Celtic Religion in Pre Christian Times

The history and spiritual practice of the Druids. The more the scanty remnants of Celtic religion are examined, the clearer it becomes that many of its characteristic features had been evolved during the vast period of the ages of stone. During these millennia, men had evolved, concomitantly with their material civilization, a kind of working philosophy of life, traces of which are found in every land where this form of civilization has prevailed. Man's religion can never be dissociated from his social experience, and the painful stages through which man reached the agricultural life, for example, have left their indelible impress on the mind of man in Western Europe, as they have in every land. We are thus compelled, from the indications which we have of Celtic religion, in the names of its deities, its rites, and its survivals in folk-lore and legend, to come to the conclusion, that its fundamental groundwork is a body of ideas, similar to those of other lands, which were the natural correlatives of the phases of experience through which man passed in his emergence into civilized life. To demonstrate and to illustrate these relations will be the aim of these chapters. THE CHIEF PHASES OF CELTIC CIVILIZATION THE CORRELATION OF CELTIC RELIGION WITH THE GROWTH OF CELTIC CIVILIZATION CELTIC RELIGION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUALIZED DEITIES THE HUMANIZED GODS OF CELTIC RELIGION THE CELTIC PRIESTHOOD THE CELTIC OTHER-WORLD