The Solar Wheel

The Celts were a largely agrarian folk, thus many of these traditions are still celebrated around rural Europe. Although their deities vary greatly with tribe, location and cultural period; their pantheons of Sun, Moon and Earth deities were relatively similar, at least until the Romans came. Until then, the Earth goddess had four calendrial aspects (as illustrated in my graphic above), corresponding to the solar wheel; the cycle of life, maturity, death and rebirth as they understood it in their agrarian wisdom. Death was regarded as a necessary process of renewal just as the frosts restore fecundity to the soil.

As the legend goes, the sun god, having fertilized the fallow earth in his underworld journey, ascends again after Winter Solstice. Beltaine (eve of April 30 - 1st of May) celebrates his virile youth and sexual union with the maiden earth mother. The "Gladyearhalf" was believed to be dominated by all manner of capricious light spirits and fae. Samhain (eve of October 31 - 1st of November), on the other hand, honours the Sun god's return with her (as the crone) to her underworld domain. It was believed that with this transition to the dark underworld regime of things, dark spirits and ghosts of the dead had the rule of the roost. Thus at feasts, the dead were ceremoniously welcomed to attend, with a place specially set for them at the table. In this time, leaders were also elected and critical decisions made- with all due respect that the ancestors be present. In Winter, death of course came as the Morrigan and her ravens, to collect the souls of the lost. Much like her Germanic equivalent, she appeared to the doomed as half beauty - half corpse.

At this point, I think it should be known that the idea of a Triple goddess and its alleged lunar associations are purely a romantic invention of Robert Graves poetical myth "The White goddess". Yet, as much as it has inspired much popular acclaim through such neopagan revivalists as Gerald Gardner and Margaret Murray; unfortunately, it serves very little in the way of actual Celtic culture. Rather, the moon was generally regarded as the daughter of the Earth Mother by the ancient Celts.

Another misconception is the attempt to delineate Celtic from Germanic as if for some form of racial pedigree, albeit Aryans or some paleolithic eve from the Basquelands. Even Irish folklore tells of the countless migrations and invasions from afar over the course of millennia, so it's not as if genealogy is that simple.