Essay: ancient magic
the echoes of Celtic culture in the golden age of fantasy
An ancient silver impression of Cernunos, a Celtic god associated with animals and shapeshifting
Essay by Robin Spinks
Tabletop Role Playing Games (RPGs), liberated from trollish gatekeepers, have become inclusive and cool nowadays. Major TV labels are investing heavily in beloved fantasy franchises like Game of Thrones and The Witcher. Video games like God of War and A Plague Tale have emerged as a vehicle for beautifully acted cinematic stories in historical and mythical settings. Fantasy fans rejoice for we live in a blessed age, one which is riddled with allusions to Celtic culture. I’m arguing that these echoes should be celebrated, and not bemoaned as appropriation. After all, the Celts were known to do some appropriating of their own.
I learned to read from picture books of Robin Hood and King Arthur. In kindergarten, I had graduated to Deltora Quest and Harry Potter, and by the age of nine, I was onto the Lord of the Rings and the ancient-magic-Inheritance series. Throughout different realms of art, creation often relies upon history and a regular borrowing of what came before, transforming my fascination into a passion for real-world history. I am particularly interested in the Celts, partly for the mystery surrounding them (the only written records coming from the ancient Greeks and Romans who conquered them) and partly due to my Scottish heritage. Celtic culture is also often used to create a sense of ancient magic in modern fantasy – but the same thing happened in the medieval period. Just as we borrowed from the Celts, the Celts borrowed from those who came before them.
The Celts emerged around 1,500 BCE in the mountains of modern-day Austria, one of many Germanic tribes. Their spirituality was inextricably linked to nature, worshipping at groves and springs rather than Churches or temples. They had a particular affinity for oak trees. Their holy people were known as druids – equal parts judge, healer and priest – who had the power to shapeshift and commune with spirits. They believed in a race of spirit beings known variously as fae, fairies, elves, fair folk or aes sidhe.
The Celts grew wealthy from the mining of salt and the development of iron tools, and following the domestication of horses, their culture spread all the way from the Alps to the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles. Irish mythology tells of the Gauls - a Celtic tribe - travelling from their homeland in northern Spain and settling in Ierne (Ireland). The (surprisingly) excellent Puss in Boots: the Last Wish nods to this history with an Irish version of Puss appearing briefly, largely for comedic effect, as a foil to the otherwise Spanish representation of the protagonist. The movie also emphasises that it is “Fairy Tale”, and certainly not just a nursery rhyme. The use of the word ‘fairy’ is just one echo of Celtic Culture that prevails to this day.
The fall of Celtic culture came with Caesar’s rule of Rome, shortly before the time of Christ. Eventually, the rest of Europe embraced Christianity, leaving the only pockets of Celtic culture in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, until even these vestiges were syncretically absorbed and became Christian.
The pagan beliefs of the Celts were condemned as devil worship, but tiny elements persevered in Catholic belief systems. Brig – the goddess of healing, poetry and smithing/creation – became St Brigid. The triskelion – a triple spiral of spiritual significance to Celts – became associated with the Holy Trinity of Catholicism. The Celts’ barbaric practice of burning people in wicker cages was replaced by the Christians’ sophisticated practice of burning ‘witches’ (Pagans) at the stake if they were suspected of ‘devil worship’ (Paganism). Still, elements of Celtic culture endured, the magic and mythology too deeply rooted in Scottish, Irish and Welsh culture to be eradicated.
A painting of Brigid by John Duncan
Take, for example, Arthur Penndragon: the paragon of English culture and the prototypical hero. He is a deeply Christian figure, a disciple of God widely revered throughout the high medieval period. His tale has been told a thousand times over. In every version, Arthur is advised by a wizard – Merlin – who gives him access to the ancient wisdom and power necessary to rule. The rendition most dear to me is Disney’s 1967 animated film, The Sword in the Stone. In this version, Merlin transforms into different animals while battling a witch. He also transforms Arthur into a fish and a squirrel to teach him about the world. Such magic is forbidden – Satanic – under Christianity. It is distinctly Celtic.
Another recurring figure in Arthurian legend is Arthur’s half-sister Morgana la Fey. Her name literally means Morgana the fairy in French. In early legends she was portrayed similarly to Merlin as a magical advisor, clairvoyant and ally. Her name and portrayal are cognate with the Morrigan, the Irish-Celtic goddess of fate and war, who takes the shape of a crow to prophesy and guide warriors in battle. In later retellings, Morgana is portrayed as an evil enchantress, possibly indicating a souring taste for Pagan beliefs as time went on in medieval Britain and powerful, female strategic advisors became unpalatable. (This is not to imply that the Celts were feminists. Their culture had defined gender roles. A look at the mythology, however, shows a much broader spectrum of women than the maiden-whore dichotomy in the Christian bible.)
William Margetsen’s rendition of Morgana le Fay
Other examples of distaste for Paganism are evident in George R R Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, now a cultural institution. Its HBO adaptations Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon have brought fantasy and historical fiction into the mainstream. Martin draws on a huge variety of different historical cultures for inspiration, including the Celts. In the overall history of Westeros, the First Men (ancestors of the Starks and other Northmen, including Wildlings) are representative of the Celts while the Children of the Forest represent the fae.
The Starks and other Northmen worship ‘the old gods’ at their holy Weirwood trees and remain wary of supernatural threats, while the Andals and Rhoynar (rough reflections of Romans and Saxons) worship the ‘new gods’ in grand Cathedrals and dismiss rumours of the Long Night as superstition. Several times in the series, Southerners dismiss a Northerner’s fear of White Walkers as a fear of “grumpkins and snarks”. This aligns with Roman, and later English, folk dismissing Celtic beliefs (e.g. leprechauns) as ‘fairytails’, cheapening the word ‘fae’ to something childish while steamrolling over ancient spiritual and cultural beliefs.
A further allusion to Celtic history is the Wall, which in Westeros separates the Seven Kingdoms from the brutal anarchy of the north, where wildlings live alongside Children of the Forest. This is clearly inspired by Hadrian’s Wall: a real-world fortification stretching from coast to coast in northern England, which was built by the Romans in the 2nd Century CE, to protect against the marauding Celts and their superstitions.
Elora and her titular tutor in Disney’s Willow
The popularity of Game of Thrones has opened the floodgates for fantastical TV (like The Witcher, Dragon Prince, Vox Machine and Rings of Power), and elements of Celtic culture and language are thrown around in the maelstrom. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, recently adapted for TV by Amazon Prime, is an iconic epic saga. The powerful organisation of magicians in this world are called Aes Sedai, an allusion to the aes sidhe of Irish mythology.
The aes sidhe are said to descend from the Tuatha de Danann, translated to English as the Children of Danu. Danu is thought to be the Celtic cognate of Gaia – the Earthmother. Her children are the Celtic Pantheon. Their King is Nuada Airgetlam, and their Queen is the aforementioned Morrigan. Brig is one of the Tuatha, along with many others: Dagda, Aengus, Goibniu and so on.
In preparation for the 2022 Disney Plus series Willow, I rewatched the original movie of the same name (a box office flop, but a fantastic nostalgia trip for fans of the original Star Wars trilogy). I was stunned to hear the language of Celtic mythology swirling around as the titular Willow summons his magic to battle the evil sorcerer-Queen chanting “Tuatha…. Nuada….” The movie revolves around a plot to rescue the baby Elora Danann, who features as a protagonist in the 2022 series and a powerful sorcerer in her own right. Appropriate, then, that her name is that of the Celtic proto-Goddess Danu.
In Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance series (Eragon and its sequels), the protagonist Eragon bears a silver scar on his palm after touching his dragon Saphira for the first time. From then on the elves refer to him as argetlam, which they claim is elder speech for ‘silver palm’: a reference to Nuada’s epithet Airgetlam, or ‘silver arm.’ Irish mythology tells that the smith of the gods Goibniu forged an arm of silver for Nuada after he lost an arm in an epic battle against the king of the formidable Fomorians. Paolini loves allusions like this: the evil tyrant in Inheritance is named Galbatorix, which is Welsh for ‘Large King’.
If you’re a D&D nerd like me, you might have been intrigued by the mention of Fomorians. In Irish mythology, the wilderness was occupied by the monstrous Fomorians until the arrival of the Tuatha de Danann. Where the Tuatha and their fae descendants are blindingly beautiful, the Fomorians are disfigured and hideous. Where the Tuatha are slender and graceful, the Fomorians are hulking and engorged. Where the Tuatha are fair and just, the Fomorians are evil and traitorous. Eventually, the Fomorians were defeated, making way for the Irish people to proliferate.
Like a lot of fantasy, D&D draws on the mythology of many cultures, but Celtic myths seem particularly prominent. Three playable races (elves, half-elves and gnomes) are directly linked to the aos sidhe, or fair folk. Firbolgs - a race of gentle giants - are inspired by the Fir Bolg, a real tribe that occupied Ireland before the Celts. A host of fey creatures like dryads and pixies are listed in the Monster Manual, as are the Fomorians. Page 136 of the fifth edition Monster Manual says of Fomorians:
“The most hideous and wicked of all giant kind… The elves remember when the Fomorians were among the most handsome of races…however, a lust for magic and power consumed them. The Fomorians sought to conquer the Feywild and enslave its inhabitants. One by one the giants fell as their bodies were warped to reflect the evil in their hearts.”
Key elements of Celtic mythology are retained, but the dynamic is flipped so that the Fomorians are the conquerors and the fae are reluctant defenders, reflecting our modern distaste for Imperialism.
It is tempting to level a loaded wand at D&D, Willow, George R R Martin and Robert Jordan and call them cultural appropriators. How dare they take the language of an ancient culture and twist it to fit modern values? Consider that the Celts did the very same thing. The Celts were not the first settlers in Britain. They did not build Stonehenge. The Fomorians and Aos Sidhe almost certainly reflect real-life ethnic groups that were destroyed and/or absorbed by Celtic settlement, as was the case with the Fir Bolg. The elements of mythology from those peoples that appealed to the Celts were remembered, sometimes even deified, by bards. Other cultural elements that did not fit the culture were forgotten or demonised.
Nevertheless, it is significant to recognise fragments of Celtic culture that resound in our culture and to reflect on their ancient origins. Next time you come across an oak tree, sit beneath it and listen for the song of druids, drums beating and voices chanting in forgotten tongues, echoing through time.
Robin is an economist, blacksmith, sewing enthusiast and dungeon master from Dharawal country on the south coast of NSW. A weaver of threads and tales alike, Robin's childhood obsession with fantasy has grown into a love for the magic of history and mythology. To follow Robin's adventures with creative anachronism, check out HexForgeAU on Youtube and Instagram.
This essay was generously donated by Robin.
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