ASTRONOMY OF THE CELTS.
The numerous stone monuments that are to be found scattered over this
country, and over the neighbouring parts of Normandy, have given rise to
many controversies as to their origin and use. By some they have been
supposed to be mere sepulchral monuments erected in late times since the
Roman occupation of Great Britain. Such an idea has little to rest upon,
and we prefer to regard them, as they have always been regarded, as
relics of the Druidical worship of the Celtic or Gaulish races that
preceded us in this part of Europe.
If we were to believe the accounts of ordinary historians, we might
believe that the Druids were nothing more than a kind of savage race,
hidden, like the fallow-deer in the recesses of their woods. Thought to
be sanguinary, brutal, superstitious, we have learned nothing of them
beyond their human sacrifices, their worship of the oak, their raised
stones; without inquiring whether these characteristics which scandalize
our tastes, are not simply the legacy of a primitive era, to which, by
the side of the tattered religions of the old Paganism, Druidism
remained faithful. Nevertheless the Druids were not without merit in the
order of thought.
For the Celts, as for all primitive people, astronomy and religion were
intimately associated. They considered that the soul was eternal, and
the stars were worlds successively inhabited by the spiritual emigrants.
They considered that the stars were as much the abodes of human life as
our own earth, and this image of the future life constituted their power
and their grandeur. They repelled entirely the idea of the destruction
of life, and preferred to see in the phenomena of death, a voyage to a
region already peopled by friends.
Under what form did Druidical science represent the universe? Their
scientific contemplation of the heavens was at the same time a religious
contemplation. It is therefore impossible to separate in our history
their astronomical and theological heavens.
In their theological astronomy, or astronomical theology, the Druids
considered the totality of all living beings as divided into three
circles. The first of these circles, the circle of immensity, _Ceugant_,
corresponding to incommunicable, infinite attributes, belonged to God
alone; it was properly the absolute, and none, save the ineffable
being, had a right there. The second circle, that of blessedness,
_Gwyn-fyd_, united in it the beings that have arrived at the superior
degrees of existence; this was heaven. The third, the circle of voyages,
_Abred_, comprised all the noviciate; it was there, at the bottom of the
abysses, in the great oceans, as Taliesin says, that the first breath of
man commenced. The object proposed to men's perseverance and courage was
to attain to what the bards called the point of liberty, very probably
the point at which, being suitably fortified against the assaults of the
lower passions, they were not exposed to be troubled, against their
wills, in their celestial aspirations; and when they arrived at such a
point--so worthy of the ambition of every soul that would be its own
master--they quitted the circle of Abred and entered that of Gwyn-fyd;
the hour of their recompense had come.
Demetrius, cited by Plutarch, relates that the Druids believed that
these souls of the elect were so intimately connected with our circle
that they could not emerge from it without disturbing its equilibrium.
This writer states, that being in the suite of the Emperor Claudius, in
some part of the British isles, he heard suddenly a terrible hurricane,
and the priests, who alone inhabited these sacred islands, immediately
explained the phenomenon, by telling him that a vacuum had been produced
on the earth, by the departure of an important soul. "The great men," he
said, "while they live are like torches whose light is always
beneficent and never harms any one, but when they are extinguished their
death generally occasions, as you have just seen, winds, storm, and
derangements of the atmosphere."
The palingenetic system of the Druids is complete in itself, and takes
the being at his origin, and conducts him to the ultimate heaven. At the
moment of his creation, as Henry Martyn says in his Commentary, the
being has no conscience of the gifts that are latent in him. He is
created in the lowest stage of life, in _Annwfn_, the shadowy abyss at
the base of _Abred_. There, surrounded by nature, submitted to
necessity, he rises obscurely through the successive degrees of
inorganic matter, and then through the organic. His conscience at last
awakes. He is man. "Three things are primarily contemporaneous--man,
liberty, and light." Before man there was nothing in creation but fatal
obedience to physical laws; with man commences the great battle between
liberty and necessity, good and evil. The good and the evil present
themselves to man in equilibrium, "and he can at his pleasure attach
himself to one or the other of them."
It might appear at first sight that it was carrying things too far to
attribute to the Druids the knowledge, not indeed of the true system of
the world, but the general idea on which it was constructed. But, on
closer examination, this opinion seems to have some consistency. If it
was from the Druids that Pythagoras derived the basis of his theology,
why should it not be from them that he derived also that of his
astronomy? Why, if there is no difficulty in seeing that the principle
of the subordination of the earth might arise from the meditations of an
isolated spirit, should there be any more difficulty in thinking that
the principles of astronomy should take birth in the midst of a
corporation of theologians embued with the same ideas as the
philosophers on the circulation of life, and applied with continued
diligence to the study of celestial phenomena. The Druid, not having to
receive mythological errors, might be led by that circumstance to
imagine in space other worlds similar to our own.
Independently of its intrinsic value, this supposition rests also upon
the testimony of historians. A singular statement made by Hecataeus with
regard to the religious rites of Great Britain exhibits this in a
striking manner. This historian relates that the moon, seen in this
island, appears much larger than it does anywhere else, and that it is
possible to distinguish mountains on its surface, such as there are on
the earth. Now, how had the Druids made an observation of this kind? It
is of not much consequence whether they had actually seen the lunar
mountains or had only imagined them, the curious thing is that they were
persuaded that that body was like the earth, and had mountains and
other features similar to our own. Plutarch, in his treatise _De facie
in orbe Lunae_, tells us that, according to the Druids, and conformably
to an idea which had long been held in science, the surface of the moon
is furrowed with several Mediterraneans, which the Grecian philosophers
compare to the Red and Caspian seas. It was also thought that immense
abysses were seen, which were supposed to be in communication with the
hemisphere that is turned away from the earth. Lastly, the dimensions of
this sky-borne country were estimated; (ideas very different to those
that were current in Greece): its size and its breadth, says the
traveller depicted by the writer, are not at all such as the geometers
say, but much larger.
It is through the same author, who is in accordance in this respect with
all the bards, that we know that this celestial earth was considered by
the theologians of the West as the residence of happy souls. They rose
and approached it in proportion as their preparation had been complete,
but, in the agitation of the whirlwind, many reached the moon that it
would not receive. "The moon repelled a great number, and rejected them
by its fluctuations, at the moment they reached it; but those that had
better success fixed themselves there for good; their soul is like the
flame, which, raising itself in the ether of the moon, as fire raises
itself on that of the earth receives force and solidity in the same way
that red-hot iron does when plunged into the water."
They thus traced an analogy between the moon and the earth, which they
doubtless carried out to its full development, and made the moon an
image of what they knew here, picturing there the lunar fields and
brooks and breezes and perfumes. What a charm such a belief must have
given to the heavens at night. The moon was the place and visible pledge
of immortality. On this account it was placed in high position in their
religion; the order of all the festivals was arranged after that which
was dedicated to it; its presence was sought in all their ceremonies,
and its rays were invoked. The Druids are always therefore represented
as having the crescent in their hands.
Astronomy and theology being so intimately connected in the spirit of
the Druids, we can easily understand that the two studies were brought
to the front together in their colleges. From certain points of view we
may say that the Druids were nothing more than astronomers. This quality
was not less striking to the ancients in them than in the Chaldaeans. The
observation of the stars was one of their official functions. Caesar
tells us, without entering more into particulars, that they taught many
things about _the form and dimensions of the earth, the size and
arrangements of the different parts of heaven, and the motions of the
stars_, which includes the greater part of the essential problems of
celestial geometry, which we see they had already proposed to
themselves. We can see the same fact in the magnificent passage of
Taliesin. "I will ask the bards," he says in his _Hymn of the World_,
"and why will not the bards answer me? I will ask of them what sustains
the earth, since having no support it does not fall? or if it falls
which way does it go? But what can serve for its support? Is the world a
great traveller? Although it moves without ceasing, it remains tranquil
in its route; and how admirable is that route, seeing that the world
moves not in any direction." This suffices to show that the ideas of the
Druids on material phenomena were not at all inferior to their
conceptions of the destiny of the soul, and that they had scientific
views of quite another origin from the Alexandrian Greeks, the Latins,
their disciples, or the middle ages. An anecdote of the eighth century
furnishes another proof in favour of Druidical science. Every one knows
that Virgilius, bishop of Salzburg, was accused of heresy by Boniface
before the Pope Zacharias, because he had asserted that there were
antipodes. Now Virgilius was educated in one of the learned monasteries
of Ireland, which were fed by the Christian bards, who had preserved the
scientific traditions of Druidism.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--DRUIDICAL WORSHIP.]
The fundamental alliance between the doctrine of the plurality of worlds
and of the eternity of the soul is perhaps the most memorable character
in the thoughts of this ancient race. The death upon earth was for them
only a psychological and astronomical fact, not more grave than that
which happened to the moon when it was eclipsed, nor the fall of the
verdant clothing of the oak under the breath of the autumnal breeze. We
see these conceptions and manners, at first sight so extraordinary,
clothe themselves with a simple and natural aspect. The Druids were so
convinced of the future life in the stars, that they used _to lend money
to be repaid in the other world_. Such a custom must have made a
profound impression on the minds of those who daily practised it.
Pomponius Mela and Valerius Maximus both tell us of this custom. The
latter says, "After having left Marseilles I found that ancient custom
of the Gauls still in force, namely, of lending one another money to be
paid back in the infernal regions, for they are persuaded that the souls
of men are immortal."
In passing to the other world they lost neither their personality, their
memory, nor their friends; they there re-encountered the business, the
laws, the magistrates of this world. They had capitals and everything
the same as here. They gave one another rendezvous as emigrants might
who were going to America. This superstition, so laudable as far as it
had the effect of pressing on the minds of men the firm sentiment of
immortality, led them to burn, along with the dead, all the objects
which had been dear to them, or of which they thought they might still
wish to make use. "The Gauls," says Pomponius Mela, "burn and bury with
the dead that which had belonged to the living."
They had another custom prompted by the same spirit, but far more
touching. When any one bade farewell to the earth, each one charged him
to take letters to his absent friends, who should receive him on his
arrival and doubtless load him with questions as to things below. It is
to Diodorus that we owe the preservation of the remembrance of this
custom. "At their funerals," he says, "they place letters with the dead
which are written to those already dead by their parents, so that they
may be read by them." They followed the soul in thought in its passage
to the other planets, and the survivors often regretted that they could
not accomplish the voyage in their company; sometimes, indeed, they
could not resist the temptation. "There are some," says Mela, "who burn
themselves with their friends in order that they may continue to live
together." They entertained another idea also, which led even to worse
practices than this, namely, that death was a sort of recruiting that
was commanded by the laws of the universe for the sustenance of the army
of existences. In certain cases they would replace one death by another.
Posidonius, who visited Gaul at an epoch when it had not been broken up,
and who knew it far better than Caesar, has left us some very curious
information on this subject. If a man felt himself seriously warned by
his disease that he must hold himself in readiness for departure, but
who, nevertheless, had, for the moment, some important business on hand,
or the needs of his family chained him to this life, or even that death
was disagreeable to him; if no member of his family or his clients were
willing to offer himself instead, he looked out for a substitute; such a
one would soon arrive accompanied by a troop of friends, and stipulating
for his price a certain sum of money, he distributed it himself as
remembrances among his companions,--often even he would only ask for a
barrel of wine. Then they would erect a stage, improvise a sort of
festival, and finally, after the banquet was over, our hero would lie
down on the shield, and driving a sword into his bosom, would take his
departure for the other world.
Such a custom, indeed, shows anything but what we should rightly call
civilization, however admirable may have been their opinions; but it
receives its only palliation from the fact that their indifference to
death did not arise from their undervaluing life here, but that they had
so firm a belief in the existence and the happiness of a life hereafter.
That these beliefs were not separated from their astronomical ideas is
seen from the fact that they peopled the firmament with the departed.
The Milky Way was called the town of Gwyon (Coer or Ker Gwydion, Ker in
Breton, Caer in Gaulish, Kohair in Gaelic); certain bardic legends gave
to Gwyon as father a genius called Don, who resides in the constellation
of Cassiopeia, and who figures as "the king of the fairies" in the
popular myths of Ireland. The empyrean is thus divided between various
heavenly spirits. Arthur had for residence the Great Bear, called by
the Druids "Arthur's Chariot."
We are not, however, entirely limited to tradition and the reports of
former travellers for our information as to the astronomy of the Druids,
but we have also at our service numerous coins belonging to the old
Gauls, who were of one family with those who cultivated Druidism in our
island, which have been discovered buried in the soil of France. The
importance which was given to astronomy in that race becomes immediately
evident upon the discovery of the fact that these coins are marked with
figures having reference to the heavenly bodies, in other words are
astronomical coins. If we examine, from a general point of view, a large
collection of Gaulish medals such as that preserved in the National
Museum of Paris, we observe that among the essential symbols that occupy
the fields are types of the Horse, the Bull, the Boar, the Eagle, the
Lion, the Horseman, and the Bear. We remark next a great number of
signs, most often astronomical, ordinarily accessory, but occasionally
the chief, such as the sign [symbol: rotated mirrored S], globules
surrounded by concentric circles, stars of five, six, or eight points,
radiated and flaming bodies, crescents, triangles, wheels with four
spokes, the sign [symbol: infinity], the lunar crescent, the zigzag, &c.
Lastly, we remark other accessory types represented by images of real
objects or imaginary figures, such as the Lyre, the Diota, the Serpent,
the Hatchet, the Human Eye, the Sword, the Bough, the Lamp, the Jewel,
the Bird, the Arrow, the Ear of Corn, the Fishes, &c.
On a great number of medals, on the stateres of Vercingetorix, on the
reverses of the coins of several epochs, we recognize principally the
sign of the Waterer, which appears to symbolize for one part of
antiquity the knowledge of the heavenly sphere. On the Gaulish types
this sign (an amphora with two handles) bears the name of Diota, and
represents amongst the Druids as amongst the Magi the sciences of
astronomy and astrology.
Some of these coins are represented in the woodcut below.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
The first of these represents the course of the Sun-Horse reaching the
Tropic of Cancer (summer solstice), and brought back to the Tropic of
Capricorn (winter solstice).
On the second is seen the symbol of the year between the south
(represented by the sun [symbol: sun]) and the north (represented by the
Northern Bear). In the third the calendar (or course of the year)
between the sun [symbol: sun] and the moon [symbol: moon]. Time the Sun,
and the Bear are visible on the fourth. The diurnal motion of the
heavens is represented on the fifth; and lastly, on the sixth, appears
the Watering-pot, the Sun-Horse, and the sign of the course of the
heavenly bodies.
On other groups of money the presence of the zodiac may be made out.
These medals would seem to show that some part of the astronomical
knowledge of the Druids was not invented by themselves, but borrowed
from the Chaldeans or others who in other lands invented them in
previous ages, and from whom they may have possibly derived them from
the Phenicians.
We may certainly expect, however, from these pieces of money, if found
in sufficient number and carefully studied, to discover a good many
positive facts now wanting to us, of the religion, sciences, manners,
language, commercial relation, &c. which belonged to the Celtic
civilization. It was far from being so barbarous as is ordinarily
supposed, and we shall do more justice to it when we know it better.
M. Fillioux, the curator of the museum of Gueret, who has studied these
coins with care, after having sought for a long time for a clear and
concise method of determining exactly the symbolic and religious
character of the Gaulish money, has been able to give the following
general statements.
The coins have for their ordinary field the heavens.
On the right side they present almost universally the ideal heads of
gods or goddesses, or in default of these, the symbols that are
representative of them.
On the reverse for the most part, they reproduce, either by direct types
or by emblems artfully combined, the principal celestial bodies, the
divers aspects of the constellations, and probably the laws, which,
according to their ancient science, presided over their course; in a
smaller proportion they denote the religious myths which form the base
of the national belief of the Gauls. As we have seen above, for them the
present life was but a transitory state of the soul, only a prodrome of
the future life, which should develop itself in heaven and the
astronomical worlds with which it is filled.
Borrowed from an elevated spiritualism, incessantly tending towards the
celestial worlds, these ideas were singularly appropriate to a nation at
once warlike and commercial. These circumstances explain the existence
of these strange types, founded at the same time on those of other
nations, and on the symbolism which was the soul of the Druidical
religion. To this religious caste, indeed, we must give the merit of
this ingenious and original conception, of turning the reverses of the
coins into regular charts of the heavens. Nothing indeed could be better
calculated to inspire the people with respect and confidence than these
mysterious and learned symbols, representing the phenomena of the
heavens.
Not making use of writing to teach their dogmas, which they wished to
maintain as part of the mysteries of their caste, the Druids availed
themselves of this method of placing on the money that celestial
symbolism of which they alone possessed the key.
The religious ideas founded on astronomical observations were not
peculiar to, or originated by, the Druids, any more than their zodiac.
There seems reason to believe that they had come down from a remote
antiquity, and been widely spread over many nations, as we shall see in
the chapter on the Pleiades; but we can certainly trace them to the
East, where they first prevailed in Persia and Egypt, and were
afterwards brought to Greece, where they disappeared before the new
creations of anthropomorphism, though they were not forgotten in the
days of the poet Anacreon, who says, "Do not represent for me, around
this vase" (a vase he had ordered of the worker in silver), "either the
heavenly bodies, or the chariot, or the melancholy Orion; I have nothing
to do with the Pleiades or the Herdsman." He only wanted mythological
subjects which were more to his taste.
The characters which are made use of in these astronomical moneys of
the Druids would appear to have a more ancient origin than we are able
to trace directly, since they are most of them found on the arms and
implements of the bronze age. Some of them, such as the concentric
pointed circles, the crescent with a globule or a star, the line in
zigzag, were used in Egypt; where they served to mark the sun, the
month, the year, the fluid element; and they appear to have had among
the Druids the same signification. The other signs, such as the
[symbol: wave], and its multiple combinations, the centred circles,
grouped in one or two, the little rings, the alphabetical characters
recalling the form of a constellation, the wheel with rays, the
radiating discs, &c. are all represented on the bronze arms found in the
Celtic, Germanic, Breton, and Scandinavian lands. From this remote
period, which was strongly impressed with the Oriental genius, we must
date the origin of the Celtic symbolism. It has been supposed, and not
without reason, that this epoch, besides being contemporaneous with the
Phenician establishments on the borders of the ocean, was an age of
civilization and progress in Gaul, and that the ideas of the Druids
became modified at the same time that they acquired just notions in
astronomy and in the art of casting metals. At a far later period, the
Druidic theocracy having, with religious care, preserved the symbols of
its ancient traditions, had them stamped on the coins which they caused
to be struck.
This remarkable fact is shown in an incontestable manner in the rougher
attempts in Gaulish money, and this same state of things was perpetuated
even into the epoch of the high arts, since we find on the imitation
statues of Macedonia the old Celtic symbols associated with emblems of a
Grecian origin.
In Italy a different result was arrived at, because the warlike element
of the nobles soon predominated over the religious. Nevertheless the
most ancient Roman coins, those which are known to us under the name of
Consular, have not escaped the common law which seems to have presided,
among all nations, over the origin of money. The two commonest types,
one in bronze of _Janus Bifrons_ with the _palus_; the other in silver,
the _Dioscures_ with their stars, have an eminently astronomical aspect.
The comparison between the Gaulish and Roman coins may be followed in a
series of analogies which are very remarkable from an astronomical point
of view. To cite only a few examples, we may observe on a large number
of pennies of different families, the impression of Auriga "the
Coachman" conducting a quadriga; or the sun under another form (with his
head radiated and drawn in profile); or Diana with her lunar attributes;
or the five planets well characterised; for example, Venus by a double
star, as that of the morning or of the evening; or the constellations of
the Dog, Hercules, the Kid, the Lyre, and almost all those of the
zodiac and of the circumpolar region and the seven-kine (septemtriones).
In later times, under the Caesars, in the villa of Borghese, is found a
calendar whose arrangements very much recall the ancient Gaulish coin.
The head of the twelve great gods and the twelve signs of the zodiac are
represented, and the drawing of the constellations establishes a
correspondence between their rising and the position of the sun in the
zodiac. It may therefore be affirmed that in the coinage and works of
art in Italy and Greece, the characteristic influence of astronomical
worship is found as strongly as among the Druids. Nor have the Western
nations alone had the curious habit of impressing their astronomical
ideas upon their coinage, for in China and Japan coins of a similar
description have been met with, containing on their reverse all the
signs of the zodiac admitted by them.
In conclusion, we may say, that it was cosmography, that constructed the
dogmas of the Druidical religion, which was, in its essential elements,
the same as that of the old Oriental theocracies. The outward ceremonies
were addressed to the sun, the moon, the stars, and other visible
phenomena; but, above nature, there was the great generating and moving
principle, which the Celts placed, at a later period perhaps, among the
attributes of their supreme deities.
[Illustration: THE NORTHERN CONSTELLATIONS.
The Lyre--Cassiopeia--The Little Bear--The Dragon--Andromeda--The Great
Bear--Capella--Algol, or Medusa's Head.]