[41] The evidence was British Celtic sagas about great queens and warrior maidens. But there was also a form of foster parentage in which no fee was charged, designed to tighten the links between two families. Since the wooden body of the spindle does not survive, it is the clay whorl which is most commonly found in graves; stone weights from wooden looms are also common. It's important to remember that, as the University of Hawaiinotes, this term isnow considered highly offensive when used to refer to people. As Human Rights Watchnotes, this is shown by historical records dating back over 7,000 years. [26] The position of Celtic women may have changed, especially under the influence of Roman culture and law, which saw the man as head of his household. Ancient Celtic women - Wikipedia Encyclopedia.com. [42], Matrilineality (the transmission of property through the female line) is not attested for the Celts either. On her feet there are pointed shoes. The popularity of modern paganism and Celtic spirituality is strengthened by the assumption that Celtic religion could survive domination by Roman culture and Christianity. Very often these mythic female figures embody sovereignty over the land or the land itself (see hieros gamos). As well as their male and female forms, Inari can also appear as an androgynous bodhisattva, or as various animals including snakes and dragons. These are the gods referred to throughout the Studio Ghibli movie "Spirited Away,"but one particular kami stands out as having no fixed gender. In the belief system of the Fon people of West Africa, the world was created by a bigenderdeity. Perhaps the best known legendary non-binary figure is Aphroditus, from Greek Myth. Inari is also notable for their strong association with foxes. As a Gaul himself (he belonged to the Vocontii tribe), Trogus would have transmitted much of his information at first hand. [85], The hair was often shaved above the oiled forehead. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. The Celts (Ancient Greek Keltoi; Latin Celtae, Galli, Galati) were tribes and tribal confederations of ancient Europe, who resided in west central Europe in the Late Bronze Age and early Iron Age (the Hallstatt culture). [18] Plutarch[19] names the women of Cisalpine Gaul as important judges of disputes with Hannibal. Indigenous people across Australia share some beliefs in common, and a widely revered figure among them is the Rainbow Serpent. [31], In later times, female cultic functionaries are known, like Celtic/Germanic seeress Veleda[32] who has been interpreted by some Celtologists as a druidess.[33]). A study in the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journaldiscusses this, noting that the view of modern archaeologists is influenced by a modern view of binary gender which can easily gloss over intersex and non-binary people from the ancient world. The already mentioned Queen of Connacht, Medb, broke with all conventions and selected her own husbands, whom she later repudiated when she tired of them. The regional variation in fashion (as well as differences based on age and class) were more complex than the simple tunic. The organization of religion in other areas such as Galatia or Celt-Iberia is less well known. As History on the Net mentions, nobles in Mayan culture had a near-priestly role in society, considered to be intermediaries between earthly people and the gods, tasked with a duty to both. They could dispose of this property freely, unlike in Old Irish law, in which the widow was under the control of her sons. After that, the inheritance returned to her paternal relatives (Fine). [51] The resulting children would be assigned to whichever man was willing to marry the woman. [78], Gold jewelry (necklaces, bracelets, rings) were worn as symbols of social class and were often of high craftsmanship and artistic quality. Astrid - Old Norse for "super strength." The position of the wife (Irish: ct-muinter, 'first of the household', or prm-ben, 'chief woman') was determined by the size of the dowry she brought with her. In thinking about the topic as it relates to the ancient world, one must consider, WOMAN In Western society, there is a rigid binary older than time itself. Tight-waisted skirts with bells in the shape of a crinoline are also depicted. Reliefs and sculptures of Celtic women are mainly known from the Gallo-Roman culture. 150 Medieval Names, Meanings and Origins Third Genders: New Concept? Or Old? | The Evolution of Celtic names are used as unisex too, both for boys and girls. Between the third and sixth century ce, Christianity was introduced to Gaul, Britain, and Ireland. However, as a chapter in the book "Ancient Maya Women"explains, there's good reason to believe that Mayan society recognized a third gender, and the Maize God is seemingly a big part of this. ", This page was last edited on 14 March 2023, at 17:29. She employed the contrast between the Celtic matriarchal culture and the Christian patriarchy as a theme of her work. [1] Here perhaps matrilineality could be a reason for the selection of these leaders, rather than the king's own sons, but other reasons cannot be ruled out, even if the story is not fictional. Diseases like sinusitis, meningitis and dental caries leave typical traces. Celtic druidess[de]es, who prophesied to the Roman emperors Alexander Severus, Aurelian und Diocletian, enjoyed a high repute among the Romans. A large majority of graves have no gender-specific grave goods, but where such goods are found, they almost always belong to female graves.[7]. Latin adultera, 'adultress') had much less power and was subordinate to the main wife. Bustnotes that some versions of Dionysus played with the god's gender. There is no overall scholarly study of gender in Celtic religion from the ancient to modern period; however, Philip Freeman's WarWomen and Druids: Eyewitness Reports and Early Accounts of the Ancient Celts (Austin, Tex., 2002) makes useful comments on the relevant classical references. Similarly, in North America, the Zuni have a creator deity Awonawilona, who is also both male and female. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. This, however, is no modern creation. The position of ancient Celtic women in their society cannot be determined with certainty due to the quality of the sources. She had a legal duty (Lg n-enech) to assist the first wife in case of illness and could be harassed and injured by her with impunity for the first three days after her marriage, with only very restricted rights of self-defence (pulling hair, scratching and punching back). A consistent matriarchy, which was attributed to Celtic women by Romantic authors of the 18th and 19th centuries and by 20th century feminist authors, is not attested in reliable sources. Nearly all of the following legal matters seem to have been similar, with some regional variation, both on the mainland and in the British Isles. Alastair. Biblical Period Good surveys of modern Celtic paganism and Celtic spirituality are Ronald Hutton's The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (Oxford, 1990) and Marion Bowman's "Contemporary Celtic Spirituality," in New Directions in Celtic Studies, edited by Amy Hale and Philip Payton, pp. [84] Unlike married women, unmarried women usually wore the hair untied and without a headcovering. However, the date of retrieval is often important. [86] The seer Fedelm in Irish sagas is described with three braids, two tied around her head and one hanging from the back of her head down to her calves. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. Since ancient Greek writers first identified the Celts as keltoi, this group has provided a powerful symbol of otherness for the perception of women and their function in religious contexts in Celtic society. [66][67] Incest played a key role in British Celtic myth, such as in Tochmarc tane ('The Courting of tan') as in other ancient cultures (like Ancient Egypt or the pair of Zeus and Hera in classical Greece. Humans are natural storytellers, and ancient cultures used myths and legends to explain facts, both about nature and culture. As trophies one took the head or the breasts of the women. In the Vix Grave a huge bronze krater or mixing bowl was found which indicates the high status of the woman buried there. Two utter spontaneous prophecies to two emperors, whereas the emperor Aurelian (c. 215275 ce) consults Gaulish druidesses directly. The cost which the birth parents had to pay to the foster parents was higher for girls than for boys, because their care was considered more expensive. Unlike the Greeks and Romans, the Celts never had a single pantheon, although the Romans attempted to connect them up on the basis of their functions, through the Interpretatio Romana. The deity Hermaphroditus is where the word hermaphroditecomes from. As with so many figures from mythology, Hermaphroditus is neither man nor woman, but both at the same time. They have ring-shaped heads which could be richly decorated in some regions. Pronunciation is unique and tricky for Celtic names, but there are common names too like Erin. [76], In everyday life, Celtic women wore wooden or leather sandals with small straps (Latin: gallica, 'Gallic shoe'). The hair was often coloured red or blonde. Women were also partners in marriage. The right to make gifts was restricted to transfers within the family. 216 Engrossing Celtic Girl Names With Meanings - MomJunction (April 27, 2023). Written evidence is first transmitted by the Greeks: the historian and geographer Hecataeus of Miletus (Periegesis), the seafarer and explorer Pytheas of Massilia (On the Ocean) (both of these works survive only in fragments), the geographer and ethnologist Herodotus (Histories) and the polymath Poseidonius (On the Ocean and its Problems). the historical perspective While Mawu-Lisa is a creator god, there are also stories of an even older androgynous god who preceded them. Among later historians, there is also Gerald of Wales who was born to a Cambro-Norman family in the 12th century and composed an important account of the history and geography of the British Isles. In anger, she placed a curse on Arjuna, transforming him into a member of the third gender. These sites attest to the enormous interest in women's spirituality and to the importance of Celtic images in providing metaphors for this to be expressed. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Post Views: 25,048. In battle, she carried her rations on one shoulder and her young child on the other. 1221 (Oxford, 1992), help to clarify the issues and define the parameters of the argument. Pronounced en-mweer. The religion of Zoroastrianism arose from the preaching of a devotional poet named Zarathushtra (one who leads old camels), who lived around 1750 to, The history of gender and sexual ideologies in Hinduism is complex. The idea of a non-binary creator deity is a concept that recurs over and over in human culture. As their child, Hermaphroditus inherited their beauty from both parents, as a divine fusion of masculine and feminine characteristics. Ancestral Recovery Work: Postulating the Sheela Na Gig as a WebThe Celtic renaissance really got off the ground upon James Macpherson's publication of the Ossianic poems in 1762-3, which he claimed to be translations of rediscovered works of a poet from the third century. Coproliths (fossilised fecal matter) indicate severe worm infections. Julius Caesar had portrayed an image of the Celts in his Bellum Gallicum, tailored above all to his own domestic political purposes.[12]. The Roman geographer Strabo (64 bce24 ce) makes the tantalizing suggestion that gender tasks among the Celts were the reverse of those among Romans. People we'd recognize today as trans women and trans men were called kurgarra and galatur, created by the gods to be neither male nor female. However, as Autostraddlepoints out, Dionysus' gender-bending identity wasn't universally accepted there either, and perhaps that may have been the entire point. The descriptions of ancient authors are rather generalistic; only Diodorus transmits something more detailed. One of Japan's national religions is Shinto, which involves the worship of Kami, variously translated as either spirits or gods. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. The Vix Grave from modern France is the most famous rich female burial, but there are several other significant ones. It is women who fortune or misfortune give. Growth disorders and vitamin deficiencies can be detected from the long bones. Names Another factor is the changed attitude to the nature of Celtic culture. [28] Female rulers did not always receive general approval. Aphroditus would later become known as Hermaphroditus who, as Theoiexplains, was a winged love deity, one of many known as Erotes. Australia, with hundreds of distinct groups of native peoples, is home to some of the world's oldest cultures. Most inscriptions date from the Romano-Celtic period (first century bcefourth century ce) and indicate the importance of female deities rather than the position of women in religion. Certainly, the Celtic gods included women such as the Irish-Celtic trio of war goddesses known as the Mrrigna: Badb, Macha, and the Mrrigan. An essay by archaeologist Caroline Seawrightexplains that in Mayan mythology the gods weren't as clearly defined as in cultures around the ancient Mediterranean. [54], Adultery by the wife, unlike adultery by the husband, could not be atoned for with a fine. Marion Zimmer Bradley depicted a matriarchal reinterpretation of the stories of King Arthur, Lancelot and the Holy Grail in The Mists of Avalon (1987), which were dominated by the female characters. The Scottish journalist and folklorist Lewis Spence popularized the idea of Celtic religion as benevolent and magical nature worship in which women played an important role. The stories told in a society reflect and inform the beliefs and values of the people telling themin the modern world just as in ancient times and as Prideexplains, human history is awash with stories of people who defy binary gender. Sexuality/Queerness in Ancient Ireland and Irish Polytheism? Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gender-and-religion-gender-and-celtic-religions. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. The Hallstatt-period limestone statue of a Celtic woman found at the entrance to the tomb of the "Lady of Vix" wears a torc and sits on a throne. The version of Lokifrom ancient legend was a shapeshifting trickster, able to change both his appearance and gender at will. The female figures named in the local Irish sagas mostly derive from female figures of the historically unattested migrations period, which are recounted in the Lebor Gabla renn (Book of the Taking of Ireland). On the one hand, great female Celts are known from mythology and history; on the other hand, their real status in the male-dominated Celtic tribal society was socially and legally constrained. In Chinese mythology, the primordial goddess T'ai Yuan was said to embody both Yin and Yang, the feminine and masculine forces which sustain the cosmos. Rulers of Mayan society, both male and female, would show off divine power by impersonating the Moon-Maize god, gender and all. In addition, in Celtic mythology, several male heroes, notably C Chulainn, learnt to use weapons from female masters such as Scthach and Aife. [40] Heinrich Zimmer's Das Mutterrecht bei den Pikten und Skoten (The Matriarchy of the Picts and Scots) of 1894 argued for the existence of a matriarchy in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Webso ive long held the personal theory that druid might have been a spiritual third-gender role in ancient celtic society. Even if these women were stereotyped figures of prophecy and magic, the links among druidry, power, and women are clear. The inheritance law of the British Celts disadvantaged women, especially daughters, in similar ways to marriage law. A story mentioned in "Norse Mythology A to Z"sees Loki become the mother of Odin's 8-legged horse, Sleipnir. A Kami named Inari, the god of rice. In 2014, India's Supreme Court officially recognised a third gender - and eunuchs (or hijras) are seen as falling into this category. The Greeks and Romans commonly referred to areas under Celtic rule as or Celticum. Their homeland was known as Gaul(Gallia). The motif in Fon culture of two seeming opposites combining to work in harmony is a motif that is shared by the culture of many other peoples across the world. The mainland Celtic "Princess" tombs of Bad Drkheim,[14] Reinheim,[15] Waldalgesheim[16] and Vix show that women could hold high social positions; but whether their position was a result of their marital status is unclear. In Norse mythology, Loki often appeared alongside Thor and Odin, sometimes as an ally and sometimes as an antagonist, in a characterization that will be familiar to comic fans. Having several legal wives was limited to the higher social classes. Theoi elaborates further, that people in the Classical and Hellenistic eras depicted Dionysus as pretty, youthful, effeminate, and frequently drunk. [75], On a first century AD Celtic gravestone from Wlfnitz[de], a girl is depicted in Norican clothing. Its a similar scene at Butser Ancient Farms eclectic Beltane Celtic Fire festival in Hampshire. On her back she bore a 30 foot long pole with an iron hook, with which she would grab opponent amongst her enemies by their braids. [2], The Celtic mainland was characterised by this culture from c. 800 BC at the earliest until about the fifth century AD (end of the Roman rule in the Celtic sphere and Christianisation of Ireland). The people of the pre-colonial Philippines evidently celebrated diversity in gender. All kinds of legal issues in marriage are described in the Celtic myths: The marriage of a sister by her brother (Branwen ferch Llr, 'Branwen, daughter of Llr'), the marriage of a widowed mother by her son (Manawydan fab Llr, 'Manawydan, the son of Llr'), rape and divorce (Math fab Mathonwy, 'Math, the son of Mathonwy'), marriage of a daughter against the will of her father (Culhwch and Olwen). A similar development occurred in Britain, especially in Wales. Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid, an Assyriologist at Wolfson College Oxford, explains that an assinu was a gender-fluid person. [47], Among the Iberian, Gallaeci, women had an important role in the family and the clan, despite the importance of men as warriors, indicated by frequent matrilineal succession among them.[48]. In the book "An Anthology of Ancient Mesopotamian Texts,"Asushunamir is described as an assinu, with no further elaboration. In actual social life, however, a notable meaning cannot be found. Instead, the gods were sacred entities who overlapped with each other. Two articles by Wendy Davies, "Celtic Women in the Early Middle Ages," in Images of Women in Antiquity, edited by Averil Cameron and Amlie Kuhrt, pp. This popular Scottish Gaelic name can also be spelled Alasdair, and means defender of men.. Other Greek writers include Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheke), who used older sources, Plutarch (Moralia), who took a position on the role of women, and Strabo (Geography), who expanded on the work of Polybius (Histories) through personal travels and research. One figure, in particular, is named Bathala. Any woman who dropped roofing material was torn to pieces. These are all clichs of the Greeks and Romans about barbarian peoples. Information about Celtic women of the British Isles comes from ancient travel and war narratives, and possibly the orally transmitted myths later reflected in Celtic literature of the Christian era. The mother goddesses which had great importance in Celtic religion were also united in this way under the names Matres and Matronae.[87]. [46], Describing the Celtic expansion into southern and southeastern Europe around 600 BC, Livy claims that the two war leaders Bellovesus and Segovesus elected by the army were the sons of the sister of Ambicatus, king of the Bituriges. [43] In Wales, the wife was allowed to leave her husband if he committed adultery three times, if he was impotent, and if he had bad halitosis taking with her the property which she had brought into the marriage or acquired during it. WebErgi: The Way of the Third by Raven Kaldera Being Ergi by Lydia Helasdottir The Tale of a Transsexual Norse Pagan Spirit-Worker by Linda Rite of Passage for an Ergi Child by Theres a commonly accepted third category of mixed gender people called muxes. Loki also seems rather more enigmatic than other Norse Gods,with no evidence of a cult of followers, and no places named after him. Transgenderism in Ancient Cultures - LGBT Health and The dispute between Medb and her husband Ailill mac Mta over the wealth brought into the marriage by each of them is the indirect trigger for the Tin B Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). Elissa Henken's Welsh Saints, A Study in Patterned Lives (Woodbridge, U.K., 1991) examines the hagiography of gender, and Dorothy Bray's "The Image of Saint Brigit in the Early Irish Church," Etudes Celtiques 24 (1987): 209215 considers the growth of this important cult, a theme developed by Elva Johnston's "The Pagan and Christian Identities of the Irish Female Saint," in Celts and Christians New Approaches to Religious Traditions of Britain and Ireland, edited by Mark Atherton, pp. If the husband wished to carry out a clearly unwise transaction, the wife possessed a sort of veto power. . It consisted of a back and sides that came together to create a circular. Romantic nationalism and Romantic feminism have undoubtedly over-interpreted the sources, but modern developments in paganism and Celtic spirituality draw crucial metaphors from images of a powerful goddess figure who embodied female power in a unified pre-Christian world and the idea that such a figure was intimately bound up with the cycle of nature. Their name, Asushunamir, literally translates as "whose appearance is radiant." [72], The women's tunic was longer than the men's; a leather or metal belt (sometimes a chain) was tied around the waist. According to the Southeast Asia Queer Cultural Festival 2021, while Bathala is considered to be ambiguously gendered, a deity named Makapatag-Malaon was explicitly both male and female and the highest deity of the Waray people. The women, identified as worshipers of Dionysos, inhabited an island off the western coast of France and only left to have sex to produce children. Inga - Scandinavian name that has origins in Norse mythology which means "guarded by Ing." Ainmuire: Meaning great lord in Irish. A daughter inherits no land from her father, except if she has no brothers, if she is an inheriting-daughter (ban-chomarba), and even then she inherits only for her lifetime. In the ancient Celtic religion, there was a belief in an afterlife in the Otherworld which was perhaps considered like this life but without all the negative elements like disease, pain, and sorrow. The description hints that the sacrificial victim was chosen in this way, because the account notes that the victim was jostled. [69], Skeletal finds in graves provide the following age statistics for the ancient Celts: the average age at death was 35 years old; 38 for men and 31 for women. She could not normally give away or pass on her property without their agreement. The sexual identity of "Celtic" archaeological remains has traditionally been Whereas once scholars assumed similarity and continuity between ancient Celts and later cultures in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany, since the 1980s there has been less emphasis on folk migrations and on supposed connections between continental and insular Celts and more emphasis on the effects of literacy and the introduction of Roman culture and Christianity. The abbot and saint Adomnan of Iona produced the legal work Cin Adomnin (The Canon of Adomnan) or Lex Innocentium (The law of the innocents) on the property of women (especially mothers) and children. Usually referred to as a man, the Tonsured Maize God is depicted as eternally young and attractive, ornamented with jade, and with long flowing hair like corn silk. Religion was an aspect of public life open to women in the ancient world, and other continental iconography depicts women, either as devotees or officials, worshipping at altars or in processions. 6079 (Cardiff, 2002). She passes through the seven gates of the underworld but finds herself trapped there. Athair: The Irish name for father. 27 Apr. [68], Palaeopathological research based on bone samples and, in the best-case scenario, on mummified corpses indicates illnesses found among the ancient Celts. Diodorus and Suetonius, in particular, describe the sexual permissiveness of Celtic Behind her came her husband, who drove her into battle with a fence post. Fittingly, festivals of Aphroditus usually involved men and women swapping both their clothes and their gender roles. Issues of gender in Celtic religion and in early Christianity have been informed by the revival of interest in Celtic culture since the end of the It's important to be cautious when interpreting ancient cultures, as modern concepts like LGBTQ+ don't necessarily apply. According to 19th century Unilineal evolutionism, societies developed from a general promiscuity (sexual interactions with changing partners or with multiple simultaneous partners) to matriarchy and then to patriarchy. The view of a slain Celtic woman and her child"mother's blood and milk streaming over"on the battlefield, shocked his mother so much that she forced her son, by fasting, to compose this law book and to present it to the princes. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. One occurs in a medieval Welsh poem, "The Spoils of Annwn," which describes a supernatural journey to a land where nine women keep a fire burning under a cauldron. The pre-colonial Philippines had a pantheistic religion with strong homosexual and transgender themes. If she was pregnant with her husband's child, she could not have intercourse with other men before the birth of the child, even if thrown out by him. Thus modern authors refer to them as both "ladies" and "princesses". The issue of gender, and how this shaped concepts of sacredness in the religious behavior of the Celts, has been a topic of discussion since the late nineteenth century, and ideas of Celtic pagan and Christian spirituality have played a prominent role in alternative spirituality movements since the second half of the twentieth century. Irish: is mhnibh do gabar rath n amhrath. A page from the University of Liverpool's Department of Archaeology, Classics, and Egyptologydiscusses how Dionysus can be used to highlight the way both gender and sexuality could be fluid in the ancient world, challenging the idea that non-binary gender identities are a new invention. WebFrom the third century BCE on, "Galatai," and in Latin, "Galli," are vaguely equated in the sources with the Keltoi.