The Power of Animals

Animals, birds and even the smallest insects were an integral part of the Celtic universe. They were not separate, nor inferior, but wise teachers whose shapes might be assumed by Druidesses and Druids. This could be either a temporary transformation to absorb the strengths or acute vision of a specific creature, or sometimes for a lifetime in order to learn a particular lesson that could be acquired only by scurrying close to the Earth or soaring through the clouds.

The Celts, unlike a number of modern Druid/esses, were not vegetarians, nor were they sentimental about animals. They recognised the clear demarcations and roles of each species, so hunted animals and sacrificed them in ritual, knowing that the animal too would move into the Afterlife with glory. But because they respected the creatures, they hunted primarily for food and a number of warriors associated themselves with specific animals spiritually whose flesh they would not eat.

Goddesses and birds

Druidesses, like the Celtic goddesses whose identities have sometime become blurred in myth, have strong links especially with birds whose form, it was said, they often assumed in their astral or spirit body. Morgan le Fey, chief priestess/Druidess of Avalon, who took the name of the Dark Goddess of Winter, is depicted as a raven in Arthurian legend. The Druidesses on Anglesey, screaming curses against the Romans, were cast as raven-like in Tacitus’s description.

These mysterious raven women were perhaps a separate order of oracular Druidesses who wore black. They may have dedicated themselves to the Morrigu goddesses who took the form of a raven. Since the raven was a symbol of transformation and rebirth, the raven women may have been involved in sacred initiation rites.

These Druidesses bird shapeshifting powers may date back to Neolithic times when the Goddess was depicted with the head of a bird and her priestesses were her flock and wore feathers on their robes. Druids as well as Druidesses have occasionally been depicted similarly.

The raven goddesses

Among the Celts, ravens were sacred to Rhiannon, Otherworld Goddess of death and rebirth, like their more tuneful sisters, the blackbirds. Ravens; were also the form most often taken by the Triple Goddeses, the Morrigu, who, in carrion form, flew over the battlefields, carrying off the souls of the dead for healing and rebirth. We know that ravens pick off the flesh of corpses and this carrion aspect had magical significance in the matriarchal Celtic world, with the Death Mother being as her alter ego the mother who birthed new life.

This function has continued in some Northern shamanic traditions when the Carrion Goddess pecks clean (in psychic vision) the bones of the initiate shaman so that he or she can be magically reformed and reborn. This is not a cruel act but necessary to remove the decay of the old life and follows the tradition of the Palaeolithic Bone Mother. This aspect of the wise goddess/death Druidess, whose potions were said to ease the passing of those in great pain or irrevocably wounded, became demonised. Under the patriarchy and Christian versions of the old myths, the Morrigu became bloodthirsty raven/vulture goddesses of vengeance and the cackling Druidesses were described brewing cauldrons of enemies’ blood after battle.

The Celtic God raven tradition has survived rather better and the protective, oracular and magical attributes have remained in the legend of the ravens of the Tower of London. It is claimed that the presence of the ravens (with clipped) ensures that the realm will not fall. They act in this national guardian capacity (though no one actually recalls this on the official tours) as the representatives of the hero God giant Bran the Blessed, whose name means raven. His head was, at his own request, buried under the White Mound, now the White Tower, to keep the land  he loved forever unconquered.

Mistress of the herds

Though we think of Cernunnos, the Horned God, as the God of the Hunt, nevertheless there is an older Mother Goddess tradition of the Mistress of the Herds that prevailed into Celtic times. Her importance is indicated by the survival of this role in the unbroken tradition of shamanism of Northern Scandinavia, the Arctic Circle, northern Canada, America and Siberia. The shaman, who may be male or female, travels astrally to ask the Mistress of the Herds to release the animals to the hunters.

In Ireland, she was called Flidais who could shapeshift into any of her creatures. She rode in a chariot pulled by stags and possessed a cow who could give milk to thirty people at a time.

Arduinna is the Gaulish huntress Goddess, who rode a wild boar. We know that Broceliande, the magical forest near Rennes in Brittany, now a fraction of its former times, had its Druidesses who may have carried out rituals in her name to ensure the abundance of food for the winter.

Cailleach, the Celtic Hag Goddess was known also as the Mistress of Wild Things and took the form of a deer as one of her animal guises. In Ireland, the Crone huntress goddess, Garbh Ogh, was said to hunt the mountain deer with a pack of seventy dogs, all of whom had the names of different birds.

Because of the vast tracts of forest in Celtic Europe and the importance of hunting as a source of food, these Goddesses and their Druidess/forest priestesses were figures of power also of kinship with the creatures they protected.

But like the Druidesses, over the centuries, the huntress goddesses lost their power and became downsized as fairies. Legends told how fairy women would assume the form of a deer to escape pursuit of a male or if enchanted by a powerful hunter magician who sought to possess them.

The role of Cernunnos, Celtic Lord of the Forest, was split. In France he became St Hubert, patron saint of hunters, having been, according to legend, converted to Christianity by a stag with a cross between his antlers. I was lucky enough to be outside Amiens Cathedral in Picardy, France, on November 10, St Hubert’s day, and saw huntsmen, garbed in their red jackets, playing a fanfare on hunting horns before going in to take part in St Hubert’s mass.

But the horned/antlered aspect of Cernunnos was demonised by the Christian Church and he became the devil incarnate (in the Wiccan and other pagan traditions he is still Lord of Winter and the Wild)

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