Celtic Polytheism - Sources

Sources

We know comparatively little about Celtic polytheism because the evidence for it is fragmentary, largely due to the fact that the Celts who practiced it wrote nothing down about their religion. Therefore all we have to study their religion from is the literature from the early Christian period, commentaries from classical Greek and Roman scholars, and archaeological evidence.

The archaeologist Barry Cunliffe summarised the sources for Celtic religion as "fertile chaos", borrowing the term from the Irish scholar Proinsias MacCana. Cunliffe went on to note that "there is more, varied, evidence for Celtic religion than for any other example of Celtic life. The only problem is to assemble it in a systematic form which does not too greatly oversimplify the intricate texture of its detail."

Read more about this topic:  Celtic Polytheism

Famous quotes containing the word sources:

    I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Even healthy families need outside sources of moral guidance to keep those tensions from imploding—and this means, among other things, a public philosophy of gender equality and concern for child welfare. When instead the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world.
    Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)

    The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.
    Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)