Lorcan's favourite gods and goddesses!

Welcome to today's 12th post for the month of April.

Every day this month,  I aim to post about some aspect of BEFORE BELTANE a PREQUEL to my Celtic Fervour Series, newly published in paperback and soon to be published in Kindle (29th April 2022). 

Taranis (Jupiter)

Lorcan, like everyone around him, has a long list of gods and goddesses that he pays homage to. Some, however, feature a lot more as they're his favourites for personal reasons. Druid/Celtic devotions, as far as is known, involved praying to multiple deities. There were likely to have been regional ones, and others that were more universal, even if their names changed slightly according to local dialect.

Julius Caesar wrote about some of the deities worshipped by the druids of Gaul, and highlighted particular events that he considered somewhat barbaric - i.e. human sacrifice. Human sacrifice was outlawed by the higher echelons of Roman religion long before Julius Caesar's time, though animal sacrifice was still rife across the Roman World. Having personally witnessed, or having heard about, the druidic sacrificial on goings in Gaul possibly coloured Julius Caesar's opinion of what was happening in Britannia. The druids left no written record, so it's not certain what was normal in Britannia in 55 (BC/BCE). And not certain afterwards, either. 

In my fiction writing, I've assumed that even if human sacrifice happened in the time of Julius Caesar in Britannia, the rites had been abandoned by (AD/CE) 71 when my Celtic Fervour Series begins. What is not surprising is that gruesome tales can linger long in the traditions of societies and Lorcan is not much different from most of his fellow Brigantes in being scared of the power of the druids.

There's a nice long list here of deities mentioned in Lorcan's story, by him and by other characters, but the pantheon to choose from is much bigger than this! 

Epona

Gods

Ambisagrus (am-bi-sag-rus as in bus) –weather; Bel (bell) – sun; Cernunnos (ker-nun-oss) – forest god/woods; Ialonus (eye-ah-lone-us) – local god of the meadows (Cumbria); Manaan (man-ay as in hay-an) – sea; Taranis (tah-ran-eesh) – thunder

Goddesses

Andraste (an-drast-eh) – war goddess; Belisima (bel -iss-im-a) – ford/river goddess; Brighid (bride-ee) – hearth; Cerridwen ( ker-id-wen)– night dark; Epona (ay-pon-ah) – goddess of horses; Suala – river goddess/spring/ waterfall

Finding images that come with free copyright use for adding to this post is not easy, but there are some wonderful interpretations of the deities on internet sites. I would love to have shown some of my favourite renditions of Andraste - Lorcan's favourite, too - but sadly I can't. Though we really have no idea if people who lived in north Britannia during Lorcan's era actually pictured any of their deities in the way that we can do today. 

Happy Reading.

Slàinte! 

p.s. In another post I'll mention Nara's favourites, since there's a slightly different list in her story. 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taranis_Jupiter_with_wheel_and_thunderbolt_Le_Chatelet_Gourzon_Haute_Marne.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Epona.jpg