The gate of the year

Sculpture in limestone of a probable Celtic divinity (called the “Euffigneix god”, from the locality in which it was discovered), dating to the I century A.D., now in the National Archaeological Museum (Musée d’Archéologie Nationale), Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, France. The representation is interpreted as a god of the wilderness, and the boar superimposed on his breast seems not simply an animal escort but a kind of alter-ego or manifestation of the god.
In the Celtic and Germanic mythic worlds, it is frequently mentioned the capacity of transformation, of shape-shifting, a quality specially associated with the power of the bards and druids, who were able to transfer themselves from one body into another, maintaining their own interior personality. In the poems, it is often made reference to a person of the ancient times who had passed through successive reincarnations in the body of different animals, like the Irish hero Tuan Mac Cairill, who was said having been changed successively into a deer, a boar, a sea hawk and a salmon. Another mythic personage associated with the transformation in an animal was Cian, member of the race of the Tuatha Dé Danann (the “people of the goddess Dana”). He was the son of the healing god Dian Cécht and father of the great divine hero Lugh. According to the epic narrative, Cian was once surprised by the three sons of Tuireann, his enemies from a long time. Cian turned himself into a pig and feigned to rummage the soil searching for acorns, but his enemies recognized his transformation and changed themselves, on their turn, into dogs, which run at once after the pig. Cian had just the time to take his human shape again before being slaughtered. In Ireland, popular tradition still recognize in an artificial linear earthwork, in Southwestern Ulster, the Black Pig’s Dyke (Claí na Muice Duibhe), excavated by the giant pig into which the hero Cian had changed himself, that had produced this feature of the landscape digging with its snout into the soil (Monagan 2004).

[Image: http://junior52000.free.fr/euffigneix/dieu.php]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Sculpture in limestone of a probable Celtic divinity (called the “Euffigneix god”, from the locality in which it was discovered), dating to the I century A.D., now in the National Archaeological Museum (Musée d’Archéologie Nationale), Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, France. The representation is interpreted as a god of the wilderness, and the boar superimposed on his breast seems not simply an animal escort but a kind of alter-ego or manifestation of the god. In the Celtic and Germanic mythic worlds, it is frequently mentioned the capacity of transformation, of shape-shifting, a quality specially associated with the power of the bards and druids, who were able to transfer themselves from one body into another, maintaining their own interior personality. In the poems, it is often made reference to a person of the ancient times who had passed through successive reincarnations in the body of different animals, like the Irish hero Tuan Mac Cairill, who was said having been changed successively into a deer, a boar, a sea hawk and a salmon. Another mythic personage associated with the transformation in an animal was Cian, member of the race of the Tuatha Dé Danann (the “people of the goddess Dana”). He was the son of the healing god Dian Cécht and father of the great divine hero Lugh. According to the epic narrative, Cian was once surprised by the three sons of Tuireann, his enemies from a long time. Cian turned himself into a pig and feigned to rummage the soil searching for acorns, but his enemies recognized his transformation and changed themselves, on their turn, into dogs, which run at once after the pig. Cian had just the time to take his human shape again before being slaughtered. In Ireland, popular tradition still recognize in an artificial linear earthwork, in Southwestern Ulster, the Black Pig’s Dyke (Claí na Muice Duibhe), excavated by the giant pig into which the hero Cian had changed himself, that had produced this feature of the landscape digging with its snout into the soil (Monagan 2004). [Image: http://junior52000.free.fr/euffigneix/dieu.php]