Animal Worship
The character and vitality of certain animal species seems to have been considered numinous. Certain spirits were very close to the animals with which they were associated: the names of Artio the ursine goddess and Epona the equine goddess are based on Celtic words for ‘bear’ and ‘horse’ Animals were perceived at the same time similar to and very different from humans. Certain creatures were observed to have particular physical and mental qualities and characteristics, and distinctive patterns of behaviour. An animal like a stag or horse could be admired for its beauty, speed or virility. Dogs were seen to be keen-scented, good at hunting, guarding and healing themselves. Snakes were seen to be destructive, fertile and having a curious habit of seeming to regenerate themselves by sloughing their skin. Birds were keen-sighted, and by flight, able to leave behind the confines of the earth. Beavers were seen to be skillful workers in wood. Thus admiration and acknowledgment for a beast’s essential nature led easily to reverence of those qualities and abilities which humans did not possess at all or possessed only partially.
Read more about this topic: Celtic Nature Worship
Famous quotes containing the words animal and/or worship:
“The animal is one with its life activity. It does not distinguish the activity from itself. It is its activity. But man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has a conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he is completely identified.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)