Footnotes

*1 For an excellent overview of the archaeological and written evidence see Anne Ross, Pagan Celtic Britain.

*2 For further details about the Coligny Calendar, please see Eoin MacNeill, “On the Calendar of Coligny.”

*3 For a detailed description please see Liz and Colin Murray, The Celtic Tree Oracle, or Robert Graves, The White Goddess. (Many people believe that the Tree Calendar is a pure invention of the poet Robert Graves, who claims to have intuited the evidence.)

*4 Druids will want to call in the four directions and a fifth—the center. Please see Chapter 13, “Sacred Groves and Circles,” for a further discussion of this practice.

*5 Potatoes were added to the traditional diet after the discovery of South America by Europeans.

*6 Some “Yule” customs listed here are actually Germanic and were adopted by Celtic communities relatively recently.

*7 This game emulates the act of winnowing grain by tossing it so that the chaff can be blown away.

*8 For an excellent discussion of these, see Marija Gimbutas, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, 70003500 B.C.

*9 Dr. Fergus Kelly is currently working on a book entitled Early Irish Farming: The Evidence of the 7th–8th Century Law-Texts, and he was kind enough to share this information with me in a letter.

*10 For a discussion of rue and wormwood, please refer to “The Herbs of Samhain” in chapter 3 and to chapter 14, “Last Rites and the Celtic Otherworld.”

*11 Native Americans also used to keep track of patches of watercress, and in winter, when ice covered the streams, they would break through to get the fresh, green plants. This was a way to get fresh greens and vitamins in the deepest winter.

*12 Other herbs used in poultices for tumors and cancer are slippery elm (bark, leaf, and root), heather (flowers and twigs), maple leaf (powder), and speedwell (Veronica officinalis), which is especially well suited to breast cancers. The fresh juice of veronica benefits all internal cancers. Mandrake (leaf and root) is crushed and boiled and applied to tumors. Chaparral (powder) is especially well suited to skin cancers.

*13 For an excellent overview of the Egyptian material, see William Emboden, “The Sacred Journey in Dynastic Egypt: Shamanistic Trance in the Context of the Narcotic Water Lily and the Mandrake,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Jan-March 1989, 21 (1).

*14 A “poppet” is a magical effigy of a person. Sympathetic magic is used to direct spells by visualization, prayers, or even putting pins into the figure.

*15 The golden knife was probably a brass or bone sickle or knife which was gold-plated. Pure gold would be too soft for the harvesting of herbs.

*16 Homeopathic medicines are based on the observation that similia similibus curentur, or “like cures like.” A substance that is capable of producing symptoms in a healthy individual will tend to eliminate those symptoms in someone who is ill.

*17 Druids of highest rank customarily carried a gold-covered brass sickle to use in the gathering of sacred plant medicines.

*18 Huei Lee and Jung-Yaw Lin, Mutation Research.

*19 Auf’mkolk, Ingbar, Kubota, Amir, and Ingbar, Endocrinology 1985 May 116 (5), pp. 1687-93.

*20 G. Honda, J. Tosirisuk, Planta Medica.

*21 Copper is a solar metal in East Indian systems of thought.

*22 The rowan tree held special favor among the Irish Druids, whereas the yew tree was venerated by the British. The oak, while generally revered, was perhaps the most important in Gaul and Galatia.

*23 Stag in the light half of the year; boar in the dark half.

*24 Boar in the light half of the year; stag in the dark half.

*25 The sweat lodge is a Native American ceremony of purification done outdoors. Young saplings are bent to form a small hut, which is covered with blankets. Hot rocks are brought into the lodge and placed in a hole in the ground, and water is poured over them to produce steam. During the ritual, prayers are said for the Earth, the sky, and the four directions.

*26 For more on this see Jean Markale, Women of the Celts, Inner Traditions International, Rochester, Vt., 1986.

*27 Ireland is frequently alluded to because it is the most Celtic of countries. The ancient Romans never managed to get there, and its original culture remained intact for a longer period than other Celtic societies enjoyed.

*28 Please see “Sacred Groves and Circles” for a fuller evocation of the directional correspondences.

†1 K. M. Smith, H. D. Tabba, and R. S. Chang, Antiviral Research.

†2 After the invocation of the center, an oaken staff is symbolically planted in the center of the circle. The circle is now sacred space, beyond the laws of time and matter.