Belgae: Kelts, Germans or something else?

[PSYCHO V]

Some food for thought;


AHISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF CELTIC HISTORY

The Celts have suffered from agenda based revisionism since the first accounts of their existence were recorded. Their history has been written and re-written over centuries, swayed by the tumult of ethno-political events, movements and agendas,... only recently being clawed back from obscurity.

It began with the writers of the classical period but was given new impetus in the new dawning of European national identity.

When the last Breton army was defeated in 1488 by the French, the Bretons were forced to sign the Treaty of Union between Brittany and France. Frenchman Jean le Fevre was sponsored by his King to write ‘Les Fleurs et Antiquitez des Gaules, ou il est traits des Anciens Philosophes Gaulois applelez Druides’ (1532) in which he stated “we are all Celts now”, claiming that the Germanic Franks and Celtic Bretons were all of the one Celtic stock.

Elias Schedius claimed that Celts and Germans were the same people and that the Druids were the ancestors of all German peoples (1648, De Dis Germanis). The later Nazi Germans drew heavily on such texts to support their ethic theories on the Aryan race of blond hair/blue eyes.

Whilst Germans and French both claimed Celtic roots, the mood was very different in England.
“Because the English had difficulty with accrediting the Celts with a strong culture or any ‘civilised’ talents or capabilities. After all, as conquerors, like the Romans, it would be imprudent of them to attribute any such qualities to those that they had conquered or were in the process of conquering, as they were at the time with the savage ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Irish in Ireland.” - (History of the Druids, Dr Peter Berresford Ellis, 2002). They found other ways of dealing with the history of the Celts.

Thomas Smith claimed that the Druids and Celts were of Jewish / Semitic stock and that “Abraham was the patriarch of the Druids” (1644, Syntagama de Druidum moribus ac institutis). John Aubrey, married reports of the New World with his version of the Celts stating that they were “different nations of haughty barbarians and noble savages” (1649, Ancient Wiltshire). John Web, drawing on the works of Inigo Jones (1573-1652) claimed that the Celts had “no art, no sculpture, no science, language, culture, architecture or common religious belief” (1655, The Most Remarkable Antiquity of Great Britain). He claimed that Celtic culture actually belonged to the Anglo Saxons, who had also erected Stonehenge.

Dr Walter Charleston disagreed and claimed Celtic culture for the Vikings, that they had built Stonehenge, (1663, Chorea Gigantum). Aylett Sammes claimed that the Druids were Phoenician bards who had influenced the ‘Celts’ with their ancient religion and culture (1676, Britannia Antiqua Illustrata). Rev Henry Rowlands traced the Druidic origins from Noah, stating that the Druids were the same as the patriarchal figures of the Old Testament. He dwelt heavily on the accounts of Celtic sacrifice, stating that these were “evidences that the Druids were following Old Testament traditions”, (1723, Mona Antiqua Restaurata).

By 1746, the last Jacobite uprising had been suppressed in Scotland, Ireland had been subdued since 1691, there had been no uprising in Cornwall since 1549 and Wales had been pacified since Tudor times. Outwardly the Celtic world was now at peace with England and again the Celts received a new history.

By the mid 1700s, John Aubrey's sentiments were adopted enmasse. The catalyst was the philosophical writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau which gained prominence throughout Europe. A key component of that philosophy was the concept of the "Noble Savage"; that is, humanity is essentially good, a "noble savage" when in the "state of nature" and that good humanity is corrupted by civilisation / society. This fitted well and further cemented the depiction of the Celts as recorded by the Romans.

Poems by John Thomson (1700-174 , William Collins (1721-1759) and Thomas Gray (1716-1771) depicted the Druids / Celts as venerated nature-worshipping pacifists. William Stukeley is credited as the one who “brought the Druids both to Stonehenge and into modern folklore in a way that caught the fertile imaginations of subsequent writers” (Ellis) in his book (1740, Stonehenge, a temple restores to the British Druids).

By the mid 1700s the French were again having problems with the Bretons. French centralist policies were encroaching on Brittany’s autonomous status, guaranteed under the Acts of Union and several Breton leaders had been executed for attempting to reassert Breton independence. Simon Pelloutiers was sponsored by his King to write another work, claiming that “the religion of the Germanic Franks and the Celts was one and the same thing” (1740, Histoire des Gaulois)

In England, a ‘modern’ Druidic order, organised as a “friendly society with Masonic rituals” came into popularity. With the pious English having problems with some religious moral outrage about the re-emergence of a pagan priesthood as a group worthy of respect, the Druids received a Christian approval. William Cooke, rector of Oldbury, wrote a works arguing that the Druids were “so morally high minded that they were not ethically different from Christians”, (1754, An Enquiry into the Druidical and Patriarchal Religion)

In James MacPherson’s ‘History of Great Britain’ (1773), we see the Druids presented in the new romantic imagery of semi-deified ‘white wizards’. William Blake claimed that Britain was the original Holy Land and ‘Jerusalem’ was not far from ‘Primrose Hill’ He stated that Britons were directly descended from Abraham and that “the Druids of England had set out with missionary zeal in the mists of time to establish their sacred temples of Oak across the face of the world and create the one true religion” (Ellis). Blake claims that Christ was crucified to a sacred oak (1804, Jerusalem, the Emanation of Giant Albion).

Keeping in line with this move to mysticism, the Druidic order in England split in 1833. The new order called “The United Ancient Order of Druids” focussed more on the “pseud theosophical ideas and mystical aspects” of the ancient Druids, rather than the former society model. It was to this new group that a well-known Winston Churchill joined on the 15th of August 1908. At his inauguration, ”some of the participants were wearing false beards and looking more like applicants for a job as Santa Claus than any self respecting Druid” (Ellis). By 1918 there were five different sects of Druids vying to perform their own sacred rites in Britain alone.

“With the onset of the 1960s, Hippies and Alternative Religions regarded the Druids as fair game. The Druids were called upon as the prototypes of many ‘New Age’ ideas and credos. Sybyle Leek (1975, The complete Art to Witchcraft) claimed that she followed the “old religion very closely allied to Celtic witchcraft”. Yes, ‘Celtic witchcraft’ had suddenly arrived out of all the mishmash and hocus-pocus of modern Druidism” (Ellis). Gavin & Yvonne Frost (1978, A Witches guide to Life) stated, “We call our religion Celtic Witchcraft”. Ellis commented that this was “rooted in 16th & 17th century balderdash with a mind-blowing reinterpretation of history”

By the 1980s not only new age beliefs and witchcraft, but esoteric Christianity and even ‘corn circles’ were given a Celtic gloss. In the 1990s the likes of John Matthews conjured images of the Druids as Zen Masters of the ancient world (1991, The Celtic Shaman).



I think it’s worth finishing with a quote from Ellis:

Celtic and Druidic ‘truths’ of every description, from ‘arcane knowledge’, ‘karmic destiny’, ‘ the true path to enlightenment’ to ‘mystic awareness’ are solicited in the commercial deluge of New Age philosophies. The Druids and the Celts were there when our 17th and 18th century ancestors sought ‘Romanticism’ as a counter-balance to the ‘Age of Reason’ and industrialisation. It is not surprising that they are still being reinvented at this time because, in our sad and sorry contemporary world, people still want a quick fix on spirituality; because people, in the quest for truth and meaning in life, which seems the perennial human drive, prefer simple answers. It is easier to accept the cosy pictures of non-existent romantic / barbarian Celts and Druids rather than ponder the uncomfortable realities of these once proud, independent, sophisticated and advance peoples”. - (History of the Druids, Dr Peter Berresford Ellis, 2002)