WHEEL

The wheel had become a cdt symbol by the end of the Bronze Age. Often it can be seen in Iron Age images, for example on coins, just ftoating in a comer. It may represent exactly what it seems to represent: the wheel of a wagon or a chariot. On some coins the wheel floats beneath a horse, and in that context it looks as if a chariot might be intended. If so, it codd represent the power of trade or the military power of the warrior elite. Given that chariots and wagons were often included among the grave goods of the rich and powerfd, the wheel may represent a very specific journey: the journey to the Otherworld.

In abod 600 BC a remarkable cdt wagon was bdlt at Strettweg in Austria. It carries a group of human figures with battle trumpets (horsemen and infantry with spears and shields), surrounding a large central female figure who holds a shallow bronze bowl above her head. The wagon has four large eight-spoked wheels.

But the wheel could equally be a transformation of the sun, in which case it could take on a variety of meanings, such as life, strength, power, and sovereignty. The wheel is a natural symbol for the sun: it is round, it has spokes that radiate like the sun’s rays, and it is capable of moving. Even where it is shown with a horse it could represent the sun, because a celestial horse was envisaged as necessary to draw the sun across the sky.

The solar wheel cult had been in existence for a long time. The Trundholm chariot from Denmark dates from 1300 BC. It consists of a bronze model horse pulling a bronze disk, gold-plated on one side and borne along on three pairs of wheels. There can be no doubt that this disc represents the sun and the horse is imagined as drawing the sun across the sky. Sometimes the wheel is paired with a crescent, making the obvious paired association between sun and moon.

The wheel is not considered to be self-running; even if it is shown on its own, there is an implication that some god must be responsible for rolling it along. Some figurines show a deity with one hand on the wheel, so in those depictions we can see who it is who rolls it. A favorite Roman goddess was Fortuna, who was responsible for turning the wheel of fortune. She appears on Roman coins, and the image is very familiar to Britons of an older generation, because she was adopted and adapted to become Britannia, who very similarly appeared on coins. In her new role as Britannia, Fortuna finds her wheel of fortune itself transformed—into Britannia’s proudly held round shield.

Another transformation of the solar wheel to suit the values of a later age is the rose window. Several great European cathedrals have magnificent rose windows, which are huge sun-wheels made of stone and glass and sunlight. In the Middle Ages they were actually referred to as rota: “wheels.”

In the last two centuries BC, an Iron Age celestial and mainly solar cult becomes evident, with the wheel as its symbol. The Romans had their sky god, Jupiter, borrowed from the Greek Zeus, and these were powerfijl bearded male figures, emphatically modeled on the human male. But among the Celts, representations of the gods in human form were still quite unusual. By the second century AD, however, a Romano-Celtic wheel god had emerged. This late shift into human form is an indication of the Celts’ reluctance to think of their gods in human form; in this case it seems only to have happened as a result of contact with the Greco-Roman civilization. But in a way we are lucky that this happened, or we might not have realized that the wheel was in fact a god.

Miniature wheels have been found at a number of Iron Age sites, from Britain across to Slovakia. Often these are only 1 inch (2.5cm) in diameter, with four spokes, but some are larger and have six or as many as 12 spokes. They were probably carried as talismans or good luck charms.

At the La Tene site of Villeneuve au Chatelot in France, large numbers of lead wheel models have been found at a site that is believed to be a temple. The lead wheels were presumably sold to worshippers to leave as ofterings, as a kind of divine currency.

In a similar spirit, wheel models were left as grave goods. At the Durmberg hilftbrt near Hallein in Austria, the grave of a small boy dating from 400 BC contained jewelry that included a realistic wheel model. Another grave, of a young girl, contained a model wheel and a model axe. Grave goods such as these were left as a help on what was imagined to be a difficult journey The little girl was very small for her age, to the point of disability, and this may be why her parents felt that she needed some good luck charms to help her on her way.

The wheel was also inscribed on tombstones. In the cremation cemeteries of Alsace there are some distinctive house-shaped tombstones, which have wheel symbols scratched onto them. Some have wheels and rosettes together.

Irish legend tells of a magic wheel, the Roth Fail, made by the Druid Mog Ruith. This wheel is said to have carried the Druid through the heavens, but it met with an accident and broke up. Mog Ruith’s daughter, Tlachtga, gathered some fragments of the wheel, and took them to freland, which in itself (according to Irish tradition) was a calamity. She raised one of the fragments as the pillar-stone of Cnamchoill, near Tipperary. The Roth Fail, the Wheel of Light, was clearly not intended to be a flying-machine at all but to symbolize the sun, and some of the storytellers who passed on the story did not understand this. This has its parallel in the Greek tale about Icams, who flew through the air with aid of a pair of wings made by his father Daedalus; he flew too close to the sun and the sun’s heat melted the wax that held the feathers in place.

A Roman sarcophagus dating from AD 350 has a remarkable symbol carved on it. It combines the circular Roman laurel wreath, the wreath of victory and immortality, with the chi-rho symbol: the first two letters of the name of Christ when spelt in Greek, “X” and “R” So the symbol represents Christ Victorious. Yet these elements have been carefiJly put together to make a six-spoked wheel. It is the sun-wheel of the Celtic pagan god Taranis, but Romanized and Christianized to

Make it into what is sometimes called an Ichthys wheel.

The wheel with eight spokes instead of six is the Wheel of the Year, with its eight calendar festivals:

December: Winter Solstice February: /mbolg March: Spring Equinox May: Beltane June: Summer Solstice August: Lnghnasad September: Autumn Equinox November: Samhain

WIDDERSHEVS

There is a very old custom, when walking around something, to walk round it clockwise, in other words veering to the right. This is seen as conforming to the movement of the sun across the sky. Viewed from northern Europe, the sun is generally in the southern half of the sky, and when you look south the sun rises to your left and crosses to the right, so this clockwise processional movement is sometimes described as “sunwise.” It is in keeping with the natural order of the universe.

We can imagine the ancestors of the Celts walking or dancing around their stone

And earth circles “sunwise,” perhaps in rituals that related directly to the movements of the sun itself In Irish and Scottish Gaelic this movement with the sun is called deiseal (right-handwise).

The opposite, circling to the left hand, is called tuathal in Gaelic, and is regarded as unlucky. It is known in England and Lowland Scotland as “widdershins,” meaning “walking against.”

In the seventeenth century, if ordinary people in the Western Isles of Scotland happened to be passing a prehistoric cairn, they used to make a point of walking around it three times, always sunwise, for good luck. It made no difference whether they were Protestants or Catholics—it was understood, even then, that this was a very ancient custom handed down from the way their ancestors worshiped. On Colonsay, people walked “sunways” around the church and turned their boats in the same way. In the Highlands, wedding processions often went clockwise round the church. Herdsmen danced three times sunways around the Beltane lire.

To go widdershins was to go the wrong way. A Scottish witch who was refused some grain by a neighbor deliberately walked around the neighbor’s stack the wrong way, “contrair to the sunis cours,” in order to do damage to the grain.

WILLOW

A tree associated with mourning, because of its drooping shape, and therefore also with death. The fact that willows grow near water may also associate them with the Otherworld. Willow is supposed to assist in communicating with the Otherworld. It was sometimes used to line graves for this reason {see Crane).