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Religious (and indeed political) belief systems can be deceptive – behind the mask of one tradition we often find elements that have been absorbed from quite different sources.
This is the case with the Celtic civilization that I recently suggested could provide us with spiritual inspiration for the future. [1]
For instance, in his book on the druids, Jean Markale writes about the origin of their sacred sites, known as nemeta: “The nemeton was never chosen by chance. Most of the time it was on the spot of a prehistoric sanctuary, because the tradition of sacredness says that certain places are privileged.
“We can talk about telluric currents, magnetic forces or a propitious environment without falling into pseudo-esotericism: sacred places really are privileged places, either because ‘supernatural’ things happen there that we do not understand or because the psychic energy of individuals who carried out rituals there for centuries has ended up impregnating the place”. [2]
He points out that some people imagine that megalithic monuments like Stonehenge were the product of Celtic culture.
“This is to cheerfully forget that megalithic monuments in the West date from the fourth to the second millennium BC, while the Celts only appeared at the end of Bronze Age, that’s to say around 900 or 700 BC and they only had an undisputed historical existence from 500 BC.
“The megalithic monuments, which point to an advanced and spiritualistic religion, were built by peoples about whom we do not know much, except that they had nothing to do with the Celts”. [3]
However, just because the Celts did not build the monuments – or indeed, as we saw, base their religious festivals on the solstices which these celebrate – this does not mean that they were not influenced by the culture that built them.
Markale says: “Religions never completely die: certain elements of belief, rituals or habits acquired from the old religion always linger in the new one that arrives.
“So there is nothing astonishing about the notion that druidism gathered a certain heritage from the populations that the Celts discovered living in the lands that they occupied and with whom they found themselves forming a new community”. [4]
He notes that Stonehenge was built at least a thousand years before the Celts arrived in Britain. “However, it often appears in Celtic tradition, such as in the legend that says the monument was created magically by Merlin and the Arthurian stories that place Arthur’s last battle in its immediate surrounds”. [5]
Likewise, the Celts’ “shining” god Belenus and certain other solar figures “are probably images borrowed by the Celts from the indigenous peoples they subjugated”. [6]
“In the Celtic tradition, the solar role is not held by a man, but by a woman. The moon is masculine in Celtic (and Germanic) languages and it is the sun that is feminine…
“The so-called solar hero, so loved by mythologists, is in reality a moon-man dependent on the sun-woman of whom he is either the son, or the lover, a distinction which does not exist on the mythological level since it is merely a question of establishing an intimate relationship between two symbolic characters”. [7]
Markale argues that “an ancient Bronze Age solar goddess” had made her way into Celtic thinking, only to lose her solar role to a male figure [8] as society, and thus its religion, became increasing patriarchal. [9]
Markale also identifies traces of pre-historic totemism in Celtic culture: “They are survivals of what preceded the arrival of the Celts and were neither accepted nor integrated into their system.
“But a religion which systematically wipes out references to the beliefs and practices of a previous religion will see these resurface in other forms”. [10]
He also points to striking parellels between druidism and shamanism – a phenomenon often regarded as not belonging to the Indo-European tradition.
“The druids were certainly organised according to Indo-European structures, that is without doubt, but one has to admit that a large number of their beliefs and techniques were in some way similar to ecstatic beliefs and techniques that characterised shamanism”. [11]
He says we should not dismiss this connection, “especially when we are aware of the importance that shamanism had on the plains of central Asia and central Europe, where the Celts came from. [12]
“Druidism had a Nordic tint in comparison to the Mediterranean religions. It seems closer to Germanic and even Finno-Hungarian religions than to the religions of classical Greece and republican Rome…
“The Ancient Greeks were perhaps not wrong when they confused the Celts and the Germans under the vague label of Hyperborean [from the extreme north]”. [13]
But while these prehistoric beliefs bled into Celtic thinking, Celtic thinking (including the absorbed elements) also bled into Christian beliefs.
Markale says that Christianity was influenced by druidism “on more than one account” not least in the way in which it recruited and trained its priests. [14]
He adds that Christianity also inherited many of the druids’ sacred sites: “How many Christian sanctuaries, churches or small chapels must have been built on the site of a former nemeton?” [15]
The Arthurian legend, with its Quest for the Holy Grail, is an apparently Christian one, but Markale explains that its characters are often “literary avatars” for the old Celtic gods. [16]
“Some of Arthur’s companions became characters in Celtic folk tales, like the one able to pump the water out of an estuary, the one who could carry enormous weights or the one able to ingest incredible amounts of food”. [17]
Markale traces a line of descendance from the pre-Celtic great goddess to the Christian tradition. We heard in the last article how the goddess Brigid effortlessly became the Christian Saint Brigid (pictured), even retaining the same feast day of February 1.
The author adds: “Surrounded by formidable and efficient auxiliary gods, cloaked with many faces and many names, performing the three Indo-European functions, mistress of poetry, magic and prophecy, knowledgeable in diverse techniques, mother of all the gods, somewhat nymphomaniac and filled with the fury of a warrior, triple goddess but always one single woman, probably heiress to the Great Goddess of prehistoric times, she comes across as the Celtic Minerva”. [18]
“Since she is the mother of the gods of druidic Ireland, she can just as well be the Virgin Mary, mother of the Christian God, at the same time, moreover, as being his ‘bride’ and his ‘daughter’. The theological content is identical if one is prepared to dig under the surface”. [19]
Markale says that in Bath, in Britain, the sun goddess was known as Sul and was the protector of the spa town’s healing waters.
He adds: “What can we say about the ‘white ladies’ of Pyrenean folklore and of their possible relationship with the ‘apparitions’ at Lourdes or indeed about the numerous fountains and wells in the immediate proximity of churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary, in Brittany and elsewhere?” [20]
One of the best arguments I have heard in favour of Christianity is set out by Pierre Hillard in his 2019 book Archives du mondialisme (‘Globalist archives’).
He says that Jesus Christ’s self-sacrifice “had unprecedented consequences… thanks to the torments on the cross it warded off the predatory aspirations of human nature to put one’s fellow men to death by way of religious sacrificial ceremonies of Satanic essence”. [21]
I am certainly opposed to all human sacrifices, whoever carries them out and whatever form they take, [22] and I did wonder if a similar position on the part of druidic Celts accounted for their fairly quick conversion to Christianity – a moment of enlightenment that led them to turn their back on the sacrifices that we are generally told formed part of their religion.
But Markale is having none of it, not least because he regards reports of Celtic human sacrifices as fake news.
“It was the Romans, then the Christians, who insisted on the bloodthirsty side of these sacrifices, either not understanding the ritual in question or wanting to systematically blacken the name of the druidic cult so as to be able to ban it”. [23]
He argues that the burning of human beings in giant wicker men, as described by Julius Caesar, were not real sacrifices, citing evidence suggesting that people soaked themselves in water and then sat in a cabin under the bonfire and got high by breathing in the smoke of the burning vegetation, notably hemp. [24]
These were rites of passage, rituals of death and rebirth, he insists: “We can state without fear that druidism never practised human sacrifices other than by substitution, simulation or symbol”. [25]
Moreover, he suggests a completely different reason for the transition from druidism to Christianity which again involves a false narrative, namely that of the Celts’ supposed polytheism.
He writes: “We would do well to ask ourselves, once and for all, whether worshipping numerous gods is not just a practical way of honouring a single and unknown divinity under the multiple functional aspects attributed to him”. [26]
“The druidic God is ultimately the same as the Christian God, alpha and omega, beginning and end of all things. If the Irish fili [druids], guardians of the druidic doctrine, so easily became Christian priests, it is simply because their theology aligned with the main principles of the new theology…
“The first Christians, whether Fathers of the Church or Irish monks, concentrated more on the ‘superstitions’ and ‘sacrifices’ which they condemned and left aside theological arguments.
“Consequently, they deliberately said nothing about the symbolic elements which backed up and embodied the real dogma, which was the unicity of the unnameable God”. [27]
Despite this theological convergence, differences remained and the Roman Catholic Church fiercely resisted the introduction of Celtic thinking into its Mediterranean belief system, regarding this as “heresy”.
This was the case for Pelagius, who, I see elsewhere, was a British monk, really named Morgan, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries. [28] The “Pelagian Heresy” included the rejection of the concept of original sin, which was completely alien to the (healthy!) Celtic mind.
Remarks Markale: “We know that the Church reacted vigorously against this Pelagian ‘heresy’, almost completely eliminating it, whereas it seems to have been easily accepted by the British and Irish. This is quite telling: Pelagian thought mainly came from the heritage of the druids”. [29]
“Druidism was diluted into early Christianity… From the moment that two traditions come together on essential positions, we find synthesis and not just syncretism…
“We know, in fact, that Patrick and his initial disciples baptised, ordained and consecrated numerous members of the druidic priestly class. We can draw whatever conclusions we like from this, but it is certain that, very often, we seek druids where they are not to be found and rub shoulders with druids without knowing it.
“Let’s go further: there are heirs of the druids who do not know that they are guardians of an initiatory line”. [30]
All of this helps me to understand how it is that, while I have problems with the Christian religion – which is not the fruit of the European soil in which am rooted – I can still see the essential light within it and resonate with its old and beautiful sacred buildings and images.
I can now see how the figure of Jesus Christ can draw out the best in people, lifting them out of selfish egotism, cowardice and material greed towards a higher spiritual state like that of the Celtic druids.
However, of course, it has not just been through the Christian channel that druidic thinking has trickled, albeit underground, into the contemporary world.
Markale says that in the face of repression, some druids would no doubt have carried out their religion in secret without playing their crucial social role and the tradition would have degraded over time.
“If druidism has left some traces, it can only be in consciousness, in mentality… as with any repressed non-official tradition it surfaces again in what is called ‘folk wisdom’. The treasury of stories, folk songs, customs, superstitions and religious rituals in the territory that was Gaul can prove a mine of information for those searching patiently and objectively for possible remnants of druidism”. [31]
Markale identifies particular druidic influence in the folk healers who, as I can confirm, still flourish in rural France today, [32] adding: “The same goes for Britain, where under the Saxon and Christian surface can be discovered some very strange substrata…
“It was in Wales, a region which has remained very Celtic despite the weight of the Methodist religion, that at the end of the 18th century a neo-druidic movement emerged and then spread pretty much everywhere.
“Although neo-druidism is the result of a bizarre intellectual syncretism in which imagination played a more or less exclusive role, there is certainly a reason for its existence: this resurgence of a ‘druidic’ spirit, even completely invented, corresponded to a deep need, answered an unconscious demand. This ‘druidic spirit’ is surely not dead”. [33]
In this degraded, corrupt and soul-crushing twenty-first century we have more need than ever to access the fresh spirituality of our ancestors, whether Celtic or otherwise.
Markale writes: “Druidism captures the imagination. We confusedly feel that it carried the seeds of a Western tradition perfectly adapted to the peoples of Europe”. [34]
This is what has been stolen from us all by the globalist mafia and its cruel empire of lies and laws – the right to live according to our own values and in the way that feels right to us.
Those old values are still there, somewhere. Says Markale: “As religions never completely disappear, something of them remains, particularly in the way in which people in the West, especially rural people, experience their spirituality”. [35]
What we are talking about here is a spirituality that is deeply ingrained in the innate unconscious patterns of most human minds.
It is a joyful life-rooted way of thinking and being [36] completely incompatible with the vitaphobic authoritarianism of Empire and its sterile dogmas of control – it arises from the reality of our withness to nature, our belonging to a greater living being.
For many millions of human beings today, this reality is hidden from them by their urban cage of concrete and chrome, of bustle and blather, of artifice and avidity.
But if we step out of the cities, and the modern mindset that goes with them, we can allow the glory of that natural belonging and gnosis to flood into our hearts and guide our living and our thinking in the way that it should.
In the next piece we will look more closely at the ancient Celts’ relationship to nature.
Also in this series:
For a future inspired by the past
Through nature we can touch the divine
Life: a sacred and heroic mission
[1] Paul Cudenec, ‘For a future inspired by the past’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2026/07/13/for-a-future-inspired-by-the-past/
[2] Jean Markale, Le druidisme: traditions et dieux des Celtes, (Paris: Payot, 1985), p. 159. All translations are my own and all subsequent page references are to this work, unless otherwise stated.
[3] p. 60.
[4] pp. 60-61.
[5] p. 68.
[6] p. 101.
[7] p. 104.
[8] Ibid.
[9] p. 145.
[10] p. 223.
[11] p. 233.
[12] p. 46.
[13] p. 281.
[14] p. 17.
[15] p. 158.
[16] p. 151 FN.
[17] p. 236.
[18] pp. 141-42.
[19] p. 136.
[20] p. 105.
[21] Pierre Hillard, Archives du mondialisme: De la guerre contre l’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament (Lopérec: Editions Nouvelle Terre, 2019), p. 55.
[22] See Paul Cudenec, ‘Zionism, Nazism and Moloch’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2025/12/16/zionism-nazism-and-moloch/
[23] p. 128 FN.
[24] pp. 188-89.
[25] p. 196.
[26] p. 243.
[27] p. 250.
[28] The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. by Sir Paul Harvey, Fourth Edition revised by Dorothy Eagle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 628.
[29] p. 261.
[30] pp. 279-80.
[31] p. 37.
[32] p. 47.
[33] pp. 37-38.
[34] p. 282.
[35] p. 11.
[36] Paul Cudenec, ‘Life-rooted thinking’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2026/06/26/life-rooted-thinking/
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