2. Elements of the West Atlantic Neolithic Religion
In
the period roughly between 3500 BCE and 2500 BCE, Neolithic farmers on
the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North Africa created a remarkable
megalithic culture, or set of cultures, whose monumental remains are
awesome testament to their creativity, organization and knowledge of
their environment. Stonehenge in Britain and Newgrange in Ireland are
just two of the best known of these much-loved and admired monuments,
and attract hundreds of thousands of visitors even today, thousands
of years after they were built. They are western Europe's equivalent
of the Egyptian pyramids which they predate by many hundreds of
years.
Archaeological
evidence points to the cessation within a single generation of this
culture's prime offices and ceremonies with the arrival of the Bell
Beaker peoples, the first to bring an advanced knowledge of
metalwork, initially the use of copper. It should be noted that DNA
studies suggest that this was effected through the rise
of a foreign
elite (similar to the invasion of Britain
by the Normans in 1066), rather
than through mass migration, since the
local population continues to dominate the DNA of Bronze Age burials.
These burials, however, now followed the
new rite of the newcomers, suggesting that the local population was
rapidly acculturated to the beliefs, power-structures – and we may
speculate language or languages – brought by the metal-users. To
what extent this was a military take-over is unsure, but considering
the warrior cults evident in Bronze Age culture and burials from all
over Europe, it seems highly likely that the incomers were
militaristic in their values and behaviors, and it would be
remarkable if some elements of the native population did not resist
them, particularly among those who had leading positions in Neolithic
society.
What
can we tell about these Neolithic people's society and in particular
about their religion? Despite the fact that they left no continuous
written records, a study of their
monuments, which includes their symbolic
art, and other less dramatic, but no less
fascinating Neolithic sites, such as the Céide
Fields – Neolithic field boundaries from the West of Ireland, and
all of these considered in their natural
settings,
combined
with insights from the anthropology of neolithic and pre-Neolithic
cultures that have survived into modern times, we can draw often
very convincing conclusions as to the life
and culture of these. While archaeologists
have a responsibility to couch their reports strictly according the
evidence they discover, even they will admit that a wider analysis
points strongly to unwritten non-material aspects of the Neolithic
culture, and they can accept that while their science may never be
able to speak with full authority on these topics, they can certainly
agree that their finds would be consistent with these conclusions.
So what are these conclusions?
Firstly,
these people were farmers of crops and herders of animals. It would
make sense that their culture prized these activities and sought to
make sense of them. Secondly, their monuments show clear seasonal
alignments with the movements of the Sun and arguably of other
celestial objects. This clearly suggests that they knew very well the
link between the Sun and the seasons, and almost certainly attributed
the changing of the seasons to the influence of the Sun. It is very
probable that the Sun was imagined as a protective, personal god, who
watched over the people. Details of the design of sites such as
Newgrange suggest that the Sungod was thought of as male, with his
rays bringing the force of his male energy to the world, and in
particular to the earth and soil on which they depended for their
living. Again Newgrange illustrates how the earth could have been
imagined as female, receiving the Sungod's rays and becoming,
literally, pregnant with new life. Thus the archaeology points to a
basic cultural orientation around two opposing but complimentary
mythic figures: Father Sky and Mother Earth. This imagery is still
very much alive and with us in our culture today, and certainly
survived the downfall of any Neolithic elite, if such there were.
The
possible existence of a Neolithic elite is a thorny issue. Most
archeologists tend to contrast the communal nature of Neolithic
evidence (cremation of bodies, multiple burials and so forth) with
the highly individual Bronze Age burial tradition (single burial of
individuals in marked mounds forming “houses for the dead”) –
along with the importance of the concept of fame in the literary
culture from the eastern Mediterranean. Indeed our very concept of
fame
per se seems to have something of
the historic individual about it that may have been utterly alien to
the Neolithic mind.
However
this should not blind us to the fact that Neolithic culture every
show sign of having religious and technical experts and high-ranking
families and individuals whose burials were highly ceremonious and
important public events. The sheer level of skill involved in the
construction and alignment of megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge
and Newgrange, requiring research and planning over a number of
years, not least in the act of selecting the specific sites, but also
in the choice of material, design and exact positioning of the
elements of the monuments – all of this, together with the
inspiration for the symbolic aspects of the monuments – strongly
suggest a highly trained, knowledgeable and prestigious group of
individuals were in charge. In effect, a priesthood.
What
we like to call Neolithic Art obviously had aesthetic aspects, but
almost certainly served more than just to decorate these monuments
where it is found, such as Knowth in Ireland, a part of the greater
Newgrange culture. Rock art in surviving Stone Age culture is often
associated with the shamanic telling of sacred tales and serves to
illustrate the tales in abstract form, celebrating the outstanding
characteristics and behaviors of the mythic beings associated with
the location of the rocks, thereby sanctifying them, or rather
marking them out as holy places. Convincing arguments can be made
that some, at least, of the Irish stone art was actually used to
record the passage of the seasons, and – though this is speculation
- may have served as a sketch-pad in the construction period when
records may well have been kept, year on year, to ensure the correct
alignment of the monuments concerned, if not actually used in the
ceremonies thereafter.
Returning
to Newgrange, where the symbolism is particularly clear, we find the
bones of cremated individuals, presumably of very high status, placed
in the central chamber where the light of the rising sun can
penetrate through a specially aligned window and along the long
entrance passage for a limited number of minutes at dawn on the days
around Midwinter, the Midwinter Solstice.
What
can we draw from this? Firstly, as said, the we are looking at the
sacred marriage of Father Sky and Mother Earth. The monument
is suggestively called Brú
na Bóinne in Irish (“The Womb of the
White Cow” –
the Goddess spirit of the nearby river Boyne, though
this may be a reference to location rather than ownership. One should
note that Old Irish “brú”
= womb, has now become identified with Modern Irish “brú” =
hostel and is most often translated thus, taken as a reference to the
story of Aongus as given below).
Whatever we may or may not conclude from
its current Gaelic name, the tomb clearly
represents the Belly of Mother Earth, penetrated and made pregnant
(it was hoped) by the fertilizing rays of the Father God. (As
an aside, it might be that it was thought that the sexual energy of
orgasm that critical here, rather than the exchange of any bodily
fluids: the position of the window at the entrance suggests a
symbolic representation of the clitoris, and it through this
portal that
the energy of
the male enters the female.) This
action (should the Father God decide to engage in it) would
inevitably lead to the flowering of Mother Earth and the return
(after a period of latency) of the Spring. The “night” of winter
– with its sexual congress, would return to the “day” of summer
with its activity and life.
The
fact that this monument is a tomb and
that for high status people
is highly significant. It suggests that certain individuals were seen
as having a special relationship with the divine entities of Mother
Earth and Father Sky. Experts in folklore have suggested that here we
have evidence for the early existence of a belief that is widespread
in later times; that a sacred Kingly figure, chosen from a tribe to
represent the Sky Father on earth, is symbolically, and in a deep
sense truly,
the incarnation of the Sky God on earth, in effect his son.
Dáithí Ó hÓgáin describes how the conceit went: the Sky Father, supposed
to be the all-protecting, all-fathering originator of life – with
which he impregnates our world below, Mother Earth, and as the Great
Ancestor and Sky Father, HE is still supreme being, but in an act of
political nous, he concedes Power on Earth, among the Living of the
Tribe, to His Son, who rules locally in His stead. Thus a human may
bring to the tribe the blessings of the life-force and care of the
Sky Father. Indeed it was long believed in Gaelic Ireland that a good
king brought life not just to society (as one might expect) but
actually enhanced the powers of nature (Mother Earth), making it –
including people – more fertile and productive. There seems little
doubt but that this conceit, or an early form thereof, was at the
root of the construction of tombs such as Newgrange, and as such a
core belief of Neolithic religion.
Further,
the importance
of natural cycles in Neolithic society, the fact
that the seasons are cyclical, and that the Sun has permission to
penetrate Newgrange annually, strongly suggests a belief in time
itself
as somehow eternally cycling and returning. Belief in returning
almost
certainly extended to include the spirit of the sacred king: most
obviously when the human king died. The archaeological finds at
Newgrange clearly indicate that persons of high status (let us say,
“kings”) were cremated and their ashes placed inside the burial
chamber that we can reasonably believe represented the Womb
of Mother Earth, a
chamber, the penetration of which by the Sky Father indicates the
annual return to flowering of nature. The symbolism of this
association of death with the site dedicated
to rebirth
could hardly be clearer: the remains of the Sky Father Incarnate, the
Son of God, were placed in the Womb of Mother Earth to invite
the Sky Father to re-father –
that is reincarnate –
His Son in the person of the new king. The burial site was a prayer,
a bidding action, that begged the Sky Father to send again His
Beloved Son to bring us His blessing and potent life force on earth.
Thus
the new sacred king was almost certainly seen as a reincarnation
of his predecessor, making both, ultimately, the same incarnation:
the Son of the Sky Father.
I
stress that these ideas are based on the clearly symbolic character
of the archaeological remains and finds, with reference to one
widely-known cultural metaphor for kingship. Without any other
sources we can come to these conclusions with a high degree of
confidence in their underlying probability. That probability is
greatly heightened when we look at the Celto-Gaelic folklore and
legendary history of Brú na Bóinne. Though these beliefs come from
Gaelic sources dating to the medieval period, they seem with little
doubt to reflect a remarkable continuity of interpretation of the
symbolism of the monument stretching back into
Neolithic times. While
the names of the characters and other details of the tale are clearly
Celtic, and therefore date from the Bronze Age at the earliest, key
elements of the folklore continue the older tradition:
the Sky Father (the Dagda = “The Proficient God”) fathers a
Sacred Son, Aongus Óg (= “Prime-Strength
Possessed-of-Life”), on the local Goddess Bó Vinda (the Sacred
“White Cow” of the local river) whose Womb the tomb is, and that
under particularly ritual circumstances
the
Sky Father granted possession of His “house” to Aongus in
perpetuity.
Not
only the general outlines, but specific details of the later legends
suggest links to the original cult: thus Aongus is
said to have been conceived and born during what appeared to the
outside world to be one night and the next day. At the risk of being
naieve, this does sound remarkably like a folk memory of an overnight
vigil. The exact ritual can only be guessed, but it would seem very
possible that part of the ritual to prove that the new (human) king
was indeed the true reincarnation
of the
Son of the Sky Father could have been that the new candidate stayed
overnight (possibly for more nights), waiting to be inspired -
fasting, maybe drugged or intoxicated (?), shaman-like - by the
spirit of the Sky Father, then to emerge, as if newly
born
at Sunrise from the sexual passage of Mother Earth. Thus the human
man became a god-king, refathered
by the light of his Sacred Father, and rebirthed
by Our Great Mother.
And
indeed there is plentiful evidence in the Irish tradition of just
such cults of Hairy Baby! Mongán (= “Hairy Baby”) and Finn
(“Clean/Pure/White”) are synonymous characters, along with many
other kingly figures, who are born strangely
precocious,
in that even though they were only just born, they are bearded, able
to speak in rhetorical and inspired verse, and in every way as fit
and able as a healthy young man in his prime, in short, like Aongus
(“Prime strength”). Similar tales are told in other traditions,
such as of Hermes or Apollo, but this in no way undermines the
validity of this association with the Neolithic tradition. Rather do
these other traditions strengthen it.
With
the above goes, quite clearly, another tradition that may have later
features, but which could also have some
Neolithic
roots: the tales of women being impregnated by Gods. This
was a rational requirement of the fact that the man (mostly young
men) chosen to be the next king would certainly have been known to
have a human mother and father.
How then could this boy be the Son of God? The answer clearly was
that somehow in secret
the Sky Father must have impregnated the boy's mother. Various
versions of just how the Sky Father did this were imagined; either he
took on the appearance of the human husband and tricked the mother,
or sneaked in at night while the real husband was sent away on some
warlike mission and so forth. This sort of tale is
widespread in Bronze Age culture, and very well represented in
Ireland. It is found, very prominently in the Celtic cult of Lug
(Lugus = “The Binder”) and in the Greek story of Perseus (facts
which lead Dáithí Ó hÓgáin to suggest a direct influence between
the two tales).
Whether this sort of
rationalization was needed in the Neolithic “king” cult is
questionable:
after all, in our interpretation of the likely cult, the new sacred
king was seen to
be rebirthed from the vaginal mouth of the tomb at Newgrange. His
mother was plainly Mother Earth. The conceit of his rebirth
would
seem to make any worries about his human mother seem unnecessary.
That said, it is not impossible that this topos of the secret
fathering may
have formed part of the religious folklore from the earliest times.
Notably in the folklore surrounding Jesus of Nazareth it has achieved
dominance over the spiritually more significant moment of his rebirth
when he is baptized by John and greeted by the rays of the Sky God on
emerging from the waters of sacred river. Back in Ireland, the cult
of Finn does seem to be associated with a river rebirth. This may
have been a secondary part of the rebirthing ritual in Neolithic
times: the newly-reborn king may have emerged naked and
painted in blood
from the tomb/womb, to be taken to the nearby Boyne river to be
ritually washed and clothed in the ritually cleansing waters of the
sacred river. This might suggest
that the River Goddess was an assistant nurse to Mother Earth's
birth, rather than being felt to be strictly the Mother Goddess
herself. And indeed there are many such Goddesses in both the Celtic
and wider European tradition, who act as midwives or nurses, allowing
the Mother herself some respite. Many of them in the west are
associated precisely with cleansing springs, said to bring health and
strength to those that bathe in or
drink the
waters. It seem clear that from Neolithic times mountain springs,
especially if warm, were viewed as the breasts of Mother Earth, while
caves were her vagina. While Newgrange and similar artificial cave
gives evidence of the latter, the Paps of Ana – an Irish range of
mountains – gives evidence of the former.
Once
born, washed and grown instantly to manhood, the new Neolithic “king”
needed to be wedded to his mystical bride, a
(doubtless) younger version of Mother
Earth. This had obviously to be in some symbolic form, but may have
involved a real marriage between the newly-reborn king and a local
girl, chosen for her beauty and (quite possibly) for her virginity –
to prove the fertility of her husband. Here SHE would be impregnated
by a “god” and her hoped-for pregnancy would have been watched as
a portent of the future health, happiness and success of the
community. On an annual basis, she would have been associated with
the coming of Spring, and this seems
also to
be reflected
in later tradition, as in Welsh figure of Blodeuwedd,
the
Flower Maiden, who marries Lleu Llaw Gyffes, who appears to be the
British version of Lugus, and quite possibly in the Irish traditions
of St. Brigid, from whose name we may derive the modern English word
“bride” as well as the tradition of brides wearing white.
The
story of the legendary Irish king Conaire Mór, who was
associated
with sacred sights such as Tara ( = “Spectacle”) on the east
coast of Ireland, may reflect elements of a very early Bronze Age
tradition. It suggests that a ritual procession to Tara formed part
of the coronation ceremony in early Celtic times. He approaches Tara
naked, as if a stranger, and is questioned on his arrival, having to
give the correct rhetorical answers to gain admission and be accepted
as a rightful candidate for kingship. This also features in the story
of how Lug came to Tara, and seems to have been a local myth
associated with the ritual nature of that sight.
Whether
exactly
this
or anything like it existed in the Neolithic times is hard to say.
Tara
has a Neolithic
tomb,
but it is nothing on the order of those of the Boyne Valley, and it
is questionable if these sites were ever closely linked. But
we
can
note that the new king approaches his role naked
and
yet unearthly wise, as
we presume must have been the case at Newgrange, and the
aspect of his seeming to be a stranger (although in fact known as a
person to all present) who must in some way be proven – at least by
uttering the ritual formulas – could
also to date from Megalithic times.
At
the other end of a “king's” life cycle, after
death (whether natural or not...),
he had to be cremated before his ashes were placed inside the tomb
awaiting rebirth. This part of the Sacred Son's life was doubtless
also surrounded by ritual and taboos. burning formed a central part
of his tradition. Again
the story of Conaire Mór (as
told in The Destruction of Da
Dearga's Hostel) strongly
indicates that a ritual burning formed the logical transition point
of a king to the afterlife. The archaeological facts tell us that
Celtic kings were not as
a rule cremated whereas Neolithic ones were, suggesting that this is
again part of the older tradition. It suggests a poetic conceit that
saw the funeral pyre
as the House of the God of the Ancestors (the Sky Father as the
dreadful, but ultimately benign King of the Dead), into which the His
Son was invited to return, called by His Father to his service in the
Other World.
It
may be that traditions of heroes visitations to Hell and back – to
be reborn as explained above – formed part of this belief since the
earliest times. And just as these hero-kings defeated the enemies of
the community in this life so they might defeat the same or a darker
enemy on the Other Side. The greatest enemy was Death itself and this
could have been imagined in the form of the flames of the funeral
fire – as final a symbol of death as one can ask for. There may be
evidence for this in the long-established legends of hero-kings
defeating fire-breathing dragons, to rescue a maiden, whom they would
then proceed to marry. It may have been a very early conceit the
Death was a fire-monster (much as the Devil in Hell) and that by
passing through the funeral fire and being reborn the next (or some
subsequent) morning, the spirit of the late king – the spirit of
the Son of the Father God had defeated Death and shown that, reborn,
he can bring new life to the earth and the community. It seems almost
impossible not to
imagine some such conceit surrounding the ritual of cremation and
rebirth that lay at the heart of Newgrange's king-birthing function.
Much
more could be said about the implications of the archaeological
evidence of the Megalithic culture and how it suggests links to
later, mostly Bronze Age traditions. The impression one gets is of a
considerable continuity in symbolism, if not in practice. But there
are also hints of critical differences that we might want to
emphasize. Whether the word “king” is appropriate to the
Neolithic figure of the Sacred Sun Child is an example. There is
little doubt but that the later Bronze Age figure was what we would
call a Sacred king, but if the Neolithic figure can rightfully be
thought of in that light is open to question.
One
of the most important of these differences concerns dating of the
principle events in the calendar. It is clear that the Neolithic
monuments are aligned with the solstices and equinoxes: focusing
mainly on Midwinter (presumable new year) and Midsummer. Various folk
traditions pertain to these four dates even today. But the Irish
tradition in particular is quite clear on the fact that the major
Gaelic festivals were not at
these points but days associated not with solar events, but with the
major activities of the farming year: ploughing/seeding, herding/milking, harvesting
and culling; thus the four Irish
dates
of St. Brigid's day (Feb 1), Mayday (May 1), August Bank Holiday
(August 1) and Hallowe'en (November 1), to give them their
contemporary names or Oimelc (Imbolg), Bealtain, Lughnasa and Samhain
to give them their earlier Gaelic names.
It
is true that Midsummer and Midwinter and the equinoxes may have
featured also as festivals in the past, since there are folk
traditions associated with these times, but both the Irish and British evidence for
this idea is open to question. Even if one cannot fully believe that
such times as Midsummer and Midwinter were not
important
to a farming people with a long Neolithic tradition of celebrating
these key turning points in the solar year, it does seem as if they
were down-played in what we might dare to call the druidic tradition.
The older Neolithic solar tradition is undoubted, but the Bronze Age may
have indeed seen a sharp change in emphasis away from these solar traditions (perhaps with a greater lunar emphasis, and certainly with a host of individualistic Indo-European ideology), just as it saw the
sudden finish of the Midwinter ceremonies at Stonehenge. The old
ceremonies ceased for a reason. Later
tradition clearly suggests that the Bell Beaker people used a different
religious calendar and switched ceremonies such as those for new year
to suit their purposes. Many believe that Hallowe'en, marking the end
of the herding year, became in some sense the new New Year's
festival, and may deserve the title “Celtic New Year”.
The
New individualism of Bronze Age graves – prominent individuals
buried under highly visible mounds with, for the first time, grave
goods for use in the afterlife – marks a total change in the
attitude towards the individual – and thus the soul
of the person. It was as much the cultureshock of this change in
thinking about ourselves that undid the Neolithic cults as was the
arrival of any new men with copper tools. This must have been deeply
important to the shift in the interpretation of the sacred sites.
They became now “houses” of great men, just as the Bronze Age
tombs were. Realizing that this is an innovation about 2500 BCE begs
the question what they were before, and the answer would seem to be
sacred spaces on the Body of Mother Earth. We can suspect that with
this change went a significant change in the status of women in
society. But
echoes of a more equal status are found in the later tradition, not
least in the strength of mythical women in the Celtic tradition:
Maeve will not be outdone
by her rather spirit husband Ailill in the justly famous pillowtalk
that opens the Irish epic the Táin
Bó Cuailgne.
Clearly
not all Neolithic sites were suited to reinterpretation by the new
religion. Individual ownership of previously communal funeral mounds
(as at Newgrange) was easy enough to imagine, but what can Bronze Age
individualists have made of Stonehenge? Maybe here is the clue to the
virtual abandonment of Stonehenge, as opposed to continued and
continuing living traditions of Newgrange. It is for this very reason
that the latter may offer us a window into the lost religion of the
New Stone Age that goes beyond its strictly archaeological
significance.
