This post was last updated on March 4th, 2025 at 01:06 pm
Ancient Welsh religion boils down to Celtic paganism. The Celts worshipped many deities and believed in life after death, possibly through reincarnation. They also believed that spirits lived in everything, both living and non-living.
What was the ancient Welsh religion, and where did it come from? People who lived in ancient Wales were Celtic pagans. They got their beliefs from the Celtic tribes, who started arriving from the continent of Europe around 1,000 BC. At this time, the late Bronze or early Iron Age, people had a strong connection to nature. They closely monitored the seasons, the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, and animal behavior. Archeological evidence shows that the tribes’ spiritual beliefs and practices closely followed this connection.
Unfortunately, the Celts left behind no texts explaining their religion. We may never know their exact beliefs. We can only make educated guesses based on the sites and artifacts they left behind. Luckily for us, however, the following books on ancient Welsh religion before Christianity were written by experts who’ve examined the evidence and studied the subject extensively. Find out what they’ve learned about ancient Welsh religion—the “fairy faith.” Learn about the beliefs in not only fairies but spirits, other beings, gods and goddesses, and the afterlife.
This post is about books that discuss ancient Welsh religion.
Ancient Welsh Religion
Religion in Britain from the Megaliths to Arthur: An Archaeological and Mythological Exploration by Robin Melrose
From the blurb: The Druids and the Arthurian legends are all most of us know about early Britain, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age (4500 BC-AD 43). Drawing on archaeological discoveries and medieval Welsh texts like the Mabinogion, this book explores the religious beliefs of the ancient Britons before the coming of Christianity, beginning with the megaliths–structures like Stonehenge–and the role they played in prehistoric astronomy.
Topics include the mysterious Beaker people of the Early Bronze Age, Iron Age evidence of the Druids, the Roman period, and the Dark Ages. The author discusses the myths of King Arthur and what they tell us about paganism, as well as what early churches and monasteries reveal about the enigmatic Druids.
Ancient Welsh Religion: Blood & Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain by Ronald Hutton
From the blurb: The acclaimed author of Witches, Druids, and King Arthur presents a “lucid, open-minded” cultural history of the Druids as part of British identity (Terry Jones).
Crushed by the Romans in the first century A.D., the ancient Druids of Britain left almost no reliable evidence behind. Historian Ronald Hutton shows how this lack of definite information has allowed succeeding British generations to reimagine, reinterpret, and reinvent the Druids. Hutton’s captivating book is the first to encompass two thousand years of Druid history and to explore the evolution of English, Scottish, and Welsh attitudes toward the forever ambiguous figures of the ancient Celtic world.
Druids have been remembered at different times as patriots, scientists, philosophers, or priests. Sometimes portrayed as corrupt, bloodthirsty, or ignorant, they were also seen as fomenters of rebellion. Hutton charts how the Druids have been written in and out of history, archaeology, and the public consciousness for some 500 years, with particular focus on the romantic period, when Druids completely dominated notions of British prehistory. Sparkling with legends and images, filled with new perspectives on ancient and modern times, this fascinating cultural study reveals Druids as catalysts in British history.
Pagan Celtic Britain by Anne Ross
From the blurb: Although some aspects of pre-Roman and pre-Christian beliefs remain shrouded in mystery, the author of this comprehensive, profusely illustrated volume contends that neither the Roman invasion of Britain nor the coming of Christianity eliminated pagan religious practice. Dr Anne Ross, who speaks Gaelic and Welsh, writes from wide experience of living in Celtic speaking communities where she has traced vernacular tradition. She employs archaeological and anthropological evidence, as well as folklore, to provide broad insight into the early Celtic world.
She begins by examining Celtic places of worship, the shrines, and sanctuaries in which sacred objects were housed, and from where they could be ritually displayed with various rites and sacrifices conducted before the people. Dr Anne Ross describes the divine warriors with their aquatic, therapeutic and fertility connection. Dr Anne Ross is truly gripping as she leads the reader through her evidence from ritual pits and cult sites, votive wells, sacred precincts, and monuments. This is a brilliant piece of historical and archaeological reconstruction.
The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz
From the blurb: This is one of the most in-depth and scholarly attempts to explain the phenomena of the Celtic belief in fairies. Based on Evans-Wentz’s Oxford doctoral thesis, it includes an extensive survey of the literature from many different perspectives, including folklore, history, anthropology, and psychology. The heart of the book is the ethnographic fieldwork conducted by Evans-Wentz, an invaluable snapshot of the fairy belief system taken just on the cusp of modernity. There are regional surveys of the fairy faith in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Brittany, and the Isle of Man. Evan-Wentz later went on to become one of the leading authorities on Buddhism and published many of the key documents of Tibetan Buddhism, including the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Evans-Wentz examines each of the hypothetical explanations of the fairy phenomena. Among these are the theories that fairies were a reclusive race of dwarfs, that they are disembodied spirits, or that they are a figment of our imaginations. Evans-Wentz concludes that they may indeed be a manifestation of inhabitants of a higher reality that only some of us are able to view, let alone understand.
This post was about books that discuss ancient Welsh religion.
You may also enjoy the Copper and Cobalt Trilogy, a YA fantasy series set in North Wales. Click here for all eReader formats: Universal Book Link and here for Amazon Kindle and paperback: Amazon
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