About A Folk Halloween Experience's Logo
Introduction
Our LOGOs (pictured above, and all variations thereof), designed by Graphic Designer Mikayla Olson, were the product of many days, nights, and weeks of back and forth with A Folk Halloween Experience's creator, Azriel Anthony, to get it right. We thank Mikayla for her infinite patience, attention to detail, and insistence on getting it right. She was gracious in receiving specific feedback and made prompt corrections, especially when we miscommunicated. She's infinitely professional and patient, and the design of graphic designers is not easy.
It was important to Azriel to graphically pay homage through iconic or symbolic allusions in our logo to:
the Celtic Samhain origins of Hallow's Eve, from which we get our fire, candle, and Jack-O-Lantern traditions, as well as our 'guising costume and mask-wearing traditions, represented by the Killycluggin (Coil-a-klo-GAIN) megalithic stone circle and Crom's cult icon in the central stone, and the full moon background;
the Roman Pomonalia festival celebrated October 31st and from which we get our apple and nut roasting Hallow's Eve traditions of Snap Apple or Nutcrack Night, represented by Pomona's natural apple right-side-up pentacle superimposed over the full moon; and
the Christian Allhallowtide later contributions to these pre-Christian Celtic and Roman pagan traditions, from which we'll recognize souling, soul cakes, trick-or-treating, Halloween Parties and Fall Harvest Festivals, and the fortune telling games brought by late Victorian Era Christian Spiritualism, represented by the pentacle (a Christian symbol during the Middle Ages) and the crow (a symbol for the Victorian Christian Spiritualist traditions grafted onto Halloween).
It was the blending of these distinct cultural hearths that produced our modern Halloween traditions. Roman Catholic Christendom Allhallowtide's All Hallows Eve customs joined the more ancient Celtic and Roman pagan origins of this uniquely American holiday. Irish, Welsh, and Scottish immigrants brought it to the New World where customs were then enhanced by the Spiritualists who revived its heritage and charms.
For a more thorough and detailed discussion of: the cultural hearths of Celtic Samhain traditions in Ireland and the archaeological (prehistoric record) and annalistic (historical record) evidence for its more distant prehistoric origins in a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer solar cult (seemingly adopted and adapted by invading Celts), please read our more exhaustive treatise: The (Pre-History) and History of Halloween.
Here we've digested pertinent Halloween prehistory and history for you in shorter form (yes, it's voluminous!) in order to explain the iconography of our logos. Symbolic explanations for them are integrated and embedded throughout this treatise discussing our Halloween heritage.
By the way, Halloweven, the name of our sister company, is NOT a misspelling.
It's a transitional abbreviation, shortening, or contraction of Hallowed⁐Evening and pays homage to its slow progression to its modern and more familiar descendant label, Halloween.
19th Century (1800s) Welsh, Scottish, and Irish immigrants would have referred to All Hallows Eve alternately as:
All Hallows Eve,
All Hallow Even'ng,
All Hallows Even, or
Allhalloweven or Halloweven.
Halloweven, then is short for Hallowed evening.
All Hallows Evening ➡ All Hallows Even/Ev'n/Eve ➡
Hallow's Even ➡ Hallow even ➡ Halloweven
➡ Hallowe'en ➡
Halloween
Celtic Origins: Who are the Irish Celts?
Ancient Celtic warriors dressed for battle, with a shaman, c.1800-18 (coloured engraving).
The pre-Christian pagan (non-Christian, nature worshiping) Goidelic (pronounced goy-del-ic, Irish) Irish Celts (pronounced kelts, not selts; an Indo-European people) are the undisputed originators of all of our Samhain (🔊pronounced SOW-win NOT Sam-HAIN) traditions. Ireland is where all of our Samhain traditions began, but we must first understand the peoples from whom they descend in order to understand those customs.
But just who were the Irish Celts? They were Indo-European and Celtic (the Indo-European tribe that colonized Central and Western Europe and the British Isles and spoke Gaelic) to be sure. The Indo-Europeans were the fair-skinned horse, cattle, sheep, and pig herding invaders who migrated into Europe from the Caucasus region (hence Caucasian, meaning from this region of central Asia, but also meaning fair-skinned) of the Central Asian steppes in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age (3300-1200 BCE). Yet the Irish Celts were not entirely Indo-European and Celtic, unlike their continental mainland Gaulish (Gallic) Celtic cousins (the Celts in mainland Europe outside of the British Isles) as well as their Gaelic (Scottish) and Bryonthic (English) Celtic cousins of the British Isles.
If Irish Celts weren't entirely Celtic, then just who were they? “Who are the Irish Celts?," is a question whose answer hadn't entirely started to become clear until very recently (in the first quarter of the 21st Century CE). In the early 21st Century, advances in genetic science helped us trace their origins through genetic science as corroborated by archaeology, linguistics, and literary, mythical, and historical analysis.
With as fair-skinned as most Irish people are today, it surprises many to learn that the genetic origins of all modern Irish people began with non-Caucasian (non-white), non-Indo-European people who had olive complexion, were shorter, and had black hair and brown eyes but arrived in Europe thousands of years earlier than the Celts, or that their story really started first in the Middle East and then southern Spain and the Mediterranean island of Sardinia where they mixed with the first human inhabitants of Europe before reaching the Emerald Isle.
The term Celt comes from the Greek Keltoi which described the nomadic barbarian Indo-European people of Western and Central Europe. Celts come from the original Caucasian (fair-skinned, meaning from the Caucasus region of Central Asia) Indo-European herding people who came from the Central Asian steppes. And, yes, the Irish Goidelic (GOY-del-ic) Celts do descend from the Indo-European Gallic Celts (from mainland Western Europe) and descend from the same Central Asian Caucasian people as their mainland cousins and those in Scotland and England, but they also descend from the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) darker skinned, shorter, brighter-eyed hunter-gatherers and the more olive-complected slightly taller brown -eyed and -haired nomadic pastoralists and horticulturalists from southern Spain and Sardinia, just like the Spanish Basques do.
Current population genetics science reveals that the modern Irish population began with a much older non-Caucasian, olive to dark-complected southern European (non-Indo-European) farming population which had mixed with the first human hunter-gatherers who colonized Europe in Southern Spain and Sardinia—thousands of years older than the Celts—that then mixed with two waves of migration from the colonizing Caucasian Indo-European Celtic population from which they got their misleading name concealing their diversity and uniqueness as Europeans similar to the basques of Spain.
The first wave of Celtic migration came from northwestern coastal France (ca. 3,000 BCE) and the second Celtic wave came from northern Spain's basque region (ca. 1,000 BCE). Finally, the Irish mixed with an invading Caucasian Indo-European Norse (viking) population during The Medieval Period from 795-840 CE nearly 2,000 years after the second Celtic invasion.
So, in short form, the Irish are essentially non-white, southern Europeans from southern Spain and Sardinia (7-6,000 BCE) originally from the Middle East (ca. 9,000 BCE) who after crossing the Celtic Sea from France's Brittany Peninsula by boat (ca. 5,000 BCE, the lime green horn in the map below jutting out into the Atlantic labeled 5000 BCE) to colonize Ireland and then mixed with three waves of Indo-Europeans in: two waves of fairer-skinned Celtic invaders (ca. 3,000 BCE and ca. 1,000 BCE) from whom they only got about a third of their DNA); and, nearly two thousand years later, Norse (viking) invaders (ca. 800-850 CE) from whom they got the third third of their DNA.
Map of the spread of farming into Europe up to about 3800 BCE. Here, the early southern European Neolithic farming population from which the first Irish descend is depicted in blue shades. The Indo-Europeans (and Celts) are depicted by green colors. Archaeological evidence of Neolithic crops, animals, and technology from the Middle East first appears around 5,000 BCE in Ireland, dating their first arrival to around that time. Credit: Wikimedia: 2021 Condensed and simplified map showing of the spread of agriculture from Southwest Asia to Europe, between 9600 and 3800 BCE, with approximate dates and routes of diffusion
The non-Caucasian, non-Indo-European origin of the Irish Celts is now backed up by genetic, linguistic, and archaeological evidence. Their most distant ancestors, the nomadic (moving from place to place) Neolithic (Late/New Stone Age) pastoralist (herding) and horticulturalist (small-scale farming) people who initially colonized southern Spain and Sardinia—the early European farmers (or EEF as they are known in the literature)—arrived in a much, much earlier human migration than the Celts' own. The early migration of the early European farmer population into Europe occurred during the Neolithic (new/late Stone Age) between 9,000-7,0000 BCE compared to the Celt's Indo-European migration into Europe occurring at earliest starting at 3000-2000 BCE but happening mostly from 1700-1200 BCE during the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age.
This initial Neolithic non-Indo-European migration of the early (southern) European farming population was much earlier than the Indo-European migration of the Celts, preceding it by many thousands of years. It means that the Irish Celts' European story starts in southern Spain or Sardinia (ca. 6000 BCE) with their origins in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East at about 9,000 BCE. The Irish, unlike other Europeans of Indo-European descent, but like the basque, descended from an admixture involving the first farmers in the world with the first modern human hunter-gatherers in the first humans in Europe with whom they mixed in southern Europe.
These early (southern) European farmers migrated from the Middle East to southern coastal Europe from Anatolia (Turkey) because the climate got drier and colder in the Fertile Crescent, making it untenable for farming there. Once they migrated to and colonized the southern Mediterranean coastline of Europe, the ancestors of the Celts settled in southern Spain and on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia where there they mixed with the descendants of the original Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) hunter-gatherers who'd initially colonized western Europe and Ireland (10,000-8,000 BCE) just in advance of these early Neolithic herders and farmers (9,000-7,0000 BCE), with barely a thousand year head start on them.
Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers:
8,000 - 3,000 BCE (B.C.)
(10 KBP-5 KBP) ~4,000 year reign
Credit: Cheddar Man © Tom Barnes Channel 4
An artist's rendering of how the Mesolithic (Middle Stone) Age Ice Age hunter-gatherers might have likely appeared. They appear to have abruptly disappeared quickly and even genetically.
The first invading wave of Celts ~3,000 BCE (5,000 years ago) would later themselves be displaced by a group of Spanish Celts around 1,000 BCE (intermixed with Southern European Early Farmers like modern Basque Spaniards, the same stock that the first wave of Celtic migration had pushed out of Ireland, perhaps into the sea literally, around 3,000 BCE).
Their differential fertility led to rapid genetic and population absorption by the second Celtic Milesian invasion (~1,000 BCE, or 3,000 years ago). Thuse the first wave of Celts seem to have reigned from about 5,000 years ago until about 3,000 years ago. Could it be that the Milesians, descended from a Spaniard in mythology, were actually the descendants of the Southern European farmers pushed out by the invading Celts, who then would face an invasion of their descendants later?
Southern European Early Farming Population
4,000 - present
(6 KBP- present, displaced ~1,000 BCE [3 KBP])
Credit: 3D reconstruction of Whitehawk Woman © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
An artists' rendering of what the Neolithic (Late/New Stone) Age early European farming population might have likely appeared around 4,000 BCE (B.C.) or 6,000 years ago from the Fertile Crescent of the Middle east as they migrated along the coastline. These may have been the mythological Fomorians who came from the sea and are driven back to it.
Their genes also appear to quickly disappear, so it would appear they were vastly outnumbered by the invading Indo-European Celts, and intermarried and were absorbed, but it could also be they were driven out and displaced by the first wave of Irish Celts who arrive ~1,000 BCE.
It could be the invaders violently displaced, rapidly absorbed by outnumbering and intermarrying so that within a couple of generations there was scarcely genetic trace of their stock across the population (the predominant theory as of 2024), or they simply left, as in the case of Irish Mythology recording the Fomarians being vanquished into the see.
The cold-adapted Mesolithic hunter gatherers would have appeared much shorter, longer-legged, shorter-torso-ed, and dark-skinned with black or brown hair and blue- or green-eyes. The invading Neolithic herders from the Middle East were more temperate-climate adapted and were slightly taller but had olive-complexion, brown or black-hair, and brown-eyes. Modern Irish DNA shows that their populations mixed in southern Spain and on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, and continued to mix in Ireland after the Neolithic people arrived there and found descendants of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers there.
The offspring of these people in southern Spain and Sardinia would first colonize the western, then northern Iberian (Spanish) Peninsula's Atlantic coastline before proceeding to colonize the western coast of France before their maritime invasion of Ireland, crossing the Celtic Sea by boat from the Brittany Peninsula around 5,000 BCE. The descendants of these two non-Indo-European archaic Mesolithic hunter-gatherer and Neolithic early European farmer/herder populations represent the oldest ancestors of the Irish Celts and comprise about a third of modern Irish DNA.
Interestingly, the DNA of their Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, and Bretton/Britton Celtic relatives of the British Isles lack this far older, more archaic, more native European DNA, making the Irish Celts unique from other Celts or Europeans in this respect (the Celtic tribe of Indo-Europeans were ultimately native to the Central Asian steppes), with only the Spanish basque sharing that unique genetic heritage.
The earliest evidence of Mesolithic hunter gatherers in Ireland dates from the end of the Paleolithic (Old Stone) Age and during the Ice Age at 31,000 BCE from a butchered reindeer femur (thigh bone) and 10,500 BCE from a butchered bear skull. But full-scale colonization of Ireland by these hunter-gatherers dates around 8,000 BCE. Anthropologists believe their descendants to be the “short, dark" original inhabitants of the island, the Fir Bolg, described in Irish mythology and in the debased and suspect Book of Invasions, which they now believe, despite its fantastical elements, actually recorded prehistoric waves of migration embedded cryptically in its accounts of supernatural races of beings.
The olive-complected early European farmers brought Neolithic tools, cereal grains, animals, pottery, and technology dating around 5,000 BCE. Anthropologists think this wave of migration and invasion are represented by the “sea demons" in the mythological but possibly quasi-historical evil Fomarian demigods of darkness, death, chaos, and wildness recorded in Irish mythology. Their invasion and colonization of Ireland came from across the Celtic Sea and was a maritime invasion, matching the sea demon description of these peoples in Irish mythology.
The Fomarian invaders defeat the original Fir Bolg (the “short, dark" Fir Bolg older Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who'd colonized the island since ca. 8,000 BCE) in Irish mythology as they colonized Ireland with pastoralism (herding) and horticulture (small scale farming) from their original colonies in Sardinia and southern Spain. They subsequently branched out and colonized the western and northern coast of the Iberian (Spanish) Peninsula, then colonized France's western Atlantic coast. They—unlike the Celts whose maritime invasion of Britain across the English Channel preceded their maritime invasion of Ireland from Scotland across the North Channel of the Irish Sea—invaded Ireland directly by boat from France's Brittany Peninsula from which they crossed the Celtic Sea, circa 5000 BCE.
The mythical Fomarian sea demons had arrived, and their maritime invasion appears to have rapidly displaced the Fir Bolg hunter-gatherers genetically. In other words, whatever happened, EEF genes appear to have quickly replaced the older hunter-gatherer genes in the population, with very little intrusion of older genes into the newer EEF genetic population in the genetic samples from burials examined. Quite possibly, the Neolithic EEF population quickly outnumbered the Mesolithic hunter gatherers in their use of a superior subsistence strategy in farming over hunting and gathering which supported far greater numbers than hunting or gathering ever could, and which then replaced the more archaic genetic material rapidly through interbreeding. We cannot rule out violent displacement either, as the Irish myths suggest that all but the last thirty Fir Bolg were wiped out by warfare and calamity.
The Fir Bolg Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had been in Ireland for some 7,000 years by the time the first Celtic invaders arrived and 5,000 years by the time the last ones did but had enjoyed Ireland unmolested for roughly 3,000 years. In turn, the olive-complected Fomarian Neolithic pastoralists from southern Spain and Sardinia had been in Ireland for some 1,000 years by the time the very first Caucasian (fair-skinned) Celtic Indo-European invaders appeared from Scotland. They had been there for 3,000 years by the time the final second wave of the Celtic invaders appeared from Scotland. It should be noted that these mythical peoples mentioned in Irish mythology are fantastical and the myths should definitely not be regarded as actually historical (only incidentally so).
Unlike their Mesolithic hunter-gatherer and Neolithic early farmer DNA from those southern Spanish and Sardinian ancestors, Goidelic Irish Celts do share DNA from both waves of Celtic invasions with their Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh, Cornish, and Bretton/Britton Bryonthic Celts, and mainland Gallic Celts.
The later Indo-European migration of Caucasians with their Yamnaya culture (from which the Celtic peoples descended) from southern Russia and Ukraine north of the Black and Caspian Seas—the Central Asian Pontic-Caspian steppes where genetically Caucasian people with bright blue-eyes first appeared ca. 10,000 BCE or 12,000 years ago—was much, much later. The earliest Indo-European migration into Europe was very small scale and started around 8,000 BCE. Migration was not seriously underway until at least 3000-2,000 BCE as the Indo-European Yamnayas didn't invent wheel and cart technology necessary for serious migrations until around 3,500 BCE. This also corroborates the two arrivals of the fair-skinned Indo-European Celts after 3,500 BCE, at about 3,000 BCE (northwestern French Celtic migration across the English Channel through England and Scotland) and 1,000 BCE (the northern Basque region of Spanish Celts who invaded following the same path).
The Indo-European Celts invaded and colonized Ireland from Scotland in two genetic waves, the first wave preceding the second by 2,000 years. The first wave arrived circa 3,000 BCE from the northwestern coast of France (the Tuatha De), and the second wave around 1,000 BCE from the basque region of northern Spain (the Milesians). Credit: CULTURE CLUB/GETTY IMAGES
It would be one of the early migrations of Indo-Europeans from which the first wave of Celtic invaders arrived from Scotland associated with the genetic population of Celtic pastoralists and horticulturalists from the north and western Atlantic coasts of France. These people who invaded Ireland from Scotland around 3,000 BCE were genetically different from the early European farmer population that originally colonized from the Brittany Peninsula around 5,000 BCE despite migrating from the same general vicinity of the northwestern coast of France. The first Celts to invade Ireland did not share those more archaic Middle Eastern genes that came from southern Europe. However, both groups of Celtic migrants shared similar maritime invasions which occurred by crossing the English Channel into and colonizing Britain first, then colonizing Ireland from Scotland across the North Channel of the Irish Sea. But the northwestern coastal migration of Celts occured around 3,000 BCE.
Most scholars agree there is adequate evidence for widespread migrations into Europe of Indo-Europeans occurring between 1700-1200 BCE. And it would be from this second and largest wave of late Indo-European migration into Europe that brought the second of two waves (around 1,000 BCE ) of Celts into Ireland from across the English Channel and then Scotland across the North Channel of the Irish Sea, but this time these Celts originated in basque northern Spain. For reference, their northwestern French coastal Celtic cousins had arrived in Ireland via Scotland following the same migration route roughly 2,000 years earlier.
Thus, the first wave of Caucasian (fair-skinned from the Caucasus region of Central Asia) Indo-European, Celtic maritime invasion of Britain and Ireland occurred around 3,000 BCE, roughly two thousand years after the olive-complected black-haired, brown-eyed Neolithic pastoralist Fomarians analogized from mythology colonized and displaced the Fir Bolg hunter-gatherers analogized from mythology, and 2,000 years before the second Celtic invasion.
Anthropologists believe the first save of Celtic migration from northwestern coastal France are likely recorded in Irish mythology as the Tuatha Dé Dannon demigods of light, life, and order who heroically defeated the sea demon Fomarians (the non-Indo-European first farmers of southern Europe) of darkness, death, chaos, and wildness and banished them back into the sea.
The second-wave of migration of fairer-skinned Caucasian Indo-Europeans were Celts from the northern basque region of Spain (the same basques with whom Celts share their more archaic Meso- and Neo-lithic ancestry) is recorded in the earliest histories and mythologies as the Milesian invasion of Ireland (ca. 1000 BCE). The Milesian Celts in Irish mythology are dubbed in the myths the sons of Míl Espáine, recorded in early histories and mythologies as a Spanish Celtic warrior. This mythology and history is corroborated through genetic science which identified this distinct wave of Celtic migration as originating in the northern Spanish basque region.
Interestingly, Irish men with Gaelic (Celtic) surnames (last names) today have the highest incidence of a y-chromosome (only inherited through males) genetic mutation or marker (a new genetic change shared by a population) identified as the Haplogroup 1 (or Rb1) genetic marker. The RB1 marker is associated with this Celtic-basque wave of migration, the last Celtic invasion of the island around 1,000 BCE.
The Milesian invasion is recorded in mythology and the early apocryphal histories in the Milenesians vanquishing the Tuatha de Dannon (children of Danu, the people thought to be associated with the earlier Celtic invasion from the northwestern coast of France around 3,000 BCE) into the fairy forts under the ancient burial mounds into the Celtic Otherworld.
A darker interpretation of where the Tuatha Dé were sent by the invading (basque) Milesians as being the ancient burial mounds as portals to the Celtic Otherworld might have these myths darkly recording their actual violent displacement by the invading northern Spanish basque Celtic Milesians. Both groups of Celtic tribes believed in reincarnation, after all, and the Otherworld was where people waited for a time before reincarnating after their death. Their spirits entered that world through entrances under the ancient burial mounds. In the myths, the Tuatha Dé fight two battles of Moytura with the Fomarians before vanquishing the sea demons (who arrived in Ireland across the Celtic Sea) in the second battle into the sea. This myth could similarly record the Tuatha Dé violently displacing the older Fomarians as they colonized (prior to their own vanquishing by the Milesians), pushing the Fomarians back into the sea from whence they had come across the Celtic Sea from Brittany (more western than northwestern France).
In any event, anthropologists believe genetic science has helped make sense of Irish prehistory possibly recorded in their corrupted earliest histories and mythology in this way. Interestingly, both of these Celtic genetic haplogroup markers associated with each of these migrations (the one from northwestern France around 3000 BCE, and the one from northern basque Spain around 1000 BCE) also seemed to rapidly replace the older Fur Bolg-Fomarian gene pool, whether by numerical superiority in interbreeding or violent displacement with both waves of migration.
Together, these fair-skinned Celtic pastoralist colonizers from the northwestern coast of France (who invaded from Scotland around 3,000 BCE) and the second wave of Celtic Indo-Europeans who similarly invaded from Scotland around 1,000 BCE from northern Spain with the Celtic-Basque DNA make up the largest segment of the DNA for modern Irish people, around a third (with the first third from the Fir Bolg Mesolithic hunters and Fomarian southern Spanish and Sardinian Neolithic pastoralists, and the last third from the late Medieval viking invasions).
Thus, it appears thanks to genetic science, we know that the Irish began as a farming Middle Eastern people who mixed with the earliest native modern human hunter-gatherer inhabitants of Europe in the descendants of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in southern Spain and Sardinia. Their descendants continued to colonize the Iberian Peninsula of Spain, then moved up its western then northern coast before colonizing the Atlantic western coast of France and crossing the Celtic Sea by boat to Ireland from the Brittany Peninsula and colonized it around 5,000 BCE (the Fomarians). There they encountered the descendants of the Ice Age Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Ireland and displaced them (the Fir Bolg).
Around two thousand years later, roughly 3,000 BCE, the first fair-skinned Celtic invaders from Scotland (The Tuatha Dé Danann of mythology) from the northwestern coast of France arrived and colonized the island, displacing the Neolithic pastoralists (The Fomarian sea demons), vanquishing them back to the sea. And the final migration of Celts occurred around 1,000 BCE with the Milenesian basque northern Spanish Celtic invasion of Ireland from Scotland vanquishing the Tuatha Dé to the ancient burial mounds (to the grave?).
Each of these episodes seems to make better sense of Irish mythology and the archaeology given the revelations from genetic science despite the clearly mythological or fantastical elements recorded in these myths that contradict genetic reality.
Celtic Origins: Painting Historical Context
Samhain was the fall Celtic harvest and fertility festival on October 31st to the chthonic (🔊, cthonic means underworld) god Crom Cruach (Cromm Crúaich in Old Irish, pronounced Cromm Crew-ACK 🔊) that represents the earliest known Celtic origin point for our traditions.
Their language and culture are described as Goidelic (goy-del-ic, or Irish Celtic), differing from the Scottish Gaelic or Pictish Celts, the Brittonic/Bryonthic Welsh, Cornish, and Breton Celts, and the mainland European Gallic Celts. Now that we have a sense for who the Irish Celts were, a broad overview of the historical time periods in which these customs evolved can help us contextualize the evolution of Samhain rites.
Samhain traditions were developed by the Goidelic Celts (and modified by the Roman pagans and Christians) during:
The Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE). The Bronze Age was the Irish prehistoric (before written records) time period when bronze tools and weapons replaced stone ones and the fair-skinned, Caucasian Indo-European pastoralist (herding) people from which the Celts descended migrated into Europe from the Central Asian steppes, arriving in Ireland in two distinct waves. During this time period, the burial practices and solar cult of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who colonized Ireland around 8,000 BCE were adopted and adapted by the southern Spanish and Sardinian Neolithic pastoralists who invaded around 5,000 BCE. The solar cult and burial practices of these first inhabitants of Ireland were then further adopted and modified by the first wave of fair-skinned Celts from northwestern coastal France around 3,000 BCE. The northwestern French Celts, Neolithic Early European Farmers, or Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, or their genetically and culturally mixed descendants may have constructed the outer stone megaliths at the Killycluggin Stone Circle where Samhain rites began around 2500 BCE.
The Iron Age (1200-5o0 BCE). The Iron Age was the Irish prehistoric time period when iron tools and weapons began to replace bronze ones and the fair-skinned Indo-European Celts from northern Spain (the basque Celts) invaded Ireland. The Milenesian Celtic invaders consolidated Irish mythology and the earliest histories and divided Ireland into the modern four Irish provinces (then kingdoms) of Ulster (Northern Ireland), Munster (Southern Ireland), Leinster (Eastern Ireland) and Connacht (Western Ireland) which is recorded in the Ulster Cycle of Irish Mythology. Samhain traditions originating with the Mesolithic Fir Bolg hunter-gatherers and Neolithic pastoralist sea demon Fomarians were continued by Bronze-Iron Age Celts from northwestern coastal France (Tuatha De). These burial and solar cult practices were consolidated by the basque Celtish Milenesian Irish at the Killycluggin Stone Circle in Crom Cruach's cult during this time period. Its originally half-buried central stone hero head with its La Tène curvilinear designs date from about 450 BCE-100 BCE and are associated with the basque Milesian Celts. The associated Tuatha De northwestern French coastal Celtic Samhain rites at Tlachtga Hill (pronounced clackda hill) were transferred likely in the 6th Century BCE (500s) to Tara Hill, the seat of the high kings in the kingdom of Leinster after the invading Laigin Celtic tribe displaced Tlachtga's Luigni Celtic tribe.
Classical Antiquity (700-400 CE) to the Roman Republic &Empire (400 BCE-476 CE). Classical Antiquity is the historic time period focused on the rise of Greco-Roman civilizations/empires in European history. The prehistoric (to the Irish Celts, but historic to the invading Romans) time period when the Goidelic, Gaelic, and Bryonthic Celtic tribes of the British Isles united to resist Roman incursions into the British Isles, their early histories and mythologies were consolidated by the Milesians into a framework, and the Bryonthic Celtic tribes were defeated by the Romans. Towards the end of this time period, Rome adopted Christianity as its official religion which began to spread in the British Isles. Imperial Rome had sought to extinguish Celtic paganism since Julius Caesar's Gaulic Wars in the First Century BCE/BC (100s BCE/BC).
The Medieval Period (476 CE-1500s CE). The Middle Ages, comprised of the Early (Dark Ages), Middle, and Late Medieval Periods, are also known collectively as The Age of Faith. During this period, monasteries became the center of Western European life after the fall of Rome in Western Europe. The Bishop of Rome (Pope) and the Roman Catholic Church and French-German Holy Roman Empire rose in power in Western Europe and replaced the political, social, and economic infrastructure of the Roman Empire. The Christian Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire flourished in Eastern Europe and the Levant (Middle East) before falling to the Ottoman Turks. Some historians date the Middle Ages from the fall of Rome in Western Europe in 476 CE/AD through the Renaissance (cultural rebirth of literacy, art, secularism, and humanism) of the 1300s CE/AD. Other historians include the Renaissance and dating the Middle Ages then through to the 15th Century's (1400s CE) Age of Exploration birthed by the Renaissance. During this time period, Goidelic Celts resisted St. Patrick's and Roman-Catholicism's mission to extinguish Celtic pagan practices. The first mythologies and histories were finally written down in Latin in the Late Medieval Period (1000s-1200s) when the first castles in Europe were being constructed and the Crusades took place. Or, they were compiled from earlier source material from the Early Middle Ages (Dark Ages, 400s-800s) that has since been lost to the ages. During this time period, Celtic Samhain traditions syncretically blended with with Roman Catholicism's Allhallowtide or were practiced covertly, and customs more familiar to us began.
Tracing the precise origins of our Samhain (Halloween) traditions from Irish prehistory into the Medieval Period is a difficult task. We've prepared a more exhaustive treatise about Samhain's prehistoric origins (click here) for those hoping for a more thorough discussion or review of the prehistorical and historical evidence for- and the evolution of- Samhain rites, as well as competing claims over its cultural hearths and birthplace(s).
In the following digest of Celtic prehistory and history written with the purpose of explaining the iconography of our logos, we clarify the visual meaning we intended in the symbols appearing in them lest they be misconstrued.
Likewise, the basis for Crom's cult is explored in some detail here as little is known about him and what is thought to be known is largely speculative and subject to debate. In addition, other Celtic deities are also associated with Samhain in Irish myths and at other sites that serve as cultural hearths for Samhain customs. Thus, it's important to differentiate in explaining why it appears that it is Crom's cult at the Killycluggin stone circle (vandalized/destroyed by early Christians) that best represent our most educated guess at where they actually began, and why it figures so largely in our logos.
Celtic Origins: The Ancient Celtic Origins of Samhain
The worldview and cosmology appearing throughout the following sections has been integrated by Celtic Reconstructionists who use: the surviving oral tradition and clan lore; Roman pagan and Christian records; the earliest Irish mythologies and histories; and similar work by Gallic, Gaelic, and Bryonthic Celtic scholars to assumble a coherent worldview and cosmology for the ancient Celts as a whole.
Recognizing Crom as a chthonic deity can mislead. Unlike Gallic Celts (mainland continental European Celts from Roman Gaul), the Goidelic (pronounced GOY-del-ic, Irish) Celts did not imagine the afterlife as a dark or sinister place in their mythology (except in those myths associated specifically with Samhain but that likely represent Christian influence as their mythology wasn't recorded or their history wasn't compiled until late during the Age of Faith). In most of those myths, they did imagine that the entrances to it were fairy forts existing under the ancient human burial mounds and other sacred sites (often constructed over caverns or crevices) in being located underground.
But the world they imagined there as an Otherworld depicted in mythology as the Land of Youth & Plenty where endless food, joy, youth, and immortality were enjoyed before departed souls were reborn. Even if supernatural otherworldly spirits, demigods, gods, departed spirits, and creatures of all kinds—both dark and light—inhabited it (the fey or fairy of folk Celtic faith), the Celtic Otherworld was a heavenly magical realm, described with ethereal mists and shimmering in silver and golden light. Crom is depicted as the wizened old man shrouded in the mist sitting atop the highest mountain, broken or bent one of the hill, and this is his domain in the earliest cosmology according to clan lore and surviving oral tradition.
The earliest archaeological evidence for the Celtic Samhain arguably exists at the Iron Age Killycluggin Stone (pronounced Coil a Chlogáin 🔊) hero head or cult icon in County Cavan, Ireland with relative dates from 400 BCE-100 BCE (from the curvilinear La Tène artwork designs inscribed or carved into it, definitively associating the central Killycluggin stone with the Milesian invasion ca. 1000 BCE, and not the earlier Tuatha Dé Celtic invaders either). Its encircling megaliths relatively date (from similar Mesolithic to Bronze Age stone circles in Ireland) to around 2500 BCE, prior to the arrival of the Milenisian Celts on the island, and probably too early for the Tuatha De northwestern French coastal Celts either.
Thus, Crom's cult at the Killycluggin stone circle nearly necessarily represents the continuation and modification of a much older solar cult and burial practices which were modified by each succeeding wave of migration. The more ancient mound burials and megalithic circles around Ireland definitely date older than the Celts' arrivals, so must have been originally erected by the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers or Neolithic southern early farmers.
As the outer (destroyed) stone circle here dates from 2,500 BCE, it was most likely erected by the original Mesolithic hunter-gatherers or else the invading southern European Neolithic (Fomarian) farmers who crossed the Irish Sea from the Iberian Peninsula around 5,000 BCE. The outer circle could have also been erected by the first wave of the late Bronze-early Iron Age Tuatha Dé Celtic invaders from northwestern coastal France who invaded from Scotland.
Who, precisely, erected the outer stone circle or others like it across Ireland will likely remain a mystery, but its erection at around 2,500 BCE was more likely by the Fir Bolg hunter-gatherers or Fomarian Neolithic pastoralists as the Tuatha Dé first wave of Celtic invaders from northwestern coastal France were just relatively recent arrivals (who'd been there for about five-hundred years).
It could be that both groups of the farming and pastoralist invaders (the southern Spanish and Sardinians who arrived ca. 5,000 BCE, and the first wave of Celtic invaders ca. 3,000 BCE) that arrived a thousand years apart and their descendants were both already culturally and genetically mixed by the time the outer stone circle was erected. Perhaps the descendants of the Neolithic south Spanish and Sardinian farmers and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had already integrated with the recently arrived and colonizing first Celtic wave from northwestern coastal France from Scotland around 3,000 BCE in that half century before the surrounding stones were erected. We may never know who, specifically, erected the outer stone megalithic circle but from other ancient mound burials and megaliths scattered across Ireland, we can guess they were initially constructed by the descendants of the Neolithic farmers and Mesolithic hunters who were mixing with the the Tuatha Dé Celtic invaders from northwestern coastal France (Normandy).
But from artwork on the central stone at the Killycluggin stone circle, we also find the oldest discovered (450-100 BCE) authentically Celtic origins of Samhain rites in Ireland in its curvilinear La Tène design, explaining why the central Goidelic (Irish) Celtic Killycluggin Stone and its encircling twelve megaliths (a circle of large stone menhirs) figure centrally in our logos. The solar cult of the Neolithic Sardinian and southern Spanish farmers appears to have been adopted and adapted by at first the Tuatha Dé (~3,000 BCE) Celtic invaders, and then the final Celtic wave of Milesian basque Celts (~1,000 BCE).
Spoiler alert: Contrary to legend, it's actually fairly unlikely that the child and human sacrifice recorded by early Irish Catholic monks (or earlier Roman pagan or Catholic chroniclers at other Celtic sites) actually took place there. There is literally no physical archaeological evidence of the same at any of the locations associated with Samhain rites. Thus, it appears to be an invention of anti-Celtic Romans and Christians. This topic is discussed in some detail in a forthcoming section.
Celtic Origins: Celtic Samhain
According to all the annalistic (historical) sources, on October 31st's Celtic New Year, Samhain, inter- and intra- tribal marriages were arranged, taxes and tribute were paid to one's liege (lord) or the high kings /lords (or queens), tribal rendezvous and meetings were held, wars were stopped and peace was made, or new inter- or intra- tribal wars were announced for the spring, and Samhain chariot and horse racing festivities provided a unifying and homogenizing effect on Goidelic (Irish) Celtic culture and peoples despite their tribal and regional cultural differences.
In the spring, six months opposite Samhain, Beltaine (pronounced bel-tuh-NAH), or “the first day of summer," marked the continuation of the pastoral cycle begun on Samhain in the turning out of cattle to graze after being wintered since Samhain. Beltaine's name may derive from a Celtic god of healing and fire called Beil, may mean bright fire from the Goidelic “belo-te(p)niâ," or may come from the Gallic (mainland European Celtic) name for their sun god Belenus, analogue to the Goidelic (Irish) Celt's sun god Lugh (pronounced LuuH with a hard h).
May 1st's Beltaine marked the first day of summer and the arrival of the annual time of year when Celts began driving cattle herds out to graze for summer. Celts danced around decorated trees, picked the first flowers, and washed their faces in dew. The Celtic cattle pastoralists (herders) drove their herds through two bonfires for good luck. Celtic youth jumped over bonfires three times for good luck in the coming light half of the year that it signaled as the second of the two liminal festivals of the year (a threshold festival in which otherworldly creatures and spirits could interact with our world), straddling the boundaries of the two halves of each year, the light half, and the dark half, when otherworldly beings were able to enter our world and interact with us.
Interestingly, although not liminal between the light and dark halves of the year as May 1st's Beltaine or October 31st's Samhain, during the other sacred fire festivals of Imbolc (pronounced im-bolk; Feb. 1, the first day of spring), and Lughnasadh (pronounced LuuH-nah-sah; named after the sungod Lugh, pronounced LuuH with a hard h; Aug. 1, the first harvest of summer), spirits and supernatural creatures were believed able to enter our world and interact with us in addition to the two liminal days. But their activity on the festival days of Imbolc or Lughnasadh paled into comparison to their activity on the liminal Beltaine and Samhain fire festival days that demarcated the transitions between the dark and light halves of the year. Otherworldly beings were most active of all of the fire festival days on Samhain.
Similarly worthy of note, although also similarly not liminal, Litha (pronounced lee-thuh) or the Midsummer Solstice (the longest day of the year) on June 21st, and An Grianstad (pronounced uhn gree un-SAHD), or the Winter Solstice (sunstop, because the sun rises and sets at the same point on the horizon; the shortest day of the year), so-called cross days,were also times otherworldly beings and creatures were thought to be similarly active as well as the four quarter cross fire festival days (Samhain [Oct. 31], Imbolc [Feb. 1], Beltane [May 1], & Lughnasadh [Aug 1] in oder).
Winter darkness began the dark half of each year on October 31st with the Goidelic Celtic New Year through Crom's Samhain rites at the Killycluggin Stone Circle. In ancient times, it likely began with sacrifices of valuables, food, and livestock as an annual ransom or tribute to Crom for the return of Lugh in the spring and in order to ensure a mild but wet winter to ensure a bountiful harvest the next season.
Saint Patrick Drives the Snakes from Ireland: Roman (Irish) Catholics Forbid Celtic Druidism in Ireland
According to tradition, St. Patrick chased Ireland's snakes into the sea. PHOTOGRAPH BY CORBIS/NATGEO
Before discussing Crom Cruach (whose hero head and cult icon at the Killycluggin Stone Circle the early Christians vandalized and destroyed as they forbade continued practice of the Celtic Druidic religion), it's important first to set the historical context for these early Christians and their bias against Celtic pagans in order to dispel the darker and more sinister connotations of Celtic Samhain still erroneously circulating among Christians millennia later.
Julius Caesar claimed that common Celts were kept in a state of near slavery by their elite Druid priests and warrior knight chieftains. With all the sinister and spurious claims of the Celts rampant in the late Roman Empire then Byzantine Christian empire, it's no wonder a non-Celtic Roman Catholic slave who'd have the pretense to convert the island to Christianity would not have favorable views of the Druidic religion of the Celtic people he sought to convert (see the upcoming Dubious Roman Claims: Infanticide, Human Sacrifice, and Cannibalism to explore the prejudices of the early Christians towards the Celts and their origin).
It's interesting to note at the outset that the myth of St. Patrick driving all the snakes out of Ireland is, of course, an allegorical reference to him stamping out Celtic paganism, not literal snakes. We know this to be so as snakes were strongly associated with Druids and their magic by the early Christians in Ireland. Further, we know, according to paleontologists and biologists, Ireland has not one (nor did it ever have) single species of indigenous snake.
The source of Celtic Druids being associated with snakes is thought to be the fabled charms they allegedly wore around their necks. According to the first century CE Roman Pliny the Elder, Druids wore Serpent Glass, Serpent's Eggs, Adder's Stones/Eggs, Druid Glass, or Druid Eggs necklaces as their distinguishing badge. Yet, the association of Celtic Druidism with serpents (long associated with the biblical snake in the garden of Eden and, therefore, the devil) is regarded with some skepticism given these aforementioned Roman anti-Celtic biases and may ultimately in reality be apocryphal. However, whether or not they actually wore them as they recorded in their records, the belief that Celtic Druids wore them according to the first century CE Pliny the Elder's descriptions are the likely source of the allegorical myth of St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland and association of Celts with serpents, as well as with pagan devil worship (as the snake in the Garden of Eden was equated by Christians to be the devil in disguise).
Adder's stones are made of natural glassy flint stone with holes in them (said to be perforated by the hissing of adders' tongues). They were fabled by Pliny to be made of hardened snake saliva and venom from their hissing (coughed up by writhing snake pits of massed slithering venomous adders in orgiastic congress that must be caught by cloak at the correct lunar cycle or on the Midsummer Solstice). These charms or talismans were thought to imbue them with magical powers deriving from the massed serpents in congress somehow giving Druids magickal power as they uttered their spells over them to the spirits or gods.
In reality, the stones that the folklore maintains are the actual origins of the Celt's fabled badges were actually collected on beaches. These stones are made naturally by Pholad clams burrowing into glassy flint, sandstone, basalt, or other softer rock in the ocean. Rarely, they're formed naturally on the shore through erosion and weathering when a harder stone ends up caught in a depression rolled back and forth by waves and tides, eroding holes in the soft rock over time (see the following images). It's believed polished natural stones were affixed in the holes worn through the stones by Celts, giving the appearance of glass, hence their descriptions.
If acculturation patterns of those missionized by Roman Catholicism elsewhere on Earth held true of the Celts, this early Irish Catholic myth records the eradication of only overt pagan Celtic practice in Ireland in likely both feigned and authentic replacement by- as well as syncretic blending with- overt Roman (Irish) Catholic Christianity. As pagan practices which faced growing social approbation by disapproving early Christians were driven underground, they would have been passed on secretly within families and clans across generations. For the record, this pattern of acculturation does appear to hold as true in Ireland as they do elsewhere in the world missionized by Roman Catholics. Celtic Reconstructionists would be at a loss to reconstruct their worldview and cosmology without the clan lore and oral traditions secretly passed down through the centuries in families and clans away from the prying eyes of the Roman (Irish) Catholic Church and its clergy.
Adder Stones, Druid Glass, Druid Eggs, or Serpent Eggs were worn around the neck of Druids who placed natural (polished) stones that looked like glass into these natural stones and were fabled to give their spells and incantations magickal power.
Illustration of the two methods of their natural creation. Right: Pholad Clam burrowed into softer rock.
Adder's stones are naturally formed by erosion or clams.
A photograph of a Pholad Clam burrowed into basalt.
RIGHT:
Another historical example of a Druid's Serpent's Egg described by Pliny. Note from these two photographs the drastically different appearance of these objects recorded by archivists in museums as being Adder's Stones, likely suggesting that they were actually worn by Druids dubious.
Adder's stones are usually formed by Pholad clams seeking protection from predators who burrow into softer rock
BOTTOM:
A photograph of an object purported to be a historical Welsh Druid's Glass Adder's Stone. CREDIT: Image: © Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales
Cromm Cruaich and St. Patrick. Illustrated by L.D. Symington. Photo Credit: By Katharine Tynan - The rhymed life of St. Patrick
Who Crom was as a deity has largely been lost to time as there are only a few scant references to Crom in the earliest myths and histories, leading some to suggest he may have even been an invention of the Christians.
In this illustration, Crom's iconography is not of the wizened old man of the mist, bent one of the broken hills, the crouching darkness, but here Crom is instead depicted as the chief god of the evil Fomarian aos sí (pronounced ee-SHE), counterpart to the Tuatha Dé Danann (or Tuatha Dé for short) aos sí. Crom is depicted as the one-eyed Baylor (pronounced BALL-er), chief of the immortal Fomarian aos sí of darkness, death, chaos, and wildness, sworn enemies of the Tuatha Dé aos sí of life, order, and light. A Medieval place name poem about the Killycluggin stone circle's location on the Plains of Slaughter also describes Crom with a single eye, but the conflation of Balor with Crom is likely a Christian confusion introduced in the late Medieval Period when the first Irish histories and mythology was being compiled by them.
It appears from the Christian mythology and folklore surrounding St. Patrick and Crom (Crom Dubh as his cult survived, meaning black Crom, or the crouching darkness, the dark crooked one), and visual depictions of St. Patrick's casting down of Crom, it's clear that monastic and Irish Catholic culture equated Crom with Balor (whom the Christians equated with the devil).
In truth, Crom was never Balor, nor was he the devil.
Irish mythology itself was first recorded in the Late or “High" Medieval Period (when the first castles were being built, replacing thatched hut manors with wooden palisades) in several books, the: Lebar na Núachongbála (The Book of Leinster, c. 1160 CE), Lebar na nUidre (The Book of the Dun Cow, c. before 1106 CE with later additions), Leabhar Baile an Mhota (The Book of Ballymote, c.1390-1391 CE), Leabhar Mór Mhic Fhir Bhisigh (The Great Book of Lecan, c. 1397-1418 CE), and Leabhar Buidhe Lecain (The Yellow Book of Lecan, c. 1318 CE).
Strangely, the Irish myths appearing in them don't mention Crom, probably owing to the taboo nature of Crom's cult as being targeted for eradication by St. Patrick and the Roman (Irish) Catholic mission in Ireland during the early Middle Ages. Some scholars think that's evidence that Crom wasn't actually a pre-Christian Celtic pagan god but rather simply a deified personification of winter, darkness, and death.
St Patrick casts down Cromm Cruach and the twelve idols; from a 1911 illustration by Curtis Dunham.
Credit: Wikimedia: Wurra-Wurra; a legend of Saint Patrick at Tara
Crom as the Cult Icon of the Goidelic Celtic Killycluggin Stone and Twelve Encircling Stones
However, we can be reasonably certain from both the archaeological (prehistoric) and annalistic (historical, textual mythologies, poems, and histories) evidence that Cromm is the oldest Celtic pagan god of fertility (and the harvest) and death or the Otherworld. But as one of the oldest ancient gods of the Celts not figuring prominently in Irish myths and with both the literary or historical textual sources scant, he is a mysterious deity and thus subject to much speculation and debate today.
Because Crom isn't featured prominently in Irish mythology, some scholars differentiate him from the Celtic pantheon (the whole group of gods and demigods) of Irish mythology as simply an ancient prehistoric personification and deification of darkness, winter, and death of a superstitious, primitive people. These scholars think Crom isn't an actual pre-Christian pagan god of the Goidelic (Irish) Celts or the original people they displaced. Some consequently think Crom is a creation of the monastic culture of Middle Age Roman (Irish) Catholic monks. However, this view seems to ignore multiple historical accounts of St. Patrick's intentional eradication of Crom's cult as an actual deity as recorded in the earliest Christian annalistic sources, the existence of Crom's central Killycluggin stone and the folklore surrounding it as a Celtic hero head or his cult icon and its encircling megaliths that were destroyed by the early Christians (corroborating the early Christian histories of St. Patrick's destruction of it), and Crom's cult's continuance in Crom Dubh's derivative cult surviving to modern times today all over Ireland.
It seems this interpretation that Crom was never an ancient pagan god was ironically influenced by the same dubious and clearly biased Medieval Christian accounts of Crom as famously one-dimensional in being cruel, bloodthirsty, or evil. The proponents of this interpretation cite their bias in these early sources as the principal evidence for Crom not actually being a pagan god of the ancient Celts. But this view disregards surviving oral tradition, practices, and clan lore indicating Crom is an actual deity as well as the clear archaeological evidence that he was a deity once worshipped at the Killycluggin stone circle in time immemorial. In the lore, Crom may be transcendent, aloof or indifferent—that is, he a non-interventionist cosmic deity—if not at times benevolent and not all menacing or malevolent either. Crom is just a necessary deity.
Crom's domain over the harvest and fertility associates him with “The" Dagda (pronounced DOG-da), the giant good god of life and death and the literal father of all the Celtic gods, “who, in the story of the battle of Mag-tured, is said to be so called [the “good god"] because he promised to do more than all the other gods together," illuminating his namesake as the “good god" from dagos, “good," and deivos, “god." Thus his name the Dagda literally means the good god. Thus, he's referred to in the myths as “THE Dagda," meaning the good god, literally.
Crom is also largely analogous to the Dagda in sharing domain over fertility and the harvest (life) and death in mythology with The Dagda's magical club he uses to give and take mortal life. Thus, many scholars believe Crom is at least an equivalent or alternate overgod deity to The Dagda, with powers greater than all of the other gods and power over them, something else the Dagda and Crom share. Consequently, some believe he's the same god.
Some also suppose Crom is perhaps a cryptic rebranding and concealment of- Crom to make him more palatable to the early Christians as a jollier more Santa Claus kind of character but with coded references in his myths which would be understood only by the initiate as only Goidelic Celtic Druidic cultural insiders would understand. It should be noted that there are no archaeological sites associated with the Dagda predating Crom's Killycluggin stone circle, suggesting Crom's cult is indeed actually older.
Some suggest that Crom is perhaps an earlier and more ancient impersonal (aloof, transcendent) antecedent (predecessor) pre-Celtic cosmic god (simply serving a function to explain the movement of the sun and weather at whose mercy these pastoralists were for their survival). They suppose perhaps Crom is the more indifferent and less involved (if not distant and seemingly cruel) god of a Middle-New Stone- and Ice- Age people. As Ice Age living was inestimably difficult, they suppose Crom was the indifferent, non-interventionist original over-god of the people (the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and the Neolithic early European farmers from southern Spain and Sardinia) that the Celts displaced. If this interpretation is correct, then it could be that Irish mythology's representations of The Dagda, the “good god" of life and death could cryptically represent the benevolent enhancement of Crom's original attributes by the invading northwestern French coastal Celts, or else that he might represent a concealment and re-branding of Cromby the northern Spanish basque Milesian Celts after his cult's oppression by the early Christians in Ireland in the fourth-eighth Centuries CE/AD.
In the early records and mythologies, The Dagda is described as: “the lord of great knowledge," “He has power over corn [sic, here not meant as maize but as cereal grains, grasses] and milk" as “the god of the earth," “because of the greatness of his power," “an under-earth god of fertility and abundance," and, “the principal god of the pagans," which is also precisely how Crom is described, perhaps revealing that The Dagda is actually a concealment, and in fact one and the same deity as Crom.
In J.A. MacCulloch's 1911 The Religion of the Ancient Celts, he cites late 18th Century (1700s CE) British General Charles Vallancey's interesting claim (who elsewhere is responsible for wrongly making up a fictional nonexistent Celtic lord of death he named Samhain, a fabrication that erroneously still circulates among Christians today; thus, his claims should be generally regarded as suspect) felt the resemblance so uncanny that he noted that:
“...citing a text now lost, [Vallencey, sic] says that Crom-eocha was a name of Dagda, and that a motto at the sacrificial place at Tara read, ‘Let the altar ever blaze to Dagda,'"
suggesting further that Crom and Dagda are actually one in the same deity.
MacCulloch also illuminates that The Dagda is recorded throughout Irish mythology as “king of the síde" in having domain over the aos sí (otherworldly gods, demigods, spirits, and creatures) of the sidhe Otherworld portals. He provides another point of comparison to Crom who similarly has domain over these portals and the aos sí,
“In Irish accounts of the síd, Dagda has the supremacy [over all the sidhe in assigning different deities to different sidhes in mythology, sic], wrested later from him by Oengus [who in the associated myths supplants his father in alternately displacing him as lord of his father's sid or in killing his father], but generally each owner of a síd [sic] is its lord."
MacCulloch elaborates how the confusion of Celtic deities likely occurred over the ages, making them virtually inextricable (impossible to extract to determine which was older and newer) today:
“Generally speaking, there were many local gods in Gaul [mainland, continental Europe, among the Gallic Celts, sic] with similar functions but different names, and this may have been true of Ireland. Perhaps the different names given to Dagda, Manannan, and others were simply names of similar local gods, one of whom became prominent, and attracted to himself the names of the others."
McCullouch further illuminates the difficulty of ascertaining the evolution and position of equivalent gods in speculating about how this happens in discussing how a possibly older (or younger) cult of Oengus (Aengus) may have been integrated into Irish mythology as Dagda's son,
“The beautiful and fascinating Oengus [Aengus, sic] is sometimes called Mac Ind Oc, ‘Son of the Young Ones,' [suggesting Dagda's cult was newer than Oengus' cult, sic] i.e. Dagda and Boand, or In Mac Oc, ‘The Young Son [suggesting the opposite, sic].' This name, like the myth of his disinheriting his father [Oengus was to supplant his father in literally killing him in some versions of the myth or else scheming to steal his domain from him, sic], may point to his cult superseding [overcoming, sic] that of Dagda. If so, he may then have been affiliated to the older god [Dagda, sic], as was frequently done in parallel cases, e.g. in Babylon. Oengus may thus have been the high god of some tribe who assumed supremacy, ousting the [older, sic] high god of another tribe [Dagda, sic], unless we suppose that Dagda was a pre-Celtic god with functions similar to those of Oengus, and that the Celts adopted his [Dagda, sic] cult but gave that of Oengus a higher place."
The 650 CE/AD Cathach (battler), also known as The Psalter of St Columba (Colum Cille), is one of the oldest surviving manuscripts from Ireland. The rest like the original versions and source material for the Book of Takings, The Annals of the Four Masters, and The Lore of Placenames have disintegrated and are lost to history. Credit: Irish Script On Screen: A Timeline of Irish Manuscripts
Crom is likewise strongly associated with Lugh (pronounced luuH with a hard h, sun god of mixed light and dark parentage), the great grandson and eventual king of The Dagda's Tuatha Dé Danann (the children of Danu) demigods of light, order, and life that The Dagda literally fathered with Danu. Lugh defeats the Fomarian's (sea demons of chaos and wildness) cruel chief Balor. Crom is nearly always implicated in Lugh's solar cult as he is the one who annually subdues Lugh in the Otherworld, explaining winter. Crom in the oldest annalistic sources is associated with fertility and rites to secure a bountiful harvest.
See The Coming of Cromm section for a more thorough, detailed, and exhaustive discussion of the evidence and evolution of the cosmology and beliefs of the solar cult of the ancient Goidelic Celts in prehistory: The History (and prehistory) of Halloween.
Readers may be interested in J.A. MacCullough's 1911 book The Religion of the Ancient Celts now in the public domain at Project Gutenberg (PDF version, HTML version).
According to one of the later late medieval annalistic (written) sources thought to ironically contain the earliest (oldest) references to the Druidic (Celtic priests) Celtic pantheon, The Annals of the Four Masters (1636), written by Franciscan friar Mícheál [Tadhg] Ó Cléirigh (chief compiler) with the aid of Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh (Mícheál's cousin), Fear Feasa O'Maolchonaire, and Cuchoigríche Ó Duibhgheannáin, Cromm is mentioned as one of the oldest of the old gods, along with:
The Dagda (the Tuatha de Dannon's [gods of light, order and life] chief overgod, patriarch and father, the “good god of life and death," a burly giant with a club that takes and gives away life, a harp that commands the weather, and a cauldron whose ladle fits two men from which infinite food can be produced),
Lugh (the sun god, The Dagda's handsome great grandson with a bloodthirsty spear of light with mixed light and dark parentage and his great grandfather's successor as The Tuatha Dé Danann chief who leads them to defeat the evil Fomarian gods of chaos, darkness and death), and
Balor (pronounced Ball-er, chief of the evil Fomarian gods of death and darkness depicted as a giant one-eyed cyclops).
However, despite the late authorship of the Annals, it's thought to contain the earliest written annalistic (historical) non-mythological references to the Druidic religion and its pantheon. The Annals of the Four Masters digested the earliest of the early medieval annals from the 6th-7th Centuries (500s-600s CE/AD). The early annalistic source materials for the four masters' compendium have since been lost to history through centuries of deterioration, so their account compiling the older material is the only surviving 17th Century CE compendium digesting the now lost earliest source material.
The Annals' earliest entries in Volume I are thought to have come from the Lebor Gabála Érenn, The Book of Takings (or Invasions), the earliest debased surviving copies of which are from the 11th Century (1000s or the aughts of the first millennium CE/AD). Its original source materials believed to be written in the 6th-7th Centuries have similarly been lost to the ages.
Unfortunately, The Book of Takings itself is now disregarded as a credible historical source given that our earliest copies of it have been too corrupted by the additions and license taken in them by copying scribes and their deletions, modifications, additions, and fanciful embellishments appearing in it (from comparisons between them and the more serious records found in the Annals) to be of much scholarly use. The Book of Takings/Invasions is still used as a mythological source. According to the Irish Republican Irish geek culture website AN SIONNACH FIONN:
“The Leabhar Gabhála Éireann itself is a synthetic-history of Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man began in the monastic schools of the 6th and 7th centuries and reaching its most developed form in the 12th century. It subsumed the pre-Christian oral beliefs of the Gaelic peoples into the body of the Roman, Greek and Judaeo-Christian myths accepted by the early Christian Church in Europe to give the Irish, Scots and Manx a suitable framework in which could be placed their histories, genealogies, poetry and literature. As a result the indigenous traditions of the pre-Christian Gaels pervade the compendium albeit largely in a hidden or debased form. It has survived in several broadly similar versions or redactions dating between the 11th and 17th centuries, evolving from mainly verse texts to a largely prose one."
An Sionnach Fionn continues in its skepticism towards these sources:
“The original Latin and Irish texts, dating to the 9th and 10th centuries CE, seem to have been inspired by the Judeo-Christian myth of the Old Testament statue of Moloch [which today appears to be based in a terrible repeated mistranslation of biblical translators, not an actual Canaanite god, sic] mixed with elements of an early version of the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann [Ibidem, sic], the legendary history of the island and its peoples (the metal-plated sacrificial idol came from the Bible [and its entirely made up, fictional Canaanite god Moloch which is based on a mistranslation of the word for sacrifice by biblical scribes copying it, leading scribes to accidentally invent a Canaanite deity who never existed, sic], while the ritual tributes at Samhain and the mass deaths stemmed from the [discredited as a historical source, sic] LGÉ). The possibility that the tale reflected distant memories of genuine pre-Christian rituals in connection with ‘sacred' monuments – decorated stones or pillars – seems likely enough, though the drama of human sacrifice and bloodshed is an inevitable bit of monastic embellishment."
The similarly lost 12th Century CE (1100s CE) The Metrical Dindsenchas Volume 4 (Lore of Placenames Poetry) found in surviving partial copies of it in 12th-15th Century manuscripts—corroborates The Annals' claim of Crom as THE original old god of the Celts—in a poem about the Plains of Slaughter:
“Tis there was the king-idol of Erin, namely the Crom Cróich, and around him twelve idols made of stones; but he was of gold. Until Patrick’s advent, he was the god of every folk that colonized Ireland."
In the following verses describing Tara Hill king Tigernmas' prostrate ritual sacrifice at Crom's icon whose worship he is said to have introduced, it claims they,“stirred his evil eye," before Crom killed three in four of his host in the midst of their act of worship of him. It's important to point out in this passage here paraphrased from the Dindsenchas that Crom has a singular evil eye (another literary conflation or allusion to Baylor), strong evidence of monastic (and not Celtic) conflation of Balor with Crom.
The Plains of Slaughter poem continues on in recording that those who ritually sacrificed their children to him to pour their blood around his icon for milk and corn (the word corn here is a transliteration error and shouldn't be read as maize, but rather as cereal grasses) would never see heaven. The judgment codified in this poem at least exhibits the strong Christian bias of the author, if not serving as evidence of anti-pagan Christian monastic propaganda. Scholars also think The Metrical Dindsenchas Volume 4 of the 1100s was similarly debased or corrupted by the same anti-Celtic monastic bias evident in the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann Book of Takings, and should be interpreted as more reflective of monastic culture than Celtic culture.
But if these earliest text references can illuminate anything about an ancient cult to Crom despite their glaring bias against the Celts or Crom, Crom is recorded in both sources as being the chief of all the gods worshipped by the Celts, not Dagda, mythical father of the The Tuatha Dé Danann (Danu's children) of Irish mythology. This suggests The Dagda was derivative from Crom, not the other way around. Thus, Crom is likely the Chthonic deity of the descendants of the southern European early farmers and Mesolithic hunters, or possibly the first wave of Celtic invaders. But as anthropologists associate the The Tuatha Dé with these invaders from Scotland from northwestern coastal French, whose overgod in mythology is The Dagda, it's probably more likely that Crom was the overgod of the descendants of the darker-skinned Mesolithic hunters as they mixed with the olive-skinned Neolithic farmers.
It thus could be that Crom was the older god of fertility, the harvest, winter, death, and darkness of the original darker people (Fir Bolg Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, or Fomarian south Spanish/Sardinian Neolithic pastoralists) displaced by the Celts and whose religion the Celts appear to have adopted and integrated. Balor and his conflation with Crom fits the Irish Catholic monastic vilification of Crom in replacing this ancient old god with the chief villain of Irish myths. The outer stone circle at Crom's Killycluggin stone circle was almost certainly erected by these earlier people (or the descendants of the older solar cult mixing with the first wave of Celtic invaders from northwestern coastal France), and so this explanation seems perhaps the most likely.
The Dagda, the over-god of Irish mythology (like the Greek Zeus), was associated with the harvest and fertility (and the giver of both life and death) but also death (with his club having the power of life and death and him doling out both). Lugh, his great grandson and the eventual successor of his great grandfather as chief god of the Tuatha Dé, led the defeat of the evil Fomarians (sea invader demons, possibly the early European farmers) in Irish mythology. Lugh is associated with the Goidelic Druidic solar cult (and is the most likely the truest namesake of the spring May 1st Beltaine in his Gallic name Belenos, and thereby both the solar cult of both Beltaine and Samhain).
If mythology is to prove instructive here, perhaps then as the Fomarians were the bad guys of the story (perhaps because they were in the way of Celtic invasion as the Emerald Isle's secondary inhabitants), and The Tuatha Dé, the first Celts arriving around 3,000 BCE, with Crom's cult icon featuring Celtic artwork (from 800-100 BCE), its good guys, perhaps it is doubly clear that he is their chthonic deity instead, and the Killycluggin stone circle records the integration of the older solar cult of the Mesolithic hunters and south European early farmers with the newly arrived solar cult of the northwestern coastal French Celts who arrived ca. 3,000 BCE, about a half century before the outer stone circle was erected, and the Milesian arrival correlates with the central stone cult icon around 1,000 BCE and integration of their solar cult with the 3,000 BCE northwestern coastal French Celts' solar cult. Thus it might appear that the Milesian over-god and chthonic deity was Crom, so the replacement of Crom with The Dagda as over-god instead records covert cryptic rebranding by Celts now forbidden from his worship.
Lugh was prophesied to kill Balor in Irish mythology. Anthropologists propose the mythical epic battle between the Tuatha Dé forces of order and light and Fomarian forces of chaos and darkness (fitting the motif of most Indo-European spiritual cosmologies) encodes the actual displacement and violent end of the original inhabitants of Ireland by the Goidelic Celts. So perhaps Lugh killing Balor and the Tuatha Dé vanquishing the Fomarians, and then the Milenesians vanquishing the Tuatha Dé to the fairy mounds in typical Indo-European fashion records the triumph of light over darkness, which seems to be a departure from older Meso- and Neo-lithic solar cult cosmology which was more dualistic. Perhaps it simply recorded the Celtic triumph and assumption of the older burial practices and solar cult from the Mesolithic Fir Bolg hunter-gatherers and Neolithic Fomarian early farmers, and maybe even the first northwestern coastal French Celtic people replaced by the basque Celtic sons of Mil.
If The Dagda is actually older (which appears unlikely), perhaps instead Crom may have evolved over time as a god over death and the Otherworld afterlife due to the need for a scapegoat juxtaposed against “the good god" of “life and death" overgod The Dagda. It's also interesting that no other god in the Irish mythological pantheon is recorded or described as “the good god," when being described nor are any other deities described as “the evil god(dess)," when named in myths which begs the question, “Who needed to qualify that The Dagda was the good god or good in the first place, and why?" and, “Isn't his goodness evident in his deeds in each myth without pointing it out?" It's redundant, so perhaps it does point us to something else going on here, a coded reference the initiate will understand revealing The Dagda is actually Crom.
It begs the question, “If there was never the evil god, or similarly a/an evil god to The Dagda, why did The Dagda need clarification as being good, or ‘the good god,' in the first place?" So maybe scholars who have speculated that The Dagda may, in fact, be Crom, just codified in Irish myth only to the initiated in order to hide his cult and his worship from the Christians who were intent on destroying it. Maybe there was benevolent enhancement of Crom by the Celts in The Dagda. So maybe Celtic bards developed this convention in naming The Dagda lest there be any doubt Crom is Dagda or good god, just like from surviving clan lore we know all good Celts actually knew who Crom was before he was demonized and vilified by the Christians and his cult forbade.
Modern clan lore within the black dragon clan of Celtic Seanchai (pronounced SHAWN-ha, keeper of clan lore and stories) J.D. Castle's family teaches that Crom was actually a dragon—actually two dragons (one of the land and air, or of light and order; one of the sea, or of darkness, chaos, and wildness) as his primordial dualistic avatars. Castle explains these avatars or physical bodies (as a pair of dualistic dragons) were the embodiment of Crom's neutral draigsl natural energy in perfect neutral balance. He elaborates that his clan lore teaches Crom was the grand chieftain of both the Tuatha Dé and the Fomarians, ranking above The Dagda and Balor, ultimate ruler of all of the aos sí (pronounced ee-SHE), both light and dark, sitting atop Carrauntoohil's peak (or in alternate lore in a different place, Croagh Patrick). The surviving clan lore, only some of which is shared for public consumption, in elucidating Crom as not an all-menacing and all-sinister god then as the grand chieftain of both the Tuatha Dé and Fomarians, above their respective chiefs in the mythology, Dagda and Balor, may also actually suggest The Dagda in Irish mythology thus could be a cryptic covert concealment or coded covert continuation of Crom Cruach's cult more palatable to the disapproving early Christians.
Recall both Crom and The Dagda share domain over the harvest and death and the Otherworld, and are two of the ancient old gods in the annalistic sources. Did ancient Milesian Celts contending with the Roman invaders and Christian missionaries reinvent Crom as The Dagda, concocting jovial heroic stories of an essentially good god to conceal and continue his worship more openly perhaps, having a good perpetual inside joke and laugh at the outsiders?
But if this speculative interpretation is inaccurate (The Dagda is not equivalent to Crom, or Crom wasn't resurrected in Irish mythology in a form more palatable to the Christians after nearly being stamped out by them as The Dagda), and The Dagda preceded Crom in the development of Goidelic Druidic religion, perhaps instead The Dagda may have evolved over time into both Lugh with the sun god representing Dagda's good side of light, order, and life, and Crom representing darkness, chaos, and death.
Some have supposed Lugh's mixed Tuatha and Fomarian parentage also echoes The Dagda's dualistic nature, echoing Crom's older dualistic nature, insisting The Dagda and his cult thus must have preceded both Lugh and Crom, with Crom differentiating as a necessary “evil" but not actually evil, just necessary. Every culture has mythological explanations for death and misfortune—meeting the human need to understand why bad things happen, and at first Crom then Balor and Fomarians by the Medieval Period seemed to have been assigned the job.
It may appear these three old gods and their cults mentioned in The Annals developed together, and their cults worshipped alongside each other. Lugh (becoming the god of life and light) and Crom (becoming the god of death and darkness) may have evolved in differentiating a possibly older The Dagda (god of life and death whose club takes or gives life) as Irish mythologies began with the good god. Whether The Dagda and Lugh derived from an older Mesolithic, Neolithic, or ancient Celtic cult to Crom, or Crom and Lugh derived from dualistic The Dagda, or if perhaps there are even older cults from which Crom's, The Dagda's, and Lugh's cults derived involves speculation. Unfortunately, we may never know definitively and are left to endlessly speculate. The only clue we have is that of surviving clan lore and oral tradition, which many scholars disregard as necessarily suspect. But if we use them as a clue, we might conclude that Crom is likely older and dualistic and The Dagda and Lugh likely derived from his cult. After all, the early lore of placename poems assert he was the primary god of all the Celts before the Christians came.
Just WHO is Crom? Crom's Mystique Produces Endless Speculation & Popular Fascination
In the 1982 film adaptation of Robert Howard's 1932 Conan the Barbarian, actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wields Crom's sword which he was seemingly gifted by the god Crom the moment he needed it from the warrior after which Howard believed Crom was named and anthropomorphized by people. Credit: Hollywood Theater
Robert Howard's philosophy in his 1930s pulp fiction about Conan the Barbarian resulted from his own exhaustive study of the Celts and Crom in what was then known about them and at a time when Crom Dubh's cult was more widespread than it is today. Thus, we may ironically find hints from his own investigation in his writings about Conan the Barbarian as to who Crom was to the people who worshipped him at least in Howard's interpretation.
One can't miss the unmistakeable literary allusion to the Roman Hibernia (the Latin name for Ireland) in the mythical setting for Howard's fiction: The Hyberion Age. It can be summed up in his seeming conclusion in what appears to be a unifying theme in his stories that the gods won't save us, and it's up to us to save ourselves. He commented that his fictional Hyborian Age occurred between the fall of Atlantis and the Bronze Age. Howard invented the imagined fictional Cimmerian tribe to which Conan belongs as the tribe directly ancestral to the Celts: The proto-Indo-European tribe that modern scholars have today dubbed Yamnaya culture. Howard later revealed before his death by suicide that he imagined them as the pure-blooded ancestors of the proto-Indo-Europeans (the tribe he imagined as ancestors to both the Celts and Greeks).
After freeing himself as a slave, wandering the wilderness, and being chased into a dolmen (stone tomb) by pack of wolves, Conan finds a deceased, mortal Crom (a giant warrior in the short story) and his Atlantean sword (from the short story this scene was based on) as a weapon with which he can defeat the hungry wolves, and, for the rest of the sagas, the rest of his enemies—seemingly as if to say allegorically that the old legends and myths—the gods—have already given us all we've needed to survive the hardships and trials of this life. We just have to be resourceful and find the gifts they left us, not whine or complain and simply strive as the strength we need has already been given to us by our ancestors.
Self-reliance seems to be the overriding message from Conan—or Crom—as it were, in Howard's conclusions of Crom whom Conan invokes in prayer for strength. A resourceful Conan isn't afraid to pry an old sword from a deified old dead warrior, even as he recognizes him as the god he regularly invokes in hard times as his own personal god. Despite this recognition, he continues to pray to Crom after meeting his actual corpse. Visually a discerning viewer might have caught the irony hidden in the implicit knowledge of the futility of supplications to a deity that doesn't really even exist and has probably since crumbled to dust. Conan is a victim of violence from birth in his parents' murder, his mother's prior almost certain rape before her murder, and his childhood as a slave chosen for hard labor, then fighting and breeding, who frees himself from his own servitude—conspicuously without the aid of the gods or spirits or wizards (who definitely make their appearance) who ignore his childhood and adolescent prayers to be freed and gain vengeance on his parents' murderer.
Crom is depicted in the film as a mortal. While witches and dark spirits make appearances, when the rubber meets the road for Conan in his hardest moments, Crom is absent. In the tomb, Crom is just some lost nearly forgotten great warrior buried with his servants, reduced to near dust and his original mortality—now reduced to a crumbling skeleton who holds a sword encased in dirt. Some literary analysts suggest this intentionally reveals Howard's hidden thematic conclusions about Crom—as if to say about deity itself in general—and the almost nihilistic philosophy he developed from his study of the Celts.
This episode of Crom's adventures was actually written after Howard's death by ghost writers in L. Sprague de Camp's and Lin Carter's 1967 Conan short story titled The Thing in the Crypt. De Camp and Carter faithfully illuminate Howard's sentiments in his 1932 mythopoeia-building essay The Hyborian Age in it. These sentiments are echoed in Howard-influenced fantasy author and masculinist Jack Donovan's works. Howard's own study of Crom was echoed by him in A Sky Without Eagles that,
“Crom is my god…Crom is the god I need because he is the opposite of the interventionist gods who care about the petty details of men’s lives. You don’t pray to him, because he probably won’t listen, and if he hears you, he probably won’t even pretend to care.”
Crom serves then to remind us we're alone. In Howard's Weird Tales Magazine, in his short story Queen of the Black Coast, republished in 1969's Conan of Cimmeria, Howard has Conan describe Crom (from Howard's personal study of the Celtic Crom in all the sources):
“He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man’s soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?”
In Howard's 1938 essay explaining his mythopoeia (with Bori as a stand-in for any deity mentioned, including Crom), “The Hyborian Age," Howard shared his conclusions about Crom's (and other deities' origins and functions [in their indifference]):
“Bori—some great chief, whom legend made even more ancient as the king who led them into the north, in the days of the great Cataclysm, which the tribes remember only in distorted folklore."
Clearly, Howard here unmistakably elucidates his belief that the gods aren't to be revered. To Howard, they're just deifications or anthropomorphized personifications of old long forgotten warriors and kings. But by studying them, just like studying the deeds of heroes from the past, he seems to say, we can find inspiration to strive and to fight. So when Conan prays to Crom, one might say, Conan is steeling his nerves and with iron resolve praying to himself for strength in exercising the core principle of self-reliance.
Perhaps Howard's extensive study of the Celts in the early part of the 20th Century of the ancient Celtic Druidic religion and Crom in all of the then known sources—historical, literary, mythological, and even early ethnographical (oral tradition, tribal/clan lore handed down) concluded Crom is and was an indifferent, non-interventionist deity, and that certainly contradicts the version of Crom in the Samhain deity Tigernmas' sacrifices to in the annals of Irish history as written down by Christian monks as a bloodthirsty devil who'd wipe out the king's host who introduced his worship to the Celts. Perhaps we shouldn't take those accounts so seriously. Howard didn't.
Saturn, Jupiter's father, devours one of his sons. Jupiter is the Romanization of Zeus, Saturn of Chronus (Kronos).
Some scholars also suppose Crom is actually the Greek Kronos, the king of the dark old gods and titans and father of the Olympians, overthrown by Zeus and the Olympians in Greek mythology. They do so on the basis of the child sacrifices recorded to Crom which they associate with Kronos' child eating, and Plutarch's description of the place Kronos was imprisoned in sleep in his account on an island off the coast of Britain, surrounded by twelve gods to keep watch on him eternally which they believe are emblematic of Crom's Killycluggin stone's original twelve surrounding stones.
Crom and Chronus/Kronos are both depicted with sickles in the myths that survive, and are both also associated with death and an underground underworld. Others say that Indo-European mythologies almost always involve a battle between the gods of light and darkness, with light being eventually triumphant, a motif to which both the Greek origin story and the Celtic Irish mythology conform (the Olympians defeating the Titans and the Tuatha Dé defeating the Fomarians, respectively). The Greeks were Indo-European cousins to the Celts (they came from the same ancestral people) after all these scholars insist.
Yet other scholars speculate the twelve stones are idols to the twelve ecliptic constellations of the Zodiac given the indisputable solar cult of the predecessors of the Celts they displaced but whose cosmology they maintained. See The History (and prehistory) of Halloween for a longer discussion. Perhaps they did serve as a kind of calendar. We'll never know because early Christians all but destroyed the Killycluggin stone and the twelve encircling stones and removed all but two of them as they forbade Crom's cult (thus we cannot see if they align with the constellations or sun at certain times of year).
In review, some scholars of Druidic religion suppose either Crom (fertility and harvest underground Otherworld god) and Dagda (good god of life and death overgod of the Tuatha Dé Dannon) are the same god with Dagda being a rebranding after the disapproval of the Christians or perhaps with the arrival of the Milesian Celts from northern Spain, or else that, alternately if Crom did not precede The Dagda, The Dagda preceded with Crom and Lugh deriving from Dagda to represent a different side of his dualistic nature. Or maybe it really was that The Dagda and Lugh and Balor all evolved from an older dualistic Crom as suggested by surviving clan lore.
But we can be sure from these sources that Crom, corroborated by the earliest Celtic relative dates for the Killycluggin Stone's curvilinear La Tène style archaeology as well as the earliest annalistic references, and his cult, is the oldest cult for which we have textual and archaeological evidence linking him to Samhain.
Dubious Roman Claims: Celtic Infanticide, Human Sacrifice, & Cannibalism
Credit: Wikimedia: Jean-Léon Gérôme - The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer (1863-1883)
Roman pagans circulated rumors that early Christians practiced infanticide (the murder of infants [historically, oppressed minorities are accused of drinking their blood in rites for eternal life]), cannibalism, and human sacrifice. The elite Roman Patricians (5% of the Roman population; the elites who owned vast estates of land and possessed most of the political power) were challenged by the political threat of the incorrigibly rebellious Jews of Judea and a Jewish leader and cult who threatened them in claiming to be their Jewish savior and Messiah, claiming to be the son of God and the Jewish Messiah (the savior of the Jews prophesied in the Torah whose coming they awaited in prayer as they do today at the Wailing Wall of King Soloman's Temple before the Romans destroyed it a second time in 70 CE/AD).
The gospel Christ preached involved the equality of all as children of god and as sinners in need of forgiveness and the undeserved gift of God's love and forgiveness through faith in him. It was a message that appealed to the extremely unequal Plebeians (75-85% of the Roman population) and slaves (10-20 % of the Roman population) to whom little was ever given upon which the Patrician class depended—and that message was spreading. Patricians and their way of life were directly threatened in every way by this rebellious Jewish cult that was spreading like wildfire among the Plebes and slaves and replacing the worship of the old Roman gods. Christians made an easy scapegoat for Patrician ills and an empire in decline.
In context, the fall of Rome was a gradual decline spanning centuries. Placed in the context of: Ostrogoth and Visigoth barbarians at the gates driven into the Roman Empire by the Huns in the 4th Century CE; deserting and disloyal Germanic mercenaries demanding to actually be paid; the increasing unwillingness of Roman male citizens to serve as legionnaires as the empire grew led to increasing reliance on mercenary auxilia which spurred more rebellions in conquered territories; ever-increasing inflation eating into the value of Roman currency driven by colonial rebellions impacting raw materials and wars with rivaling empires that disrupted trade routes and increased transportation costs; the approaching bankruptcy of the treasury from maintaining the Roman Empire and its infrastructure in its roads and system of fortifications; war with the Persian Empire and disruption of trade; growing east-west sectionalism of the empire soon to be formalized by Diocletian; the loss of Brittania in 410 CE with the recall of its legions to defend Rome; and the series of mysterious cataclysmic diseases that ravaged the Roman Empire that all contributed to its slow decline from the end of the first century to the end of the fifth (from the end of Caesar Octavian Augustus's Pax Romana in his death in 180 CE to the sacking of Rome first by Alaric the Visigoth in 410 CE followed by the converted Germanic Arian barbarian Odoacer's sacking of Rome in 476 CE), as it declined, the last thing on Earth that Rome needed was an internal division spurred by this new religion that threatened its entire political, social, and economic structure.
Threatened Patricians pretending to be well-informed warned each other about the moral depravity of Christians who might steal their babies in the night in order to drink their blood in misunderstood resurrection rites for immortality. Early Christians were known by the Romans for their remembrances of the last supper and Christ's words about taking bread as the literal body and wine as the literal blood of Christ, thus making them cannibals.
Patricians told each other Christians believed in and performed human sacrifice to their God. There was basis for this claim expressed in the central belief of Christians that Jesus' human sacrifice (by Roman crucifixion on the orders of the Jewish Sanhedrin) was required by God to appease his blood lust, a price that must be exacted for his forgiveness—clearly a capricious and angry God. Thus, it was clear that Christians believed in and practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism.
So the idea that they stole Roman infants to drink their blood for eternal life didn't seem as outlandish to them as it does to us today, and it's easy to see how those misunderstanding proliferated throughout the Roman Empire.
The Patricians spread false rumors about Christians in the same way German Catholics spent centuries hearing in their parish churches from priests that Jews would do the same to their children (the Late Antiquity Roman Catholic doctrine of blood libel that ironically began with the false allegations towards the early Christians but then were associated with the Jews led directly to the Holocaust), or suburban soccer mothers warn new arrivals to their suburbs in urban legends of not flashing your headlights in the inner city, or inform others about “those" other people, the stuff of fear and prejudice that is all too human.
These false allegations claimed of Christians led directly to the both unofficial and official persecutions by Romans throughout the empire of Christians and Christian communities (as well as the 20th Century's Holocaust many centuries later). Emperor Nero famously fed Christians to lions for entertainment and sport in Rome's Coliseum stadium/amphitheater (Christians only needed to recant their faith to be spared). He famously dipped them in tar and burned them alive in front of spectators to light his feast after the Great Fire as their judicial sentence for the arson he blamed on them. Early Christians were persecuted in the late Roman Empire, but it was not official imperial policy until 303-312/3 CE or barely a decade of time when those persecutions reached their height.
Until 250 CE, a sort of unofficial Roman “don't ask, don't tell" policy applied to Christians. Yet, provincial governors were pressed by local mobs of Patricians threatened by Christians to denounce and put them on trial, believing their increasing personal misfortunes in the declining Roman Empire to be attributed to the loss of faith in the old Roman gods (evinced in the growing number of Christians) angry with Roman complacency, decadence, apostasy (abandonment of faith), and inadequate sacrifice. It is important to note that during these persecutions, any Christian would be forgiven by committing sacrifice and recanting their faith publicly. Ironically, their refusal to do so and choice to instead be publicly attacked and viciously eaten alive by the beasts or burned alive rather than recanting gained new converts and fervent adherents, both shocked and inspired by the fervor and steadfastness of the Christian martyr's faith.
In 250 CE, barbarian invasions prompted Emperor Decius to declare all Romans should sacrifice to the gods and submit a certificate of proof they had. In 257 CE, Emperor Valerian re-decreed the same, specifically targeting Christians and dubbing those who refused to sacrifice (the Christians) as un-Roman (early Christians saw the same akin to Moses' golden calf Baal idol worship). Their refusals resulted in exile, hard labor, or torture and death by crucifixion (on an X or T cross, not the cross depicted in art in Medieval paintings and universally recognized today as Christ's iconic cross with the perpendicular intersecting horizontal plank) for those who refused to sacrifice. Emperor Valerian's first official persecution ended in 260 CE after three years with Valerian's capture by Persians. His son Gallienus rescinded his father's order and decreed personal religious freedom.
In 303 CE, Emperor Diocletian and co-Emperor Galerius began the “Great Persecution," involving destruction of churches, seizure of church property, and destruction of Christian texts in which historians estimate perhaps 3,000-3,500 Christians were tortured, condemned to the beasts in amphitheaters, crucified, sent to deaths by hard labor, or otherwise slain. Records indicate that amnesty was provided to any Christian if they would simply recant and denounce Christ and sacrifice to the Roman gods.
Yet those who refused either suffered or were ignored depending on the behest of local Patrician mobs and the whims and bias of the local provincial governors for or against Christians. Provincial governors responded based on the whims of the local mobs and their own biases for- or against- Christians, so the notion that all of the machinations of the Roman imperial state were dedicated to hunting down and torturing and killing Christians everywhere are exaggerated, although not entirely. The infrastructure for Christianity was actively and intentionally targeted by the imperial state, but the persecution of rank-and-file believers may be a tad exaggerated in context.
Credit: Wikimedia: 1876 Henryk Siemiradzki- Nero's Torches
In AD 64, rumors circulated that Nero had started the Great Fire of Rome. Roman historian Tacitus recorded that Nero, instead, blamed the Christians, accusing them of arson. He executed them by condemning them to the beasts (lions, tigers, bears, leopards, boars), crucifying them, by covering them in the carcasses of wild animal skins and having them torn to death by wild dogs, and by being dipped in tar and set on fire to light his feasts. This is according to Tacitus, a Roman source describing Roman practices.
An 18th Century engraving depicts Julius Caesar's First Century BCE (56-50 BCE) claim that Celts burned prisoners of war in wicker figures—the wicker man of 1973's Wicker Man film or its 2006 reboot and Burning Man infamy.
An image from a set of 8 extra-illustrated volumes of A Tour in Wales by Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) that chronicle the three journeys he made through Wales between 1773 and 1776. These volumes are unique because they were compiled for Pennant's own library at Downing. This edition was produced in 1781.The volumes include a number of original drawings by Moses Griffiths, Ingleby and other well known artists of the period. Author: Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) Credit: Wikimedia: Beyond My Ken
Roman claims of infanticide (infant murder), human sacrifice, and cannibalism were nothing new as the Romans had levied those same claims against the early Christians, leading to centuries of persecution in the first centuries of the common era against Christians throughout the Roman Empire.
Those persecutions would end with Constantine's conversion and his mother's conversion, with his decree ordering Christianity tolerated and persecutions ended in the 313 CE/AD Edict of Milan, and especially after Theodosius decreed Christianity the official religion to replace Roman paganism in the Empire in 380 CE/AD, now instead making the persecution of pagans the official imperial policy instead. Please note the Cappadocian Greek Kaymakli Underground City was used by early Christians as defense against Muslims in the Arab–Byzantine wars (780–1180 CE), not Romans pagans as maintained erroneously by many modern Christians today.
No serious scholar today even remotely believes these anti-Christian accounts of the pagan Romans which appear in the histories of several otherwise trusted Roman historical sources and even in the writings of emperors. Why anyone would believe them about the Celts then is just as curious. These claims, having a virtual cacophony of echoes in all of the trusted Roman historical sources, might not be so suspicious if Rome didn't have a long history of levying these very same charges against the Christians.
It would seem those allegations were common for Romans to make about the people they conquered—whether Christian or Celtic—to justify their dehumanization, conquest, subjugation, and enslavement. And they also represented genuine misunderstanding of Christian rites concerning Christ's last supper and beliefs about sacrifice for the remission of sin, so why is it such a stretch for many to believe Celtic practices were similarly misunderstood? Yet there is a veritable cacophony of trusted Roman historical sources that insisted the Celts performed human sacrifice. It's a mystery why more people today don't apply the same scrutiny to the Roman claims about the Celts that they do apply to the early Christians.
Despite early Christians having been similarly victimized, demonized, and vilified by such false allegations for centuries in the Roman Empire, they now became the abuser instead of the abused. In the now Byzantine Roman Catholic, Christian Roman Empire (which would fall in 476 CE in Western Europe, with the monastery system and church in Rome evolving to replace the infrastructure of the Roman Empire with church as state there, but would survive in the Greek speaking east to the middle 15th Century CE/AD [1450s] as the Greek speaking Eastern Orthodox Byzantium), persecutions of pagans at the hands of the Christians would become official imperial and church policy. The now Christian Roman Catholics continued to denounce and malign oppressed people still under Roman rule with the exact same false allegations they'd faced, and the persecuted became persecutor. After 380 CE, they had official imperial sanction to do so, and they did. St. Patrick, the Roman Catholic slave, would arrive in Ireland in 415 CE, five years after the Romans left the British Isles with his mission to drive out the snakes and Christianize the island.
It's odd how quickly the persecuted can become persecutors. But as no one would today take seriously the rampant rumors that early Christians practiced infanticide, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, so too ought we remain skeptical of the many claims made over the centuries towards the Celts of a similar nature.
By contrast, in the case of the human sacrificial practices of the Mexica (Aztec) and the Maya, we have the writings of Bishop Diego de Landa and others and archaeological evidence to corroborate the sacred blood-letting and ceremonial ritual human sacrifice of the Mayans. We have the writings of Franciscan friars Bernardino de Sahagún, Marcos de Niza, and Dominican friar Diego Durán as well as of Conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men of the human sacrifice of the Mexica (Aztecs). We also likewise have archaeological evidence to corroborate the sacrifices they recorded. We also have a few extant Mayan and Mexica (Aztec) records to corroborate them. In the case of head-hunting and cannibalism in Papua New Guinea, we have historical records, archaeology, and the oral tradition of New Guineans to rely on that all corroborate those practices.
In the case of the Celts, there are no Celtic accounts from Classical Antiquity, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire or the entire Medieval Period corroborating human sacrifice as a practice. Oral accounts today flatly reject that these were ever authentic practices of the Ancient Druidic Celts. There are only Roman pagan and Roman Catholic records that survive that make these claims. As the Celts had no written records of their own and only had their spoken oral tradition and histories, we must rely on archaeological corroboration of the dubious Roman claims about them, as well as the spoken oral traditions in clan lore that deny all three charges of infanticide, human sacrifice, and cannibalism.
We have found virtually no evidence to date corroborating those claims, so we may safely conclude those claims are highly suspect. We should no more believe them than the accounts of the many Roman historians about the early Christians. It may not be unthinkable that the Celts might burn their prisoners of war in wicker figures, after all. But if that is true, then we should find archaeological evidence corroborating it, like we have found evidence of the ritual livestock of animals.
Thus, more than likely, conquering Roman pagans (greedy for Celtic lands and resentful of their resistance in Gaul in the first century BCE) mistook the legitimate cultural ritual sacrifice of animals and embellished accounts to vilify and demonize the Celts to justify their conquest and subjugation before emperors and Roman Senate.
We should note a few human cultures did engage in human sacrifice, cannibalism, and infanticide. In the case of infanticide, it should be noted that it is usually practiced in preference to infants starving to death in bad years for hunting, foraging, farming, or grazing in foraging, pastoralist, and horticuluralist peoples. When practiced, infants were left out often at the edge of a forest to be eaten by animals and as sacrifices to the gods for a better year in the coming year. In the case of human sacrifice, it appears associated with bad farming years in agriculturalist peoples with blood equated with life, and an attempt to placate gods that must have been angered. And in the case of cannibalism, it appears to be practiced functionally as a consequence of inadequate protein rich food sources in the environment. So it is possible, however improbable based upon our best attempts to verify these claims, that the ancient Celts did perform human sacrifice, cannibalism of their enemies, and the sacrifice of children.
But what appears far more likely on the whole is that Christian missionaries—whether Catholic or Protestant—were too easily tempted to embellish or use false claims about other people in order to attempt to secure more financial or human support for their missions to indigenous peoples from their respective Crown, or the Pope (or later home churches or Congress or the President), or later to justify their removal or annihilation (as in the case of American Indian Policy during the roughly 150 Plains Indian Wars). The accounts of missionaries, governors, bureaucrats, and business interests from the colonizing societies generally ought be mistrusted in their accounts when exploring relations with indigenous or aboriginal peoples the world over. And that skepticism and scrutiny absolutely must be applied against the Roman (Irish) Catholic Christian mission in Ireland as well.
For an interesting case study of the same, Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas's descriptive, qualitative accounts of the atrocities of Columbus and his men to the Arawaks on Hispaniola (once seen as awful exaggerations) have in recent years been corroborated by newly discovered writings of friars Antonio de Montesinos and Pedro de Córdoba and even Las Casas's enemy Toribio de Benavente Motolinia. So it turns out that Las Casas' charges levied at Columbus and his men appear to be actually true, but that he exaggerated in the size and frequency of those atrocities in order to get King Ferdinand and Pope Paul III to intervene.
Virtually all serious historians today have a nuanced view of his accounts in that they were largely exaggerated quantitatively (exaggerating frequency and total numbers) to influence monarch and clergy, but qualitatively (descriptively) accurate in describing the atrocities committed by Columbus and his men against the native Arawak on Hispaniola.
There is ample historical precedent beyond this single case for less than fully accurate accounts by missionaries and monastic sources from settler colonizers, which should thus be regarded with suspicion. The Irish Celts themselves in their own mythology demonized the Fomarian early European farmers they displaced who had in turn displaced the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer Fir Bolg (similarly demonized). In the same mythology, the Sons of Mil (second Celtic invaders from basque Sapain, ca 1,000 BCE) similarly demonized or villifed the Tuatha Dé (first Celtic invaders from Normandy, ca 3,000 BCE).
Unfortunately, the Celts had no written language, so what we know about them comes exclusively from outside and ostensibly biased sources. But we can reasonably bet that what the Romans or early Irish Catholic monks wrote about them is about as accurate as Roman claims about early Christians, or the vilification of the original inhabitants of Ireland in its mythology.
If these sources are to be believed, the Celts allegedly performed human sacrifice to Crom as annalistic sources have Milesian high king Tigernmas who is said in those histories to have introduced Crom's cult to the Celtic people. Tigernmas is alleged to have required the firstborn of every family and the scion (eldest inheriting male) of every clan sacrificed to him.
The twelve surrounding stones encircling the golden central Killycluggin Stone as the cult icon of Cromm Cruach (where the ancient Celtic druids performed at least animal sacrifice to Cromm on Samhain) are located on the plains named Mag Slecht by the Bronze-Iron Age ancient Celts (in English: The Plains of Slaughter) and the place's historical Goidelic Gaelic name at least hints to the credence of it being a place of sacrifice (whether human or animal), so we may be reasonably certain that this was one place where the Goidelic Celts at least ritually sacrificed animals each year. Some Roman sources suggest spring Beltaine sacrificial fire imolation customs of animals replaced voluntary human sacrifice in more ancient times in which a member of a tribe was chosen by lot in a piece of charcoal baked into a piece of a cake. They too are dubious.
The false etymology (falsely identifying a common word origin between Sumerian Baal and the Celtic Beil of healing that derived from Lugh's May 1st Beltaine) of Beltaine to Baal instead of Beil (healing/fire god), belo-te(p)niâ (bright fires), or Belenos (Gallic sun god), is the ultimate source of the mistaken belief that ancient Celts worshipped Baal. Subsequent to this pseudoetymology, the early Irish Catholic monks implicated Crom to a completely imagined and fictional Canaanite god Moloch who demanded child sacrifices (it seems entirely based on a translation error of the word sacrifice, an error that was made repeatedly because of the original translation error and then created false theology about a fictional made up Canaanite god that God condemned that never existed in the first place). Their mistake further implicated Celts and Crom with devil worship and human or child sacrifice.
Baal, by contrast, was an actual Canaanite god in that he was the Sumerian son of their over god El, both of whom were worshipped millennia before Druidic religion even appeared. Baal is identified biblically as one of the principal rivals of the biblical God, so thus often associated with or equated to Lucifer or Satan. And Baal was also associated by them with the fabricated biblical never a real god that was concocted by biblical mistranslation in Moloch. Read Cromm, not Baal to understand how Christians grossly misunderstood Cromm. No, Cromm is not a god called Samhain either (there is no such Celtic god).
However, what is less dubious is that sacrifices of animals, food, harvest, and jewelry would have originally taken place as part of a new year fall harvest festival celebrating the conclusion of that year's harvest in thanksgiving to solar deity Lugh, and as ransom to Celtic Otherworld boss Cromm to release Lugh after winter. The time to thank Lugh and pay Crom's ransom was October 31st, Samhain.
At Samhain, Crom was annually remembered in solemn and frightful (perhaps ever more so after the coming of Christianity to the British Isles because of the increasingly menacing and sinister tone adopted in accounts of Crom by Christian writers) supplication to protect and bless herd and crop to ensure bountiful spring. Perhaps solemnity was required in contemplating the seriousness of the certainty of death in the annual tribute paid to the lord of winter, darkness and death Cromm who allowed lost relatives to visit after death on Beltane and Samhain. Julius Caesar had Samhain traditions originating in the British Isles and then spreading to continental Europe or Gaul.
Annual sacrifices took place (according to the early literate Christians) on the Mag Slecht (pronounced mog-SCHLECHK 🔊), or the Plains of Slaughter in English, to Cromm on October 31st every year, the Celtic New Year demarking ,“Summer's end," the end of the Celtic year and the start of a new pastoral cycle. With the harvest complete, winter would soon arrive.
It bears reassertion that Samhain has long been falsely and wrongly associated with infanticide, devil worship, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. This may be in part due to Roman misunderstandings of the authentic and archaeologically verified yearly ritual animal sacrificial practices of the Celts. Yearly animal sacrifices at Beltaine and Samhain are also recorded in the earliest written sources. They are corroborated by archaeology in the ritual deposits examined in both excavation spoil (piles of material removed by the ancient Celts as ancient Celts dug new passages into, around, or between the ancient burial mounds) and at ritual hoards excavated at known ritual sites. They have revealed ritual sacrifice of jewelry, crops, and livestock.
It bears mentioning. So far, the human bones uncovered in excavation spoil or at ritual hoards yield no skeletal evidence of human sacrifice, and instead appear to come from disturbed ancient burials within burial mounds. The complete lack of evidence found at these sites ritually associated with Samhain rituals of even a single human sacrifice suggests the claims of the pagan or Christian Romans to the contrary are likely very dubious and should be regarded with extreme skepticism.
Pliny the Elder's history in his section on Emperor Claudius' reign, has Suetonius summing up the Druidic religion, “druidarum religionem diræ immanitatis," or, “the religion of the Druids is of terrible cruelty," in English. Pliny the Elder's history recorded head-hunting and blood being drank from the skulls of enemies by Celtic warriors. The first to second century Roman historian Lucius Cassius Dio (165 – c. 235 CE) recorded of the Brittonic/Bryonthic Celts in Brittania to female prisoners of war:“their breasts cut off and placed over their mouths, and a stake driven through their bodies, which were then hung in the sacred grove." The earlier Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (c. 56 – c. 120 CE/AD) recorded the altars of the Celtic Welsh Anglesey island of Mona were, “laved (washed) in human blood." Julius Caesar claims in 58-50 BCE/BC Commentarii de Bello Gallicohis, or Commentary on the Gallic Wars, that Celts burned prisoners of war and sacrificial animals in wicker figures. Pliny the Elder suggested Celts cannibalized their enemies to gain their strength. Lucan recorded in the first century CE/AD alleged Celtic sacrifice to Celtic gods Esus, Toutatis, and Taranis.
In the earliest textual sources referencing Crom's cult at the Killycluggin Stones, it's also mentioned but similarly dubious. The 12th Century CE (1100s CE) Dinsenchas (Lore of Placenames) poem about the Plains of Slaughter, Crom Cruach is given sacifices of “the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions (eldest sons) of every clan," in order to ensure a plentiful harvest (of grain and milk) ordered by mythical Celtic King Tigernmas who loses three-fourth of his host after sacrificing to Crom.
These Roman pagan then Irish Catholic sources insisted on the human sacrifice and cannibalism of the Celts. Most modern scholars and historians regard these accounts with strong skepticism, especially given the almost complete lack of archaeological evidence for the same at every site where human sacrifices were claimed to have occurred in analysis of excavation spoil or ritual hoard deposits that have been painstakingly analyzed.
There is no reliable evidence for it as a widespread practice. There are a handful of archaeologically proven cases involving ritual sacrifice of humans in the Cashel Man and Old Croghan Man bog bodies and Lindow man ritual sacrifices, who were all apparently ritually sacrificed (inferred from the violence committed to these corpses beyond that required to kill them). But we don't find evidence of widespread human sacrifice in archaeological excavations of the sites associated with Samhain, and that should be enough to put these spurious claims to rest.
Thus claims of Celtic human sacrifice are disputed and may largely be dismissed as anti-pagan, pro-Roman, pro-Roman Catholic Christian embellishments or exaggerations of the at first Roman pagan (53 BCE-313 CE) and then Roman Catholic Christian (313 CE-present) cultural outsiders covetous of Celtic lands, echoed in the 6th-9th Century (500s-800s) monastic culture of the scribes copying these manuscripts so that they would not be lost to the ages.
It's believed those claims may have been made in order to justify Roman conquest of the Gauls and Brythonic/Brittonic and Gaelic and Goidelic Celts. The grotesque practices alleged of the Celts were meant to disgust Roman emperors and senators beseeched for appropriations for a Celtic conquest of Hibernia, just like similar claims of Christians were. The Romans from other writings seem more likely concerned with the tin and grazing land Romans coveted in the British Isles. Because of the almost complete lack of physical evidence, despite the cacophony of Roman sources insisting otherwise, earlier and later, both Roman pagan and Roman Catholic, the allegations ought generally be taken as seriously as claims of infanticide, human sacrifice, and cannibalism by early Christians ought to be taken.
Just who is Crom? Hints about Crom & his Cult from Modern Cultural Survivals
Crom Dubh's Sunday is celebrated by Irish Catholics at Croagh Patrick as Reek Sunday on the Sunday before Lammas. It's simultaneously celebrated at Croagh Patrick and at Carrauntoohil there too by modern pagan Celts on July 31st, the night before August 1st's Lughnasadh to either the Celtic Crom or Lugh today.
Credit: Croagh Patrick Pilgrim Sunday the ascent of the Holy Mountain Alan James 30 July 2007
In Crom Dubh's cult which survives today in pockets throughout Ireland, Crom's remembered on the night before Lugansadh, or on the last Sunday in July (before the August 1st Catholic Lammas or Celtic Lughnasadh) by Roman (Irish) Catholics and neo-Celticist pagans, but no longer on Samhain (possibly due to the stigma Crom devotion gained with Christianization of Ireland to distance it from the stigma applied over the centuries), strangely enough:
at Liscannor in County Clare, Munster, Ireland with a feast and festival;
at Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, Connacht, Ireland with a barefoot climb to Croagh Patrick's peak to where sacrifices were once left to Crom (and then Lugh historically; the site was later appropriated by Catholics dedicated to St. Patrick's descruction of Crom's cult as “Reek Sunday" and a test of their faith, the practice has been continued by Irish Catholics and Celtic Lugh and Crom devotees today); historically, similar barefoot climbs were undertaken by Irish Catholic and Celtic people before Lammas or Luggansadh at all the high places associated with Crom Dubh: Carrauntoohil, Knocknadobar, Drung Hill, Mount Brandon, and Slievecallan in Munster, Slieve Donard in Ulster and Church Mountain in Leinster, representing the Christian appropriation of Crom Dubh's Sunday; and
at the Altóir na Greine or Altar of the Sun at Mount Callan in County Clare, Munster, Ireland where Crom's devotees leave flowers and a several day Buaile na Greine festival is held before Crom Sunday,
The last Sunday of July (Reek Sunday, Crom Dubh Sunday) or on July 31st (alternately is known as Crom's Day) Irish Catholics and neo-Celts celebrate with gifts of produce and crops taken to the hillside and left for Crom (preceding Lugansadh) and a feast of new bacon, new cabbage, and new potatoes ensues. Those unable to contribute food are dubbed “wind farmers." But even to the modern day, the myths and legends of Crom are intimately tied to Lugh's annual journey and his solar cult.
In some of the clan lore (oral tradition from those families claiming to have carried on the Druidic traditions, most of whom also identify as Irish Catholic), Crom carries Lugh's mother Eithne on his back (whose name means grain or kernel or seed and is associated with bountiful harvests and Boann [from “Bò Fionn,” meaning White Cow, a sacred animal, and whose associated burial mound is strongly associated as a fairy mound] associated with the health and bounty of livestock) at Lughnasadh (the August 1st first harvest festival named for Lugh).
Thus, in the surviving clan lore oral traditions, Crom carries the ability to germinate with him into the dark soil of the Otherworld and each Samhain and returns her to the surface each Beltaine as well. Thus, his fertility power is also derivative from Eithne in clan oral tradition lore, and once again Lugh is implicated with Crom as dualistic light and dark deities juxtaposed and opposing each other—fitting the war of the gods of light and darkness in true Indo-European cosmology motif fashion.
On Crom's (Dubh's) Day, Crom judges whether or not to have a festival determined by the quality of the sacrifice and demonstrates his pleasure or displeasure today by whether or not the clouds clear in response to the sacrifice (like an Irish Ground Hog's Day predicting the quality of next year's harvest) with Crom breathing fire to clear the clouds to allow Lugh to shine through if he's satisifed by the sacrifice, rewarding the festival with good weather. Once again, Crom is associated with Lugh in modern practice of the surviving cult.
Their annual struggle hearkens to the Tuatha-Fomarian war's Second Battle of Moytura when Lugh slays Balor with a single slingshot shot to his eye and vanquishes the lords of chaos and darkness back into the sea, the lords of light and life being triumphant over the lords of death and darkness. It's definitely interesting how in the modern Crom Dubh cult in the clan lore, Lugh and Crom are today comfortable with their roles and annual arrangement like bookends on a park bench, having danced this dance from time immemorial like old friends, judging the sacrifices of the foolish mortals together in tedious boredom and continuing their dance that gives and takes life each year, and, following form, the Roman (Irish) Catholics in Ireland celebrate Reek Sunday next to Crom's or Lugh's devotees in similar fashion.
Samhain Begins the Dark Half of the Year: The Solar Cult of the Celts & the Celtic Otherworld's Intersection with Our World
The Winter Solstice (Dec. 21st) sun aligns with the Newgrange ancient burial mound constructed by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers but modified and used by the later Celts. Credit: Science: DNA from ancient Irish tomb reveals incest and an elite class that ruled early farmers: Practice linked to royalty around the world found in massive Newgrange tomb
According to Iron Age Roman histories, throughout Gaul, Celtic Druids , or priests, worshiped the sun in solar cults to the Celtic god Lugh (Gallic Belenos) or alternately Crom. Celtic Druidism was fully established more than seven hundred years before St. Patrick arrived in Ireland (ca. 432 CE, established by 270 BCE throughout the island) to Christianize it. In those intervening 700 years, a cosmology and worldview unique to the Goidelic Celts of Ireland, consolidated by the invading first Tuatha-associated Celts from northwestern coastal Normandy (France, ca. 3000 BCE) and second Milesian (ca. 1000 BCE) Celts had emerged and was firmly in place by the start of the third century BCE.
Their society was divided into two ruling classes of knights who kept the people in state of near slavery and Druids who were shamans, scientists, priests and teachers according to Julius Caesar's accounts of Celts in continental Gaul or Western continental Europe. As the sun waned in daylight, day after day until the shortest day of the year on December 21st, or the Winter Solstice, early pre-Christian pagan rituals across Europe seemed to have been aimed to guarantee the sun's return by the springtime.
June 21st, Midsummer's Solstice, marked the height of the sun's power in the year round and was celebrated by ancient Celts with joyful midnight fires and dances, blazing wheels representing the sun rolled down hills. Fern and hemp seeds charms were performed and read for fortune telling assured to be more accurate on liminal Samhain or Beltane, omens in dreams were heeded. These rites sought to enhance Lugh's heat and power to give him the strength to break free from Cromm's hold on him in the Otherworld.
The various names of that Otherworld illuminate that it wasn't imagined by the ancient Celts as a dark underworld or land of the dead until the much later manuscripts as a result of Chrsitian influence. Wikiwand's Irish Mythology page puts it thusly:
In Irish mythology, the Otherworld has various names. Names of the Otherworld, or places within it, include Tír nAill (“the other land"), Tír Tairngire (“land of promise/promised land"), Tír na nÓg (“land of the young/land of youth"), Tír fo Thuinn (“land under the wave"), Tír na mBeo (“land of the living"), Mag Mell (“plain of delight"), Mag Findargat (“the white-silver plain"), Mag Argatnél (“the silver-cloud plain"), Mag Ildathach (“the multicoloured plain"), Mag Cíuin (“the gentle plain"), and Emain Ablach (possibly “isle of apples") .
Yet, all sources are clear that on Samhain, the ancient fairy burial mounds were opened, the Otherworld intersected with our own, and the supernatural beings, spirits, and creatures from the Otherworld could interact with us.
The ancient burial mounds (in particular, the two most famous fairy mounds, Brú na Bóinne and Cnoc Meadha) and other sidhe (pronounced SHE) portals to the Otherworld opened on liminal threshold days of the year. Spirits and the aos sí (pronounced ees-SHE 🔊) supernatural creatures (elves, fairies, and other supernatural beings) were free to wander and roam, so torches were carried in fields to protect people from possession, being dragged to their world, or to ward off their mischievous pranks. 'Guising, short for disguising, evolved as a practice in wearing masks and costumes either to scare these creatures away or to blend in so as not to be noticed by them.
These rites sought to guarantee fertility in the spring and bountiful harvests in the fall of the new year. Animals—in this case cattle, pigs, and sheep—were sacrificed as archaeologists have shown. If Julius Caesar's account is accurate, perhaps livestock immolation in wicker figures occurred with the death struggles of the animals read by Druids to predict the future. If it happened, it would have been to ensure the sun's return but also to ensure a fertile spring in plentiful offspring of livestock and a bountiful harvest for the upcoming fall's harvest through sympathetic magick practiced by the ancient animists (who sacrificed of the same of what they wanted to get, hence sympathetic magick; animists believe mountains, sky, and rivers have spirits, and they often engage in ancestor worship and animal totemism). Animal sacrifice, however, was undoubtedly a real thing to these ancient Celts.
After cattle were slaughtered and butchered at or near the central Killycluggin Stone to the ancient Celtic god of the underworld Cromm Cruach and his cult image (which was half buried in the ground to indicate his domain over the underworld and the grave), the bones of sacrificial animals, mostly cattle, were burned by bone fire which is where we get the modern term: bonfire.
After the sheep and cattle were driven in for the coming winter, men, women, and children enjoyed the first leisure from their harvest toil. And the Druid priests would have lit a forced fed fire of a wheel on a spindle spun sunward from east to west and the sparks given off by the centrifugal force were taken to light hilltop fires surrounding the spinning fire wheel. According to Roman sources, the black sheep was especially chosen for immolation in the sacrificial Samhain bonfires. Gifts of food, milk, and cream were left out at the ancient fairy burial mounds for lost loved ones and to please creatures who might otherwise steal infants, spoil the harvest, curse the spring plantings, or wreak other havoc.
After the bonfire at the Killycluggin Stone burned out, and the hilltop fires burnt out or were extinguished, fires were extinguished in homes which had previously that day been swept from back to front. The next day, the Druids lit the New Years fire, and the new fire was given to the community by torches to relight their fires, symbolic of the New Year.
Lugh would now fall victim for six long winter months (November, December, January, February, March, and April) to the powers of winter darkness, subdued by Cromm, god of the Otherworld. So it's easy to see how Christians have long misinterpreted Cromm. But Cromm, seeming enemy of Lugh, had his reign over the year, subduing Lugh, and so winter was equated with death and dying and the underworld of winter.
Consequently, as the gods of light and life's power waned, and the gods of death and darkness rose with Samhain each year, the veil between the living and dead was thought to be thinnest on October 31st as the submission of Lugh by Cromm was annually achieved. Naturally, those who had died as well as those who'd never lived in the aos si, meaning supernatural spirits, fae, fairies or elves could more easily enter our world. On Samhain, the early Irish sources say that the ancient burial mounds were opened, opening portals to the Otherworld, thus Cromm allowed the magical demigod descendants of the Tuatha and Formarian aos si creatures, beings, and spirits (including fairies, leprechauns, banshee, and elves) to wander along with the souls of the departed.
Families who'd lost a relative would leave a window open to welcome departed relatives, and left them simple flour and water cakes, but went to bed early if they weren't at the great feast festivals of Samhain to avoid seeing them. The souls of those who died during that year were believed to visit their homes seeking welcome or to resolve issues, and a place was set at the table for them during a meal. The departed would visit as they were just visiting the Land of Youth Otherworld for a time before they reincarnated. Sweeping one's home from its rear to its front door was a way of clearing the last year and ushering in the new one, just as extinguishing a Samhain fire after midnight to be rekindled with the new year fire with embers of it starting new fires was about beginning anew and putting the hardships of the last year behind them.
“The Horned Women.” Celtic fairy tales, edited by Joseph Jacobs, New York: A.L. Burt Co., 1899, pp. 30-33. Credit: Fairytales at CU Boulder
Most of the creatures who exited the portals on Samhain in Irish mythology surrounding the ancient burial mounds at Samhain were dark, evil, or mischievous even if the vast majority of myths about that Otherworld do not describe it as a sinister place. Thus, the wearing of masks in a practice known as guising (short for disguising) evolved to scare or imitate in order to disguise oneself from the aos si and those recently departed revisiting homes wandering the earth on Samhain that they might not carry one back with them as happened in the stories told around the hearth fire.
The aos sí were said to live in fairy mounds underground in fairy forts, in an invisible mirror hidden world or dimension invisible that coexists with our plane of existence some seers or shamans are able to see, or across the western sea, but wherever they lived, all sources agree, they were somehow able to enter our world and interact with us and be seen by us on Beltane and Samhain. Many Neolithic passage tombs have archaeoastronomical alignments with sunrise on Samhain, marking the start of the dark death of winter, Cromm's reign.
As Lugh sacrificed himself annually in the annual death of the sun, so too did people pay tax or tribute to king or sacrifice to now Cromm as ransom for his return. They paid tribute to Cromm just as they had to the Fomarians of a third of their harvest to secure Lugh's freedom from winter in the spring. Lugh paid a sacrifice of death to Cromm's evil powers, and Celts paid sacrifices of crops and animals to fires representing Lugh to satisfy Cromm and allow Lugh's liberation from Cromm's annual subduing.
Lugh's sacrifice of death to darkness explained why charms to find out the will of the gods or spirits, good and evil, and charms and invocations worked better on Samhain marking the annual death to Lugh and payment of tribute to Cromm. One tradition in the Scottish highlands surviving today is that of sitting on a three legged stool at a crossroads of three roads where fairies would await questioners. A questioner would listen for fairies at midnight on Samhain at this location and could offer them gifts of clothing, bread, cream, or milk. If pleased, the fairies would whisper the names of those who would die in the next year. With each name mentioned, if pleased by the gift of the questioner, the fairies might intervene and repeal each person's death sentence. If care was taken not to anger and to pay honor to the good and evil spirits and the dead, the power of charms and invocations was stronger on Samhain on this liminal (threshold) day of the year like its pair match: Beltaine.
The Killycluggin Stone as Cult Icon of the Celtic God of the Underworld Cromm Cruaich (or Crom Cruach alternately)
Cromm's cult image was the Killycluggin Stone discovered by archaeologists (specializing in neolithic Ireland) on the Plains of Slaughter, or Mag Slecht, in County Cavan, Ireland, in 1921 and 1954. The surrounding stones possibly date from the Irish Bronze Age (~2500 BCE) from carbon dating of similar stone circles across Ireland with the central Killycluggin Stone carbon dating from the Iron Age in Ireland (400 BCE - 100 CE).
According to local folklore, the central Killycluggin Stone and surrounding stones were destroyed by Saint Patrick who struck it with a hammer, thus causing it to break apart (like the other surrounding stones were fabled to be broken and carried away by the early Christians who forbade animal sacrifice). Or, other local folklore implies the missing stones and broken Killycluggin resulted simply from farmers trying to clear the field for pastoral use who carried off the missing encircling stones to some unknown place or broke them into many smaller pieces and distributed or buried them, somehow interrupted in the process which was left incomplete with two stones remaining. It was fabled to have once housed a cist burial beneath the Killycluggin Stone that included treasures.
The Killycluggin Stone was fabled to appear gilded (golden) and to have been surrounded by twelve stones:
“Ranged in ranks stood idols of stone four times three; to beguile the hosts grievously the figure of the Cromm was formed of gold,”
from the c. 14th-century Metrical Dindshenchas (Lore of Placenames) at The Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT) under Mag Slecht (English: The Plains of Slaughter).
The actual Killycluggin stone (in its two broken pieces: the first [left] is the base discovered in 1921 and the second [right] is the top discovered in 1954) which had been removed from the original site in time immemorial for unknown and fabled reasons.
It would have been buried to where the discoloration stops on the base piece, but represented Cromm Cruach's head. It's now located in the Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff, Ireland; Photo credit: Jim Dempsey,
While the burnt area shows evidence of nearby ancient bonfires, the two pits and modern disturbances depicted in these images from the following archaeological journal article were apparently the result of local treasure hunters and grave robbers looking for the fabled treasure and cist burial.
The burnt area is the location of the first bone-fires which is where we get our term: bonfire.
This somewhat misleading and poor stone replica of the actual Killycluggin Stone (circa 100 BC) was officially unveiled by Andrew Boylan T.D. Chairman Cavan County Council on 7th March 1992. Photo Credit: Jim Dempsey
The replica sits at coordinates N 54° 05′ 33″, W 007° 38′ 10″, or about 300 meters or 984.25 feet from where the original Killycluggin stone originally sat in SITU at its original coordinates N 54° 05' 41.6" W 007° 38' 24.3". See the following photos to see the IN SITU location of the original (now broken and in the Cavan County Museum) Killycluggin stone. Photo Credit: Kenneth Allen.
The Size and placement of the Iron Age Killycluggin Stone's Twelve Bronze Age Encircling Stones
In size, the Killycluggin stone is 11.8 feet in circumference. Its petroglyph (prehistoric rock carving) panels feature Celtic artwork, covered in Iron Age La Tène curvilinear designs (dated relatively to 400 BCE-100 CE). Some archaeologists argue there is evidence of erection of its encircling stones in the Early Bronze Age (2500 BCE) from carbon dating of similar stone circles around Ireland. They believe the surrounding circles were erected first by Ireland's original inhabitants, the dark-skinned, blue-eyed Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, with the central Killycluggin Stone erected by the Iron Age. If the Killycluggin Stone was circular in circumference (it's more like a slightly lop-sided egg-shape), its diameter would have been 3.75'.
Two of the original twelve surrounding stones remain in situ (their original location), with a third broken stone resting against one of the two stones left standing as originally erected, as pictured below (see the archaeological illustrations above and below to visualize the twelve surrounding stones in the center Killycluggin Stone serving as the cult's icon encircled by the outer surrounding stone circle).
Above, a photograph of theDrombeg stone circle for reference to provide a mental model for what the twelve surrounding stones likely looked like before being destroyed.
The two remaining stones in situ.
The two remaining stones in situ.
The two remaining stones in situ.
The Mšecké Žehrovice Head (150-50 BCE) Head in the Czech Republic is similar in type to the carved Killycluggin Crom Cruach cult icon stone before it was damaged.
In this photo of the poor replica, you can “see" Crom's La Tienne “face."
Only two of the original stones remain in situ as pictured above (with a third broken stone resting against one of the two remaining upright stones). The remaining nine stones have been lost to history and likely farmers clearing fields, or else early Christian fanatics forbading animal sacrifice, with early Irish Roman Catholic Christian sources crediting St. Patrick for smashing these icons. The missing stones were long ago in time immemorial carried away.
From the Irishstones.org description,
“Two aligned stones in a private land. The permission to enter the field was given to me by the owner. The two stones are 60 metres north from the cattle gate and are aligned along the southeast-northwest (110°-290°) axis. The southeast stone is the taller and measure 1.90 metres in height, 1.18 metres in width and 97 centimetres in thickness. The other stone is 2.90 metres far and is 1.62 metres tall, 90 centimetres wide and 83 centimetres thick. A third stone would stand between the two, but now it rests against the second one."
We can deduce from the same descriptions, the height of the surrounding twelve stones would have been around 5-6' tall, around 3' wide, around 3' thick. The metric to standard conversions of the above measurements follow: the first stone would be 6.23 feet tall, 3.87 feet wide, and 3.18 feet deep/thick; and the second stone would be 5.312 feet tall, 2.95 feet wide, and 2.72 feet thick/deep.
The encircling stone circle was 65 feet in diameter so would have stood at a radius of approximately 31 feet from the edge of the central Killycluggin Stone. The pits were disturbances by people looking for fabled treasure under the golden Killycluggin Stone but were fabled to have disturbed a cist burial at the base according to folklore—although only a single burnt bone was discovered there in 1921 and no other evidence of a cist burial.
Thus, the central Killycluggin stone is likely not nor was it ever likely a cist burial (an underground dolmen, see The History of Halloween) nor where sacrifices happened per se but merely possibly so. Any residual organic matter from the last sacrifices on it would have long ago washed away in many centuries of rain since Christians forbade the practice.
With the central golden stone representing Cromm's head itself, the god of the dark half of the year and Otherworld—with his cult icon's head half-buried into his domain, his forehead, nose and eyes peering into the land of the living—each year the ancient Celt's Druid priests performed at least animal sacrifices at this place then burned their bones in the first bonfires.
They did so wearing masks to scare away or blend in with the wandering spirits and host of supernatural beings who with the onset of dark escape their portals to the Otherworld at Samhain and Beltaine, and feasting with a harvest festival of the fall's bounties to a raging bonfires fed with the bones of the slaughtered animals (bone-fire).
Thus, the Killycluggin Stone and twelve stones encircling it represents the place where our Halloween traditions began deep in time immemorial.
Maestro Azriel wanted to pay homage to the fire and candle traditions that hail from the ancient Celts, which also include mask-wearing and Halloween bonfires to scare wandering spirits away and the monsters found in the dark.
Roman Pagan Origins: Pomonalia (& her Husband's Vertumnalia)
The so-called Pomona or Flor Minor - Roman, second half of 2nd Century CE/AD (100s, ∴~150-200 CE/AD).
Azriel wished to pay simultaneous homage to the ancient Roman pagan origins of Halloween involving apples and nuts — featured cryptically in the iconography of Candlelight's logo as well.
Those origins are expressed in the Roman Augustana Font in which the company name is chiseled into the full moon (the moon being another nod to Celtic pagan origins). These origins are also remembered in the superimposed natural apple core pentagram imposed on Luna's full moon—the Roman fertility and harvest goddess Pomona's icon or symbol. A horizontally-sliced apple core reveals a natural pentagram and pays homage to both the pre-Christian pagan Celtic traditions of Hallow's Eve as well as the Roman pagan and Roman Catholic Christian traditions grafted onto the holiday over the centuries.
Julius Caesar led Roman expeditions to the British Isles in the first century BCE (in 55 BCE/BC), but the Roman conquest of Brittania (the Roman name for the island of England) began officially in 43 CE, nearly a century later. Romans brought apple orchards to the British Isles, and their fall harvest Pomonalia festival grafted onto Halloween all of our traditions involving apples and nuts (Snap Apple Night and Nutcrack Night were alternate monikers for AllHalloweventide in the British Isles) onto the more ancient Celtic traditions.
According to oral tradition, Celtic Druids would make their wands out of apple or yew trees, for example, after being introduced by the Romans in England. Pomona's apple has long been a symbol for her Roman festival and traditions which have become confused with Vertumnalia. The original Etruscan-influenced Roman fall harvest festival Vertumnalia was celebrated on August 23rd originally. Its celebration migrated over the centuries to late October to be replaced by Pomonalia likely due to clerical errors on calendars throughout the Empire. The confusion of the two Roman fall harvest festivals likely occurred due to Vertumnus and Pomona's marriage in Roman mythology, the latter associated with the last harvest of apples and nuts (occurring in late October versus the beginning of harvest season in late August with the former's Vertumnalian autumnal equinox and the ripening of the first crops), and integration of- and confusion by- Gallic, Brittonic/Brythonic, Gaelic, and Goedellic Celtic harvest festival customs as the Romans and Celts acculturated together in the British Isles.
According to the famous seducer Ovid, Pomona was uncommonly beautiful so was pursued by many orchard gods but wished to remain unmarried. Vertumnus, “the changer," was the victorious suitor who had domain over commerce, the changing of river channels, and the ripening of fruit. He appeared to her as a ploughman (spring), fisherman (summer), and reaper (autumn) before appearing as an old woman (winter) to plea with Pomona through a fictional story she told him to spare Vertumnus' despair and inevitable suicide by hanging by giving in to his proposals. The story Vertumnus told as an old woman also suggested Pomona could spare herself from her fate of turning into a statue of marble in her grief as she watched his funeral train. Vertumnus' manipulative deception preposterously and outrageously succeeded to the chagrin of every feminist ever. Endeared, she relented and married his proper form of a handsome young man, moved by the old woman's story and his physical comeliness. Her sacred grove at Ostia in Rome was where her festival was celebrated around November 1st. Pomona was assigned by the Romans with one of the fifteen flamina (like the Vestal virgins who kept Vesta's fire lit) who kindled her sacrificial sacred fire in her sacred grove in Ostia (Rome).
Like the Celtic pagans, the Roman solar deities (Sol Indignes through the first century [aughts] CE, and Sol Invictus the Syrian solar deity whose cult spread across Rome influence by Mithras after) were sacrificed to each fall. Rome's water deity, Neptune (from the Greek Poseidon) was placated and propitiated as well to bless the next fall's harvest. Solar and water deities were worshipped to ensure bountiful offspring with minimal winter kill and an adequately wet spring and summer (but not too wet or too dry) and bountiful sunshine to ensure robust harvest in the fall and spring grasses for summer grazing of livestock, just like the Celts that their disfavor might not ruin the next year's harvest or the slaughter. But as the solar and water gods were supplicated, Roman fertility gods required their recognition as well.
On Pomonalia, Romans gave offerings of the ripened last harvest fruits of nuts and apples (ripening them was her domain) on November 1st to Pomona in thanks of her favor that season, just as they'd thanked her husband on August 23rd in offerings of the first fruits of harvest in Vertumnalia to Vertumnus thanking him for his ripening of them (his domain) in earlier times. The horses released from summer planting and the work of the harvest were released from their toil for racing contests. Thus all of our charms and omens derived from nuts and apples around Halloween can be attributed to Roman paganism in Pomonalia, the sister festival to Vertumnalia (August 23rd).
Unsourced: Map of Roman Brittish Isles showing Brittania, Hibernia, and Gaul
Although Rome never conquered Ireland, they fortified Britannia's western coast against the Goidelic Celts with military outposts to defend against attacks. Possible incursions of Romans into Ireland would have begun into Ireland around the time of the subjugation of the Welsh island of Mona now known as Anglesey by 60 CE led by Roman General (and Governor of Brittania) Gaius Suetonius Paulinus with 20,000 legionnaires before he returned home to put down the opportunistic rebellion of Boudica, queen of the Brythonic/Brittonic Celtic Iceni, in southeast England.
Suetonius's contemporary, Pomponius Mela of Baetica (southern Spain, Andalusia) remarked of the people of the land Roman historian Tacitus dubbed Hibernia that they were, “a people wanting in every virtue, and totally destitute of piety," and of a land so luxuriant in grasses for ranching that if cattle were “allowed to feed too long, they would burst," simultaneously capturing the dehumanization required to subjugate another group of people and their motivation to do so. Romans called the British Isles the Tin Islands before their conquest of Brittania, noting they were conquered for their tin and grazing land.
The following Roman governor of Britannia, Agricola, is believed to have had Túathal Techtmar, the son of a deposed high Irish king in his entourage who invaded Ireland from afar to regain his kingdom. However, there are no records of an official Roman incursion into or invasion of Ireland, even if Agricola's (Paulinus' successor) desires to do so are recorded and corroborated in the likely establishment of a Roman trading post at Drumanagh, Ireland by 80 CE and coastal garrisons against Irish attacks by the watchtower they established south of Anglesey on the Llyn Peninsula.
By CE 150, when Claudius Ptolemy made the first map of Ireland, it noted several Roman settlements in Ireland including royal settlements like Emain Macha (Navan fort) in County Armagh. There is clear evidence too of subjugated Roman allies colonizing in Ireland in the British Brigantes. The Brittonic/Bryonthic Celtic Ogham (pronounced Aumm) alphabet and writing system is believed to have been derived from Latin through contact and intermarriage through Romanticized Britons. In fact, several Welsh Ogham stones in Wales were bilingual, featuring both the Old Irish Goidelic and Brythonic (Gaelic ancestor language to Welsh) and Latin.
The Romans never conquered Hibernia, the land of winter. It was no doubt a place they desired to subjugate as Agricola's“refuge for fugitives," and the last remaining stronghold of Celtic Druidism in the British Isles after Tiberius and Claudius routed the Gallic Celts from mainland Europe to their British Isle stronghold on the Welsh island of Mona. Romans throughout the empire began converting to Celtic Druidism so that Emperor Caesar Augustus Octavian forbade conversion on penalty of death. Tiberius militarily banished the Celtic Druids from Gaulish mainland continental Europe who fled to the Welsh island of Mona. The Emperor Claudius stamped out the remnants of Druidism in continental Gaul and executed a Roman knight for wearing the telltale badge of a Druid priest in wearing an Adder's Stone or Druid's Egg globe necklace (see Halloween History to learn more) to win a civil lawsuit.
By the time the Romans left the British Isles in 410 CE (five years later, the Roman slave Saint Patrick came to Ireland in 415 CE), there'd been nearly a century of increasing Roman Catholic Christianity, and Celtic Samhain and Roman Pomonalia began to blend with Roman Catholic Christianity.
Roman Christian Origins: Roman Catholicism Absorbs Samhain and Pomonalia Traditions
The Massacre of the Groves: Seutonius slays the Druids on the Isle of Mona Credit: Medium: Cosgrrrl
The Gallic Druids vanquished by Tiberius and Claudius from Gaul fled to the Welsh Island of Mona (Anglesey) where they were finally massacred by Seutonius in ~60-61 CE by 20,000 legionnaires. Consequently, with the keepers of its traditions mostly slain, the Druidic religion waned throughout the British Isles.
After Christian convert Emperor Constantine ordered Christianity tolerated and Christian persecutions to end in 313 CE through his mother's conversion and his vision of the Christian Chi-Rho at the Battle of the Milvan Bridge, and his Christian successor Emperor Theodosius I (the last Roman emperor of a united Roman Empire before his successor Diocletian split the empire into the Latin-speaking Roman Catholic West and Greek-speaking Greek Orthodox East, or Byzantium) made Christianity the official religion of Rome in 380 CE/AD, he and succeeding Christian Roman Catholic Emperors ordered the Druidic religion eradicated from Brittania and Gaul over the next three centuries, replacing it with Roman Catholicism (although Christians probably only made up less then 20% of the Roman Empire). After 410 CE when the Roman legions left the British Isles to defend Rome after Alaric the Visigoth sacked it, Roman Catholic missionaries like the Roman Catholic slave Saint Patrick and his growing cult would continue that mission.
The Roman Catholic missionaries to Ireland told the Celtic Druidic holdovers that their aos si pagan gods had been exiled or died after Christ rose again after descending and conquering hell. Christian church fathers said the fire, candle, nut, and apple omens and charms worked due to “black magic," further conflating Cromm's old Druidic Celtic cult with devil worship or Baal worship.
Midsummer became St. John's Festival, Lugnasad became Lammas, and so Samhain became All Hallows Eve in preparation for All Souls Day as part of the triduum of AllHallowtide. Samhain's bonfires were still lit, but the Roman Catholic converts were told they would now light souls from “Purgatory to Paradise" as they once lit Lugh to his yearly death on Samhain. The old sacrificial rites to induce Cromm's protection were now lit to protect them from the same god who now became an evil lord of darkness equated with Baal/Beelzebub, Belial, Lucifer, Baphomet and Satan in black masses to the devil. That stigma is an unfortunate stain that still haunts Halloween.
Azriel wished to pay simultaneous homage to the ancient Roman pagan as well as the Roman Christian Roman Catholic origins of many of our Halloween traditions involving apples and nuts — featured cryptically in the iconography of Candlelight's logo as well. That story is next.
Roman Catholicism Grafts Christian Allhallowtide (All Hallows Eve, All Hallows Day, All Souls Day) onto Samhain
Samhain became Hallowmas after Nov. 1st's All Saints or All Hallows Day. Then, Nov. 2nd's All Souls Day, Dia de las Muertos in Latin America, was added and along with it the Hallow's Eve collection of alms for the poor the night before All Hallows (Saints) Day (hence All Hallows Eve) throughout late Medieval Europe. Allhallowtide had been born.
When there weren't enough days in the year to celebrate all in the panoply of Christian saints and those who were martyred to spread the faith, Pope Gregory IV in 835 CE established All Saints or All Hallows Day to solemnly remember all of the Christian martyrs en masse. He then moved it from its original station on May 1st (Beltaine) to Nov 1st ( just after Samhain) to make it easier to feed the throngs of people who came to Rome to celebrate Allhallowtide as a festival to all the Christian martyrs and saints, and those poor souls purifying in Purgatory, and ostensibly to make the conversion of the Celts in Western Europe and the British Isles easier.
The “Dance of Death" depicted in medieval art. This art was a reminder that no one lives forever, and that we should remember our death and live in a way that makes us unafraid to die and ready to meet Christ our Judge. Credit: Kyra C Kramer.com
All Soul's Day Creates All Hallows Eve's Souling & Trick-or-Treating
Nov. 2nd's All Souls Day was added to Allhallowtide or Hallowtide triduum in the late 10th (900s), early 11th (1000s), and 12th (1100s) Centuries CE gradually over time to assist in afterlife purification of souls in Purgatory (an implied third place of cleansing after death between heaven and hell) and to support the Medieval poor by Christian charity.
During the Medieval Period, throughout Catholic Christendom, souling for alms was a Hallowtide tradition that would lead to historical trick-or-treating. Credit: Medieval Histories
The Doctrine of Purgatory. The Catholic church's doctrine of Purgatory was defined by the Councils of Lyon (1274 CE/AD), Ferrara-Florence (1438–45 CE/AD), and Trent (1545–63 CE/AD). In these meetings, the doctrine was first justified in scriptures rejected by Protestants and Jews in the Catholic Bible's apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:42–45 suggesting prayers and alms for the poor collected for those already dead could redeem those who were killed but not already redeemed. Protestants thought the idea that prayers for the dead could redeem them preposterous, with only an individual's faith in Christ's sacrifice on the cross and God's grace being the only thing that could redeem anyone. That single difference of opinion would eventually result in the death of 70 million Christians killing other Christians.
Doctrinal Differences that Created the Modern World. Of course these doctrinal differences led to the Christian: Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation; the Spanish, French, and Roman/Italian Inquisitions; publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (famous witch hunting guide-book, The Witch Hammer) in 1487 CE resulting in centuries of witch hunts, false accusations of the church's or neighbors' enemies, trials, and witch burnings; and, famously, The European Wars on Religion in which 70 million Christians killed other Christians from the late 15th Century (1400s CE/AD) through the early 18th Century (1700s). Ironically, they led to the freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and church-state separation that America's founding fathers insisted upon in the Bill of Rights' First Amendment. The framers of the U.S. Constitution, America's founding fathers, wrote extensively about these things as being necessary antecedents for (conditions that must precede) Republican (representative) self government, the rule of law, and even for freedom itself to exist