), From the sanctuary of Donon (Alsace) – a naked god wearing a wolf skin (a variation of Silvanus / Hercules / or Vosegus?) Sucellus: was often associated with Silvanus in Germania, and “possibly Belgica” (Dorcey: 58). In contemporary scholarship, Cernunnos has become a name used for other Celtic horned gods whose na… Selvanus would thus be easily identified with Silvanus, a god of flocks. Thus Cernunnos would be another form of the Celtic Dispater. Silvanus was a popular god in Rome, up there with Jupiter and Mercury in terms of altars and other devotional evidence. The bronze plaque came from a pit in Colchester, along with a bronze stag, a possible link to Vosegus. Though many attempts have been made to prove the non-Celtic origin of the three-headed divinities or of their images, there is no reason why the conception should not be Celtic, based on some myth now lost to us. 'Maponos' (meaning "Superboy", essentially!). As in most other Indo-European systems, one twin was truly divine and the other was flawed. As you can see from the picture, whatever weapon or attribute he was carrying is lost, so we can’t tell if he’s meant to be Mars (weapon) or not. The lord of the underworld would then easily be regarded as their ancestor. The story in which he loses a hand or arm and has it replaced by a silver one is doubtless ancient, though it's hard to tell how widespread it was in the Iron Age. Because horses played such a large part in the Celts' military successes in Europe, the horse was a symbol of sovereignty and political power (as opposed to cattle, which were a symbol of the Land and of material wealth). 1AfppjYZddJzc2C15PXKMsnyBPjPJQezwA. Although as a warrior he is a giver of death, the mysteries of death are seen as being closely related to the mysteries of rebirth and healing, so his main shrines are healing shrines. “I am the child of earth and starry heaven.” – Petelia Tablet, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde. "Affranchis, chevaux sauvages, libérateurs et mercenaires: le mot gaulois pour «libre»". A Comparison of the Celtic God Sucellus Silvanus and the Norse God Thor The Gaulish hammer-god, Sucellus Silvanus, is among the most important of the Celtic deities with respect to religious expression and influence as well as the iconography that depicts him (Green, 1992). Anne Ross and others have linked his name to the Irish word coll, hazel, but Andrew Breeze challenges this, tracing it back to Irish caill and Welsh celli, both words for a forest or grove. But one inscription gives the name Selvanos, and it is not impossible that there was a native god Selvanus. Gods of your occupational group (kerdá).
In other myths human heads speak after being cut off. Would love your thoughts, please comment. Creiddylad: A Welsh goddess, daughter of Llyr.
Through him goods can be passed from one realm to another (hence his association with money), and valuable things can be gotten from raw Nature.
Maglae/Maglaenus: is a Pannonian (parts of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe) name for Silvanus, possibly meaning “boy”. [10][23] (Compare Bona Dea for a Roman deity from whose worship men were excluded.) [10] These references to Silvanus as an aspect of Mars combined with his association with forests and glades, give context to the worship of Silvanus as the giver of the art (techne) of forest warfare. [16], In the provinces outside of Italy, Silvanus was identified with numerous native gods:[17], The Slavic god Porewit has similarities with Silvanus.
On the altar of Saintes is a squatting but headless god with torque and purse. Virgil relates that in the very earliest times the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians had dedicated a grove and a festival to Silvanus. This would include your own tutelary tribal god, often in conjunction with intertribal divine figures of Indo-European origin which are seen as upholding the tribal order. Celtic myth may have had the same confusion. Both inscriptions come from Gérouville, Treveri territory. (Google Books) [13], Like other gods of woods and flocks, Silvanus is described as fond of music; the syrinx was sacred to him,[2] and he is mentioned along with the Pans and Nymphs. Dispater was a god of growth and fertility, and besides being lord of the underworld of the dead, not necessarily a dark region or the abode of “dark” gods as is so often assumed by writers on Celtic religion, he was ancestor of the living. The altar to Cocidius Silvanus (RIB 1578) was dedicated by the the prefect of a cohort of Tungrian soldiers. The Celtic "Minerva". One was in the rectangular temple and was dedicated by a centurion (RIB 732), the other was found halfway between the two temples, and the prefect of the same cohort dedicated it. Once again, the southern god was identified with Silvanus. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. The Roman god was also associated with the wolf. [21], The sacrifices offered to Silvanus consisted of grapes, ears of grain, milk, meat, wine and pigs.
The Romans equated him with their Silvanus. Generally speaking, the images of Cernunnos are not found where those of the god with the hammer (Dispater) are most numerous. Share Tweet. WIkipedia says there’s a Romano-British temple dedicated to him. In the later literary tradition his name appears as 'Mabon' in Welsh and as Aengus' title 'in Mac Óac' in Irish. He is the god who crosses boundaries, and the god of change. So it would seem that Poininus was just as misunderstanding, and the text actually invokes Silvanus Dominus. Three divinities have claims to be the god whom Cæsar calls Dispater–a god with a hammer, a crouching god called Cernunnos, and a god called Esus or Silvanus. I'll use the names of the 'interpretatio Romana', not because I think the Romans had the right idea, but because they're consistent! Various meanings have been assigned to “Sucellos,” but it probably denotes the god’s power of striking with the hammer. They treat her as a Queen because of her great beauty. But if the god is a Dispater, and the ancestral god of the Celts, it is natural, as M. Mowat points out, to represent him in the typical attitude of the Gauls when sitting, since they did not use seats. Animals are sometimes represented beside the divinities who were their anthropomorphic forms. Little is known about the rituals and mythology of the… … Wikipedia, Paleo-Balkanic mythology — is a rubric that entails the gods and goddesses worshipped by the Dacians, Thracians, and Illyrians.
We may also go further and see in this god of abundance and fertility at once an Earth and an Under-earth god, since earth and under-earth are much the same to primitive thought, and fertility springs from below the earth’s surface.
[8], Silvanus is described as the divinity protecting the flocks of cattle, warding off wolves, and promoting their fertility. Both these names are conjoined in an inscription from Worms ; [3] in the South of France, the name Silvanus is used almost exclusively; elsewhere, both names either coexist, or the god is all but absent. Green, Dorothy (ed) 1947: “Roman Britain,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 37: 107-20. But a horned god is sometimes a member of a triad, perhaps representing myths in which Cernunnos was associated with other gods. This god is associated with youth, vigour and growth, and particularly the power of the waxing Year as the days grow longer, which sometimes led him to become an "Apollo" in the 'interpretatio Romana', although the usual Celtic "Apollo" is a different god. Cernunnos may thus have been regarded as a three-headed, horned, squatting god, with a torque and ram’s-headed serpent. * [http://www.novaroma.org/religio_romana/cato_mars.html Cato's "De Agricultura":] an offering to Mars Silvanus (e-text in English and Latin), Silvanus — may refer to:*Silvanus (mythology), a Roman tutelary spirit of woods, apparently inherited from the Etruscan deity Selvan *Silvanus, also called Silas, an early Christian and companion of Paul *Silvanus of the Seventy, another early Christian and … Wikipedia, Silvanus (Forgotten Realms) — Forgotten Realms Deity|fgcolor=#fff bgcolor=#000 fgcolor=#fff name=Silvanus title=Oak Father, Forest Father, Treefather home=House of Nature power=Greater alignment=True Neutral portfolio=Wild, nature, druids domains=Animal, Plant, Protection,… … Wikipedia, Silvanus — Guardian of forests and god of fields, in Celtic mythology assimilated to a north British deity Cocidius … Who’s Who in non-classical mythology, Silvanus — noun (Roman mythology) god of woods and fields and flocks; Pan is the Greek counterpart • Syn: ↑Sylvanus • Topics: ↑Roman mythology • Instance Hypernyms: ↑Roman deity … Useful english dictionary, Mars (mythology) — Mars, 1st century, found in the Forum of Nerva (Capitoline Museums, Rome) Ancient Roman religion … Wikipedia, Paleo-Balkan mythology — The cult of the Thracian horseman spread over much of the Balkans during the Roman period. The Divine Twins. Like other gods of woods and flocks, Silvanus is described as fond of music; the syrinx was sacred to him, and he is mentioned along with the Pans and Nymphs. [3][14] Later speculators even identified Silvanus with Pan, Faunus, Inuus and Aegipan. I am the author of five books on mythology, including one on sun-goddesses. (Six in total, and two to Silvanus. (Wright’s report in the Journal of Roman Studies (1947: 178) is more cautious – he simply mentions “the remains of a Roman building”.) Here's one way of looking at it: The "intertribal" divinities are too numerous to discuss fully in this article but we can list the main ones. The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli c. 1485–1486 … Wikipedia, We are using cookies for the best presentation of our site.
The Celtic god Dis Pater, from whom, according to Caesar’s account, the Gauls were descended, is represented as clad in wolf-skin, and holding a vessel, also a mallet with a long shaft, which, Monsieur Reinach thinks, recalls the image of the Etruscan Charon. Your generosity is very much appreciated and needed. But the one that represents. Similarly the ram’s-headed serpent points to animal worship. 3. Although there's no direct evidence of it in the sources, I strongly suspect that the god/goddess pair here were brother and sister (rather than married consorts as in most other cases), and were related to the cult of a brother/sister prophetic and healing pair that spread across Europe (from Central Asia, apparently) in the early Iron Age (and best known as Apollo/Artemis). The other was dedicated by someone named Paternius, for the health of his son Emeritus, and invokes Sinquas in his Romanized form as Deo Silvanus Sinquas. The squatting attitude of Cernunnos is natural in the image of the ancestor of a people who squatted.
Delamarre, Xavier. (a) A bronze statuette from Autun represents a similar figure, probably horned, who presents a torque to two ram’s headed serpents. His consort is the territorial river goddess. This (Epona, "Great Mare") was a particular aspect of the sovereignty goddess, distinct from, say, Rosmerta, who gives rulers the intoxicating drink of flaith/wlatis. Archaeologists found six altars dedicated to him, with two dedicated to Vinotonus Silvanus Augustus. Bodies or heads of dead warriors had a protective influence on their land or tribe, and myth told how the head of the god Bran saved his country from invasion. These two types may thus be different local forms of Dispater. The etymology of silva is unclear. As a god of the common people, he had a large audience, and soldiers, slaves and freedmen to spread his cult abroad. These would be gods who serve as archetypes for your occupation, as well as goddesses who give energy to that occupation (I know it sounds sexist, but that's the way it was!). These would primarily be ancestral spirits, and their worship would be confined to the home. Domestic animals, in Celtic mythology, were believed to have come from the god’s land. His popularity worked both ways, too: a British craftsman explained his god Callirius as Silvanus, and many of the other examples in this post could have worked the same way.