This is unfortunately a rather grey area of investigation as virtually no written evidence or history stems from ancient British origin. Information to be imparted was handed on from mouth to ear, as was the custom of the Druids in later history, not by written communication.
Probably the earliest
known writing which was pre-Roman in these islands was a Goidelic alphabet
known as Ogham and first mentioned in the Book of Ballymote.
It consisted of a
number of upright strokes standing on, suspended from and crossing one
line. Following the Ogham, came the Bobileth
or Boibel-Loth alphabet and its derivatives, all favoured
to some extent by the Druid class in certain areas.
Runic alphabets were known in this region of the northern hemisphere, not only in Britain but in Scandinavia, leaving us such examples as Danish, Rök, Dotted and Pre-Saxon Runes. These may well have been used around the time of the Boibel-Loth alphabets as they are certainly more graphically evolved than Ogham.
If we look to the spoken language of Britain, and here I concern myself with the mainland - excluding Ireland, we find that the phonetic mutations which divided Parent British into the streams of Welsh, Cornish and Breton occurred around 450 to 600 AD. So in the British mainland, excluding the Pictish region of the north, we find the Primitive Welsh period being from the end of the 6th century to the 8th century; the Old Welsh period from the 8th to the 12th centuries - and even at this point in history there are no continuous texts in existence, simply fragments written by scribes working on Latin manuscripts. These foot-notes are the first written records that remain. Such is the sorry state of our documented ancient heritage. The Middle welsh period is the 12th to the 14th centuries.
As a digression here, it may be advisable to give full appreciation of the place of the Cymru in the 'well' of racial development in Britain. By 350 AD the mainland of Britain was inhabited by the Keltic race of Britons from the Channel up to Antonine's Wall and a little beyond. A reasonable boundary may be noted by drawing a line from the Isle of Arran, which lies off the West coast of Scotland, through Dumbarton, Dunblane, Perth, Forfar and Brechin to Stonehaven in the East. To the North of this line lay Pictland.
The ancient name of Arran was Emain Ablach; that of Dumbarton (which means "fort of the Britons") was Kaer Glut; while Brechin was known by the longer form of Brecheinawc. Perth to this day remains the untranslated Welsh word which means "bush" or "hedge."
Returning to the West, Bretrwn was the region around Troon and Coet Beit was the original name of the moor at Beith in Ayrshire.
It may be a revelation to many that the early names of these loci were in the Cymreig (Welsh) tongue, but it is no surprise to the student of history. At this point in British history, apart from the wealthy and such as had scaled the then local government ladder by a-whoring with the occupying power and system imposed on the country by Imperial Rome, and who lived in the Roman style speaking Latin and subjecting their children to the Empire's standards in culture and education, the bulk of the population spoke 'Parent' British - a language now known as Primitive Welsh.
In 367 e.v. the mainland was attacked by the Teutonic Saxon warriors in the South East and by the Irish Scots in the North West. The Scots were to settle the Northern Region in time, giving their name to it and sub totally absorbing the Pictish and Keltic cultures. (The name Scotti was not, as it is often imagined, the name of an Irish tribe. It was the Latin name for these 'pirates', as they were considered by the Roman forces of occupation.)
With the Roman administration and occupation virtually ended by c. 425, the unity of the mainland became eroded. By the 540s there were three subdivisions of the Cymru (a word which meant "fellow countrymen."):
1.
North Wales - from around the Bradford area up to Dumbarton.
2.
Wales - more or less
according to its present boundaries.
3.
West Wales - from about Wells to Land's End.
In the 580s, Cumberland, then known as Rheged, was ruled by King Urbgen and Strathclyde by King Rhydderch. Both these Cymreig monarchs valiantly but unsuccessfully attempted to rid the North of the Teutonic invaders. The final and permanent wedge which was to separate the Northern Cymru from their Southern brethren was driven home by an Angle - King Aethelfrith of Northumbria when, in 616 AD, he annihilated the Welsh army at Chester.
In 600 AD the tribe of the Gododin (later Middle Welsh spelling is "Gododdin"), which inhabited the region around Edinburgh, had marched against the Northumbrian king and had joined battle at Katraeth (Catterick in Yorkshire). There the Gododin were completely overwhelmed, save for a handful of men which included the bard Aneurin. He returned to the region of the Forth to write his epic tale of the encounter - "The Gododdin", a poem composed in Primitive Welsh and found in The Book of Aneurin. This was called the earliest known "Scottish" poem when published by Edinburgh University press c. 1971/2.
Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th cent.), in his "The History of the Kings of Britain" volume 2, recounts the story of King Ebraucus (founder of the city of Edinburgh), Maiden's Castle and the Dolorous Mountain.
In the Welsh romance "Peredur Son of Efrawg" which is linked with the Mabinogion, Peredur, who is the son of the same Ebraucus (the Latinised form of Efrawg), overcomes the serpent which lives in the "Dolorous Mound." The Mound in Edinburgh, then, Arthur's Seat (or castle -Caer Arddu) and Maiden's Castle may be the few remaining links in legend with Cymreig traditions which at one time permeated the lowlands of Scotland and which is that region's birthright.
The Lion Rampant and the Red Dragon - co-guardians of the Northern lands, are quite content to be harnessed to the same chariot when viewed in this manner.
(In 1986 a political phenomenon made its appearance - a rudimentary alliance linking the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru. Are Keltic and Gaelic group identities destined for a return to former greatness? Only time will tell. Certainly the leaders of both these parties, when appearing in tandem before the television cameras in the run-up to the general election in 1997, were virtually invincible during their interrogation by the interviewer!)
The
earliest British recording of the tales of the Ancient Gods of Britain,
therefore, are to be found in the Ancient Books of Wales:- The Red Book
of Hergest which contains the 58 poems comprising The Book of Taliesin,
but which was first penned c. 13th century; The Black Book of Caermarthen,
dating also from the 13th century; The White Book of Rhydderch from the
14th century and The Peniardd Manuscripts from the 16th century.
Most of the tales of the better known Mabinogion are drawn from these sources,
but here the later legends are, of course, becoming Christianised in part.
Those who favour a purely Gaelic stream can find the counterpart of some
of these legends in the Irish writings which I list here for interest:-
Manuscripts
which corroborate the Irish legends and even supplement the Cuchullin Saga
are housed in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. Giving
all due credit to the Irish legends, they are far more numerous and evolved
than the Cymreig.
Nevertheless, to return to our main theme and to demonstrate the veracity of these legends and of the very existence of such bards as Taliesin, we must regress chronologically from the written Ancient Books to the writings of Nennius who, in his 7th century work "The Genealogy of the Saxon Kings", mentions one Taliesin as being "renowned in British poetry".
Here then seems to be the answer to documented proof of religious observances - the historians, especially those of classical times, for let us not forget that the Kelt was known to ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, historians and geographers.
Hecateus confirms this in his writing when, c. 500 BC he describes the Kelts who "dwell beyond Spain".
According to Caesar in his De Bello Gallico, when talking of the Druid caste, his sources of information were Gallic Druids who told him that their cosmology was founded in Britain and communicated to Gaul. (Irish documentation confirms this statement.) On account of this, they proceed from Ireland and Gaul to Britain in order to study the mysteries, but their doctrine was never written. The main belief was that the human monad or spirit survived death to be reborn for further earthly experience.
This prompts us to remember that, c. 2000 BC, the round barrows contained the dead trussed in a foetal position accompanied by weapons and cherished ornaments - not hinting at some form of after-life, but pointing to a belief in a foetal life followed by a further physical birth.
Caesar also reports that they had many discussions about the stars, their celestial courses and their effects on the material world, the size of the cosmos, the departments of Nature, the powers of all Divinities and the task of preserving the ancient lore by passing it down to their younger brethren.
Looking to Dio in his Roman History and his description of the Icene uprising we read: "When Boadicea had completed addressing her people, she resorted to a species of divination, freeing a hare from the folds of her garments and, since it ran on what they all considered the auspicious side, the whole assembly raised cries of pleasure. And Boadicea raised her arms towards the heavens, invoked Andraste and prayed to Her for victory". Her prayer was answered as we know and, although Boadicea herself seems to have perished in the battle, the victory resulted in the withdrawal of the vicious Suetonius Paulinus and the appointment of Roman rulers who governed wisely and compassionately for the next decade.
Be this as it may politically, it demonstrates what may have been a terminal phase of matriarchy in Britain - a tribe ruled by a queen, a tribe led into battle by a queen, a tribe whose religious worship was presided over by a queen skilled in divinatory practices and a tribe which was looked after in spiritual terms by a GODDESS who had supreme power in time of utmost need.
Turning again to Caesar's Gallic Wars, we read of diviners called Druidesses who were even more ancient than the Druids. Indeed the contemporary of Caesar, Diodorus Siculus, together with Timogenes and Hippolytus, are all unanimous in believing that Pythagoras received his mystical philosophy from the Keltic priests of Gaul and so impressed were the ancient writers by Keltic philosophy that Pliny was inspired to write that, in his opinion, "it was possible that Britain taught the art of magic to the Persians!"
This, then, was the picture in Pre-Christian Britain. Bearing in mind the diversity of Deity names, Divine attributes and methods of worship, there was NO national religion or, in earlier times, even a regional standardisation. So we can forget all ideas of an ancient equivalent of a modern state Church with its Book of Common Prayer and even the so-called Wiccan Book of Shadows - these never existed. Although each group or tribe had its own parochial concepts and absolute religious autonomy, what does appear reasonably uniform was a fairly common spiritual thread behind the concepts, which is quite understandable if religion is based upon natural observations which are applied as trigger mechanisms to inner-plane levels as we have suggested.
What is common to all is the idea of Divinity embracing both poles of Nature's function - the female force or Goddess and the male force or God; the ability to convert these forces into a practical application by which changes could be effected on the physical plane and a belief in the reincarnation of the spiritual nucleus of each human individual.
In concluding this chapter on evidence in which reference has been made to the term 'magic', some comment must be made to qualify the expression. Magic is at the present time in the Mysteries accepted as "the utilisation of certain natural forces, within the framework or constraints of natural laws, to effect changes in conformity with the will of the practitioner". The vast majority of people, being totally ignorant of the theory and practice of this work, naturally tend to minimise their own ignorance and attempt to allay their fear of the unknown by endeavouring to assure themselves that such work is impossible and fallacious. This is simple psychology - the unknown produces fear which arouses the instinct of self preservation and self preservation causes one to either flee, perhaps laughing all the while to hide embarrassment, or turn and attack the fear producing object.
I personally never use the word 'Magic' (with or without a 'k') because, by common usage and on account of numerous misconceptions, it has become an exceedingly silly term, but as it is derived from the Attic Greek 'Magos' (a wise or knowing person), it is to this root that we must turn for a simple explanation:-
"That which is practised by those who have the knowledge and skills to do so."
Of course, this can also apply to herbalism, hypnosis and psychotherapy (skills which at one time would have condemned the practitioner by Holy Mother Church) even carpentry, music making and accountancy. In modern times we could include armaments manufacture, nuclear weapons proliferation and possibly political machinations worldwide with all the evil these imply, rightly condemning the skills of all those therein involved!