This page groups sacred sites by whether their sacred status is still actively maintained. Wikipedia notes that Mircea Eliade "argues that while the concept of a sacred space is often associated with religious traditions, it is not exclusive to them," since secular societies can keep treating a place as significant too. Browsing this way lets a visitor tell a site with living religious observance apart from one preserved mainly for its history.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingSanctuaries, sacred springs, hills and ritual enclosures of pre-Roman and pre-Christian Britain, Ireland, Gaul and beyond. They are known almost entirely from excavation and from what outsiders wrote about them: no text in a Celtic language describes a rite performed at any of these places. 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredA cover term over unrelated and often mutually hostile peoples - Gauls, Britons, Irish, Galatians and others - who shared a language family and much material culture but were never one political, ethnic or religious community. 2 Attestation
Era of AttestationRitual enclosures, votive deposits and shafts of the kind grouped here are archaeologically attested from about the fifth century BCE into the Roman period. Where a place is called Celtic on the strength of later legend or antiquarian tradition rather than excavation, the atlas says so on the entry. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryContested. "Celtic" as the name of a people is a disputed archaeological label. Ancient writers used Keltoi of continental peoples and not of the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland; the equation of the Hallstatt and La Tene material with a single Celtic people is a nineteenth-century construction, and attributing a monument to "the Celts" asserts more than any excavation shows. 4 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseModern Druidry has held ceremonies at several of these places since the eighteenth century. It is a revival built on antiquarian guesswork, not a continuation: the ancient druids left no liturgy, nothing of their rites survives to be resumed, and the reputable modern orders do not claim an unbroken line. The atlas records modern ceremony as modern and does not read it back into the monument. 3 Learn More
Celtic Sacred Sites
This group holds sacred sites of the Celtic world, the sanctuaries, sacred springs, hills and ritual enclosures of the pre-Christian Celtic peoples of Britain, Ireland and the Continent, known from archaeology and later tradition.
The browser will find the Celtic sacred places the atlas gathers. The entries describe what is known of each site's ritual use, noting the often fragmentary evidence for pre-Christian Celtic religion.
Practice Status
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia
3. Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain
4. The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention?
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.