The Names of the Gods

[Heron]

Are the names by which we address the gods our names which we have given them or their names that they have given to us to call them by? And are all gods called upon by a specific name the same god, or might a god inhabit different personalities for different worshippers or at different times? These are perplexing questions to which there are no clear cut answers, but they are questions that a forum like this might beneficially pursue if we are to explore the nature of the gods. So I'll try a few (controversial?) suggestions in the hope that it will stimulate a discussion.

It is sometimes asserted that the Celts did not name their gods, or make visual representations of them until they came under the influence of the Graeco-Roman world. It has even been suggested that the earliest Romans, or the inhabitants of Latium before they became Romans, didn't either and that the concept of 'numen' or sacred presence better encompasses their earlier religious practices. But let's stick with the Celts, or at least the inhabitants of Britain and Gaul. Many of the names that have come down to us seem to have originated in epithets or descriptions: Rigantona( 'Divine Queen'), Rosmerta ('Great Provider'), Epona ('Divine Horse'), Matrona ('Divine Mother'), Maponos ('Divine Son'). There is a god that is often referred to in discussion as 'the Gaulish Mercury' who was given the name Mercurius by the Romans and Hermes by the Greeks before them, but only approximately equated with that god. Who was he? He is often equated with Lugos, a pan-celtic deity. In Britain and Gaul he was partnered with Rosmerta. Michael Enright suggests he was given the name Woden by the Germanic tribes that bordered Gaul and that he was Odinn further north. Note that we are not talking just about the 'Interptretatio Romana' here - swopping one name for another - the Romans simply identifying the gods of other people with their own. There is a deeper question of the way the gods were experienced and represented. Once the Romans had taken over in Gaul, and the Gauls became Romanised, 'Mercurius' might well have been the name they used for him, just as they began to represent him and their other gods in statues and stone reliefs, something they had previously not done. But If he previously had no physical visual image in human form, and similarly did not have a specific name (whether Lugos or some earlier form of it) how was he - and the other gods- experienced culturally by the Gauls and the Britons?


I have my own ideas about this, and about the roles of culture as opposed to direct personal experience (nature -v- nurture?) in relating to the gods, but I'd like to throw this out for responses from others so perhaps we can get a discussion/exploration of our views. There is no heresy for polytheists so (unless you think that statement is itself heretical) why not air your views?

[lorna]

'Are the names by which we address the gods our names which we have given them or their names that they have given to us to call them by?'

I'd say names come from the gods and reflect their essence and role. For me meeting the gods has been very much a process of finding names for beings I've either been aware of within the landscape or as presences within my life. Finding Brigantia I found a name and face for the Pennines and with Belisama for the Ribble. With Gwyn it was more complex as I have more of a soul than landscape connection with him- when he finally appeared to me I found a name and face for my experiences of faerie and my call to otherworlds. Finding out the names of these deities and being gifted with visions of them as persons has been a long and difficult process, and I think comes both from them and us. It's certainly not for us to make up a name for a divine presence in our lives - it's more a case of revelation through interaction.

'And are all gods called upon by a specific name the same god, or might a god inhabit different personalities for different worshippers or at different times?'

Mmmm... not too sure on this one. You give the example of the Gaulish Mercury being equated with Lugus, Woden and Odin... I can see the similarities in the pyschopomp role and connections with ravens but without having any interactions with these deities it's hard to tell.

I'm not even sure if Gwyn's 'the same' as Vindos or Finn. I definitely think there are major differences between Gwyn and Finn - mainly Gwyn being a king of the otherworld and Finn opposing the Sidhe (which makes him more like Arthur) that can't be resolved in spite of there being parallels between their stories. I've only ever got a sense of Vindos through Robin Herne's writing. In relation to my research on Gwyn and the Old North I've been trying to sense whether he might be found in any of the ancient British / Romano-British Horned Gods of the North described in Anne Ross's 'Pagan Celtic Britain'. Again, I'm uncertain... the only named god who feels possible is Mogons 'Great One' who was worshiped by soldiers. I often use the title 'Great One' (also used by Gwyddno) in my devotions to Gwyn. Mogons was venerated at Vindolanda, which has etymological links to Gwyn and an altar to Neptune (Nodens under interpretatio romana?). I'm hoping to follow this up with a visit at some point.

'It is sometimes asserted that the Celts did not name their gods, or make visual representations of them until they came under the influence of the Graeco-Roman world.'

That doesn't make sense to me. If people, animals and trees had names, why not gods? I don't get the argument that the Celts didn't 'anthropomorphise' their gods either. Their names and stories suggest they've always been seen as a anthropomorphic or zoomorphic persons. Our cultural deities anyhow. I guess genii loci and mountain and river deities were seen more as presences within nature but would still have had names.

[Gwenno]

This is very interesting.I don't know enough to be able to say what they did in Britain or Gaul before the Romans. But the numen idea I've heard before and is something I like and to think that the gods are like this rather than like people. I know we do have to call them something but they are not really like people to me, more like giants but maybe not big and a bit more airy?? But not. Oh I don't know how to say it. But names? well I've had n experience of sort of hearing a name, but not one in words, more like it says itself without me being able to say what it says. Does that make sense to anyone?

[Lee]

'Are the names by which we address the gods our names which we have given them or their names that they have given to us to call them by?'

I am inclined to say a bit of both

Are the names by which we address the gods our names which we have given them or their names that they have given to us to call them by? And are all gods called upon by a specific name the same god, or might a god inhabit different personalities for different worshippers or at different times?

Crikey...difficult to say if not impossible. I think different people will have different experiences of the same god though there is overlap, though this isn’t 'testable' to see if it is the case. Whether one god slots into different names or several gods into one name?
In cases where you have a clearish continuum of language evolution; Nodens > Nudd > Lludd or Lugos > Lleu, then I see no reason to think the same god answers to all; these changes didn’t happen overnight but over decades and centuries, so with a continual interaction between god and humans they evolve together.

But If he previously had no physical visual image in human form, and similarly did not have a specific name (whether Lugos or some earlier form of it) how was he - and the other gods- experienced culturally by the Gauls and the Britons?

I don’t think I can see a time when the gods didn’t have names. The titles-for-names thing is a red herring I think, we are too hung up on the idea these days of names being unique and for person naming only. Historically of course that wasn’t the case. My name comes from the Anglo Saxon for a clearing, everyone else names means something else. Naming a god by a title or by their ‘role’ is pretty much how naming happened; just look at all the Coopers, Smiths, Fletchers and Bakers are out there 
If we look at the more primitive hunter gatherer societies out there; they have spirits and gods with names. Looking at comparative linguistics in Indo-European cultures we can say that there have been titles/roles-as-names for thousands of years. I can’t imagine a point in the even as far back as the Bronze age where the gods whether local or more regional didn’t have their own names and identities.

[Heron]

May 15, 2016 10:03:09 GMT -1 lorna said:

'Are the names by which we address the gods our names which we have given them or their names that they have given to us to call them by?'

I'd say names come from the gods and reflect their essence and role. For me meeting the gods has been very much a process of finding names for beings I've either been aware of within the landscape or as presences within my life. Finding Brigantia I found a name and face for the Pennines and with Belisama for the Ribble. With Gwyn it was more complex as I have more of a soul than landscape connection with him- when he finally appeared to me I found a name and face for my experiences of faerie and my call to otherworlds. Finding out the names of these deities and being gifted with visions of them as persons has been a long and difficult process, and I think comes both from them and us. It's certainly not for us to make up a name for a divine presence in our lives - it's more a case of revelation through interaction.

This touches a crucial aspect of our relationship with the gods and so the names we know them by. In focusing on individual revelation it also brings us to one of the key distinctions I had in mind in discussing this. If a god tells us a name that, of course, is absolute. That then certainly is their name because we have come to know both the god and the name as one. But what we know in a one-to-one relationship and what a god is known as in the public sphere might be different. Ways of knowing other persons through names are various and range from the formal 'Mr ---' or 'Ms ---', or the person's whole name (first and second together), or just the first name, or maybe a generally used nickname, or if we are very close, an affectionate name just between the two of us. So if we know a god personally, the name we use might be a personal name. But socially, in the wider culture, a god might be known by a variety of names (in the Norse tradition Odinn can be referred to in poetry by a number of different names which it is known refer to him). Over time, then, a god might acquire names out of interactions between gods and humans. But names are words in human language. What do the gods call each other? We cannot know. I'd agree absolutely that the names we use come from both them and us out of revelation (which is individual) and interaction (which could also be cultural). It's in the case of the latter that interactions with different cultural groups might cause a god to be experienced differently. And in a different language be known be a different name. And maybe even manifest as a different god?

[....]

[....] If animals and trees had names, why not gods? I don't get the argument that the Celts didn't 'anthropomorphise' their gods either. Their names and stories suggest they've always been seen as a anthropomorphic or zoomorphic persons. Our cultural deities anyhow. I guess genii loci and mountain and river deities were seen more as presences within nature but would still have had names.

Yes, I think the suggestion is not so much that they didn't have names as that the names were epithets rather than personal names, at least in the wider cultural sphere, though what they were called locally in the oral tales about them that were never written down is another matter. But as Lee has raised a similar point too I'll discuss this in response to him above.

[Heron]

May 16, 2016 13:07:33 GMT -1 Lee said:

In cases where you have a clearish continuum of language evolution; Nodens > Nudd > Lludd or Lugos > Lleu, then I see no reason to think the same god answers to all; these changes didn’t happen overnight but over decades and centuries, so with a continual interaction between god and humans they evolve together.

Yes, we do also have to allow for change over time rather than look back at the developing past as if it were freeze-framed as a single period. Rigantona and Rhiannon can be shown linguistically to be the same name but that is only obvious when you have the linguistic knowledge. For me, Rigantona is a name I use formally but am aware of is descriptive function. Rhiannon might be the 'same' name but it feels much more like a personal name to me and I use it much more like a personal name without any particular descriptive function when addressing her informally.

I don’t think I can see a time when the gods didn’t have names. The titles-for-names thing is a red herring I think, we are too hung up on the idea these days of names being unique and for person naming only. Historically of course that wasn’t the case. My name comes from the Anglo Saxon for a clearing, everyone else names means something else. Naming a god by a title or by their ‘role’ is pretty much how naming happened; just look at all the Coopers, Smiths, Fletchers and Bakers are out there 
If we look at the more primitive hunter gatherer societies out there; they have spirits and gods with names. Looking at comparative linguistics in Indo-European cultures we can say that there have been titles/roles-as-names for thousands of years. I can’t imagine a point in the even as far back as the Bronze age where the gods whether local or more regional didn’t have their own names and identities.

Yes, these are good points. I think we do have to distinguish, though, between formal names and more familiar names (as in my reply to Lorna) and also take account of the fact that different tribes sharing a common culture might have had their own distinct practices and experiences of gods who were nevertheless common to them all, and perhaps their own names though no written records were made of them. Even today many pagans simply talk about 'The Goddess' or perhaps one of her 'aspects', or about 'The Horned God' or 'The Sun God', but will also have their own names (arbitrarily assigned or given?) within their personal practice or worshipping groups. As polytheists we need to distinguish more than generic pagans perhaps need to do, and seek to know our gods as individuals. Sometimes they seem close, at other times elusive. Knowing them is a life's work. Many of us are working on the basis of personal revelation, which needs no other definition. But developing cultural practices we can share, as if we lived in a polytheistic society, means that we need to work out ways in which personal revelation(s) can cohere into agreed social understandings. Using descriptive names is one way to do this, using given names in addition if this is our revelation. Bringing together what we share with the gods and what we share with each other is the thing.

[Heron]

May 16, 2016 11:37:23 GMT -1 Gwenno said:

This is very interesting.I don't know enough to be able to say what they did in Britain or Gaul before the Romans. But the numen idea I've heard before and is something I like and to think that the gods are like this rather than like people. I know we do have to call them something but they are not really like people to me, more like giants but maybe not big and a bit more airy?? But not. Oh I don't know how to say it. But names? well I've had n experience of sort of hearing a name, but not one in words, more like it says itself without me being able to say what it says. Does that make sense to anyone?

Yes, Gwenno that makes perfect sense. But finding the words to shape the name in speech is to bring the gods into our lives and our shared experiences of them. Which is why we also look for them in stories and surviving traditions - in our culture - as well as seeking to experience them directly in nature.

[redraven]

I wondered for years why I didn't experience named deities. Then I was made aware of the following through a UPG experience.. "Names fix form" and for me, my interactions needed to be more "fluid". The names fixed the form too much for me. So names play a part in framing the relationship even if it just fixing an initial frame from which to develop, which for me, doesn't "work" spiritually even though I have, and continue to, honour named deities if I'm aware of them when performing a ritual.

[lorna]

@ Gwenno - names? well I've had n experience of sort of hearing a name, but not one in words, more like it says itself without me being able to say what it says. Does that make sense to anyone?

Yes, I've found particularly with spirits of place names can be elusive - like a sense of who they are but not what to call them yet. Absolutely.

@ Heron - I'd agree absolutely that the names we use come from both them and us out of revelation (which is individual) and interaction (which could also be cultural). It's in the case of the latter that interactions with different cultural groups might cause a god to be experienced differently. And in a different language be known be a different name. And maybe even manifest as a different god?

I guess looking at the ways the Romans responded to the British deities provides clues. It seems they both brought their deities with them and responded to the British ones. In interesting to point to ponder is whether, when the Romans came, when they experienced the presence of a British god that came through to them as the presence of a Roman god. Similarly with the Anglo-Saxons and Norse.

The Roman fort at Manchester is a strange example with dedications to two Germanic mother goddesses and the Pater Noster but not anything to the British deity(s). Were the German goddesses brought over or did their names arise from earlier British goddesses within the landscape?

@ RR - "Names fix form"... The names fixed the form too much for me.

That's really interesting. In my experience names don't fix the forms of deities too much. Belisama has appeared to me as a radiant woman of light, more as a water-nymph-like figure washing her hair in the water, and more frequently simply as a presence within the Ribble's waters. Gwyn appears in various guises from a white warrior with bull horns, to a black-faced huntsman, to an escort of the dead in Victorian-style funereal garments, as a huge white hound and once as a black dragon (!).

I think of the nature of the Celtic deities to be fluid. Think of the story of the two pig-keepers in the Tain who become the Brown Bull of Cuailgne and the Bull Finnbennach. They battle as birds of prey, Whale and Seabeast, two stags, two warriors, two phantoms (Scath and Sciath: Shadow and Shield), two dragons, two maggots, and are finally drunk up by cows before they're reborn as bulls. We cling onto set forms for the gods at our peril!

[Gwenno]

Heron, thank you that is helpful. I see the difference between what you call culture and nature. It's the nature part that means most to me but thinking about it the stories are also important and the names make them personal. But part of me thinks they shouldn't be too personal or too much like us.

lorna, If its only spirits of place that you are not sure of their names are they different from gods because the gods are more identified?

redraven, I think it has to be fluid too and not too tied down. 'Names fix form' sounds right, but I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. I don't think things should be too fixed, or too personal. But if not we can't get close to them, which I also want to do. Still working this out.

[lorna]

@ Gwenno - in my experience the gods seem to have more memory of being called by a certain name by groups of people and are more used to sharing their names. It seems like we have named gods for big things - rivers, mountains, healing, death. We also have names for hills, streams, but they don't seem to have deity names, although they have spirits whose names may be gifted us after long periods of communication.

[Heron]

May 19, 2016 16:37:26 GMT -1 lorna said:

I guess looking at the ways the Romans responded to the British deities provides clues. It seems they both brought their deities with them and responded to the British ones. In interesting to point to ponder is whether, when the Romans came, when they experienced the presence of a British god that came through to them as the presence of a Roman god. Similarly with the Anglo-Saxons and Norse.

The Roman fort at Manchester is a strange example with dedications to two Germanic mother goddesses and the Pater Noster but not anything to the British deity(s). Were the German goddesses brought over or did their names arise from earlier British goddesses within the landscape?

The thing about he Romans is I think that they had hundreds of deities apart from the ones in the main 'pantheon' (Ovid addresses the deity Terminus saying 'you may be just a post at the boundary but you still have divinity'). So they had no problem accepting different deities. If they could describe them in terms of known members of their own pantheon they did, but often they just fitted them in. It also appears that individual Romans decided for themselves which deities to worship and what to ask them for. There's was not a congregational religion except perhaps for the family's devotions to the household gods.

I would think that the Germanic goddesses came with Roman soldiers who were from Germany (very few of the rank and file soldiers were actually from Rome).

.... In my experience names don't fix the forms of deities too much. Belisama has appeared to me as a radiant woman of light, more as a water-nymph-like figure washing her hair in the water, and more frequently simply as a presence within the Ribble's waters. Gwyn appears in various guises from a white warrior with bull horns, to a black-faced huntsman, to an escort of the dead in Victorian-style funereal garments, as a huge white hound and once as a black dragon (!).

I think of the nature of the Celtic deities to be fluid. Think of the story of the two pig-keepers in the Tain who become the Brown Bull of Cuailgne and the Bull Finnbennach. They battle as birds of prey, Whale and Seabeast, two stags, two warriors, two phantoms (Scath and Sciath: Shadow and Shield), two dragons, two maggots, and are finally drunk up by cows before they're reborn as bulls. We cling onto set forms for the gods at our peril!

I agree about fluidity. It's my experience that deities have different names and even different personas in different contexts. I think the best way to relate to gods is through a form of what the poet John Keats called 'negative capability' : not having too fixed an idea about them and letting them appear as they will. That's why the idea of 'invoking' them magically has never seemed to me to be appropriate.