which are most prototypically a column decorated with oak-like foliage and crowned with a statue of a man on horseback trampling a snake. The Roman Jupiter is almost never depicted on horseback, which suggests that a lot of the iconography here is native, rather than Roman. It wouldn't be unreasonable to claim that the figure depicted on horseback is Taranis (or an alternately named god fulfilling the same function), and the column depicts some kind of mythological structure wherein the god defeats a serpent- compare Thor's battle with Jormungand.
In his book How to Kill a Dragon, Calvert Watkins reconstructs the fundamentals of a common Indo-European myth about a second-function deity (or his human stand-in) who kills a serpent-like monster who has stolen something from the gods, most typically cattle, or water (the two being identified with each other). The most famous reflex of this myth is Indra's slaying of Vrtra, and I do not think it unreasonable that Gauls and Britons would have told similar stories about Taranis.
As well as being an all-purpose divine pest exterminator, most Indo-European thunder gods also had a less warlike side, with some patronage of agriculture. A common folk-myth in Europe is that the fields cannot be planted until the first thunderstorm of the year has been and gone. Victorian folklorists and their spiritual heirs have, of course, seen this as evidence for a sky-god symbolically impregnating the earth goddess with his lightning phallus. Not being convinced that our ancestors were quite as sex-obsessed as Victorian folklorists, I would suggest an alternative reading: where there are friends of mankind (the gods), there are also enemies (demons, whatever), who try to thwart us. The Thunderer is the protector of the tribe, its cattle and its fields: note Cato's prayer to Mars, in which he asks for his family, fields and livestock to be protected. I reckon that the "first thunderstorm" marks a battle, in which the thunderer drives away the hostile forces and allows the planting to begin unmolested.
In the inscriptional evidence in Britain and Gaul, we have hundreds (literally) of inscriptions to Mars-{Native Deity}, such as Mars Lenus, Mars Leucetios and so on. Are all these gods hypostases of Taranis: Taranis with just another name? Perhaps. Undoubtedly some are: in "Mars Leucetios" we can easily see the Proto-Celtic *loukket-, which gives W. lluched "lightning". Some, I feel, are generic gods of war. In the myths, the Thunderer was also the god of the warband, a term which one normally encounters in the literature in its German form Männerbund. While his most famous exploits are performed alone, as a warrior champion's should be, the Thunderer has his own retinue of followers: Indra has his Maruts, Mars his Sodales, and it's possible that the Norse einherjar belonged to Thor before they did to Odin. It's because of this that I personally subsume the manifold Marses of Gaul and Britain into Taranis' corios, his warband. We're entering UPG territory here, but I always associate these deities with a more youthful, belligerent type of war-god.
Going back a step, let's return to Mars Leucetios "Mars of the Lightning". Leucetios is freuqently paired up with the goddess Nemetona, who is frequently linked up with the Irish figure Nemain who, quoting Wikipedia (ugh), is "the fairy spirit of the frenzied havoc of war." Indrani, the wife of Indra, is similarly a goddess of rage and battle-fury, so on this basis we could give Taranis a wife in Nemetona.
Thanks to ample studies of the Vedic Indra and his homologues in other IE cultures, there's actually a lot we can say about Taranis. In fact, it's difficult to know where to start.
"Taranis", as a word, is derived from Proto-Celtic *taran-, meaning "thunder", which is his main attribute.
In the literature, one of the most solid inter-group correspondences we have is the Indo-European second function god who, in most cases, controls thunder and lightning. The corresponding deities can be listed here: Indra in India, Perkunas among the Baltic tribes, Perendi in Albania, Thor or *Thunaraz among the Germans. In Greece and Rome, thunder and lightning have been taken over by a first-function deity, but Mars and Ares still fit in the general paradigm.
As such, we can reconstruct the Celtic Taranis as a god of war, warriors and thunder. Unlike Lugus and Noudans, strength and hardiness are his attributes. Like most of the deities listed above, Taranis is associated with the oak (a tree which is sturdy, strong and resistant to lightning): in Miranda Green's The Gods of the Celts, she describes what are termed "Jupiter Columns" (here's a really cool picture of one), which are most prototypically a column decorated with oak-like foliage and crowned with a statue of a man on horseback trampling a snake. The Roman Jupiter is almost never depicted on horseback, which suggests that a lot of the iconography here is native, rather than Roman. It wouldn't be unreasonable to claim that the figure depicted on horseback is Taranis (or an alternately named god fulfilling the same function), and the column depicts some kind of mythological structure wherein the god defeats a serpent- compare Thor's battle with Jormungand.
In his book How to Kill a Dragon, Calvert Watkins reconstructs the fundamentals of a common Indo-European myth about a second-function deity (or his human stand-in) who kills a serpent-like monster who has stolen something from the gods, most typically cattle, or water (the two being identified with each other). The most famous reflex of this myth is Indra's slaying of Vrtra, and I do not think it unreasonable that Gauls and Britons would have told similar stories about Taranis.
As well as being an all-purpose divine pest exterminator, most Indo-European thunder gods also had a less warlike side, with some patronage of agriculture. A common folk-myth in Europe is that the fields cannot be planted until the first thunderstorm of the year has been and gone. Victorian folklorists and their spiritual heirs have, of course, seen this as evidence for a sky-god symbolically impregnating the earth goddess with his lightning phallus. Not being convinced that our ancestors were quite as sex-obsessed as Victorian folklorists, I would suggest an alternative reading: where there are friends of mankind (the gods), there are also enemies (demons, whatever), who try to thwart us. The Thunderer is the protector of the tribe, its cattle and its fields: note Cato's prayer to Mars, in which he asks for his family, fields and livestock to be protected. I reckon that the "first thunderstorm" marks a battle, in which the thunderer drives away the hostile forces and allows the planting to begin unmolested.
In the inscriptional evidence in Britain and Gaul, we have hundreds (literally) of inscriptions to Mars-{Native Deity}, such as Mars Lenus, Mars Leucetios and so on. Are all these gods hypostases of Taranis: Taranis with just another name? Perhaps. Undoubtedly some are: in "Mars Leucetios" we can easily see the Proto-Celtic *loukket-, which gives W. lluched "lightning". Some, I feel, are generic gods of war. In the myths, the Thunderer was also the god of the warband, a term which one normally encounters in the literature in its German form Männerbund. While his most famous exploits are performed alone, as a warrior champion's should be, the Thunderer has his own retinue of followers: Indra has his Maruts, Mars his Sodales, and it's possible that the Norse einherjar belonged to Thor before they did to Odin. It's because of this that I personally subsume the manifold Marses of Gaul and Britain into Taranis' corios, his warband. We're entering UPG territory here, but I always associate these deities with a more youthful, belligerent type of war-god.
Going back a step, let's return to Mars Leucetios "Mars of the Lightning". Leucetios is freuqently paired up with the goddess Nemetona, who is frequently linked up with the Irish figure Nemain who, quoting Wikipedia (ugh), is "the fairy spirit of the frenzied havoc of war." Indrani, the wife of Indra, is similarly a goddess of rage and battle-fury, so on this basis we could give Taranis a wife in Nemetona.
3. The Gods of the Third Function: Gods of the People and the Land
Here we turn to the gods of the third function, those who are connected intimately with the activities of farming and stockbeeding. The people's gods as it were. In this post, I'm going to talk about Sucellos and Toutātis.
It's well-known among pagan circles that according to Caesar (IIRC), the Celts claimed descent from "Dis Pater". The identity of the god hiding behind thisinterpretatio Romana is, in my opinion, fairly solidly Sucellos. In the iconography of statues attributed to him (like this one) he's nearly always depicted holding a long-handled hammer and a pot of some kind- both of which should remind us of the Irish Dagda, who had a magic cauldron and a massive club, as well as the epithetollathair "all-father". In a number of images, these two attributes are accompanied by a three-headed dog (Cerberus), which lends credence to the Dis Pater connection. Additionally, we have the Welsh king of the otherworld, Arawn with his hounds and his cauldron of plenty.
Indo-European cosmogonic myths (those relating the creation of the world), frequently involve a pair of twins, the progenitors of the human race, with one being sacrificed by the other. The sacrificed twin goes on to become the king of the realm of the dead, as the first person to die and go there. Etymologically, "Sucellos" is normally taken to mean "the good striker", coming from a form like *su-kel-dos. If this were the case, however, we'd expect his name to be Suceldos, as in Gaulish -ld- remained so, rather than becoming -ll-. I would propose an etymology *su-kel-nos, with the old passive participle suffix -no-, which would give us the reading "well-struck one", which would match nicely with Sucellos being the sacrificed king of the dead.
His iconography points towards prosperity and fecundity as well. As a chthonic deity, ruling the underground Otherworld, Sucellos is also connected with fertility and agriculture: again, much like the Roman Dis Pater (dis meaning "riches", like the Greek plouton). He is frequently paired with Nantosuelta, who I'll talk about in more depth later, but I can't help but seeing some kind of Prosperpina/Persephone relationship going on here.
The next of the third function gods is Toutātis, who is something of an enigma. In the inscriptional evidence, he's most frequently identified with Mars, which has led to him being interpreted as a "tribal war god", which would place him in the second function. Personally, however, I think the most likely Roman homologue would be Quirinus. In his Archaic Roman Religion, Georges Dumézil talks about Quirinus at length, seeing him as the third member in the triad Jupiter-Mars-Quirinus, which can immediately be likened to the Celtic triad mentioned by Lucan as Esus-Taranis-Teutatis. He records that Esus' victims were hanged, those of Taranis burnt and the victims destined for Teutatis were drowned in a vat: other sources record hanging, stabbing to death and burial: these three methods of sacrifice neatly divide into the three functions, with hanging being associated with first-function deities (recall that Odin himself was hanged, and sacrifices to Odin, like that of Starkaðr, were carried out by hanging), stabbing/burning being associated with the second function and drowning/burial being associated with third function deities (this division goes accross IE myth: in India and Rome sacrifices to third function gods go into pits or are buried).
It's all very well to link Toutātis to Quirinus, but who was Quirinus? The later Romans saw him as the deified Romulus, but Dumézil makes a very cogent case that Quirinus was originally the deity of the Romans as a people: the Romans called themselves Quirites. His name comes from *com-wir-on-os, meaning "all the men together", which matches the semantics of Toutātis as "he of the tribe" well. Toutātis in effect is the god of the in-group, of the tribe and the tribe's way of doing things. The martial aspect is easily explained if we remember that in lieu of trained, specialised soldiers, the army of a tribe at war would be made up not only of aristocratic champions but all free men serving as "foot soldier": Toutātis in his martial aspect is the god of the tribe under arms.
What's interesting is that PIE appears to have had two terms for "adult male": *wiros and *h2nēr, the first indicating a man in general and the second indicating man as a champion or hero: Celtic reflexes of this word include *nerton "strength" (giving W. nerth) and *neros, which gives the archaic Welsh ner "hero", and with a feminine suffix *-issī gives the modern name Nerys. And here's one for you, Lee, the Old Irish reflex of this word means "boar", which gives a boar-connection to the second function. It's significant that the consort of Mars, Nerio, had a name derived from the "warrior" word, while Quirinus' own name, like that of one of his consorts Virites, continues the "man in the street" word.
In his role as the god of the tribe and the social structure, we can also link Toutātes with the Vedic Aryaman, whose name essentially means "aryan-ness". Aryaman was a god who presided over marriages, which as Ceisiwr Serith points out, is how bonds between members of the tribe are cemented. Aryaman, along with Surya, god of the sun (with whom he is sometimes identified), is the regulator of time. Signficantly, one of Quirinus' consorts was named Hora, meaning of course "hour".
There are some other connections here as well. The Umbrian equivalent of Quirinus was named Vofionus, a name which comes from the PIE *leudh-on-os: *leudh- is another word for "tribe", a word which also shows up in Liber Pater, another Roman third-function deity, who is often associated with Dis Pater, which brings us full circle again to Sucellos.
Now I'm moving into somewhat more speculative territory, with Cernunnos and Ambaxtonos.
Everybody knows Cernunnos, the antlered god. Let's not waste time in talking about his co-option into modern Wicca and so on, but concentrate instead on what we can find out from comparative mythology. Aside from the "Lord of the Beasts" aspect, which is blithely reported as common wisdom in most literature about Celtic deities, a number of scholars also link him with the Celtic "Dis Pater", described above. Personally, I disagree with their reasoning. My ideas about Cernunnos are heavily influenced by Ceisiwr Serith's, who presented a paper on him at the Harvard Celtic Colloquium a few years ago, a copy of which can be found here. It's well worth reading, and what I'm about to write is essentially based upon it. (Hint: go read it)
Essentially, Cernunnos is a god of liminality, and of transfer between states. This puts him in the camp of the Vedic Pushan and his Greek cognate Pan, perhaps also Charon. Accepting this, we can sketch a fairly wide portfolio for Cernunnos: patron of herdsmen and protector of livestock, patron of travellers and (by extension) merchants, guide of dead souls from this world to the next, patron of the liminal forests, patron of doors and gates. In my UPG, this also connects him with Gwydion. Pace Megli's etymology in *wetionos, I see the etymology of "Gwydion" as *widugenos "born in the woods", not an inappropriate epithet for Cernunnos.
It's fairly clear that Ambaxtonos means "the divine ambaxtos". But what was an ambaxtos? It's formed of the PC elements *ambi- "around" and *ag- "drive, go". The Welsh reflex is amaeth "ploughman", and we normally see Ambaxtonos as the Divine Ploughman. But I'm not convinced that ambaxtos originally meant "ploughman": after borrowing into Latin ambactus means "vassal" or "noble servitor", and when loaned into Proto-Germanic as *ambahtaz it gives the Old High German wordambaht "servant". And, of course, the word gives us the modern English "ambassador". Raimund Karl makes the case that the original meaning of *ambaxtos was "noble retainer", or even something like "courtier". What to make then of a deity whose name could be translated as "Divine Courtier"? I'm not sure, but as Karl points out: "Much like 'ordinary' clientage, 'noble' clientage will have involved a transfer of wealth from the lord to the *ambaχtos", so we could be looking at a god whose function was to apportion wealth, much like the Vedic Bhaga. But I'll concede that it would all be a lot simpler if the meaning was simply "Divine Ploughman": sometimes comparativism leads one into difficulties as much as it clarifies other things.
So far we've covered five gods, or perhaps it would be better to call them "deity types". According to Dumézil, an arrangement of five gods, with two for the first function, one for the second and two again for the third function, is a key element in most Indo-European pantheons. In India we have Mitra-Varuna, Indra and the two Nasatyas, in Scandinavia we have Odin-Tyr, Thor, Frey and Njorth.
Five seems to have been an important number to the Indo-Europeans. We're all familiar with the symbolism of the "magic number" three and its multiples, but it's perhaps worth dwelling a while on the significance of the number five. The number five seems to have indicaed to the Indo-Europeans "completeness" or "wholeness": there are five fingers on a hand. But this "wholeness" seems to be made up of four plus one more: there are four directions, plus the middle. Four fingers, plus the thumb. It's significant that in IE cultures as far apart as Ireland and India, the totality of human habitation is made up of five "realms", one in each cardinal direction and one in the middle.
Revenons, however, à nos moutons. The two deities I've posited above as the third-function pair doesn't actually quite match up with the third-function gods of the other pantheons. There are certainly more than two third-function gods, of course, but canonically, the representatives of the third function in this common Indo-European "pentatheon" are more often representatives of the Divine Twins, known from the Classical world as the Dioskouroi.
Here we turn to the gods of the third function, those who are connected intimately with the activities of farming and stockbeeding. The people's gods as it were. In this post, I'm going to talk about Sucellos and Toutātis.
It's well-known among pagan circles that according to Caesar (IIRC), the Celts claimed descent from "Dis Pater". The identity of the god hiding behind thisinterpretatio Romana is, in my opinion, fairly solidly Sucellos. In the iconography of statues attributed to him (like this one) he's nearly always depicted holding a long-handled hammer and a pot of some kind- both of which should remind us of the Irish Dagda, who had a magic cauldron and a massive club, as well as the epithetollathair "all-father". In a number of images, these two attributes are accompanied by a three-headed dog (Cerberus), which lends credence to the Dis Pater connection. Additionally, we have the Welsh king of the otherworld, Arawn with his hounds and his cauldron of plenty.
Indo-European cosmogonic myths (those relating the creation of the world), frequently involve a pair of twins, the progenitors of the human race, with one being sacrificed by the other. The sacrificed twin goes on to become the king of the realm of the dead, as the first person to die and go there. Etymologically, "Sucellos" is normally taken to mean "the good striker", coming from a form like *su-kel-dos. If this were the case, however, we'd expect his name to be Suceldos, as in Gaulish -ld- remained so, rather than becoming -ll-. I would propose an etymology *su-kel-nos, with the old passive participle suffix -no-, which would give us the reading "well-struck one", which would match nicely with Sucellos being the sacrificed king of the dead.
His iconography points towards prosperity and fecundity as well. As a chthonic deity, ruling the underground Otherworld, Sucellos is also connected with fertility and agriculture: again, much like the Roman Dis Pater (dis meaning "riches", like the Greek plouton). He is frequently paired with Nantosuelta, who I'll talk about in more depth later, but I can't help but seeing some kind of Prosperpina/Persephone relationship going on here.
The next of the third function gods is Toutātis, who is something of an enigma. In the inscriptional evidence, he's most frequently identified with Mars, which has led to him being interpreted as a "tribal war god", which would place him in the second function. Personally, however, I think the most likely Roman homologue would be Quirinus. In his Archaic Roman Religion, Georges Dumézil talks about Quirinus at length, seeing him as the third member in the triad Jupiter-Mars-Quirinus, which can immediately be likened to the Celtic triad mentioned by Lucan as Esus-Taranis-Teutatis. He records that Esus' victims were hanged, those of Taranis burnt and the victims destined for Teutatis were drowned in a vat: other sources record hanging, stabbing to death and burial: these three methods of sacrifice neatly divide into the three functions, with hanging being associated with first-function deities (recall that Odin himself was hanged, and sacrifices to Odin, like that of Starkaðr, were carried out by hanging), stabbing/burning being associated with the second function and drowning/burial being associated with third function deities (this division goes accross IE myth: in India and Rome sacrifices to third function gods go into pits or are buried).
It's all very well to link Toutātis to Quirinus, but who was Quirinus? The later Romans saw him as the deified Romulus, but Dumézil makes a very cogent case that Quirinus was originally the deity of the Romans as a people: the Romans called themselves Quirites. His name comes from *com-wir-on-os, meaning "all the men together", which matches the semantics of Toutātis as "he of the tribe" well. Toutātis in effect is the god of the in-group, of the tribe and the tribe's way of doing things. The martial aspect is easily explained if we remember that in lieu of trained, specialised soldiers, the army of a tribe at war would be made up not only of aristocratic champions but all free men serving as "foot soldier": Toutātis in his martial aspect is the god of the tribe under arms.
What's interesting is that PIE appears to have had two terms for "adult male": *wiros and *h2nēr, the first indicating a man in general and the second indicating man as a champion or hero: Celtic reflexes of this word include *nerton "strength" (giving W. nerth) and *neros, which gives the archaic Welsh ner "hero", and with a feminine suffix *-issī gives the modern name Nerys. And here's one for you, Lee, the Old Irish reflex of this word means "boar", which gives a boar-connection to the second function. It's significant that the consort of Mars, Nerio, had a name derived from the "warrior" word, while Quirinus' own name, like that of one of his consorts Virites, continues the "man in the street" word.
In his role as the god of the tribe and the social structure, we can also link Toutātes with the Vedic Aryaman, whose name essentially means "aryan-ness". Aryaman was a god who presided over marriages, which as Ceisiwr Serith points out, is how bonds between members of the tribe are cemented. Aryaman, along with Surya, god of the sun (with whom he is sometimes identified), is the regulator of time. Signficantly, one of Quirinus' consorts was named Hora, meaning of course "hour".
There are some other connections here as well. The Umbrian equivalent of Quirinus was named Vofionus, a name which comes from the PIE *leudh-on-os: *leudh- is another word for "tribe", a word which also shows up in Liber Pater, another Roman third-function deity, who is often associated with Dis Pater, which brings us full circle again to Sucellos.
Now I'm moving into somewhat more speculative territory, with Cernunnos and Ambaxtonos.
Everybody knows Cernunnos, the antlered god. Let's not waste time in talking about his co-option into modern Wicca and so on, but concentrate instead on what we can find out from comparative mythology. Aside from the "Lord of the Beasts" aspect, which is blithely reported as common wisdom in most literature about Celtic deities, a number of scholars also link him with the Celtic "Dis Pater", described above. Personally, I disagree with their reasoning. My ideas about Cernunnos are heavily influenced by Ceisiwr Serith's, who presented a paper on him at the Harvard Celtic Colloquium a few years ago, a copy of which can be found here. It's well worth reading, and what I'm about to write is essentially based upon it. (Hint: go read it)
Essentially, Cernunnos is a god of liminality, and of transfer between states. This puts him in the camp of the Vedic Pushan and his Greek cognate Pan, perhaps also Charon. Accepting this, we can sketch a fairly wide portfolio for Cernunnos: patron of herdsmen and protector of livestock, patron of travellers and (by extension) merchants, guide of dead souls from this world to the next, patron of the liminal forests, patron of doors and gates. In my UPG, this also connects him with Gwydion. Pace Megli's etymology in *wetionos, I see the etymology of "Gwydion" as *widugenos "born in the woods", not an inappropriate epithet for Cernunnos.
It's fairly clear that Ambaxtonos means "the divine ambaxtos". But what was an ambaxtos? It's formed of the PC elements *ambi- "around" and *ag- "drive, go". The Welsh reflex is amaeth "ploughman", and we normally see Ambaxtonos as the Divine Ploughman. But I'm not convinced that ambaxtos originally meant "ploughman": after borrowing into Latin ambactus means "vassal" or "noble servitor", and when loaned into Proto-Germanic as *ambahtaz it gives the Old High German wordambaht "servant". And, of course, the word gives us the modern English "ambassador". Raimund Karl makes the case that the original meaning of *ambaxtos was "noble retainer", or even something like "courtier". What to make then of a deity whose name could be translated as "Divine Courtier"? I'm not sure, but as Karl points out: "Much like 'ordinary' clientage, 'noble' clientage will have involved a transfer of wealth from the lord to the *ambaχtos", so we could be looking at a god whose function was to apportion wealth, much like the Vedic Bhaga. But I'll concede that it would all be a lot simpler if the meaning was simply "Divine Ploughman": sometimes comparativism leads one into difficulties as much as it clarifies other things.
So far we've covered five gods, or perhaps it would be better to call them "deity types". According to Dumézil, an arrangement of five gods, with two for the first function, one for the second and two again for the third function, is a key element in most Indo-European pantheons. In India we have Mitra-Varuna, Indra and the two Nasatyas, in Scandinavia we have Odin-Tyr, Thor, Frey and Njorth.
Five seems to have been an important number to the Indo-Europeans. We're all familiar with the symbolism of the "magic number" three and its multiples, but it's perhaps worth dwelling a while on the significance of the number five. The number five seems to have indicaed to the Indo-Europeans "completeness" or "wholeness": there are five fingers on a hand. But this "wholeness" seems to be made up of four plus one more: there are four directions, plus the middle. Four fingers, plus the thumb. It's significant that in IE cultures as far apart as Ireland and India, the totality of human habitation is made up of five "realms", one in each cardinal direction and one in the middle.
Revenons, however, à nos moutons. The two deities I've posited above as the third-function pair doesn't actually quite match up with the third-function gods of the other pantheons. There are certainly more than two third-function gods, of course, but canonically, the representatives of the third function in this common Indo-European "pentatheon" are more often representatives of the Divine Twins, known from the Classical world as the Dioskouroi.
4. The Divine Twins
Diodorus Siculus wrote: "The Celts who dwell along the ocean venerate the Dioscouri above any of the gods, since they have a tradition handed down from ancient times that these gods appeared among them coming from the ocean."
The myth of a pair of divine or semi-divine twins is a common one to Indo-European mythology: in India we can point to the Aśvins, in the Baltics the Ašvienai and the Dieva dēli, in Greece of course the Dioskouroi. The Celtic reflexes of this myth are rather confused: there is no one single myth pointing to a pair of Divine Twins matching the comparanda in other cultures exactly. Nevertheless, the motifs of the myth are well-embedded enough that, along with Diodorus Siculus' observation, we can posit a pair of Divine Twins in Celtic myth.
Strangely, the elements of this myth are best-preserved in the Brythonic material: all too frequently the elements of comparison are to be found in their clearest form in the Irish material, with Brythonic literature merely providing corroboration. However, in this case we can refer to the story of Pryderi's birth, and the rescue of Branwen by Bran and Manawydan. Let's examine them both in turn.
The parents of the Divine Twins are most frequently the Sky Father and a goddess associated with horses. The identity of the father is easily seen in Vedic myth, where the Aśvins are most frequently termed "sons of Dyaus". In Greek myth, Dioskouroi literally means "Zeus' boys", and the Latvian name dieva dēli means "sons of Dievs", where Dievs is the Latvian reflex of the PIE *Dyeus Phter. Often, however, only one of the twins has divine parentage: in the story of Leda's rape by Zeus (engendering the Dioskouroi), Leda afterwards goes home and has sex with her mortal husband, who fathered one of the twins. The mother of the twins is generally a goddess associated with horses: in one Vedic myth, the goddess Saranyu, in order to avoid having sex with her husband Surya, turns herself into a horse and flees. Surya, however, catches up with her and ejaculates into her mouth. Saranyu snorts the semen out of her nostrils and thus the Aśvins are born.
How then does this relate to the Welsh story about the birth of Pryderi? Rhiannon, a horse goddess if ever there was one, wife of the mortal king Pwyll, gives birth to Pryderi, who is then found with a foal in the stable of Teyrnon, who we've already associated above with Noudons- an inheritor of the PIE sky father's mantle. I think here we're seeing a pair of twins, associated with horses, fathered by a mortal and a god upon the horse goddess.
A common mythological adventure of the Divine Twins is the rescue of their abducted sister- who is normally associated with the sun. Kastor and Polydeukes, the Greek twins, rescue their sister Helen from her abduction by Theseus. The Dieva dēli of Latvia are always off rescuing their sister Saule, the sun-goddess. In the second branch of the Mabinogi, we see Bendigeidfrân and his brother Manawydan rescue their sister Brânwen, who has been "abducted" across the sea by the king of Ireland. Note also that Brân and Manawydan are both sons of Llŷr, a sea-god: we've noted above a connection between the sea and Noudons. It's perhaps also worth mentioning that in the third branch, Manawydan is paired with Pryderi, one of our Divine Twins described above.
So, I would posit an original Celtic mythologic structure in which Rigantonā gives birth to a pair of twins, at least one of them fathered by Tigernonos/Noudons, who go on to rescue their sister (possibly Sūlis, a goddess of the sun) from her abduction. For the sake of argument, I would name the twins Wergos, meaning "lively" (possibly the etymology of Gwri, Pryderi's first name) and Epālos "colt".
Diodorus Siculus wrote: "The Celts who dwell along the ocean venerate the Dioscouri above any of the gods, since they have a tradition handed down from ancient times that these gods appeared among them coming from the ocean."
The myth of a pair of divine or semi-divine twins is a common one to Indo-European mythology: in India we can point to the Aśvins, in the Baltics the Ašvienai and the Dieva dēli, in Greece of course the Dioskouroi. The Celtic reflexes of this myth are rather confused: there is no one single myth pointing to a pair of Divine Twins matching the comparanda in other cultures exactly. Nevertheless, the motifs of the myth are well-embedded enough that, along with Diodorus Siculus' observation, we can posit a pair of Divine Twins in Celtic myth.
Strangely, the elements of this myth are best-preserved in the Brythonic material: all too frequently the elements of comparison are to be found in their clearest form in the Irish material, with Brythonic literature merely providing corroboration. However, in this case we can refer to the story of Pryderi's birth, and the rescue of Branwen by Bran and Manawydan. Let's examine them both in turn.
The parents of the Divine Twins are most frequently the Sky Father and a goddess associated with horses. The identity of the father is easily seen in Vedic myth, where the Aśvins are most frequently termed "sons of Dyaus". In Greek myth, Dioskouroi literally means "Zeus' boys", and the Latvian name dieva dēli means "sons of Dievs", where Dievs is the Latvian reflex of the PIE *Dyeus Phter. Often, however, only one of the twins has divine parentage: in the story of Leda's rape by Zeus (engendering the Dioskouroi), Leda afterwards goes home and has sex with her mortal husband, who fathered one of the twins. The mother of the twins is generally a goddess associated with horses: in one Vedic myth, the goddess Saranyu, in order to avoid having sex with her husband Surya, turns herself into a horse and flees. Surya, however, catches up with her and ejaculates into her mouth. Saranyu snorts the semen out of her nostrils and thus the Aśvins are born.
How then does this relate to the Welsh story about the birth of Pryderi? Rhiannon, a horse goddess if ever there was one, wife of the mortal king Pwyll, gives birth to Pryderi, who is then found with a foal in the stable of Teyrnon, who we've already associated above with Noudons- an inheritor of the PIE sky father's mantle. I think here we're seeing a pair of twins, associated with horses, fathered by a mortal and a god upon the horse goddess.
A common mythological adventure of the Divine Twins is the rescue of their abducted sister- who is normally associated with the sun. Kastor and Polydeukes, the Greek twins, rescue their sister Helen from her abduction by Theseus. The Dieva dēli of Latvia are always off rescuing their sister Saule, the sun-goddess. In the second branch of the Mabinogi, we see Bendigeidfrân and his brother Manawydan rescue their sister Brânwen, who has been "abducted" across the sea by the king of Ireland. Note also that Brân and Manawydan are both sons of Llŷr, a sea-god: we've noted above a connection between the sea and Noudons. It's perhaps also worth mentioning that in the third branch, Manawydan is paired with Pryderi, one of our Divine Twins described above.
So, I would posit an original Celtic mythologic structure in which Rigantonā gives birth to a pair of twins, at least one of them fathered by Tigernonos/Noudons, who go on to rescue their sister (possibly Sūlis, a goddess of the sun) from her abduction. For the sake of argument, I would name the twins Wergos, meaning "lively" (possibly the etymology of Gwri, Pryderi's first name) and Epālos "colt".
5. The Sun and Smith
In any Indo-European pantheon there are always deities who resist classification into the classic Dumézilian trifunctional schema (trifunctionalism, to remind you, is described in the links in my first post in this topic): like anything else in life, pantheons are not "neat". Some scholars have suggested various ways around this, such as positing an ill-defined "fourth function" or trying to shoehorn the evidence into one function or another by brute force. Others have pointed to those deities which resist classification as evidence that the trifunctional model is fundamentally flawed as a tool of analysis. In my opinion, however, the situation is quite the reverse: I would be suspicious of any theory which accounts for all the possibilities. Mythology is not physics, after all.
Two such Celtic deity-types which resist neat categorisation are the Sun God and the Smith God, and it is those two that we examine in this post.
The God of the Sun
Those who object to the idea of a Celtic God of the Sun generally point to the fact that in the modern Celtic languages, the noun meaning "sun" is almost always of feminine gender, although counterexamples do exist. Middle Welsh huan could be masculine or feminine, for example. However, the other Indo-European pantheons frequently have two deities associated with the sun, one male and one female: the latter is frequently seen as the daughter of the former, and generally the Sun Goddess is associated with the sun itself, rather than lordship over the sun. As a vague parallel, consider the sovreign god Noudons and the land-goddess Litawī: the one is "lord of the world", the other is the world.
The two key comparands which we're going to use to triangulate the Celtic Sun God are the Greek Apollo and the Vedic Surya (as distinct from his daughter Suryā. Transcription can be a bugger.)- while not the only instantiations of the IE Sun-God, they are the ones with the most information about them.
One of Surya's main attributes (besides being the god of the sun, of course) was archery: Surya himself and his sons in Indian Epic (Karna being the prime example) are renowned archers. Of course, Apollo's portfolio includes archery. Additionally, Apollo is known as a healing deity: not just himself but also his son Asklepios. When Surya's golden chariot passes overhead, disease is said to flee. The two are also ascribed similar personality traits: both are considered to be stubborn, boastful, sexually voracious and exhibiting great generosity.
Inscriptional evidence from the Roman Empire furnishes with a number of Celtic deities who were syncretised with Apollo: notably Borvo, Belenos, Maponos, Grannos and Moguns. Inscriptions to these deities are frequently found at hot springs: a Greek writer named Apollonius records a tradition among the Guals that hot springs originate from those places where the sun god's tears touched the earth. The connection between hot springs and healing need not be belaboured, however it is an interesting point that Indo-European traditions frequently have the motif of fire or a "solar essence" which is kept safe underwater (the Avestan term for the latter isxʷarǝnah, cognate to the Welsh haul, a kind of solar substance which supposedly shone around the head of a righteous ruler: compare the halo in Christian iconography).
Aside from in the works of early scholars, who saw all gods as being reductible to deified natural phenomena and consequently saw "storm gods" and "sun gods" everywhere, there are relatively few figures from recorded Celtic myth who are easily related to solar deities. However, I believe that Mabon is one that can. Mabon ap Modron is one of those rarities in Welsh myth: a figure whose name can unambiguously traced to that of a pagan deity (offhand, other deities that I can think of who fall into this category are Lleu, Nudd, Taran and Modron. And it's not unlikely that Ogmios is lurking behind Hefeydd Hen.) We have inscriptions to "Deo Mapono" along Hadrian's Wall, and a number of inscriptions referring to "Apollo Maponus". He's also attested in a Gaulish-language sample from the Chamalières inscription. Aside from the interpretatio romana, there's a decent amount of other evidence which points to Mabon being a reflex of the Indo-European sun god.
In Culhwch and Olwen, Mabon is depicted as being imprisoned inside a big tower in Gloucester, from which he is liberated by Cei and Bedwyr in order to go hunt the Twrch Trwyth. Jerome of Prague relates a Lithuanian myth whereby the god of the sun was imprisoned for some time in a strong fortress before being liberated by the twelve signs of the zodiac. Mabon is described as being a master of hounds: dogs and healing are commonly associated with each other, although this could simply be coincidence. It's also fairly tempting to link Apollo's patronage of hunting to Mabon's hunt of the Twrch Trwyth, although no arrows feature in the latter. Mabon is also relatively uncontroversially linked to the Irish figure Óengus Mac ind Óg. Without wanting to go into too much detail, it's worth noting that Óengus was something of a sex addict, with a number of lovers- this fits in well with the sun-god being sexually voracious.
Moving back to another Gaulish deity syncretised with Apollo, let's look at Grannos for a bit. He's surnamed in one inscription as amarcolitanos Gaulish for "of the broad gaze": the Indo-European sun god is typically described as being all-seeing. He's also found in an inscription as Grannus Phaebus- Phoebus being another Greek sun-god, this time without the healing implications, which indicates to me that Grannos was a sun-god, not just a god of healing. One statue of Grannos depicts him with a lyre, the iconography of Apollo, but it's also notable that Óengus is also closely associated with music. There's also the Auvergat tradition of prancing about with a burning torch singing about "Granno mio" at the beginning of spring, although given the late attestation (18th century, IIRC), I'm not sure how likely this is to be a survival of Grannos-worship. It is perhaps relavent, however, that the inscription found at Chamalières, which is in the Auvergne, refers to Maponos arveriatis"Maponos the Auvergnat".
In summation then, I would personally reconstruct Grannos as a Gaulish god of the sun and healing, with a number of different epithets: amarcolitanos "the wide-gazing", moguns "the mighty", borwū "the boiling", and perhaps maponos "the divine son".
Finally, although I've linked Belenos to Lugus above, it should be pointed out that in the inscriptional evidence he's always found syncretised to Apollo, never Mercurius as one would expect. It's possible that belenos is simply an adjective meaning "shining", rather than an independent deity, and thus available to describe any god. However, it's also possible that *Lugubelenos is actually a dvandva compound, associating two different divinites (Mitra and Varuna frequently appear in the Vedic hymns in a dvandva compound Mitrāvaruna)- in this case Lugus with "Apollo". To this end, it's worth noting that in Culhwch and Olwen the hunt for the Twrch Trwyth cannot take place without the assistance of Mabon, and without the restraint of Gwyn ap Nudd (who we linked to Lugus above)- it's a late source, but maybe we're seing the same kind of association here.
Mabon ap Modron's mother is obviously well known, but less is made of his father. There is in fact another Mabon in the Welsh literature: Mabon ap Mellt Mabon son of Lightning. It seems to me that it's possible that Maponos's father was Taranis- similarly Zeus the thunderer was the father of Apollo. Going further in this, in Culhwch and Olwen, reference is made to Mabon's first cousin Eiddoel ap Ner. "Ner" seems to me to be a likely reflex of Proto-Celtic *neros, which we've already seen as denoting a man in his second function capacity. In Vedic myth Surya is described as being at loggerheads with Indra: in IE myth it is highly common to find stories of a the second function god having issues with his son. Unfortunately, the equasion breaks down somewhat as Indra isn't Surya's father, but his brother. Surya's father was some Divine Sage type. However, his mother was Aditi, a goddess whose name essentially means "mother": Matrona~Modron meaning the same thing.
The Divine Smith
We have an excellent set of evidence for a Celtic divine smith. Not only do we have Goibniu among the Tuatha Dé Danann and Gofannon among the Plant Dôn, but we also have pre-Christian inscriptional evidence from both Gaul and Britain for a deity named Gobannos.
There's not a great deal of information in the Welsh texts about Gofannon: he's a son of Dôn, he sharpens whetstones and ploughs and he killed his nephew Dylan (accidentally, one presumes).
Goibniu offers a much more fertile field for exploration, and the elements of mythology surrounding him easily find their cognates in other Indo-European traditions. Like the Greek Hephaestus, Goibniu is the host of the feast in which the gods drink the Drink of Immortality: nektar in Greece, ale in Ireland. Similarly in India, the divine smith Tvaṣṭṛ fashions the bowls which hold the Soma, the immortality-conferring drink of the Vedas. Also like Tvaṣṭṛ, Goibniu is the owner of a magical cow: Tvaṣṭṛ's has an udder which provided Soma, while Goibniu's would fill any vessel placed under her with milk, no matter the size of the vessel.
Rather than just a metalworker, the divine smith was the Gods' all-purpose handyman. Hephaestus constructed the Gods' palaces on Olympus, and in Irish and Scottish folk tales Goibniu is remembered as Gubban Saor, the architecht of the ruined Iron-Age towers which dot the landscape.
Finally, the smith of the Bronze and Iron Ages was frequently seen as a magical figure, and it is therefore no surprise to learn that it is said in the texts of Goibniu that he di·chan brichtu, he chants spells. Tvaṣṭṛ was a similarly eldritch figure, magically creating a monster to avenge his son's death at the hands of Indra. It is also worth noting that in Indo-European myth the divine smith tends to have chthonic, otherworldly tendencies. Hephaestus's forge was underground, while that of the Norse Vǫlund was in a burial-mound. On the Berne zinc tablet, Gobannos is found with the epithet dobnoredo, which may derive from dubnorēdos "traveller in the deep".
In any Indo-European pantheon there are always deities who resist classification into the classic Dumézilian trifunctional schema (trifunctionalism, to remind you, is described in the links in my first post in this topic): like anything else in life, pantheons are not "neat". Some scholars have suggested various ways around this, such as positing an ill-defined "fourth function" or trying to shoehorn the evidence into one function or another by brute force. Others have pointed to those deities which resist classification as evidence that the trifunctional model is fundamentally flawed as a tool of analysis. In my opinion, however, the situation is quite the reverse: I would be suspicious of any theory which accounts for all the possibilities. Mythology is not physics, after all.
Two such Celtic deity-types which resist neat categorisation are the Sun God and the Smith God, and it is those two that we examine in this post.
The God of the Sun
Those who object to the idea of a Celtic God of the Sun generally point to the fact that in the modern Celtic languages, the noun meaning "sun" is almost always of feminine gender, although counterexamples do exist. Middle Welsh huan could be masculine or feminine, for example. However, the other Indo-European pantheons frequently have two deities associated with the sun, one male and one female: the latter is frequently seen as the daughter of the former, and generally the Sun Goddess is associated with the sun itself, rather than lordship over the sun. As a vague parallel, consider the sovreign god Noudons and the land-goddess Litawī: the one is "lord of the world", the other is the world.
The two key comparands which we're going to use to triangulate the Celtic Sun God are the Greek Apollo and the Vedic Surya (as distinct from his daughter Suryā. Transcription can be a bugger.)- while not the only instantiations of the IE Sun-God, they are the ones with the most information about them.
One of Surya's main attributes (besides being the god of the sun, of course) was archery: Surya himself and his sons in Indian Epic (Karna being the prime example) are renowned archers. Of course, Apollo's portfolio includes archery. Additionally, Apollo is known as a healing deity: not just himself but also his son Asklepios. When Surya's golden chariot passes overhead, disease is said to flee. The two are also ascribed similar personality traits: both are considered to be stubborn, boastful, sexually voracious and exhibiting great generosity.
Inscriptional evidence from the Roman Empire furnishes with a number of Celtic deities who were syncretised with Apollo: notably Borvo, Belenos, Maponos, Grannos and Moguns. Inscriptions to these deities are frequently found at hot springs: a Greek writer named Apollonius records a tradition among the Guals that hot springs originate from those places where the sun god's tears touched the earth. The connection between hot springs and healing need not be belaboured, however it is an interesting point that Indo-European traditions frequently have the motif of fire or a "solar essence" which is kept safe underwater (the Avestan term for the latter isxʷarǝnah, cognate to the Welsh haul, a kind of solar substance which supposedly shone around the head of a righteous ruler: compare the halo in Christian iconography).
Aside from in the works of early scholars, who saw all gods as being reductible to deified natural phenomena and consequently saw "storm gods" and "sun gods" everywhere, there are relatively few figures from recorded Celtic myth who are easily related to solar deities. However, I believe that Mabon is one that can. Mabon ap Modron is one of those rarities in Welsh myth: a figure whose name can unambiguously traced to that of a pagan deity (offhand, other deities that I can think of who fall into this category are Lleu, Nudd, Taran and Modron. And it's not unlikely that Ogmios is lurking behind Hefeydd Hen.) We have inscriptions to "Deo Mapono" along Hadrian's Wall, and a number of inscriptions referring to "Apollo Maponus". He's also attested in a Gaulish-language sample from the Chamalières inscription. Aside from the interpretatio romana, there's a decent amount of other evidence which points to Mabon being a reflex of the Indo-European sun god.
In Culhwch and Olwen, Mabon is depicted as being imprisoned inside a big tower in Gloucester, from which he is liberated by Cei and Bedwyr in order to go hunt the Twrch Trwyth. Jerome of Prague relates a Lithuanian myth whereby the god of the sun was imprisoned for some time in a strong fortress before being liberated by the twelve signs of the zodiac. Mabon is described as being a master of hounds: dogs and healing are commonly associated with each other, although this could simply be coincidence. It's also fairly tempting to link Apollo's patronage of hunting to Mabon's hunt of the Twrch Trwyth, although no arrows feature in the latter. Mabon is also relatively uncontroversially linked to the Irish figure Óengus Mac ind Óg. Without wanting to go into too much detail, it's worth noting that Óengus was something of a sex addict, with a number of lovers- this fits in well with the sun-god being sexually voracious.
Moving back to another Gaulish deity syncretised with Apollo, let's look at Grannos for a bit. He's surnamed in one inscription as amarcolitanos Gaulish for "of the broad gaze": the Indo-European sun god is typically described as being all-seeing. He's also found in an inscription as Grannus Phaebus- Phoebus being another Greek sun-god, this time without the healing implications, which indicates to me that Grannos was a sun-god, not just a god of healing. One statue of Grannos depicts him with a lyre, the iconography of Apollo, but it's also notable that Óengus is also closely associated with music. There's also the Auvergat tradition of prancing about with a burning torch singing about "Granno mio" at the beginning of spring, although given the late attestation (18th century, IIRC), I'm not sure how likely this is to be a survival of Grannos-worship. It is perhaps relavent, however, that the inscription found at Chamalières, which is in the Auvergne, refers to Maponos arveriatis"Maponos the Auvergnat".
In summation then, I would personally reconstruct Grannos as a Gaulish god of the sun and healing, with a number of different epithets: amarcolitanos "the wide-gazing", moguns "the mighty", borwū "the boiling", and perhaps maponos "the divine son".
Finally, although I've linked Belenos to Lugus above, it should be pointed out that in the inscriptional evidence he's always found syncretised to Apollo, never Mercurius as one would expect. It's possible that belenos is simply an adjective meaning "shining", rather than an independent deity, and thus available to describe any god. However, it's also possible that *Lugubelenos is actually a dvandva compound, associating two different divinites (Mitra and Varuna frequently appear in the Vedic hymns in a dvandva compound Mitrāvaruna)- in this case Lugus with "Apollo". To this end, it's worth noting that in Culhwch and Olwen the hunt for the Twrch Trwyth cannot take place without the assistance of Mabon, and without the restraint of Gwyn ap Nudd (who we linked to Lugus above)- it's a late source, but maybe we're seing the same kind of association here.
Mabon ap Modron's mother is obviously well known, but less is made of his father. There is in fact another Mabon in the Welsh literature: Mabon ap Mellt Mabon son of Lightning. It seems to me that it's possible that Maponos's father was Taranis- similarly Zeus the thunderer was the father of Apollo. Going further in this, in Culhwch and Olwen, reference is made to Mabon's first cousin Eiddoel ap Ner. "Ner" seems to me to be a likely reflex of Proto-Celtic *neros, which we've already seen as denoting a man in his second function capacity. In Vedic myth Surya is described as being at loggerheads with Indra: in IE myth it is highly common to find stories of a the second function god having issues with his son. Unfortunately, the equasion breaks down somewhat as Indra isn't Surya's father, but his brother. Surya's father was some Divine Sage type. However, his mother was Aditi, a goddess whose name essentially means "mother": Matrona~Modron meaning the same thing.
The Divine Smith
We have an excellent set of evidence for a Celtic divine smith. Not only do we have Goibniu among the Tuatha Dé Danann and Gofannon among the Plant Dôn, but we also have pre-Christian inscriptional evidence from both Gaul and Britain for a deity named Gobannos.
There's not a great deal of information in the Welsh texts about Gofannon: he's a son of Dôn, he sharpens whetstones and ploughs and he killed his nephew Dylan (accidentally, one presumes).
Goibniu offers a much more fertile field for exploration, and the elements of mythology surrounding him easily find their cognates in other Indo-European traditions. Like the Greek Hephaestus, Goibniu is the host of the feast in which the gods drink the Drink of Immortality: nektar in Greece, ale in Ireland. Similarly in India, the divine smith Tvaṣṭṛ fashions the bowls which hold the Soma, the immortality-conferring drink of the Vedas. Also like Tvaṣṭṛ, Goibniu is the owner of a magical cow: Tvaṣṭṛ's has an udder which provided Soma, while Goibniu's would fill any vessel placed under her with milk, no matter the size of the vessel.
Rather than just a metalworker, the divine smith was the Gods' all-purpose handyman. Hephaestus constructed the Gods' palaces on Olympus, and in Irish and Scottish folk tales Goibniu is remembered as Gubban Saor, the architecht of the ruined Iron-Age towers which dot the landscape.
Finally, the smith of the Bronze and Iron Ages was frequently seen as a magical figure, and it is therefore no surprise to learn that it is said in the texts of Goibniu that he di·chan brichtu, he chants spells. Tvaṣṭṛ was a similarly eldritch figure, magically creating a monster to avenge his son's death at the hands of Indra. It is also worth noting that in Indo-European myth the divine smith tends to have chthonic, otherworldly tendencies. Hephaestus's forge was underground, while that of the Norse Vǫlund was in a burial-mound. On the Berne zinc tablet, Gobannos is found with the epithet dobnoredo, which may derive from dubnorēdos "traveller in the deep".
6. Lords of the Waters
In most of the current handbooks on IE comparative mythology, a connection is frequently made between the Irish Nechtan, the Roman Neputune and the Vedic Apam Napat. The principal set of correspondences is between the myths of Apam Napat and Nechtan; these correspondences can be briefly enumerated as follows:
"A deity hoards a fiery and effulgent power immersed in abody of water. His trust is challenged by one who is inherently unqualified to possess this treasure [...] Thre rounds of approach by the usurper result in three countermeasures, either retreats or attacks [...] the advancing waters with their inherent fiery power create a watercourse or courses that after a worldwide circulation revert to their mythical source." (quoted from Puhvel's Comparative Mythology).
At first a tempting set of correspondences, this reconstruction is hampered by a few defects: firstly, the etymological correspondence between "(Apam) Napat" and "Nechtan" is far from secure: "Nechtan" might better reflect an etymology in the PIE *nigʷ- "wash" (which, incidentally, would give a connection to the Germanic water-spirits, the nixes). Secondly, the fiery nature of the waters contained in Nechtan's well is somewhat dubious: while the waters of Apam Napat's well (and that of his Avestan homologue) contain the "kingly glory" or sovreignty, Nechtan's well rather contains the waters of wisdom, inabited by the Salmon of Knowledge. A better comparand here might be the Well of Mímir in Norse Myth, which likewise confers knowledge and can similarly only be approached without sacrifice by only a few.
Aside from a few baseless connections to Nuada and thence Noudons, there does not appear to be a British or Gaulish cognate to Nechtan. It should be mentioned that even should the Nechtan-Neptune equasion be valid, in neither case is there an original patronage of the sea. The sea was added to Neptune's portfolio after his identification with Poseidon, and aside from his well, Nechtan does not have any further connections with a body of water. Which brings us nicely to our next topic:
A God of the Sea?
The evidence for and against deities commonly identified as "sea gods" has been discussed over on CF at length. As such, I'm going to assume we're all familiar with the arguments and not going to waste breath and bandwidth on explaining why Manawydan isn't the Brythonic "God of the Sea"
Actually, evidence for dedicated sea-gods is somewhat patchy in the Indo-European world in general (probably because the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived inland), and the Celtic in particular (who most definitely did not all live inland). It seems that the idea of a friendly old trident-wielding sea-god is a product mainly of the modern imagination: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the ancient Indo-European polytheisms didn't have a deity of the oceans per se.
What they did have was deities concerned with seafarers. The Pillar of the Boatmen in Paris was an altar set up by sailors, and dedicated to Esus who as we've seen is a possible name for Lugus, for example. Frequently, the Divine Twins are seen as protectors of sailors, and remember how Diodorus Siculus mentions that the Celts believed that the Divine Twins had come to them from the sea.
However, our best recourse is probably to the Norse: they had a god of seafarers, Njörðr, but the sea itself as a powerful force was under the aegis of Ægir, a giant. It is interesting that Njörðr was the patron not only of sailors but also the relatively safer coastal waters: one Welsh figure who is frequently supposed to be a "sea-god" is Dylan, the etymology of the name possibly being *dī-glandos, incorporating *glandos "coast, riverbank" (alternate etymologies proposed include *dubuglandos"dark coast" and *dī-φlanus "ebb-tide"- it's a difficult name). Also recall that Dylan is the twin of Lleu, and Lugus/Esus' patronage of sailors.
A possible sea-god from Irish myth is the Formorian Tethra, whose name possibly derives from *triyato-rīχs "ocean-king" (although this is dubious). It's worth mentioning that Tethra is associated with Manannan: both are supposed rulers of Mag Mell, a paradise over the ocean.
In most of the current handbooks on IE comparative mythology, a connection is frequently made between the Irish Nechtan, the Roman Neputune and the Vedic Apam Napat. The principal set of correspondences is between the myths of Apam Napat and Nechtan; these correspondences can be briefly enumerated as follows:
"A deity hoards a fiery and effulgent power immersed in abody of water. His trust is challenged by one who is inherently unqualified to possess this treasure [...] Thre rounds of approach by the usurper result in three countermeasures, either retreats or attacks [...] the advancing waters with their inherent fiery power create a watercourse or courses that after a worldwide circulation revert to their mythical source." (quoted from Puhvel's Comparative Mythology).
At first a tempting set of correspondences, this reconstruction is hampered by a few defects: firstly, the etymological correspondence between "(Apam) Napat" and "Nechtan" is far from secure: "Nechtan" might better reflect an etymology in the PIE *nigʷ- "wash" (which, incidentally, would give a connection to the Germanic water-spirits, the nixes). Secondly, the fiery nature of the waters contained in Nechtan's well is somewhat dubious: while the waters of Apam Napat's well (and that of his Avestan homologue) contain the "kingly glory" or sovreignty, Nechtan's well rather contains the waters of wisdom, inabited by the Salmon of Knowledge. A better comparand here might be the Well of Mímir in Norse Myth, which likewise confers knowledge and can similarly only be approached without sacrifice by only a few.
Aside from a few baseless connections to Nuada and thence Noudons, there does not appear to be a British or Gaulish cognate to Nechtan. It should be mentioned that even should the Nechtan-Neptune equasion be valid, in neither case is there an original patronage of the sea. The sea was added to Neptune's portfolio after his identification with Poseidon, and aside from his well, Nechtan does not have any further connections with a body of water. Which brings us nicely to our next topic:
A God of the Sea?
The evidence for and against deities commonly identified as "sea gods" has been discussed over on CF at length. As such, I'm going to assume we're all familiar with the arguments and not going to waste breath and bandwidth on explaining why Manawydan isn't the Brythonic "God of the Sea"
Actually, evidence for dedicated sea-gods is somewhat patchy in the Indo-European world in general (probably because the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived inland), and the Celtic in particular (who most definitely did not all live inland). It seems that the idea of a friendly old trident-wielding sea-god is a product mainly of the modern imagination: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the ancient Indo-European polytheisms didn't have a deity of the oceans per se.
What they did have was deities concerned with seafarers. The Pillar of the Boatmen in Paris was an altar set up by sailors, and dedicated to Esus who as we've seen is a possible name for Lugus, for example. Frequently, the Divine Twins are seen as protectors of sailors, and remember how Diodorus Siculus mentions that the Celts believed that the Divine Twins had come to them from the sea.
However, our best recourse is probably to the Norse: they had a god of seafarers, Njörðr, but the sea itself as a powerful force was under the aegis of Ægir, a giant. It is interesting that Njörðr was the patron not only of sailors but also the relatively safer coastal waters: one Welsh figure who is frequently supposed to be a "sea-god" is Dylan, the etymology of the name possibly being *dī-glandos, incorporating *glandos "coast, riverbank" (alternate etymologies proposed include *dubuglandos"dark coast" and *dī-φlanus "ebb-tide"- it's a difficult name). Also recall that Dylan is the twin of Lleu, and Lugus/Esus' patronage of sailors.
A possible sea-god from Irish myth is the Formorian Tethra, whose name possibly derives from *triyato-rīχs "ocean-king" (although this is dubious). It's worth mentioning that Tethra is associated with Manannan: both are supposed rulers of Mag Mell, a paradise over the ocean.
I've held off on writing about goddesses for a while now for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that the goddesses are simply more difficult than the gods. By and large, most IE gods remain recognisable across time and space: Perkunas, Thor and Indra are all, ultimately, recognisable as reflexes of "the same" deity. Goddesses, on the other hand, can fade into and out of view, and their profiles are rarely static. For example, we might find a virginal maiden goddess in one culture whose attributes correspond neatly to those of a bounteous maternal goddess in another, and those of a rather promiscuous goddess in a third.
Similarly, it is a lot easier to categorise the gods in terms of the Dumezilian trifunctional framework than it is the goddesses*. Of course, there may be some "overlap": a typically second-function god of war might also possess strong third-function fertility aspects, but then trifunctionalism is a tool of analysis, not a series of absolute categories. However, rather than three neat functional categories of magico-juridical, martial and producer, goddesses tend to fall into categories which either embrace all three functions or fall outside the schema altogether.
A number of reasons have been suggested for why this might be. One view, influenced considerably by Hindu theology, is summarised in an article by the late, great, Alexei Kondratiev:
Alexei Kondratiev wrote:Because in Celtic thought goddesses are primarily seen as sources of energy (equivalent to the Hindu concept of 'shakti'), the distinctions between them tend to blur and to be less clear-cut than in the case of the gods, as many writers on the subject have remarked.
[...]
The Hindu model can be very useful in helping us understand the Celtic view of goddesses, which was quite similar. For Hindus, goddesses are sources of energy, and they are often referred to collectively as simply Shakti (which can be personified as Durga, the supreme virgin goddess who is the source of all energy in the universe). But when the energy is applied to a specific purpose, the goddesses become differentiated: as Sarasvati (culture and creativity), Lakshmi (fertility and wealth, material comfort) or Kali (destruction and rebirth).
Now this explanation, which essentially theologises the fairly offensive concept of the active male vs. the passive female, has always seemed rather inadequate to me. It is based ultimately on Vedic theology, and the IE goddesses fared particularly badly in the Vedas: aside from Uṣas, the Vedic goddesses have largely been wholly marginalised. A universal classification of goddesses as being just passive "sources of power" available for use by active, masculine deities seems inaccurate on examining the mythological evidence. To use an example all of us are likely to be familiar with, when we compare Pwyll and Rhiannon in the First Branch, which of the two is the passive character and which the active? Goddesses are frequently described in the myths as being active and self-motivated beings.
At the other end of the gender politics spectrum, we have an oft-repeated explanation that among the patriarchal PIE speakers, goddesses were worshipped mainly by women, and as such their worship and mythology was marginalised or suppressed. This kind of thinking fits in neatly with Gimbutas-influenced theories on pre-IE Europe being a peaceful, matrifocal, Great Goddess-worshipping place, but ultimately tells us more about feminist historiography than it does about actual prechristian belief systems. It is undeniable that the societies of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their descendants were far from being utopias of gender equality, but a society's attitude towards women is not necessarily reflected in its belief system. As an example, Islamic doctrine is actually rather woman-positive, but Arab cultures are notorious for misogyny. In the case of the Indo-European religions, we can see that goddesses were vitally important to all sectors of society, male and female, and had an absolutely pivotal role in their (male-dominated, of course) ideologies of power.
To my mind, the most plausible explanation for this "difficulty" in identifying and reconstructing the portfolios of IE goddesses is that a large number of goddesses were tied to the land: as a population migrates from one territory to another, the goddesses of the old homeland are left behind, with new ones being encountered in the new land. Those goddesses whom we can reconstruct with greatest security are those which are not so tied to a particular patch of land: deities of sovereignty, of the hearth, of the dawn, of times of year and so on.
It is perhaps also for this reason that Indo-European peoples were more ready to "borrow" goddesses from other cultures than they were gods: that the Greek Aphrodite is a fully integrated borrowing of the Semitic Astarte is well-known: it is possibly less well-known that the Zoroastrian goddess Aredvi Sura Anahita is a borrowing of the same deity. Identifying similar "borrowings" in the cultures of Northern Europe is somewhat more difficult, as we do not have linguistic evidence of substratal populations from whom deities might be borrowed: we know that Astarte is Semitic in origin because we have records of her worship predating the Greeks. Among the Celts, I think it's possible that Nantosweltā could be such a borrowing, likewise the Matres. However, it is notable that these "borrowed" goddesses were generally fitted into IE moulds: the Greek Aphrodite was certainly not the same as the Phoenician Ashtart.
All these difficulties of categorisation leave us with something of a difficulty of how to structure this work. With the gods, it was pretty easy: treat each Dumezilian function in turn and then cover the residue. I intend on broadly following Ceisiwr Serith's handy classification, found in his book Deep Ancestors, with such adaptations to the Celtic situation as necessary- essentially expect the following:
At the moment, the more detailed information on the various Goddesses hasn't been completed, Ceisiwr Serith's website has an excellent overview, about half way down this page
Similarly, it is a lot easier to categorise the gods in terms of the Dumezilian trifunctional framework than it is the goddesses*. Of course, there may be some "overlap": a typically second-function god of war might also possess strong third-function fertility aspects, but then trifunctionalism is a tool of analysis, not a series of absolute categories. However, rather than three neat functional categories of magico-juridical, martial and producer, goddesses tend to fall into categories which either embrace all three functions or fall outside the schema altogether.
A number of reasons have been suggested for why this might be. One view, influenced considerably by Hindu theology, is summarised in an article by the late, great, Alexei Kondratiev:
Alexei Kondratiev wrote:Because in Celtic thought goddesses are primarily seen as sources of energy (equivalent to the Hindu concept of 'shakti'), the distinctions between them tend to blur and to be less clear-cut than in the case of the gods, as many writers on the subject have remarked.
[...]
The Hindu model can be very useful in helping us understand the Celtic view of goddesses, which was quite similar. For Hindus, goddesses are sources of energy, and they are often referred to collectively as simply Shakti (which can be personified as Durga, the supreme virgin goddess who is the source of all energy in the universe). But when the energy is applied to a specific purpose, the goddesses become differentiated: as Sarasvati (culture and creativity), Lakshmi (fertility and wealth, material comfort) or Kali (destruction and rebirth).
Now this explanation, which essentially theologises the fairly offensive concept of the active male vs. the passive female, has always seemed rather inadequate to me. It is based ultimately on Vedic theology, and the IE goddesses fared particularly badly in the Vedas: aside from Uṣas, the Vedic goddesses have largely been wholly marginalised. A universal classification of goddesses as being just passive "sources of power" available for use by active, masculine deities seems inaccurate on examining the mythological evidence. To use an example all of us are likely to be familiar with, when we compare Pwyll and Rhiannon in the First Branch, which of the two is the passive character and which the active? Goddesses are frequently described in the myths as being active and self-motivated beings.
At the other end of the gender politics spectrum, we have an oft-repeated explanation that among the patriarchal PIE speakers, goddesses were worshipped mainly by women, and as such their worship and mythology was marginalised or suppressed. This kind of thinking fits in neatly with Gimbutas-influenced theories on pre-IE Europe being a peaceful, matrifocal, Great Goddess-worshipping place, but ultimately tells us more about feminist historiography than it does about actual prechristian belief systems. It is undeniable that the societies of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their descendants were far from being utopias of gender equality, but a society's attitude towards women is not necessarily reflected in its belief system. As an example, Islamic doctrine is actually rather woman-positive, but Arab cultures are notorious for misogyny. In the case of the Indo-European religions, we can see that goddesses were vitally important to all sectors of society, male and female, and had an absolutely pivotal role in their (male-dominated, of course) ideologies of power.
To my mind, the most plausible explanation for this "difficulty" in identifying and reconstructing the portfolios of IE goddesses is that a large number of goddesses were tied to the land: as a population migrates from one territory to another, the goddesses of the old homeland are left behind, with new ones being encountered in the new land. Those goddesses whom we can reconstruct with greatest security are those which are not so tied to a particular patch of land: deities of sovereignty, of the hearth, of the dawn, of times of year and so on.
It is perhaps also for this reason that Indo-European peoples were more ready to "borrow" goddesses from other cultures than they were gods: that the Greek Aphrodite is a fully integrated borrowing of the Semitic Astarte is well-known: it is possibly less well-known that the Zoroastrian goddess Aredvi Sura Anahita is a borrowing of the same deity. Identifying similar "borrowings" in the cultures of Northern Europe is somewhat more difficult, as we do not have linguistic evidence of substratal populations from whom deities might be borrowed: we know that Astarte is Semitic in origin because we have records of her worship predating the Greeks. Among the Celts, I think it's possible that Nantosweltā could be such a borrowing, likewise the Matres. However, it is notable that these "borrowed" goddesses were generally fitted into IE moulds: the Greek Aphrodite was certainly not the same as the Phoenician Ashtart.
All these difficulties of categorisation leave us with something of a difficulty of how to structure this work. With the gods, it was pretty easy: treat each Dumezilian function in turn and then cover the residue. I intend on broadly following Ceisiwr Serith's handy classification, found in his book Deep Ancestors, with such adaptations to the Celtic situation as necessary- essentially expect the following:
- Mead and Horses: the sovereignty complex
- Cow goddesses
- Goddesses of light: sun, fire and dawn
- Goddesses of slaughter
- Goddesses of the land
- Other goddesses
At the moment, the more detailed information on the various Goddesses hasn't been completed, Ceisiwr Serith's website has an excellent overview, about half way down this page