This is a more expanded explination of the information found in the 'Thoughts on History' section/interview excerpts.  This version can be found on the deluxe edition DVD of Origins. Transcription based on subtitles from DVD. 

 

 

“Origins” deals in-depth with Celtic mythology, or to be more precise, with the aetiological tales from Gaul in particular.  That is to say: origin and foundation myths.

 

Every nation, every culture, every era had and still has its own myths and legends.  Legends tell us of things, that are important in life.  They narrate things that shouldn’t fall into oblivion.  Legends tell us, where we come from, how things were formed or how our people came into existence…in short words: They tell us who we are. 

 

Of course the Celts had their legends and myths too.  And they are what “Origins" is dealing with.  It is the duty of todays science to research on ancient Celtic legends like this.  This is not exactly a simple task though, for several reasons (and so it hasn’t been a simple task to develop the lyrical content of “Origins”).   For a start:  We’re dealing with really old matters here. 

 

What we know about Gaulish mythology today we basically know thanks to ancient historians, who write about it (usually 2000-2500 years ago).  Some legends we’re dealing with on “Origins” were already considered to be ‘ancient’ and ‘primeval’ in the antiquity, when they’ve been written down,  thus we partly go back several thousand years.  We have to face one fact: We don’t know much about the religious beliefs of the Celts and their myths and legends!  This is just a fact we have to accept (even though we’d sometimes love it would be different).  Reviewing Celtic legends from the antiquity offers certain problems science has to face.  And I’d like to mention the following few of them. 

 

Firstly we have to face the lack of written testimonia.  The Celts used writing on admininstrational, legal and similar matters,  such as legal notes, geographical directions, votive inscriptions, dedications and so on,  but they refused to write down religious, spiritual and cultural issues.  Possible motives for this unusual concept have been discussed controversially in science for a long time.  Yet based on comparisons to diverse indogermanic parallels (such as customs of the Brahmins), the French comparative philologist and mythographer Georges Dumezil succeeded to prove that we’re dealing with a writing refusal here;  the Celts, led by their druids, practiced a deliberate refusal of writing for a religious reason:  They were convinced that the ‘letter kills’ while the spoken word lives.  Once written down, a tenet, a law or even a poem loses its flexibility and aliveness….a nobile though on one hand.  But for us today this makes things difficult, for we don’t have first-hand testimonia available. 

 

The very most we know about Gaulish beliefs, we only know at second and third hand – from ancient literary testimonies, mainly of Greek and Roman authors.  We heavily depend on them. 

 

And this brings us to the next intricacy: The personal paradigms of ancient writers.  When researching on Gaulish mythology and beliefs we have to keep in mind that all ancient authors describing the Gauls and their culture were ‘only human’.  What picture of the Gaulish culture, mythology and religion they paint in their writings heavily depends on their own paradigms, possible partially and cultural backgrounds.  We have to face the fact that they described a culture alien to them.  A greek historian – for instance – traveling through distant Gaul must have faced many things that seemed very strange to him and which he perhaps couldn’t understand. 

 

Another difficulty is the question of the authors intention, of course.  What was the purpose of his work?  We can observe considerable differences here!  For instance there have been Greek scholars writing about the Gauls with the purpose on distinguishing themselves.  Some of them never visited Gaul themselves and had their little knowledge about the Gauls only at second hand.  But they were somewhere on their career ladder and thus tried to present themselves as sophisticated as possible and impress their local audience by mentioning as much ‘exotic’ issues and outlandish, ludicrous or bloodcurdling ‘facts’ from distant Gaul (about which the Greek everyman didn’t know much at all) as possible.   We can only assume how factual and objective such descriptions are  (or not).  On the other hand we have a scripture like Ceasars “de bello gallico”  which was created as political propaganda.  For several political and mostly financial reasons Caesar needed the war against Gaul, but he didn’t have the senates permission (according to Roman law it was forbidden to wage war against a country/tribe/kingdom outside the Roman republic, unless the Roman republic is threatened).  So Caesar needed to portray the Gauls as a threat to rome “as eager for war” barbarians and as dangerous as possible.

 

When we research on Celtic mythology in ancient literary testimonies circumstances like this have to be considered.  A further difficulty I’d like to mention is the ancient custom of cultural interpretation.  Interpretatio’ has been a common practice in the ancient world when it came to religion.  When antique authors wrote about foreign gods or religious issues, they usually ‘translated’ them into their own culture.  For instance, when the Roman historiographer (in this example Caesar) writes about the god, which the Gauls descent from (according to their druids teachings) he doesn’t actually name the epichoric Gaulish god, but he names the Roman god Dis Pater, which was the Roman equivalent to the afore-said Gaulish god in his (or general) judgement.  The actual name of the Gaulish god remains unknown.  Unfortunately it’s often everything but clear by what criteria such equivalents were set.  Was it the ‘functions and attributes of the corresponding divinities?  Was it their iconography?

 

About many aspects of the practice of the ‘interpretatio’ we are in the dark.  Furthermore such euqations sometimes differed and foreign gods were associated with different native deities. 

 

These are some of the difficulties we’re facing when researching on Celtic mythology, beliefs and legends… and also issues we were dealing with while creating ‘Origins’.  - Chrigel