The religious beliefs of the Celts are of interest in that, between the rise of the Celts some 800BCE and their twilight during the late Roman period of 400CE it is possible to observer the evolution from a purely animistic belief system through the rise of maternal deities to the supremacy of paternal deities.

The ‘gods’ therefore start as being spirits of nature: trees, places, streams, springs, sacred groves before being supplanted by the maternalistic deities associated with the moon, childbirth and the spirit of place and even of war. In the Roman age these maternal deities were supplanted by masculine heroes, solar deities and male warrior gods. Though this process of transformation seems to have been more gradual than in other belief systems with each female deity gaining a consort and the male counterpart gradually gaining dominance. Which is not to say that the female principle entirely lost its potency. This was not to happen until late into the Christian age.

Celtic deities are therefore gods of ‘place’. A feature that denotes their animistic origins. Indeed, though the names of over 300 deities are known across the entire Celtic world only about 60 of these are known in more than one region. And maybe only 20-30 can be described as truly ‘global’ gods; known and worshipped across the entire Celtic world.

The gods listed in the links to the right are predominantly Brythonic. That is, they are the deities known to be worshipped in by the Brythonic Celts either on the mainland of Europe or by those insular Brython of mainland Britain — those Celts who were the ancestors of the Cymry, the Cornish and the Breton peoples. I have excluded the Irish and Scottish gods, unless they have a direct counterpart in the P-Celtic list, as these deities are more than adequately represented in many books and on many other websites.

I also include within these lists heroes such as Bedwyr and Cei who generally bear a ‘cynneddf’, a magical peculiarity and like the Greco-roman Herakles (or Hercules) can be considered as semi-divine demigods or heroes in the Homeric sense of the word. Also included are faery or otherworldly beings where they have a humaniform aspect. I also include a ‘miscellaneous’ section that details sacred animals, magical realms and beings which do not have a single human-like personification. The various deities and heroes are available from the links to the right. As the figures are mainly Cymric/Brythonic in origin I have employed an extended version of the Cymric alphabet for classification, just use the initial letter to find the personage you're searching for (remember that Ch, Dd, Ff, Ng, Ll, Ph, Rh and Th are considered as single letters in the Cymric alphabet). Alternatively you can simply use the search system below to look for a name or a keyword or a mix of both:

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