Celtic Holidays
Home -> Sanctuary -> Basics
The alternation of day and night, light and darkness was of great importance for the Celts.
Just as the day is divided into two halves, so the year consists of summer and winter.
May 1 marks the beginning of summer, November 1 the beginning of winter.
And these two holidays divide the year into two seasons - 6 months each.
Summer is a time when nature is awake, and young people usually sought to leave their winter homes and go to the hills, forests, and valleys for the summer with their flocks.
After November 1, they all returned home and spent long winter evenings at home crafts, listening to stories.
Winter is a dark time of the year when nature sleeps, summer goes to the lower world, and the earth is cold and inhospitable.
January was called "darkness", November was called "dark month".
Winter is the time of the "parade of the dead", led by their dark faced king, whose symbol of power is a sword, scythe or sickle.
Time itself consists of a constant alternation of opposites: light and darkness, heat and cold, life and death.
At the border of two different periods, a certain mysterious force manifests itself, which has a tendency to do both good and evil.
Magical forces are most active on the eve of November and on the eve of May - the points dividing the year in half.
These two evans, as well as the eve of midsummer, were called "nights of spirits".
Traditionally, it was believed that on these days, or rather, at night, the forces of chaos are as active as possible: fairies appear to people, sorcerers are engaged in magic, the future opens in all sorts of foreshadows.
Thus, the traditional division of the Celtic year in Ireland was determined more by the cycle of agricultural work than by the movement of the sun, although, as the calendar and folklore data show, solstices and equinoxes were also taken into account.
"The Celtic calendar divides the solar year into a system of seasons that coincide with the Celtic seasonal holidays.
The task of their calendar was essentially to reflect the schedule of these sacred events, and not just to mark the passage of time."
The Celtic calendar does not fit into the usual 12 month Greco Roman calendar.
In the Welsh "Book of Ferillt", the existence of which is still being debated, it is indicated that the year was divided into eight 45 day stellar periods plus one 5 day intermediate (not taken into account, which fell on the time from December 15 to 20 and was called the hounds of Annon).
Each of these periods was associated with a certain set of symbols (a tree, an animal, a plant) and holidays (the Celtic Festival of Birds, Candles, Flowers, Oak, etc.).
According to another version, the Celts used an exceptionally simple way to include the monthly lunar cycle in the biological rhythm of life, in which their four main festivals were held every three years, with an interval of nine months.
The thirty six month ritual cycle had corresponding good and bad months, naturally divided into old and new moons.
The calendar from Coligny, a multi part bronze table showing the cycle of sixty two consecutive months marked as "mat", favorable, and "anm", unfavorable, obviously reflects a much more complex system.
However, its late dating - the first century AD - and the attempt at transplantation reflect the process of Romanization, which gradually assimilated Celtic Gaul.
Holidays, rituals, omens and fortune telling
Omens and divination.
Customs.
Rituals.
Holidays.
The holy year of the Celts.
The Celtic calendar calculated time at night and was based on observations of the moon.
Oenah is one of the Collections of Holidays that were periodically held in several sacred centers of Ireland (Tara, Tailtiu, Usneh, Tlahtga, Camrun and some others), which were huge earthen mounds.
These Meetings were characterized by a state of peace, the ordering of relations between the king of a given area and his subjects, were accompanied by games, primarily equestrian competitions and celebrations, that is, exchange and communication of all kinds.
These Meetings were held, sometimes once a year, and sometimes once every three years, on the main dates of the Celtic calendar - Samhain, Beltane, Lughnasad.
Celebrations were rituals that ensured the well being of society as a whole, and required the indispensable presence of everyone from the king to the peasant.
The neglect of these meetings was fraught with terrible consequences.
Here is a typical example from an Irish story: "The one from the settlements who does not come to Emain Machu on the eve of the holiday loses his mind, and the very next day he will be buried in a grave, under a mound and a tombstone."
The Irish stopped internecine wars during their annual celebrations.
In relation to the Game, this means the temporary cessation of an armed conflict (if there is one) with the settlement that celebrates the holiday.
There is a belief that it is better for a person not to stay out of the house at night, since from 10 to 12 o'clock the spirits of the dead quietly approach the houses.
Out of respect for them, you need to go to bed early, leaving a tidy hearth in the kitchen and carefully arranging the benches.
You can not throw garbage out of the house, so as not to disturb the spirits; it is also dangerous to whistle outside at night and call children by name.
It is believed that you should not leave water for drinking and washing in the house at night, and a bucket of slops, and an open fire.
Samhain. (November 1)
In Gaul and Ireland, the year was divided into 2 halves: winter and summer.
Winter, which began with Samhain, opened the year.
Samhain was the most important holiday of the year.
It was at this time that people gathered in the ritual center to perform a death and rebirth ceremony dedicated to the union of the god Dagda (in Ireland) with the goddess of supreme power Morrigan, and in Meade the goddess Boanna, the patroness of the Boyne River.
The druids usually gathered at Tlahtga, a sacred place 12 miles from Tara, on the eve of Samhain, and the main bonfire on which the gifts were burned was lit just there.
All the lights of Ireland were extinguished that night, and they could only be rekindled by the fire of Tlahtga.
Samhain was called the day of peace between the people of Ireland, when no one should feel hatred or enmity towards another.
Initially, the night of Samhain was a celebration of communication between people and beings from Another World.
In winter, "from Samhain to Beltane", the Celts traditionally performed and listened to stories and legends.
On the night of Samhain, when they expected a night visit of the deceased relatives and friends, they carefully cleaned the house, cleaned the hearth and prepared firewood for making a fire, food and drink were left on the table in the best dishes.
Irladtsy meet the ghosts of the dead, lighting white candles in the windows.
On Samhain, people tried not to leave their homes unless absolutely necessary, and if they did find themselves on the street, they tried to stay away from cemeteries.
If they heard footsteps behind them, they could not turn around in any case, so as not to see the dead people following the tracks.
On this night, the sids opened and their inhabitants came out, and in a much more real sense than on other nights.
Divination.
Girls on Samhain usually wondered about the groom.
The traditional technique of these divinations featured nuts and apples the fruits of two trees associated with Another World.
In Samhain, the boundary between the dead and the living disappeared, and to some extent also between the sexes, since young men could disguise themselves as girls and vice versa.
Traditional Samhain dishes: pies and pumpkin bread, apples, nuts.
Colcannon is a casserole made of mashed potatoes and fried onions, in which various tiny objects were hidden that indicated the future: a ring for a wedding, a doll for childbirth, a coin for wealth, etc.
Imbolc.(February 1)
In Ireland, each half year, in turn, was divided into two parts.
Imbolc signified the appearance of lambs.
The holiday was dedicated to Brigit, the goddess of healing, the patroness of poetry and blacksmithing.
The holiday the antipode of Imbolk was considered Lughnasad.
Together, these two holidays symbolize the growing and waning phase of the year.
A bread doll made of wheat straw is woven on Imbolk as an amulet of fertility.
The bread doll is stored all year round.
She is dressed up as a bride and dedicated to the goddess Brigitte.
Food (milk, cream, butter) is sacrificed to Her.
The goddess does not accept food as a gift, but the "essence of food".
The Celts often hung a panicle of spikelets on their house as a talisman.
Imbolk symbolizes rebirth, growth, renewal, the beginning of spring .
Beltane. (May 1)
The second most important after Samhain was Beltane (Keshtamain).
From that day, the summer half of the year was counted down.
An important element of it, as in Samhain, was considered the ritual lighting of bonfires.
To kindle the Beltane fire (the fire of Ireland), the druids used 9 varieties of wood.
The animals were led through clouds of smoke to protect them in the upcoming half year.
Beltane is a time when the otherworld comes into contact with the world of people, as well as on Samhain.
In connection with Beltane, it is worth mentioning one strong tradition: if a commoner managed to build a house on the wasteland in one night and by the dawn of a new day the smoke of the hearth was already smoking over his roof, then he received possession of both the building and the land plot, the circumference of which would depend on how far he could throw an axe from the threshold.
May is a time of fresh air and love, and therefore everything connected with it is fraught with a threat to the home and marital fidelity.
Beltane and the following days and nights were a time of love games and extramarital affairs.
According to custom, on the eve of this holiday, large groups of young people of both sexes went to the forest in the evening and spent the whole night playing games, returning only in the morning, with a pile of flowers and branches of birch and other trees.
It is said that marriages concluded in May last only one summer, which is consistent with Irish laws, in which Beltane is referred to as the usual time of divorce.
In connection with this understanding of Beltan, there were the following beliefs associated with the May rite: it was not good to bring Maynik flowers to the house, it was not good to have a wedding in May and wear green for the wedding, it was not good to see a homeless cat, because he could bring a snake into the house.
In love poems, performed, in particular, on Beltane, there is often a mention of the birch as a symbol of love.
The so called "love huts" were usually arranged under a birch tree or in a birch grove, wreaths of birch branches were given as a sign of love, and may poles were often also made from the trunk of a birch tree.
The May rites, of course, were not consistent with the doctrine of the Christian Church, and the reaction of the people to the attempt to ban the festivities was mainly negative.
Before the law of the pope was established everywhere And before he imposed his prohibitions on us, Everyone could make love To his darling without feeling feeling guilty.
It was a joy, not a sin, When May built houses out of leaves, And no one entered those houses under the trees, Except for two lovers.
Charms and spells gain special power on Beltane.
It was on this day that the Sidhe could be summoned.
On this day, fairies can harm a person, and witches can steal young animals and future crops with impunity, so you can take effective measures to avert trouble.
It is allowed to make sure that the sorcerers do not steal milk and do not scoop water from the well at the dawn of the 1st day of May.
There are other ways to ward off the threat of witchcraft for example, refusing to share water, food and fire.
Mountain ash branches, fortified over the entrance to the house and barn, will drive away wizards and fairies.
At noon and at midnight, as well as at sunrise and sunset, the veil between this and the invisible world became extremely thin.
At noon, you could witness the "funeral of the elves".
And at noon, the time was favorable for the expulsion of the sorcerer's changeling child.
Midnight was traditionally considered the "hour of witchcraft", when the sids and ghosts became visible to the human eye, and going to the cemetery at this hour was an audacity for which there would inevitably be a reckoning
One of the attributes of Beltane is considered a Maypole.
The Celts decorated a tree standing in the middle of the settlement with colorful scraps, and you could make a wish for each piece.
Here the color symbolism was important: blue - protection, dark green prosperity, red love, dark purple, dark blue magic, the rest - a gift to the spirit of the tree.
The traditional colors of the holiday are red and white.
There were dances around the maypole.
All participants of the holiday were served wine and beer.
Another of the rites: the coronation of the May king and queen they chose the most beautiful girl and boy, put wreaths on their heads, paid them honors and brought gifts, and until the end of May they were considered husband and wife, and then they dispersed.
Lughnasad. (August 1)
Lughnasadh (Bron Trograin) was brought to Ireland by immigrants from the mainland.
This holiday is mainly agricultural, unlike others - cattle breeding.
It marked the beginning of the harvest.
The first loaf of grain from the new harvest was baked in the Lughnasad.
Lughnasad was dedicated to Lugh, according to legend, who organized memorial games and various kinds of competitions in honor of his foster mother, Tailtiu.
The Lughnasad festival was a return to the beginning of all beginnings, a wake for the deceased goddess.
The actual Tailtiu the place of the festival in Tara, is an ancient burial site.
Here is a typical description of the Lughnasadh festival, which took place in Camrun, the capital of Leinster.
Lughnasad was especially widely celebrated once every three years.
Arranging a feast on this day, the Leinster people believed that they would provide themselves with a rich harvest and an abundance of milk and would be spared from invasions, that there would be a righteous judgment, prosperity would reign in the houses, the land would give rich fruits, and fish would not be transferred in rivers, lakes and bays.
If this feast is neglected, illnesses, weakness and early gray hair will come, the King will lose joy and strength, Hospitality and sincerity.
The welcome cry of the Leinster people was: "Hello to you!
It will be nice for you to be with us, so let it be good for us with you!"
During the Lughnasad in Kamrun, strife, kidnapping, divorce, demands for payment of debt, etc. were prohibited, and violations of the ban were severely punished:
He who transgresses the law of kings, as prescribed for the ages, will not prosper in his tribe, but will die for his mortal sin.
In memory of the goddess Tailtiu, the narrators (shanakhi) recited the following poem before the entire assembly:
They came there to praise her beauty And mourn for the first time - The goddess's tribe came to the bright valley to the east, And there was that first meeting in Kamrun.
The sky, the earth, the sun, the moon and the sea, the fruits of the earth and the depths of the sea, Mouths, ears, eyes and other feelings, Legs, hands, tongues of warriors.
Horses, swords, war chariots, Spears, shields and men's faces, Dew, fruits, glitter on leaves, Day and night, tide and ebb -
Banba's guests, free from long melancholy, Brought all this as a pledge, so that disputes and quarrels would stop On this day, which comes once in three years.
The harvest of grain crops was accompanied by a ritual.
It was impossible to cut the last uncompressed strip.
In the field, the reapers threw sickles at her until the last ear was cut off.
It was believed that the spirit of the grain remains in the last sheaf.
He was tied up so that he resembled a female figure in shape and was named the Mother of Bread (Mother of the Harvest, Killiach).
She was dressed and decorated.
Her outfit consisted of a skirt or apron made of fabric, necklaces and bracelets, ribbons and flowers.
A solar wheel was also made - a symbol of the god of the Meadow.
The harvest continued all the way to Samhain.
By the day of Samhain, the entire harvest was harvested.
The fruits left on the trees after Samhain turned out to be spoiled by an evil spirit.
Quarter days (equinoxes and solstices)
They are called "witchcraft".
These days, the Sidhe arrange feasts.
Quarter days, like middays, were favorable for the expulsion of a changeling, but it was considered unlucky if some "event" overlapped a quarter of the year, for example, if the wedding was announced at the end of one quarter, and celebrated at the beginning of another.
The vernal equinox.
Bread rolls with solar symbols were baked.
The druids painted the eggs scarlet in honor of the sun, using gorse flowers or moraine root for this.
This was a symbol of cyclic rebirth, as a living being appeared from an inanimate egg.
The red shells were thrown into the rivers so that they would someday swim to the shores of the Blessed Island, carrying with them the news that the sun and the season of rebirth had returned.
The holiday itself began at noon.
Summer solstice.
From this day, the collection of herbs began, the druids performed the ritual of collecting mistletoe with a sickle.
If May was the month of sacred weddings, then June was the month of mortal marriages.
The autumnal equinox.
All red plants are the food of the gods.
On the autumn equinox, the most effective amulets are made from them ( for example, a rowan necklace.)
Winter solstice .
Time for druidic divination.
Druids carried bags with them, in which they kept twigs with ogams applied to them (the so called crane bag).
On this day, the Celts decorated the Winter tree - spruce with fruits, nuts and berries .
Conception and birth of a child.
In Ireland, almost every area has boulders and megaliths with depressions called "Diarmaid and Graine lodges".
According to legend, the lovers spent the night on such a boulder, fleeing from the pursuit of Finn and his warriors.
If a girl goes to one of these "lodges" with a representative of the opposite sex, he has the right to demand from her everything he wants.
The" lodges " of Diarmaid and Graine, as it is commonly believed, contribute to fertility.
Women who do not have children go with their husbands to one of these "lodges" and, after spending the night there, are healed.
Usually children are born to married parents who are not related by blood.
At the birth of a child, religious stories about miraculous conceptions and births were performed, called coimperta (sagas about the birth of Finn, Cuchulain, etc.).
These stories served as models in the account of which the essence of ordinary births was to be interpreted.
As for the hero, his birth is always surrounded by extraordinary things.
Among the Irish nobility, the right of the first night (jus primae noctis) was extended - or a ransom could be paid instead.
The king or his filid had the right to ritually conceive children with married women.
The rite of initiation.
The Celts had a widespread rite of initiation, the element of which was often the cutting of hair.
The initiation included both the humiliation of the neophyte and his elevation to a higher level.
This is both a terrifying test and a victory over horror.
The initiated Fenian warrior had to fight off nine spears with a shield and a walnut stick, standing waist deep in a pit.
Matchmaking.
Wedding.
In Ireland, the most favorable time for matchmaking, engagement and marriage was considered to be winter (from the beginning of December to the beginning of March).
The Celts have many customs associated with the wedding.
The bride "belongs" to another world, and in order to marry her, she must be "brought" into this world.
The most prestigious form of marriage in Ireland was a contract between families.
However, along with such an arranged marriage, there was a kidnapping marriage and a legal procedure for its legalization.
But this form of marriage was considered lower.
When concluding "marriage deals", as a rule, there was a furious bargaining over the bride price and dowry, the feelings of the bride and groom were practically not taken into account.
Some wedding ceremonies reflect views of marriage as an event associated with abduction and flight.
The relatives of the wife must meet the future husband with mock hostility; tied gates, rope barriers make it difficult for him to enter the bride's house, he has to pay a "ransom".
The groom drives up to the house with a demand to give the girl away.
Friends and relatives of the bride, also on horseback, respond with a decisive refusal and start a comic brawl.
At this time, the bride runs out of the house, jumps on a horse to one of her relatives and tries to escape.
The groom pursues her and, having caught up with her, returns in triumph to the village, where everything ends with a feast.
This ceremony is called "horse racing for the bride".
Here, friendly neighbors are divided into two "warring" camps, the groom "defeats" the bride's friends and "forcibly" takes the girl.
Refusal is never final and irrevocable - there is always a hope to achieve a girl by performing a feat or fulfilling the difficult tasks set by her, however in traditional wedding ceremonies, the obstacles in the path of the groom were much more modest than in the sagas, and impossible tasks, by their very nature, were performed figuratively like guessing riddles or a poetic duel on the threshold of the house.
Here are examples of riddles with answers exchanged between the" seller "of the bride and the best man:" Give me for her a sea full to the brim, with a silver bottom."
(The best man brings a cup full of beer, at the bottom of which is a gold coin.) "
Guess what it is: the very hard, and the inside is soft." (The best man holds up a candle)
" Show me what the owner of this house does not have yet."
(The best man leads the groom forward, because the owner of the house has not yet had a son in law.)
Impossible tasks are designed to preserve the border between the inhabitants of the two worlds.
The bride could be "replaced" by dressing up as an old woman.
And the groom should have recognized her.
In the wedding ritual, there were so called "straw boys" (young men dressed in costumes and masks made of straw) who noisily appear at the wedding and insist on their right to dance with the bride.
At the same time, they perform the functions of a "supernatural rival" who disputes the groom's right to possess the bride.
If a woman herself confessed her love, then it was a great shame and shame for a man to reject her.
Telling stories about heroic matchmaking at the weddings of the common people increased the significance of the rite performed.
Among the Celtic peoples, including the Irish, in addition to the usual "permanent" marriages, there were also "temporary" or probationary marriages."
Temporary" marriages were concluded mainly during the Lughnasad on the market square by simply binding hands and were dissolved at the request of the "young" exactly a year later at the same place.
Death.
In ancient Ireland, the idea of death was this: death, no matter how peaceful it may seem from the outside, is always violence.
This idea is reflected in myths, stories about the death of heroes, called Oitte ("violent, or tragic, deaths").
Any death is unnatural and is neither "untimely" nor accidental.
Deaths are somehow predetermined; and their accidental causes are only tools of an initially set fate.
Death is always preceded by signs.
For example, a violation of the geysers is a sure sign of approaching death.
Death from grief (heartbreak) is found in the Irish tradition in both women and men.
Also, a person could die of shame as a result of a song of reproach sung to him, which disfigured his face, since any ugliness was unacceptable for the Celtic consciousness.
During the military expansion of the Celts in the middle of the I century BC, the custom of burying unburned bodies in grave pits reaching more than 1 m in depth, in common cemeteries, took root.
The dead were often buried in wooden coffins or in pits, the walls of which were lined with wood.
In women's graves, jewelry is more richly represented, sometimes made of precious metals.
A typical Celtic custom was to place a part of a boar (wild boar) in the grave.
Since the 3rd century BC, the custom of corpse burning has also taken root, which by the beginning of the new era replaces the custom of corpse laying.
At the wake, they arrange a funeral feast and games in honor of the deceased, play out the construction of a ship, and also tell stories about the death of heroes, thereby raising death to the heroic level, without detracting from the dignity of a person.
The feast of Tara.
About the meeting at the feast of Tara it is said: "There is also such a reason why this holiday was established - the laws adopted by the whole of Ireland, then, in the interval from this meeting to the next, at the end of the year, no one dares to violate, and the people of Ireland declared outlawed anyone who accidentally violates them."
Unlike a friend
