“PERENNITAS STUDI IN ONORE DI ANGELO BRELICH Promossi dalla Cattedra di Religioni del mondo classico dell’Universita degli Studi di Roma [ePa Edizioni dell’Ateneo GoogleDRUIDS, ASTRONOMERS, AND HEAD-HUNTERS Mircea Evrape From antiquity to modern times, the Druids have been viewed in essentially two different ways: as learned and highly spiritual men to be compared with the Persian magi, the Indian brahmins and the Pythagoreans: or as rather sophisticated barbarians. They be- lieved in the immortality of the soul but at the same time tolerated head-hunting and practiced human sacrifice. A number of scholars who adopted the second point of view have suggested that the Druids borrowed the concept of the soul’s life after death from the Pythagoreans. These same scholars also believe that the Druids’s use of calendrical and astronomical knowledge was predicated upon their contact with Greco-Roman culture’. T.D. Kendrick is repre- 1 Among recent publications, we may note Jan de Vries, Die Druiden, Kairos 2, 1960, 67-82; F. Le Roux, Les Druides, Paris, 1961; Nora Chadwick, The Druids, Cardiff, 1966; Stuart Piggott, The Druids, London, 1968. There are essentially two different groups of sources: the Posidonian classical sources and the texts relevant to what Nora Chadwick calls “the Alexandrian tradi- tion”. The work of Posidonius is lost, but important passages of his writings were quoted or summarized by Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Athenaeus, and Julius Caesar (who also made use of other sources as well). J.J. Tierney has suc- cessfully identified all of these passages in his article, The Celtic Ethnography of Posidonius, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 60, 1959-60, 180-275. The “Alexandrinian tradition” consists mainly of Greek texts “written by scholars educated in the School of Alexandria from as early as the first century AD. onwards” (Nora Chadwick), all of them imbued by “primitivism”, ie., “a romantic image of the barbarian philosopher” (Stuart Piggott). This “roman- tic image” was admirably analyzed by ‘.L. Owen, The Famous Druids: A Survey of Three Centuries of English Literature on the Druids, Oxtord 1962, and by Piggott, 123-91. Google174 Mircea Eliade sentative of scholars who have adopted this second point of view. He characterized the Druids as “a pack of howling dervishes”. With regard to “their doctrine of immortality and the incarnation of the soul”, it was “simply the expression of a frequently occurring savage belief with which the ethnographer is perfectly familiar...” With re- spect to the Druids’s astronomical science, he says, “we cannot count the Druids as especially remarkable because of their studies in this direction...” The Druids were not “capable of a complicated compo- sition, particularly as we are told it was not their custom to com- mit their lore to writing ». It was true that they were able to con- struct the complicated Coligny calendar, but, explains Kendrick, this was only “a modified version of the Roman calendar, omitting the difficulties of the Roman system...” To be sure, Kendrick’s opinion is singular and extreme. Ho- wever, many scholars are reluctant to recognize the validity of in- formation about the Druids which is culled from the writings of Posidonius and other classical authors. That is especially the case with Druid items related to the conception of immortality and scien- tific perceptions. These scholars suspect that ancient writers read Pythagorean and Stoic doctrines into druidic lore. Their suspicions that many classical authors unconciously imputed elements from their own cultures into their understanding and evaluation of “barbarian” ethnic groups are often justified. But, one must always be cautious while refraining from hasty generalizations. The only safe approach is to appraise the historiographical presuppositions of classical wri- ters in each case. In the case of the Druids, the problem is even more complicated because of their reluctance to record their culture in writing. It is a well known fact that we possess no original docu- ments that were composed by native of Gaul which reflect the beliefs and practices of the continental Druids. However, the fact that the Druids did not record their lore in writing does not prove, as Kendrick has implied, that their mental capabilities were rather limited. For, we are dealing with a general Indo-European custom, 2 TD. Kendrick, The Druids: A Study in Keltic Prehistory, London, 1927. For a penetrating and humorous criticism of these passages see Francoise Le Roux, Contribution a une définition des druides, Ogam 12, 1960, 475-86, especially 4768. GoogleDruids, astronomers, and head-bunters typ namely, the injunction of exclusively oral transmission of the reli- gious heritage *. In the absence of authentic indigenous documents (as is the ca- se with the Celts), any attempt to analyze and evaluate religious structures should begin with comparative data. Jean Vendryés, Georges Dumézil and Emile Benveniste have long pointed out the striking similarities between the Celtic-Italic and Indo-Iranian re- ligious vocabularies, and the highly sophisticated content of such vocabularies‘. To quote Benveniste: “les survivances communes aux sociétés indo-iraniennes et italo-celtiques” is the consequence of “Lexistence de puissants colléges de prétres dépositaires des traditions sacrées qu’il maintenaint avec une rigueur formaliste”*. Thus, one should not compare druidic theology with Pythagorean thinking, but with the theologies of the Vedas and the Avesta. (As we shall see shortly, the well-known cliché. “Pythagorean influences”, contributed in large measure to the misrepresentation of the “barbarian” Celts and the Geto-Dacians). The institution of Druidism survived for centuries among the insular Celts, particularly in Ireland, even after Christian conver- sion. Archaic Celtic religious structures have been preserved in the vernacular literatures of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. D. A. Bin- chy, Myles Dillon and other scholars have pointed out that there are many striking parallels between Vedic-Brahmanic and Old Irish customs and ideas. To note just a few of such parallels: similar mo- des of poetic diction in Sanskrit and Old Irish literature, analogous use of legal procedures in ancient and medieval India and Ireland, 2 See, inter alia, Maurice Winternitz, Geschichte der indischen Literatur, Leipzig, 1908, I 31; Georges Dumézil, La tradition druidique et Vécriture, le Vivant et le Mort, Revue de V’Histoire des Religions 122, 1940, 125-33; G. Widengren, Holy Book and Holy Tradition in Iran. The Problem of the Sassanid Avesta, in F-F, Bruce and E.G. Rupp, eds., Holy Book and Holy Tradition, Manchester, 1968, 36-53; S. Gandz, The Dawn of Literature, Osiris 7, 1969, 261-79. On oral transmission in Ireland, see D.A. Binchy, The Background of Early Irish Literature, Studia Hibernica I 1969, 12 ff. 4}. Vendryés, Les correspondances de vocabulaire entre Vindo-iranien et Vitalo-celtique, Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique 20, 1917-18, 265-85; G. Dumézil, L’idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens, Bruxelles, 1958, 93 ff. (bibliographical references to his anterior publications). 3 E, Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, Paris, 1969, II, 10. Google176 Mircea Eliade the religious value of fasting, and the prestige accorded to bards, in both cultures, many parallel mythological and theological con- structions, etc.*. Thus, the theoretical possibilities of the Indo- european “specialists of the sacred” can be documented already at an archaic stage. Such comparisons are made possible by historical and comparative analysis of Celtic vernacular literature, in which so much of the druidic tradition has been preserved. I would like to add parenthethicaly that Kendrick did not even mention Old Irish Druids, who are the only source of “inside information” about this venerable institution’. The most serious objections raised about the authenticity and the quality of druidic philosophical thought come from considerations of the Druids’ practice of human sacrifice. Although we cannot ad- dress the problem of human sacrifice at lenght, we must note that almost all Indo-European peoples at some time practiced similar forms of sacrifice*. Indeed, such sacrifices were not abolished in Rome until 97 B.C. Indian sources, the only sources which enable us © CE D.A. Binchy, The Linguistic and Historical Value of the Irish Law Tracts, Proceedings of the British Academy 33, 1947, 245-64, and The Hindu Act of Truth in Celtic Tradition, Modern Philology 44, 1947, 137-40, and Celt and Hindu, Vishveshvaranand Indological Journal, I, Sept., 1963), and finally his Celts and Aryans, Simla, 1975; see also J.E. Caerwyn Williams, The Court Poet in Medieval Ireland, Proceedings of the British Academy 57, 1971, 85-135 (especially 99 sq. in which comparisons are made with other archaic Indo-European cultures). 1 Such a mistrust of early medieval traditions was probably the result of a wrongly understood precaution vis @ vis any “pagan” ideas or beliefs that were documented in an ethnic group after its conversion to Christianity. But, we now know that even the most thorough “christianization” process could not completely eradicate the old, most likely neolithic, heritage of an agrarian or pastoral society. That is especially the case with regard to myths and rites related to the funerary scenarios. See, for instance, Hans Hartmann, Der Totenkult in Irland, Heidelberg, 1952. In the mythico-ritual complex of agricultural activity, many archaic religious ideas survive: chtonic and human fertility, personification of good fortune, mythologies of death, and eschatolo- gical hope, etc. In his Gestaltheiligkeit im bauerlichen Arbeitsmythos, Viena, 1952, Leopold Schmidt has shown that certain mythico-ritual scenarios still current among the peasants of central and southeastern Europe at the begin- ning of the twentieth century, preserved mythological fragments and rituals thet had disappeared in ancient Greece even before the time of Homer. "Cf. W. Kirfel, Der Afvamedha und der Purushamedha, Festschrift W. Schumbring, Hamburg, 1951, 39-50; James L. Sauvé, The Divine Victim: GoogleDruids, astronomers, and head-bunters 177 to grasp at least the partial significance of human sacrifice, emphasize the cosmogonic and eschatological intentions of the ritual. Likewise, one can determine the eschatological significance of human sacrifice as practiced by the Getae and described by Herodotus (4.94). Once every five years, a messenger is sent to Zalmoxis charged with the responsability of telling him of the peoples’s needs. In other words, the human sacrifice makes possible the “reactualization” of direct relations between the Getae and their god and allows them to par- ticipate in the original situation that existed in illo tempore when Zalmoxis still lived among them and was establishing his “mystery cult” ’. We can only determine the approximate significance and func- tion of human sacrifice among the Celts. Caesar (Bell. Gall. 5.10) state that those who are suffering from serious illness or are in the midst of the dangers of battle, either put to death human beings as sacrificial victims or take a vow to do so, and the Druids take part in these sacrifices; for they believe that unless one human life is given in exchange for another human life, the power of the almighty gods cannot be appeased. Sacrifices of this kind are tradition- ally offered for the needs of the state. In all circumstances listed by Caesar (illness, the danger of battle and needs of the state), the intention of the ritual is clear: through a sacrificial death, the victim’s “soul” (his life energies) is “transferred” into a “new” body. Such ritual transferrences of life through human sacrifice are particularly used in architectonic con- structions (temples, cities, bridges, and houses ". But human beings are also immolated in order to insure the success of any undertaking # Aspects of Human Sacrifice in Viking Scandinavia and Vedic India, in Jaan Pubvel, ed., Myth and Law among the Indo-Europeans, Berkeley 1970, 173-91. 9 See Mircea Eliade, Zalmoxis: The Vanishing God, trans. by Willard Trask, Chicago, 1972, 48 ff. © Translation by J.J. Tierney, 272. Most likely, this account was based on Posidonius; cf. Tierney, 215. "T have discussed this mythico-ritual complex in my Zalmoxis, 164-190. 2 When Xerxes sailed for Greece, he had nine boys and nine girls buried alive in order to insure his victory. And Themistocles, in obedience to an oracle, had three young prisoners sacrified on the eve of the Battle of Salmis (Plutarch, Themistocles, 14). After the military disaster at Cannes (216 B.C.), the Romans buried alive two Greeks and two Gauls (Livy, 22.57.6). Google178 Mircea Eliade (as is the case in the last two circumstances noted by Caesar) and to guarantee the historical longevity of a spiritual enterprize ¥. One may doubt, however, that the circumstances noted by Caesar, repre- sent the original intention and function of human sacrifice among the Celts. The ritual immolation of human victims is modeled after the mythological killing of a primordial giant (such as Ymir, Puru- sa, and P’an-ku) in various cosmogonies. In general, the cosmogo- nic myth has been shown to be the model for all mythico-ritual sce- narios related to a “making”, a “work”, or a “creation”. In any case, it is rather naive to infer a moral inferiority and a “barbarian” type of spirituality on the basis of the fact that Druids practiced human sacrifice and tolerated “head-hunting ". One must be careful not to apply Judeo-Christian or Stoic-Hellenistic moral presuppositions when judging the cultural creations of archaic or “barbarian” societies. During the western world’s long process of desacralization, the religious significance of death and dying, and especially sacrificial or “heroic” death in which both the actor and the victim are “consecrated”, has long been lost. In order to illu- strate the fallacy of infering moral or mental inferiority from “sa- vage” practices, we only need recall the example of the Dayak. For more than a century, the Ngadju were famous among western missionaries and scholars for their human sacrifices and ritual head- hunting. They were noted by anthropologists, ethnologists and hi- stotians of religions almost exclusively for these sanguinary practi- ces. In 1946, Hans Schaerer published his Die Gottesidee der Ngadju Dayak. In this book, Schaerer revealed a completely new and unexpected depiction of the Weltanschauung of these head- hunters. He not only mastered the language of these peoples and became thoroughly acquainted with their customs, but also came 48 Saint Peter was accused of having sacrificed a year old infant, puer anni- culus, to assure Christianity a duration of 365 years. The fact that Saint Augustine felt it necessary to answer such a calumny shows that by the fourth century of our era, the pagan world still believed in the efficacy of this magical technique; cf. J. Hubaux, L’Enfant d’un an, Collection Latomus 2: Hommage a Joseph Bidez et a Franz Cumont, Bruxelles, 1949, 143-58. On the religious significance of the head, see P. Lambrechts, L’exalta- tion de la téte dans la pensée et dans Vart des Celtes, Bruges, 1954, and especially Anne Ross, Pagan Celtic Britain, London, 1967, 94-171. In Ross’s work, figures 25-86 and plates 1-23 (cf. 155 ff.) indicate the survival of the cult after conversion to Christianity. GoogleDruids, astronomers, and bead-bunters 179 to understand their mythological structures as well as the rol myths play in the life of the Dayak. As is the case with many archaic peoples, the Dayak cosmogonic myth discloses the eventful creation of the world and of man and, at the same time, the principles which govern the cosmic process and human existence. Through the cosmogonic myth and its sequel, the Dayak progressively unveils the structures of reality and of his own proper mode of being. What happened in the beginning describes at once both the original perfection and the destiny of each individual. At the beginning, so the myth goes, the cosmic totality was still undivided in the mouth of a coiled water- snake. Eventually, two mountains arise and from their repeated clashes the cosmic reality comes progressively into existence: the clouds, the moon, the hills, the sun, and so on, The mountains are the seats of the two supreme deities, and they are also these deities themselves. They reveal their human forms, however, only at the end of the first part of creation. In their anthropomorphic forms, the two supreme deities, Mahatala and his wife Putir, pursue the cosmic work and create the upperworld and the under- world. But there is still lacking an intermediary world, and mankind to inhabit it, The third phase of creation is cartied out by the two hornbills, male and female, who are actually identical with the two supreme beings. Mahatala raises the tree of life in the “center,” and the two hornbills fly over toward it, and eventually meet each other in its branches. A furious fight breaks out between the two birds, and as a result the tree of life is extensively damaged. From the knotty excrescences of the tree and from the moss falling out from the throat of the female hornbill, a maiden and a young man come forth, the ancestors of the Dayak. The tree of life is finally destroyed and the two birds end by killing each other. In sum, during the work of creation, the deities reveal themselves under three different forms: cosmic (the two mountains), anthropomorphic (Mahatala and Putir), and theriomorphic (the two hornbills). But those polar manifesta- tions represent only one aspect of the divinity. No less important are the godhead’s manifestations as a totality: the primordial water-snake, for instance, or the tree of life. This totality—which Schaerer calls divine/ambivalent totality—constitutes the fundamental principle of the religious life of the Dayak, and it is proclaimed again and again in different contexts. One can say that, for the Dayaks, every divine form contains its opposite in the same measure as itself: Mahatala is also his own wife and vice-versa, and the water-snake is also the hornbill and vice-versa. In the most important religious ceremo- nies—birth, initiation, marriage, death—the creative combat between two polar principles is tirelessly reiterated. 18 Hans Schiirer’s book has been translated into English by Rodney Need- ham as Ngadju Religion: The Conception of God among a South Borneo People, The Hague, 1963. See my comment in The Quest, Chicago, 1969, 77 sq. For Google180 Mircea Eliade I have enlisted the Dayak cosmogonic myth and its sequel only to convey in part the highly systematic, profound and imaginative mythology of a people that practiced head-hunting and human sacri- fice. Consequently, one might assume with some justification that these same practices did not impede the Celts, and especially their re- ligious guides, the Druids, from elaborating a profound and elevated system of theology. Some scholars have also doubted the Druids’s sophisticated use of calendrical and astronomical knowledge. Caesar states (Bell. Gall. 6.14) that “they also have much knowledge of the stars and their motion, of the size of the world and of the carth, of natural philosophy, and of the powers and spheres of action of the immortal gods, which they discuss and hand down to their young students” (trans. Tierney). Stylistically, this passage reveals Pythagorean and Stoic reminiscences. But a rhetorical cliché of Roman-Hellenistic lineage does not invali- date the possibility that the Celts were experts in astronomical know- ledge. The Coligny calendar is a remarkable construction and reflects in its details Greek rather than Roman calendrical practices . ‘A comparison with the Dacians (Getae) is particularly illumi- nating at this point, as there are a significant number of analogies between Dacian priests and contemplatives on the one hand, and Druids on the other. Probably utilizing the writings of Posidonius, Strabo (7.3.11) describes the high priest, Decaeneus, as ‘a magician (goés), a man who had not only travelled to Egypt but had also thoroughly learned certain signs through which he claimed to know the divine will, the religious significance of head-hunting, see Ngadju Religion, 63,79,83 ff., 118 sq., 140 ff, etc. “Its scheme might be related to a major 30-year cycle of the type indicated by Pliny, but more plausibly to the 19-year cycle known in Baby- Jonian and Greek mathematics, and in the latter instance associated with the name of Meton, who supported its adaptation in Athens, where however it was only employed between 338 and 290 B.C. Hecateus attributed a know- edge of this same cycle to the Hyperboreans which he located in the British Isles. Its pratical significance lies in the fact that 19 solar years are (within about half a day) the equivalent of 235 lunar months; with this knowledge, it is possible to add extra months as required in a regular cycle, and so reconcile the solar and lunar calendars” (Piggott, The Druids, 116). GoogleDruids, astronomers, and head-bunters 181 Writing in the sixth century A. D., but using older sources, Jorda- nes presents a vivid account and enthusiastic portrayal of Decaeneus, the high priest who taught the Getae “almost the whole of philoso- phy.” Indeed, by teaching them morality, he restrained their barbaric customs, by instructing them in physic, he persuaded them to live in conformity to nature [...] By demonstrating theoretical knowledge to them, he taught them to observe the twelve signs [of the Zodiac] and the courses of the planets that traverse above, and the whole of astronomy [...] Consider, I beg you, what a pleasure it was for these brave men to be instructed in philosophical doctrines when, for a short time, they were not engaged in war! One could be seen studying the course of the heavens, another examining the nature of herbs and shrubs; here one followed the growth and decline of the moon, while another looked at the labors of the sun and observed how those celestial bodies that hasten toward the east are turned and brought back by the rotation of the heavens (Getica, 12, 69-71). For a long time, this rhetorical exercise, full of reminiscences and stereotypes, was not taken seriously by scholars. In fact, Jordanes was a mediocre historian; as in a romantic biography, he presented Decaeneus as a “civilizing hero” of the whole nation. Nevertheless, many of Jordanes’ assertions ate confirmed by older sources. The reputation of the “Thracian physicians of Zalmoxis” was already well established when Plato wrote Charmides. It is probably not by chan- ce that Dioscorides, a Greek physician of the first century A.D., took the trouble to collect and record a great number of Daco-Getic na- mes for medicinal plants ®. Even more important are the two Dacian sanctuaries, recently excavated at Sarmizegetuza and Cotesti. These temples had no roofs, and the very large sanctuary at Sarmizegetuza was dominated by celestial symbolism while also serving a calendrical function ”. In a celebrated passage Herodotus recounts what he had heard about Zalmoxis from the Greeks who lived beside the Black Sea and the Hellespont: that Zalmoxis as a slave of Pythagoras, who, upon "See my Zalmoxis, 65 ff. for a comparative commentary with other sources. CE. my Zalmoxis, 56 and note 106. ® CE. Hadrian Daicoviciu, I! tempio-calendario dacico di Sarmizegetuza, Dacia, NS. 4, Bucarest, 1960; 231-54, and his Daci, Bucarest, 1968, 194 ff., 210 ff. Google182 Mircea Eliade returning to Getae, attempted to convince them that “they would live forever”. Herodotus adds: “but I think that he [Zalmoxis] lived many years before Pythagoras” (4.94-96.) Herodotus was certainly right. But his Greek informers, while giving him valuable data, also inaugurated a venerable tradition that endured until the end of antiquity. That tradition was the famous theory that any mystical or philosophical preoccupation detected among the “barbarians” was somehow of Pythagorean origin. With regard to Zalmoxis, this in- formation is highly significant: it indicates that if the Greeks living beside the Black Sea and the Hellespont considered Zalmoxis as a disciple of Pythagoras, it was for the simple reason that his mythic- ritual scenario reminded them of some Greek secret practices and eschatological hopes. In other words, the Greeks recognized in Zal- moxis’s cult a particular type of “Mystery religion” in which certain eschatological ideas related to the immortality of the soul reminded them of Pythagora. Unfortunately, we do not have a parallel example of a 4th century B.C. Greek historian providing us with a scenario of a mythic- ritual cult among the Celts. But, as I have already pointed out, there are a number of analogies between Geto-Dacian priests and sages and the continental Druids. Moreover, the example of Zal- moxis helps us to decipher the implicit meaning and intention of the well-known cliché, “Pythagorean influence”: it indicates the exis- tence of eschatological ideas (such as the immortality of the soul) and secret initiatory rituals (with possible esoteric interpretations) among specific “barbarian” ethnic groups ™. For almost a century, scholars have laboriously consulted the writings of anthropologists and ethnologists in order. to understand the “primitive” aspects of the religions of antiquity. One can only hope that this practice continues. However, one might also hope that the results be different. After reading, for instance, Schaerer’s work on the Ngadju Dayak, Marcel Griaule’s publications on the Dogon, A.P. Elkin’s and Ronald Berndt’s books on Australian religion, E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s contributions on the Nuer, and many other recent publications on “primitive” culture, historians of Celtic, 2 In some cases analogous indications can be inferred from other, rather late, clichés employed by some Alexandrian authors sincerely convinced of the moral and religious superiority of “primitivism” (one can almost speak here of the myth of the “Noble Savage”). GoogleDruids, astronomers, and head-bunters 183 Germanic, or paleo-balcanic religions will be inclined at least to accept the possibility that highly spiritual doctrines and “elevated” religious practices were also shared by the “barbarians” of North, Central and Eastern Europe. University of Chicago Google