Showing posts with label Celtic Gods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Celtic Gods. Show all posts

Monday, 13 December 2010

Dagda God



The Dagda was the father God of the Celts they called him the Good God because he protected their crops.  He was king of the Tuatha Dé Danann and ruled over Uisnech in Co. Meath.  He had a cauldron called the Undry which supplied unlimited food and was one of the magical items the Tuatha brought with them when they first landed on Ireland.  He also had a living oak harp called Uaithne which caused the seasons to change in their order and also played three types of music, the music of sorrow, the music of joy and the music of dreaming. 


 He was portrayed as wearing a brown low-necked tunic which just reached his hips and a hooded cape that barely covered his shoulders.  On his feet were horse-hide boots.  Behind him he pulled his eight pronged war club on a wheel, one end of the club killed the living and the other end revived the dead, and when it was dragged behind him it left a track as deep as the boundary ditch between two provinces.


There are many humorous tales about him, about his appetites both for food and sexual gratification.  In these stories he never seems to get enough of either!

Goddess Epona



Epona was a protector of horses, donkeys, and mules.
She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, ears of grain and the presence of foals in some sculptures suggested that the goddess and her horses were leaders of the soul in the after-life ride, with parallels in Rhiannon of the Mabinogion.
Unusually for a Celtic deity, most of whom were associated with specific localities, the worship of Epona, "the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome itself,was widespread in the Roman Empire between the first and third centuries CE.