There is strong evidence that the Celts worshipped in the open air. Although there may have been buildings used as temples or altar sites, there are clear indications that specific lakes, pools, springs, rivers, rocks, headlands and clearings were important sites of religious activity. The Irish word nemed, which appears as nemeton in many place-name elements, and which may be derived from an earlier Greek term, is frequently translated as ‘grove’ or ‘sanctuary’, although in some cases it may equally well have been describing a promontory or even a hillfort. Drunemeton, which is recorded as the worship site of the Galatians, means ‘Oak Sanctuary’. In Britain there was a Medionemeton, meaning ‘Central Sanctuary’. Nemetodurum, meaning ‘Sanctuary of the Oak’, was the original name of modern Nanterre, and there is a site in Galicia, Spain called Nemetobriga, which means ‘Shining Grove’ or ‘Bright Sanctuary’. At Buxton in Derbyshire, the local sacred spring was Romanized as Aquae Arnemetiae, ‘the waters of (the goddess) Arnemetia’, the name Arnemetia also deriving from nemed or nemeton.
The common opinion of which ceremonies may have taken place within these sacred groves has been heavily coloured by a single description in the classical texts, that of Pliny describing the ceremony of the cutting of the mistletoe:
They call the mistletoe by a name meaning the all-healing. Having made preparation for sacrifice and a banquet beneath the trees, they bring thither two white bulls, whose horns are bound then for the first time. Clad in a white robe, the priest ascends the tree and cuts the mistletoe with a golden sickle, and it is received by another in a white cloak. Then they kill the victims, praying that God will render this gift of his propitious to those to whom he had granted it.
World History
