In this piece, I will summarize the work Druids and Human Sacrifice by Bruce Lincoln (link here for original text). The work discusses the ancient Druids, the priestly class of Celtic Society, and outside views on the practice of these people.
### The Grey Areas of Historical Accounts
Little is known about the Druids from within Celtic society. Almost no written records exist that describe them, their roles, or their knowledge from Celtic sources--nearly everything we know about them come from Roman and Greek sources. This presents a problem. A large portion of Roman scripts concerning the Druids were that they were "Noble Savages," using sacrifice for no other reason that they are brutish. This is faulty for a number of reasons; one of those is that much of the information gathered on them came from earlier Greek sources, and was simply appropriated for a propaganda campaign; another is that some historians believe that the act was simply conjured up by the Romans to sway northern European influence from the Celts to Rome.
On top of these historical problems, there is a modern issue with regards to interpretation of these actions. A paradox exists, in which people today acknowledge the intellectual leadership of the Druids, yet ignore their role in human sacrifice; meanwhile, others focus solely on their participation in sacrificial rituals and ignore their positions of scholarly pursuit. This, however, does not have to be the case. The evidence points to Druids being both intellectual leaders as well as ritualistic sacrificers. The fact that there is a problem in which modern interpretation pushes a bias on us is irrelevant.
#### The Early Accounts
The acts of these Druids was recorded early by Pomponius Mela around 42 A.D., when he saw "[The Gauls] are arrogant and superstitious, and at one time they were so savage that they believed a man to be the best and most pleasing sacrificial victim for the gods...they take off a little portion [from the victims] when leading the consecrated ones to the altars. Still, they have their own eloquence and their masters of wisdom, the Druids. These ones profess to know the size and form of heaven and earth, the motion of the sky and stars, and what the gods desire." Mela goes on to say that they gave orders to noble leaders, and they taught that souls are eternal and that they go to another life among "the Manes." Mela is later confirmed by Diodorus Siculus. He writes "there are some men who are philosophers and theologians...whom they call 'Druids.' And they consult them as diviners, deeming them worthy of great approbation. And they foretell what is destined through the interpretation of birds and sacrifices of victims, and they hold all the multitude attentive." Then, Siculus describes an incredible custom: "For having consecrated a man, they strike him above the diaphragm with a sacrificial knife, and when the man struck has fallen, they know destiny from his fall, from the dismemberment of his limbs, and from the flow of his blood, for they trust to ancient and time-honored observance in these things."
These texts support the view that sacrifice, and dismemberment in particular, was an honored religious practice that held an integral part in the community. This is important in critiquing the Roman view that often Druids went into training simply to avoid military service. The importance of dismemberment is also confirmed by other religious texts, from the Persian text Skend Gumanig Wizar, which states "the bodily, material creation of the Evil Spirit--all the bodily creation is of the Evil Spirit. More precisely, the sky is from the skin, the earth is from the flesh, the mountains are from the bone, and the plants are from the hair of the demoness Kuni." Similarly, the poetic Edda from Iceland contains "From Ymir's flesh the earth was made//and mountains from his bones;//Heaven from the skull of the rime-cold giant//and from his blood, the sea." All of these share the similar themes of earth from flesh, mountains from stones, etc., and all support the cosmological importance of dismemberment.
Truly, however, the only way we can confirm its importance to Druids is from Celtic evidence itself. One Irish text which supports the theme of dismemberment is a myth about the origin of healing herbs. The story tells how Dian Cecht, physician of the Tuatha De Danaan, killed his son Miach when the son passed him in medical knowledge. The myth is reprinted here:
"That cure (performed by Miach) seemed evil to Dian Cecht. He let loose his sword on the head of his son, cutting his scalp down to the flesh. The youth healed that, through the exercise of his skill. He struck again, cutting the flesh to the bone. the youth healed that by the same exercise. He hewed a third cut, to the membrane of the brain. The youth healed that by the same exercise. He hewed a fourth cut, and reached the brain so much that Miach died, and Dian Cecht said that there was not any physician who could heal that blow.
After that, Miach was buried by Dian Cecht, and three hundred and sixty-five healing herbs grew up through his grave, according to the number of his joints and sinews."
Here, the number of herbs correlates the number of bodily connectors, the "joints and sinews." These are the places where most critical repair is necessary; the correlation implies that there is a healing herb for each one, and correct healing involves finding the correct herb for the body part. It is clear that the implication is that one herb from Miach's body has the power to cure the same body part from which it came. This knowledge presupposes a knowledge of what Lincoln calls the microcosm and the macrocosm, or the small world and the large--the personal and the cosmos.
### Sacrifice and Healing: An Inverse Relation
The important point to be taken here is that sacrifice and healing are directly opposite to one another. Whereas sacrifice is taking from the body, the microcosm, to heal the cosmos, the macrocosm, healing is just the opposite; it is taking from the cosmos to heal the body. The Greeks and Romans called this interconnected discourse "physiology."
This is seen often in Celtic myth. Old legal texts such as Senchus Mor show that the Celts literally believed they created the heaven and Earth. A myth name The Seven Part Adam (which has been severely Christianized) tells of the creation of Earth by the seven parts of Adam, analogous to the dismemberment of Ymir. These tales help link the concepts of cosmogony--the creation of the universe--with anthropogony--the creation of humans. The belief that humans are created, or healed, by the universe, which is still held by many today, runs parallel to the belief that the universe is in turn created by all beings through sacrifice. Such macro- and microcosms run often in many Celtic myths.
### Other Reasons of Sacrifice
The fact that this justification proved valid to the Celts as a reason to sacrifice human beings should come as no surprise. One only has to look at the atrocities committed within the last 100 years in the names of religion, the people, etc. (genocides such as the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Palestinian Conflict) to see that this is not an uncommon aspect of human nature. Furthermore, the fact remains that most of those sacrificed were in fact prisoners of war or criminals. Dealing with these people in small-scale farming communities was not as simple as creating slave-farmer societies, as larger-scale plantation based civilizations did, nor was jail an option, for they simply did not have the resources necessary to house them. Sacrifice therefore offered a simple solution: knowing that cosmogony was important, it was preferable to eliminate the unappealing characters of society, all while knowing that "to kill a man was the most religious act."
No comments:
Post a Comment