Religion is a great power. People need religion to live better. It gives us the assurance of staying alive after death. Religion explains us what is happening on the world and why it is happening. In our beliefs it is God or Gods who reign the world. They had created people and all creatures, under their forces are the natural phenomenas. Th existance of God make us feel better but also forces us to worship him. We believe in words of his prophets, we also begin to take a part in religious observances. To sum up, the religious practices, worship of God and faith makes the religion. Of course in every religion there is a bit of mythology and legends. They are also a part of religion.
One of the most interesting and gripping cults was the religion of Celts. Nevertheless it is very hard to write about it as it was very complicated. The whole faith and practices were led by the leaders called druids. They were the center of the knowledge about all ceremonies and beliefs. The main means of conveying religious practices was art. The Celts made the whole system of symbols and spread them all over their land. The best source of information about their beliefs are the Irish legends. There is about four hundred of them left. They are devided into four main parts. The first part is telling us about god Dagada and Danu and their tribes. The next part is about the lives of the greatest heroes. The third part is acquainting us with the history of wars between the Irish kings. The last and the fourth part of the text, concernes the legendary warrior and hero - Finn Mac Cool, who took part in numerous duels, fights and wars.
The great impact on those compositions had the Christianity. This is the reason why between legends about Irish kings, druids and gods we can also find a story of King Arthur and his Knights who were questing the Holy Grall. We know that the main structure of religion was one but there were hundreds of local variants of the worship. There were found nearly four hundred names of different gods, but only thirty of them is mentioned more than once. Only "higher" gods on the religious ladder are accepted by all belivers. The rest of the gods are created for local purposes. These are the gods of streams, trees, stones, etc..
The gods who were standing on the top of the ladder were: Dagde, Luga and Benelos. Dage was the god of nature, agriculture and farming. He was the lord of prosperity and well - being. He was in possession of the secret knowledge. Luga was the god of everything what was connected with day and light. He ruled over the rays of sunshine and sun. Benelos was the god of fire. Celts stayed very close to the nature. They believed in the power of trees, stones, water, etc. the symbol of their faith in the nature was oak. It was their sacred symbol. In every village there was a great oak which was the ceneter of all practices. Like I said the priest's name was druid. The etymology of this word indicate that the part "dr" meant "oak", so we can concider druids as an oak - priests.
There were also other trees which were concidered as very important. The intake of hazelnuts and apples was supposed to guarantee the youth, wisdom and health. So, the hazelnut trees and apple trees were also surrounded by the worship.
This is a short story about one of Celtic druids. His name was Finegas and he lived by the river called Boyne. He was trying to catch a salmon there but all his attempts let down. For all that time he was eating the nuts from the Wisdom Tree and after some time he managed to catch the salmon. While he was frying the fish he burnt his finger. When he tried to relieve the pain he put his finger into his mouth and it turned out that he was given a gift of second sight.
This short story is also the confirmation of how important was the cult of water. There was a god called Danu who was the lord of all seas, rivers, streams, creeks and brooks. The water was the life - giving liquid. Celtic people believed that inside some streams and rivers there are some supernatural forces and that is why they worshipped those places. A lot of remnants of this water - cult was found. They also believed that some powers were hidden inside fish and that is why some of the species where not supposed to be eaten.
Nowadays there are no druids but we can still find some remnants of the past in streams and rivers and lakes. We can also notice that some of the gods and godess are still watching their land as their names are preserved in the names of streams, creeks, rivers.
