SPIRAL

An ancient symbol that was important throughout the evolution of the Celtic culture. The oldest spirals that exist in the British Isles are those that decorate the Boyne passage graves. Spirals were careMy and elaborately carved into the huge stone at the entrance to the Newgrange passage grave 5,000 years ago.

Another stone, deep in the heart of the tomb, was carved with another double-triple spiral, very like the one at the entrance. The central tomb chamber where the second double-triple spiral was placed was lit by the sun, just once a year, at the midwinter sunrise, when the rays of the sun were allowed in through a specially made roo&ox, a slot above the blocked door.

Similar complex multiple spirals were carved into the stones forming the chamber walls of the Gavrinis passage grave in Brittany.

The spiral is a long-enduring symbol, a tme archetype, and one that has many meanings. The outward-moving path, endlessly expanding as it goes out, suggests limitless possibilities. It also symbolizes a journey inward or outward, and perhaps both. Jung saw the spiral as a symbol of psychic journeying, inward toward the center of the seUj then out again in order to limction in the everyday world. It became, in the twentieth century at least, a symbol of reculer pour mieux sauter, a favorite psychic healing technique of Jung, and of the self-discovery to which it leads.

The spiral is the simplest form oflabyrinth, one in which no choices are presented beyond the choice to travel. It is a single path, a path to the center and back.

Other spirals lead on from one to another. The triple spiral that is the central focus of the Newgrange passage grave is in fact a triple double-spiral: each spiral has a path to lead you in and a second path to lead you out again; that takes you by way of an S-bend to the next spiral, where the same thing happens again. This is a very highly ordered never-ending path: a maze to make you giddy. What the makers of it meant is probably unknowable. But it is at least certain that this visually powerfrjl symbol was an intentional design, because it was repeated exactly on the huge entrance stone at the outer end of the entrance passage, and the Newgrange spirals meant journeying, perhaps the never-ending journeying of the sun and also the possibly-never-ending journeying of the human spirit (see Labyrinth, Triskele).

STAG

The stag symbolizes the spirit of the forest. It bears antlers that are themselves treelike, so the beast actually seems to carry the forest around on its head. It is agile, fast, and sexually vigorous, so it represents in itself the vigor of self-regenerating nature. The mysterious shedding of the antlers each autumn and their regrowth in the spring emphasize the general seasonal cycle of the forest, which sheds its foliage each autumn and grows new each spring.

Stag symboKsm is to the fore on the Gundestnip cauldron. The stag-homed god Ceraunnos is shown with a stag beside him. On another vessel, a god is shown gripping a stag in each hand.

Stag figurines in bronze are not very common, but there is no doubt that the stag cult was widespread. A stone found in Luxembourg shows a stag with a stream of coins coming out of its mouth. A carved stone Ifom Rheims shows Cemunnos with a stag and a bull, drinking Ifom a stream of coins. The imagery is supposed to convey that stags are associated with prosperity. But in most places, the stag is firmly connected with hunting. In northern Britain, the stag was associated with the hunter-god Cocidius. At Colchester, the god Silvanus Callirius (Silvanus the woodland king) was associated with a stag at a shrine.

At Le Donon in the Vosges, there was a mountain shrine where a nature god or hunter god was worshiped. He was depicted in stone, clothed in an animal pelt hung with fiuit; he rested his hand in a gesture of benediction on the antlers of a stag standing beside him. The images of forest and hunting come face to face with images of benign prosperity. The relationship between hunter and hunted is close, almost aflFectionate in nature, and like no other Celtic image it shows the Celtic mindset regarding the relationship between humanity and nature.

A sculpture of a divine couple made by the Aedui tribe shows the god and goddess presiding over the animal kingdom. They are seated side by side with their feet resting on two stags below them. The god oflFers a goblet of wine to a horse beside him, while the goddess symmetrically ofiers a drink to a second horse that she is caressing. This region of Burgundy was a horse-breeding area. It was also an area where the stag-antlered Cemunnos (virtually a stag god) was worshiped. The stag was a shorthand image for nature and the world of animals.

The antlers of the stag are a reminder of the potential violence of nature, of the fact that nature can do people harm, but they are also attributes of mainly gentle, shy, and benign creatures who are not hostile to people. They are also symbols of the masculine fertility of the rutting stag and of the fertility of nature in general.

STANDING STONES

The practice of raising standing stones began very early in Brittany, perhaps as far back as 4000 BC, and spread rapidly to the other regions of the Atlantic Celts—and beyond. Standing stones became a widespread feature across a large area of western Europe.

The simplest type of monument is a naturally weathered stone tipped up on end into a supporting pit and held in place by some packing boulders in the pit around the base. In France these are called menhirs, “long stones.” In Britain they are called standing stones.

Sometimes the standing stone acts as a territorial marker, and sometimes (especially in later antiquity) as a grave marker. They may be places where sacrifices were made. In some places they acted as foresights for alignments on cols or hilltops on the horizon where a particular astronomical event, such as a midwinter sunset, might be observed. Many such locations have been identified, and there were evidently used to mark and honor certain landmarks in the calendar.

The most impressive standing stone in Britain is the Rudston Monolith (monolith = single stone) in Yorkshire. It is 26 feet (8m) high and is believed to weigh more than 80 tons (70 tonnes).

Its dominance in the landscape has been destroyed by the building of the parish church right next to it. Whether this was a deliberate attempt to steal the ancient monument’s thunder can never be known, but it was common for churches to be built in places that were already a focus for communal worship and ritual. Christian

Missionaries were expKcitly advised to do this by Pope Gregory.

What is no longer visible at Rudston is the big ceremonial landscape that surrounded the tall monolith. There were no avenues of standing stones leading to it —there were too few suitable stones available in the area—but there were three avenues marked by earth banks, called cursus monuments. These huge processional ways converged on the Rudston Monolith.

The name ‘Rudston” comes fromrwJ stan, meaning “cross-stone.” It would seem that at some stage, perhaps in the early Middle Ages, some well-meaning Christians understood that the stone was a leftover from the pagan past and perched a cross or a cross-beam on top to render it harmless. Some Breton menhirs had their tops carved into crosses to Christianize them.

What we see here, and at other standing-stone sites such as Camac in Brittany, or Stenness in Orkney, or Avebury in Wiltshire, is a profound relationship developing between people and landscape.

Single standing stones are often hard to interpret. By 3200 BC, the practice had developed into the laying out of stone circles, such as Avebury in Wiltshire or the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney. Lines of stones were laid out to mark a ceremonial path across the landscape. Sometimes two lines were set up to make an avenue. Two winding stone avenues led to the great stone circle at Avebury: one to the west entrance and one to the south entrance; these were evidently ceremonial ways.

This architecture of great stones was developed still further to make a whole family of stone tombs. Three stone slabs might be raised to make three sides of a square, then a fourth slab might be slid on top to make a roof This burial chamber might then be covered by an earth mound with an entrance on one side. If the grave mound needed to be big and imposing, the tomb chamber might be given an entrance passage. This was made by raising two rows of vertical slabs and then adding a slab roof The passage grave Maes Howe in Orkney was designed in this way, but with a variation: the four chamber slabs were erected in the comers and the sides were made of drystone walling using large, flat slabs of sandstone.