Today’s offering comes to us from SianLuc Asha Merlyn Heart, an amateur scholar in anthropology and history, interested in the history of religion and studying to become a scholar in religious history and theology at the University of New England, Australia.
Totemism can be considered one of the most popular forms of belief to have been taken into the Modern Pagan movements, and is perhaps the most visible part of Indigenous American culture to have reached the wider world’s imagination. Totem poles have long since marked the imagination of the Indigenous American world, and many readily take tests online to see what their “totem animal” could be.
Many would be shocked, perhaps, to learn that this belief is not only found amongst Indigenous Americans but also in Europe. The Celtic peoples of western Europe, from the ancient continental Gaul and Briton to the medieval Irish, are thought of to have had a belief in totemism which appears not only in their ancient naming traditions of both tribe and family but also within their mythology, their annals, and laws down into folk practises that may persist to this day across the British Isles.
To state a definition on what totemism is: totemism is the belief that one has a spiritual connection to a particular kind of animal, plant, or other natural object either through one’s own personal spirit or from the family line. Totemism is connected to the philosophy of animism, for we cannot have totemism without animism; however, totemism is more interested with our relationship with the natural world.
On the notion of appropriation, some feel that because the word “totem” and the general study of the topic began with the Indigenous Americans that it is cultural appropriation to use “totemism” to describe non-indigenous beliefs. But while the word originates in the Ojibwe language, it describes beliefs that are not exclusive to the Americas. As no other word has been suggested to describe this theology, it will serve us for this discussion.
With that out of the way, let us begin.
The most obvious and oldest evidence for Celtic Totemism can be found in the name of an ancient British tribe, the Bibroci, whose name is thought to have meant “The Beaver Tribe.” This points to a belief that perhaps that the tribe had a special connection to beavers either as a spirit animal and omen of the tribe, or perhaps as their originator.
This form of naming convention can also be found amongst the Gauls in the Eburones, meaning “The Yew Tribe” which has a surprising connection to the Irish Eognachta dynasty which means “Family of the Yew”. This demonstrates not only how this belief crossed cultural and geographical borders but also how belief in totemism persisted for many centuries due to the Eognachta rising four hundred years after the destruction of the Eburones by Caesar.
There are many more examples of this across the Gaelic world, such as the Dal Riadan Cinel Loaran, “The Fox Clan.” Many Irish family names refer to an animalistic origin.
Totemic connections can also be found in the first names of many Celtic peoples. Take the name Artogenos for example. Meaning “Son of the Bear,” Artogenos is a direct cognate for the later King Arthur, theorised to have meant “Bear man.” This type of name can also be found in Ireland, where the common name Eogan means “Born of Yew.” These could refer to a person’s clan totem or to the events of their birth and personality.
Detail of antlered figures with animal-headed horns depicted on the cauldron found at Gundestrup, Himmerland, Jutland, Denmark. The Gundestrup cauldron is housed at the National Museum of Denmark. [Bloodofox, Wikimedia Commons, CC 3.0]
It can also be theorised that the prevalence of the boar in Gallic iconography is due to a belief in totemism. Boars appear on the coinage of the Gauls and the famous Carnyx wind instrument. They even bear the visage of a wild boar upon the crest of their helms. This might have been because the Celts viewed their totem as their spiritual protectors in battle, bringing victory and divine protection to the warriors in the field.
This is perhaps further confirmed by the Celtiberians choice of a wolf as the front peace for the Carnyx. This, combined with their fashion of wearing the wolves pelt for ceremonial purposes points towards their use as a wolf for an alternative totem.
In fact, clan or tribe totems are theorised to have been the main subject of ancient Celtic tattoos and body paint. These would have served not just as spiritual protection, taking the visage of their guardian animal with them wherever they went, but also as a symbol of the group they belonged to, a sort of signature for their clan or tribe that can be easily identified to strangers to make sense of who is a friend and who is a foe as seen with the issue of the “Devil Marks” St. Brigid cleans from an Irish warrior band.
The greatest example of totemic comes from Gaelic mythology and tradition. There are multiple examples that can be drawn from the ancient stories to demonstrate not only the belief in totemism but also the way they interacted with it and the consequences of going against one’s totem. While there are numerous examples here we will focus on a few examples: the legends of Diarmuid, Cú Chulainn, Conaire Mor, Oscar and Cormac mac Airt.
To begin with, Diarmuid was one of the famous Fianna, a mythological warband of Ireland and a son of Donn, the Gaelic god of the dead and the underworld. Before the start of the stories, Donn had killed a steward’s son in act of jealousy. Oengus Mac Og revived the steward as a boar and when the truth was found by Fionn the steward cursed Diarmuid that he would be killed by the boar in the future. In the end, due to some drama within the Fianna later in his life, Diarmuid hunted down and slew the boar, but he had been pierced by its bristles and died afterwards.
Perhaps by slaying the boar he broke his totemic taboo and thus died, the story of the steward’s son being added later to add a more direct explanation. What Oengus gave to Diarmuid is a geis, which is a taboo.
Cú Chulainn & the Bull by Karl Beutel, 2003 Oil on Canvas (20 x 30 inches) Armagh County Museum Collection [Teufelbeutel, Wikimedia Commons, CC 3.0]
Cú Chulainn is also a possible case of a memory of totemism. When Cú Chulainn slew the mighty hound of Culann, he not only became its replacement but took up a taboo against eating any other dog’s meat. Later, he was tricked to eat dogmeat by his enemies and because of this breaking of a sacred taboo and going back on his word, his fate becomes sealed, and he dies tying himself to a stone – a much less direct death then that of Diarmuid.
However, the most direct memory of totemism in Gaelic tradition is the story of Conaire Mor. His father was the king of the Enlaith, the bird people. When Conaire was a young man, he went hunting after birds and ended up in Ireland. These birds then transformed into men and then explained Conaire’s lineage to him formally forbidding him from hunting birds and then assisting him in gaining the high kingship of Ireland.
Later, Conaire breaks this taboo along with many others, resulting in the destruction of the hostel he was staying at and his own death at the hands of raiders. This is perhaps the most direct reference to totemism, not only in the consequences but also in the way his totem is presented, not as a curse or punishment but rather as an ancestor to Conaire Mor.
This motif can also be reinforced in the birth of Oscar, whose mother was transformed into a deer which caused him and his descendants of the Ossory to abhor venison and hunting deer. This again demonstrates a direct link between one’s own ancestry and the hunting and consuming of certain animals.
These totemic themes can be seen in history as well such as the story of Cormac Mac Airt, who as a baby was taken in by she-wolves and raised in the caves of Kesh. Serving perhaps as an Irish Romulus, demonstrating how totems were not just present in the mind of mythology but also the historical record long after the belief was dismissed by Christianity.
The non-consumption or hunting of certain animals seems to have been the main way Celtic peoples interacted with their totems and can go into explaining many of the odd dietary restrictions the ancient Celts may have held. Caesar, for example remarks that the Britons held it contrary to divine law to consume the flesh of hares, geese and hens. The Picts have recently been found to have avoided the consumption of fish and in Ireland meat of herons and swans were not consumed. Although the idea of not hunting a particular animal is not exactly represented in ancient accounts or folklore, the surviving mythology heavily suggests that hunting one’s own totem was heavily looked down upon.
The justification for this seems to have majorly centred around the idea that certain clans and families descend from their totems and so killing one’s totem is like killing one’s own family and kin-slaying was heavily looked down upon the ancient Celtic world. This can be seen with the stories of the Conlees who believed that in ancient days half of their family became seals and so killing a seal could mean killing their own. Similarly, the story of Aoife and the Children of Lir contains the origin of the taboo against eating heron and swan, as after their transformation eating Herons and swans is compared to cannibalism.
Another justification could be that the souls of the dead of the family become their totem upon death, so that those with a deer totem have at least part of their soul become a deer and so on. This could explain folklore describing certain birds and insects as the souls of the deceased, perhaps most famously believing that King Arthur’s own soul transformed into a raven and flew around Britain to await his return to the physical world from Avalon.
A clan’s totem acted almost certainly as either the founder of their family or an important ancestor. The totem was protected under their traditional taboos as something that could be neither harmed nor eaten without serious repercussions and may have been seen as the souls of the departed. This function was so important that it could be found in even later dates post Christianity and perhaps can even be found today surrounding the folklore around certain animals in the Irish countryside, also demonstrating the hardiness of Celtic paganism facing rapidly increasing Christianization.
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.