The Celtic conception of the cosmos distinctive features of Celtic religion, a vast and fluid imaginative world in which the boundary between this world and the next was thought to be both thin and permeable, and in which the gods, the ancestors, and the dead were believed to inhabit a parallel realm that intersected with the world of the living at particular times and in particular places. To study Celtic cosmology and the Otherworld is to enter a religious tradition in which journeys to the land of the dead were a standard feature of heroic literature, in which fairies, ghosts, and the spirits of the dead could appear at any time, and in which the natural landscape of hills, lakes, and ancient monuments was understood to be the dwelling place of a vast array of supernatural beings. As part of the broader world of Celtic religion, mythology, and spirituality, the Celtic cosmos provided the imaginative framework within which the gods, the Druids, and the heroes of myth and legend all operated.
The evidence for Celtic cosmology comes from several sources. The classical authors, particularly Caesar, Strabo, and Lucan, give some general information about Celtic beliefs about the soul and the afterlife, although their accounts are filtered through Roman and Greek philosophical ideas. The archaeological record of votive deposits, funerary practices, and ritual monuments provides material evidence for the Celtic concern with the boundary between the worlds. The medieval manuscript tradition of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany, however, is by far the richest source, and the great tales of the Ulster cycle, the Fenian cycle, the Mythological cycle, and the Mabinogion all include elaborate descriptions of the structure of the cosmos and the nature of the Otherworld.
The Structure of the Celtic Cosmos
The Celtic cosmos, as it can be reconstructed from the various sources, was structured around a vertical axis that connected the upper world of the living, the middle world of everyday experience, and the lower world of the ancestors, the dead, and the supernatural. This three-tiered structure is similar to the cosmologies of many other Indo-European peoples, but the Celtic version had several distinctive features. The upper world was not simply the sky but a complex of heavenly regions, often associated with the sun, the moon, the stars, and the winds. The lower world was not simply a place of the dead but a vast and varied underground realm of hills, lakes, and plains, often described in terms borrowed from the surface landscape.
The horizontal dimension of the Celtic cosmos was equally important. The Otherworld was conceived as a place located variously in the west, beneath the earth, beneath the sea, or on distant islands, and the literature is full of heroes who set out on voyages in search of these western or insular lands. The immrama, or voyage tales, of early medieval Irish literature describe journeys to the Otherworld that take the hero across the western sea, often through a series of magical islands each with its own marvels. The Navigatio Sancti Brendani, the voyage of Saint Brendan, is a Christianized descendant of these older pagan tales, and it preserves many of the motifs of the older tradition, including the magical islands, the sea creatures, and the encounters with the supernatural.
The Otherworld
The Celtic Otherworld was not simply a place of the dead in the Christian sense. It was a place where the rules of ordinary life did not apply, where time moved differently, where the inhabitants were often the gods themselves or the ancestors of the living, and where the heroes of myth and legend might visit and return. The medieval Irish tales describe the Otherworld as a place of eternal youth, beauty, and abundance, where the food was always plentiful, the music was always playing, and the inhabitants never aged. The Tír na nÓg, the Land of the Young, the most famous of the Irish versions of the Otherworld, is described in the tale of Oisín and Niamh as a place where Oisín spent what seemed like three years but which turned out, when he returned to Ireland, to have been three hundred.
The Welsh tradition had its own versions of the Otherworld, often called Annwn in the earliest Welsh sources. The tale of Pwyll and Rhiannon in the Mabinogion describes a journey to Annwn that is also a journey to a strange kingdom where the rules of time and motion are reversed. Pwyll, the prince of Dyfed, spends a year in Annwn ruling in the place of a king who is unable to speak, and during his absence no time passes in his own kingdom. The Cad Goddeu, the Battle of the Trees, another early Welsh poem, describes Arawn, the king of Annwn, and his magical cauldron, the Pair Dadeni, which could restore the dead to life. The Breton tradition similarly describes a vast and varied Otherworld, often located in the west, beyond the sea, and entered through caves, lakes, and ancient monuments.
The Otherworld was not a single, fixed place. It was rather a network of overlapping realms, each with its own character and its own inhabitants. Some versions of the Otherworld were clearly chthonic, located under the earth and associated with the sídhe, the ancient burial mounds of the Irish landscape. Others were located in the west, on islands in the Atlantic, often identified with the Fortunate Isles or with the legendary Hy-Brasil. Others were located under the sea, accessible to divers and to the drowned, and several of the most famous Irish tales, including the Voyage of Bran mac Febail and the Wooing of Étaín, describe journeys to submarine otherworlds. Yet other versions of the Otherworld were located in the sky, in distant stars, or in the upper air, and the medieval Irish sources describe Tír Tairngire, the Land of Promise, and Mag Mell, the Plain of Joy, as aerial regions reached only by certain heroes and saints.
The most famous inhabitants of the Irish Otherworld were the Tuatha Dé Danann, the people of the goddess Danu, a semi-divine race of Irish tradition who were driven underground by the invading Milesians and who retreated into the sídhe, the ancient burial mounds that dot the Irish landscape. According to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of Invasions, the Tuatha Dé Danann came to Ireland from the north, bringing with them four magical treasures: the Lia Fáil, the stone of destiny that would roar when the true king of Ireland placed his feet upon it; the sword of Nuada Airgetlám, the silver-handed king; the spear of Lugh, which never missed its target; and the Cauldron of the Dagda, from which no company ever went away unsatisfied.
The Tuatha Dé Danann were not simply gods in the classical sense. They were a complex mixture of divine beings, heroes, ancestors, and literary figures, and their stories form the core of the Mythological cycle of early Irish literature. The great tales of the cycle, including the Second Battle of Moytura, the Wooing of Étaín, the Dream of Aengus, and the Sickbed of Cú Chulainn, all feature the Tuatha Dé Danann as central characters. The list of the Tuatha Dé Danann, as preserved in these sources, includes not only the great gods like Lugh, the Dagda, Brigid, and Ogma, but also many less well known figures whose stories have been preserved in fragmentary form.
The fate of the Tuatha Dé Danann in the medieval Irish tradition remarkable features of the Irish religious imagination. Even as the Tuatha Dé Danann retreated into the sídhe, they continued to interact with the world of the living. They were believed to be capable of appearing in visible form, of making bargains with mortals, of carrying off women and children, and of giving or withholding their favor in the affairs of this world. The aos sí were a constant presence in medieval Irish life, and the tales of their interactions with mortals are some of the most vivid in the entire Irish tradition.
Supernatural Beings of the Celtic World
Beyond the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Celtic cosmos was populated by a host of other supernatural beings, some of them closely related to the gods and others distinct from them. The Fomorians, the dark gods of Irish tradition, were the principal enemies of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and their defeat in the two battles of Moytura is one of the central themes of the Mythological cycle. The Fomorians were associated with the sea, with destructive weather, and with the night, and they were often described as being deformed or monstrous in appearance. The Morrígan, the great Celtic goddess associated with war, fate, and death, appeared in various forms, sometimes as a single figure and sometimes as a triple figure of Morrígan, Badb, and Macha, and she was believed to hover over battlefields in the form of a crow or a raven. The bean sí, or banshee, the woman of the sídhe whose wail foretold a death in a particular family, famous of these. The leprechaun of later folk tradition, the clurichaun, the far darrig, the púca, and the merrow are all descendants of the older sí. The Scottish tradition has a particularly rich population of supernatural beings, including the kelpie, the water horse, the each-uisge, the bean nighe, and the glaistig.
The Welsh tradition, although less well preserved than the Irish, similarly includes a rich population of supernatural beings. The gwragedd annwn, the bwbach, the bwci, the coblynau, the ceffyl dwr, and the llamhigyn dwr are all part of the Welsh folk tradition, recognizably descended from older mythological figures. The Wild Hunt, known as the Gŵyl Gŵragedd Annwn in Welsh, is a particularly widespread motif, a spectral chase through the night sky led by a supernatural figure, often a king or a goddess, accompanied by a pack of hounds and a host of the dead. The Wild Hunt is found across the Celtic-speaking regions, in Brittany as the Chasse Artus, in Ireland as the Fairy Host, and in Scotland in various local forms, and it distinctive features of the medieval and early modern folklore of the Celtic world.
Tír na nÓg and the Celtic Paradise
The most fully developed literary treatment of the Celtic Otherworld is the tradition of Tír na nÓg, the Land of the Young, in early medieval Irish literature. Tír na nÓg is described in a number of tales as a place of eternal youth, beauty, and abundance, located variously in the west, beneath the earth, or beneath the sea. The tale of Oisín in Tír na nÓg is the most famous, a long narrative in which the hero Oisín, the son of Finn mac Cumhaill, is carried off by the beautiful Niamh Chinn Óir to her father’s kingdom in Tír na nÓg. After three years in the Otherworld, Oisín returns to Ireland on a magical horse, only to find that three hundred years have passed, and that all his former companions are dead.
The motifs of Tír na nÓg are found across the Celtic-speaking regions. The Welsh Annwn, the Breton Avalon, the Scottish Eilean nam Bò and Tír nan Òg, all preserve the same essential pattern of a paradise across the sea, accessible only to certain heroes, and characterized by eternal youth and abundance. The French Isle d’Avalon, where King Arthur is said to have been taken after his last battle, is a later medieval development of the older Celtic motif, and the legends of Hy-Brasil, the phantom island off the west coast of Ireland, are another descendant of the same tradition.
The Welsh Annwn, the most prominent of the Welsh versions of the Otherworld, is a complex and somewhat darker realm than the Irish Tír na nÓg. The early Welsh poem Cad Goddeu, the Battle of the Trees, attributed to the legendary poet Taliesin, describes a battle fought by Arawn, the king of Annwn, and Pryderi, the king of the mortal world of Dyfed, and Arawn’s magical cauldron, the Pair Dadeni, is a source of both life and wisdom. The Welsh tradition also has a strong tradition of journeys to the Otherworld. The story of Branwen, daughter of Llŷr, in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, describes a journey to Ireland that is also, a journey to the Otherworld.
The Fairies and the Living Tradition
The Celtic Otherworld did not disappear with the coming of Christianity. The medieval church made determined efforts to suppress the older beliefs, but the fairies, the sí, and the various supernatural beings of Celtic tradition survived in the folk beliefs of the Celtic-speaking regions well into the present, and in some forms they survive still. The fairy of modern Irish and Scottish tradition, the bean sí and the slua sí, the daoine sí of the Scottish Highlands, the tylwyth teg of Wales, and the korrigan of Brittany are all descendants of the older Tuatha Dé Danann, transformed by Christian pressure and by the pressures of modern life, but recognizably the same figures who were worshipped in the older pagan religion.
The beliefs associated with the fairies were extraordinarily detailed and pervasive. The sí were believed to live in the ancient burial mounds, in the ringforts, in the tumuli, and in the remote hills of the Irish and Scottish countryside. They were believed to be capable of appearing in visible form, of making bargains with mortals, of stealing healthy children and leaving changelings in their place, of blessing or cursing particular families, and of intervening in the affairs of the living in a thousand different ways. The traditions surrounding them include specific taboos against digging into the sídhe, against speaking of the fairies in certain ways, and against cutting down particular trees or bushes, all of which are clearly descended from older religious practices directed at the genii loci and the powers of the Otherworld.
Related Topics
- The Celtic gods and goddesses who inhabited the Otherworld are examined in detail, with attention to their regional variations and iconography.
- The Druids and the priestly class who mediated between the worlds are explored in detail, with attention to their training and functions.
- The sacred sites and pilgrimage traditions where the boundary between the worlds was thinnest are examined in detail.
- The medieval Celtic literary tradition preserves many of the great narratives of the Otherworld.
- The legacy of Celtic mythology today shows how the older cosmology continues to inspire modern literature and culture.