The Religion of the Ancient CeltsMacCulloch, J. A. (John Arnott)
Religion
The Religion of the Ancient Celts
MacCulloch, J. A. (John Arnott)
Celts -- Religion; Mythology, Celtic
The dead Celt continued to be the person he had been, and it
may have been that not a new body, but the old body glorified, was
tenanted by his soul beyond the grave. This bodily immortality in a
region where life went on as on this earth, but under happier
conditions, would then be like the Vedic teaching that the soul, after
the burning of the body, went to the heaven of Yama, and there received
its body complete and glorified. The two conceptions, Hindu and Celtic,
may have sprung from early "Aryan" belief.
This Celtic doctrine appears more clearly from what Lucan says of the
Druidic teaching. "From you we learn that the bourne of man's existence
is not the silent halls of Erebus, in another world (or region, _in orbe
alio_) the spirit animates the members. Death, if your lore be true, is
but the centre of a long life." For this reason, he adds, the Celtic
warrior had no fear of death.[1158] Thus Lucan conceived the Druidic
doctrine to be one of bodily immortality in another region. That region
was not a gloomy state; rather it resembled the Egyptian Aalu with its
rich and varied existence. Classical writers, of course, may have known
of what appears to have been a sporadic Celtic idea, derived from old
beliefs, that the soul might take the form of an animal, but this was
not the Druidic teaching. Again, if the Gauls, like the Irish, had myths
telling of the rebirth of gods or semi-divine beings, these may have
been misinterpreted by those writers and regarded as eschatological. But
such myths do not concern mortals. Other writers, Timagenes, Strabo, and
Mela,[1159] speak only of the immortality of the soul, but their
testimony is probably not at variance with that of Lucan, since Mela
appears to copy Cæsar, and speaks of accounts and debts being passed on
to the next world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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