Celtic Pantheons

This Site

The purpose of this site is to enable the exposure of my stories which are derived from Celtic myths. That is to say, I have expanded fragments from Celtic myths, and rewrote Celtic myths in a way that developed a pantheon of gods like those of the Greeks. Unlike Greek myths or Norse myths there has been little awareness in the general population of the world concerning such myths. This is because the ancient Celts wrote down almost nothing concerning Celtic myths.  What little we have of Celtic myths was mostly written down by the Romans and later Christian Monks. This has produced a distorted picture of these myths as the Romans and the Christians filled these stories with wordage and events concerned with their own god or gods.

I have always loved the stories of ancient gods and their pantheons, which I was first exposed to first by means of translations of the Greek myths and later the Norse myths. This led me to foolishly believe that every race must have had a pantheon of gods that I could also learn the myths of. However, I quickly discovered that other races tended to not preserve the stories of their gods very well. Indeed, it is a wonder that any myths were preserved at all, as when a race was conquered, the conquerors tended to impose their own gods and tear down the gods of the conquered.

I much later discovered that the Indians had managed to keep very good records of the Hindu gods despite their country being overrun by several other religions. This, however, was an exception rather than the rule.

Of course, although the Christians tended to tamper with the myths they recorded, we probably have to thank them for whatever stories they preserved. It is better to have some record than no record of these wonderful stories.

However, the result has been a western world that has been heavily influenced by Greek myths while the only well-known Celtic myths are those concerning King Arthur. These come to us heavily influenced by the code of chivalry, despite the fact that the original stories of Arthur were set in a period that was far earlier.

Getting Started

While I was very young I came across a very small summery of a Welsh myth. It was the first branch of the Mabinogion, called Pwyll Prince of Dyved. This summary intrigued me. Here, I thought, was a story about the Welsh gods. However, I discovered later, when reading the full story, that it was not as much about gods as I had first assumed. This story, although mentioning the names of the ancient Welsh gods, had been stripped of all reference to the fact the characters were gods and written as if it was set in a Christian world. Still, it seemed to me, that there was another story hidden behind the story, one where the characters were free to be gods. It seemed to me there was a story about how a mortal man had become a god of death.  In my latter years, while reading about a fox hunt, this story I had read in my youth, started to morph into this other story in my head. I started to jot down these thoughts. I kept the original name for the story at first, though gradually it was becoming a different story, that of The Dark Huntsman .

When I had finished writing (rewriting) the first branch of the Mabinogion I went on to rewrite the other three branches of the Mabinogion. I then expanded this group of gods by adding other Welsh stories that I thought could be modified to illuminate and introduce other gods. I did this by often drawing on similar gods in other pantheons and their stories. For instance, I drew heavily on the Irish Nuada to expand the story of the Welsh Nudd. My thinking was that these two gods were essentially the same god, they even both had silver hands.

Four Pantheons

In any case I ultimately created four pantheons of gods to fit four different sets of Celtic Gods. That is to say, I created a Welsh Pantheon, an Irish Pantheon, a Scottish Pantheon and a Gaulish Pantheon. To do this I had to create a genealogy for each pantheon. I basically had to determine which gods and goddesses were the children of which gods and goddesses. I had to trace lineages and families. Such pantheons may have existed but I could not be sure if the order of decent was mostly correct as different references would contradict each other. Of course even with the Greek myths this would happen. Also I had to rearrange some lineages to fit the story I wished to tell.

Lady Guest and The Mabinogion

The Welsh had a framework to build on called the Mabinogion stories. This was a translation by Lady Guest of stories from several ancient Welsh books most notably The Red Book of Hegest. I took the four main branches of the mabinogion itself and three other stories from this translation and added several other stories I found elsewhere.

Lady Gregory and The Gods and Fighting Men

The Irish had a similar book that had the most important stories concerning Irish mythology called Gods and Fighting Men by Lady Gregory. I drew heavily from this book and collected the rest of the stories from translations of The Book of invasions in pdfs on line.

The Scottish Stories

When it came to the Scottish stories there was no one book that collected most of the stories and indeed most of the stories were simply duplicating the Irish stories. To say the Scotch had a separate pantheon to the Irish is stretching things to say the least. However, there were stories that hinted at darker earlier gods. To avoid this problem I tried to collect only stories that were not duplicating something from Irish mythology but even so I had to end up using quite a few gods that were almost the same as their Irish equivalents. Also I had to draw on quite a few Manx stories to build up this group of gods two of which I took from the book Celtic Myths and Legends by Peter Beresford Ellis.

Peter Beresford Ellis

Celtic Myths and Legends

The Gaulish pantheon, on the other hand, had to be entirely created as there are no stories where Gaulish gods play a major part in them. I solved this by Taking stories from Brittany and other places and dropping Gaulish gods into them. Most of these stories came from the Brittany section of the Peter Elis book Celtic Myths and Legends. This turned out to be very freeing. I took the only two god figures mentioned in the stories from Brittany and wove them into the Gaulish pantheon.

In the end I wrote a few stories that were entirely my own creation I also had to invent a few gods and goddesses that were not mentioned in any reference. To create these I tried to use words in the ancient languages that described a particular aspect of nature such as night, dawn, dusk, sleep and dream.

Basically I have tried to continue the ancient practice of storytellers, who in retelling myths modified them by adding their own flourishes. This practice has almost stopped in this original form. Those who retell these stories in this age seem afraid to deviate too much from the original story.

As to my own lineage, my grandmother, on my father s side, was a Grant from Scotland. I know it is a bit of a feeble connection to the Celts but it is one.

I am sure some people will say you should not defile these ancient stories by distorting them so much. However, I believe the only true state of myths is to be continually changed by new voices. The only reason not to do this is if the stories turn out to be bad. Placing the stories here is my attempt to allow others to have the opportunity to critique and improve these stories themselves. In this way hopefully the stories will continue to evolve and become really good stories.

I leave it up to readers to decide whether these stories are of interest and worth saving.

At the time of writing this I had written or modified over forty stories and it is my intention to gradually display them here. Thus readers may further modify them, improve them and ultimately judge them. The first one I will display is The Book of Invasions.

The Great Irish Myth

This story, which relates the most connected form of the main Irish myths, is something witch I had searched for after having learned of its existence. While I had found bits and pieces of the story scattered across many books and papers I have never been able to find a definitive complete and connected version of the story. So I decided to write my own version which you may find by clicking under Irish Myths in one of the menus or clicking here.

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