A gentle guide to the gods and goddesses of Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the old Celtic world: their names, how to say them, their stories, and what is ancient and what is modern
The Celtic gods are not like the gods of Greece. They do not sit on a mountaintop handing down orders. They live in rivers and hills, in wells and old trees, in the weather and the turning seasons. Some are mothers of whole families of gods, some are warriors, poets or smiths, and some are the land itself. This guide introduces the best known of them, with their names, how to say them and the stories that keep them alive.
This page is part of our wider guide to gods and goddesses of myth and magic.
Celtic Gods and Goddesses at a Glance
- Who: the deities of the Celtic peoples of Ireland, Britain and continental Europe
- Main sources: medieval Irish and Welsh tales, plus ancient carvings and inscriptions
- The Irish gods: the Tuatha Dé Danann, the people of the goddess Danu
- The Welsh gods: the families of Dôn and Llŷr in the Mabinogi
- Patterns to know: gods tied to places, goddesses in threes, and the goddess of sovereignty
- Festivals: Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh, the four old fire festivals
How Celtic Gods Differ from Greek Gods
Most of us carry a picture of gods shaped by Greek myth: Zeus on Olympus, each god with a fixed personality, the same god worshipped in the same way wherever you went. Celtic deity works rather differently, and knowing this makes the stories much easier to follow.
Presences in the land
Celtic gods are tied to places more than to personalities. A goddess may be the river she lives in. A god may be the hill that carries his name. They were honoured not mainly in great temples but at springs, groves, hilltops and river crossings. You met them by going to where they were.
Goddesses in threes
The Celtic world loved threes. There are three Brigids, three Morrígans and three Mothers carved side by side on hundreds of Romano Celtic altars. One name often covers a small group of related beings who share a purpose. This is not untidiness; it reflects a belief that any great truth has three faces.
Sovereignty
In Celtic thought, a king did not own the land. He was married to it, and the land was a goddess. If the king ruled well, the cattle gave milk and the crops grew. If he ruled badly, she withdrew her favour and the land withered. Rhiannon, Macha and the Cailleach all carry something of this sovereignty goddess, the one who chooses the king and can take that choice away.
Celtic Goddess and God Names
Here are the names you are most likely to meet, where each comes from, how to say it, and what each is best known for.
| Name | Tradition | How to say it | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Danu / Dôn | Irish / Welsh | DAH·noo / DOHN | Mother of the gods, rivers and flowing water |
| The Dagda | Irish | DAG·da | The good god, cauldron of plenty, harp and club |
| The Morrígan | Irish | MOR·ree·gan | The great queen, crows, prophecy, fate and battle |
| Brigid | Irish | BRIJ·id | Poetry, healing, smithcraft, sacred flame, Imbolc |
| The Cailleach | Irish and Scottish | KAL·yakh | The winter hag, mountains, storms and stone |
| Lugh | Irish | LOO | Light, every skill, the harvest festival Lughnasadh |
| Manannán mac Lir | Irish and Manx | MAN·uh·nawn mak LEER | The sea, mists, wind and the Otherworld |
| Cernunnos | Continental | ker·NUN·os | The antlered god of animals and the wild |
| Aengus Óg | Irish | AYN·gus OHG | Love, youth, beauty and swans |
| Taranis | Continental | TAR·an·is | Thunder, storms and the sky wheel |
| Dechtire | Irish | DECH·tir·uh | Queen of the swans, mother of Cú Chulainn |
| Epona | Continental | eh·POH·na | Horses, journeys and fertility |
| Rhiannon | Welsh | hree·AN·on | The white horse, sovereignty, songbirds |
| Macha | Irish | MACH·uh | Horses, sovereignty and the curse on Ulster |
| Arianrhod | Welsh | ar·ee·AN·rod | The silver wheel, stars, the moon and the sea fortress |
| Cerridwen | Welsh | keh·RID·wen | The cauldron of inspiration, the mother of Taliesin |
| Blodeuwedd | Welsh | blod·AY·weth | The woman made of flowers who became an owl |
| Branwen | Welsh | BRAN·wen | The fairest woman in Britain, sorrow and the starling |
| Lady of the Lake | British Arthurian | as written | Keeper of Excalibur, water and foresight |
In the pronunciations, “ch” is said as in the Scottish word loch, and the Welsh “dd” is said like the “th” in “this”.
The Irish Gods: the Tuatha Dé Danann
The Tuatha Dé Danann, the people of the goddess Danu, are the great gods of Irish myth. In the old tales they arrive in Ireland bringing knowledge, skill and magic, win the land in battle, and later withdraw into the hills and mounds, where they become the Aos Sí, the fair folk. Their stories come from medieval manuscripts such as the Book of the Dun Cow, the Book of Leinster and the Yellow Book of Lecan.
Danu and Dôn
Danu is the mother of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the goddess from whom the Dagda, Nuada, Lugh and Brigid are said to descend. She stands for fertility, abundance and the life of the land, and her name is often traced to an old word for river or flow. Very few stories of her survive; she is known mostly through her children. In Wales her counterpart is Dôn, the mother of the family of Gwynedd, who likewise never appears in the tales herself. Some link both names with great rivers such as the Danube and the River Don. Read more in our guide to Danu.
The Dagda
The Dagda, “the good god”, is the father figure of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Good here means good at everything: warrior, druid, harper and ruler. He is big, earthy and generous, and he owns three wonderful possessions: a club that can kill with one end and bring back life with the other, the Undry, a cauldron that never runs empty, and a harp whose music can change the seasons. Read more in our guide to the Dagda.
The Morrígan
The Morrígan, “the great queen” or “phantom queen”, is a goddess of fate, prophecy, sovereignty and battle. She often appears as a crow or raven, and she is sometimes three sisters: the Morrígan with Badb and Macha, or with Nemain. In the great Irish epic, the Cattle Raid of Cooley, she tests the hero Cú Chulainn in many forms. At Samhain she joins with the Dagda by a river before the great battle, uniting life and death. Read more in our guide to the Morrígan.
Brigid
Brigid, daughter of the Dagda, is the most loved of all the Celtic goddesses. She is often three sisters of the same name, each keeping one fire: poetry, healing and the smith’s forge. Her festival is Imbolc on 1 February, the first stirring of spring. She was so dear to the Irish that she lived on as Saint Brigid of Kildare, where a sacred flame was kept for centuries and relit in 1993. Read more in our guide to Brigid.
Lugh
Lugh of the Long Arm is the bright, many skilled god. Raised by the sea god Manannán, he arrived at the royal hall of Tara and was turned away again and again because each of his skills was already there, until he asked whether anyone had all of them at once. He led the Tuatha Dé Danann to victory at the Battle of Mag Tuired and gives his name to Lughnasadh on 1 August. In Wales he is Lleu, and in Gaul, Lugus.
Manannán mac Lir
Manannán, son of the sea god Lir, rules the spaces in between: land and sea, this world and the Otherworld. He keeps the mist that hides the Otherworld, rides a horse that gallops over the waves and wears a cloak of shifting colours. The Isle of Man takes its name from him, and the Manx still honour him at midsummer with reeds, meadow grasses and yellow flowers. One tradition makes him the god of April, the changeable month of wind and showers.
Aengus Óg
Aengus, “the young one”, is a god of love, youth and beauty. In the telling many keep, he is the son of the Dagda and the Morrígan. He dreamed of a maiden, Caer, and searched until he found her on a lake among a hundred and fifty swans. To win her he had to recognise her in swan form; he did, became a swan himself, and they flew away together. His home is Brú na Bóinne, the great mound of Newgrange.
Dechtire
Dechtire, the Queen of the Swans, was sister to King Conchobar of Ulster. At her wedding feast she swallowed a mayfly in her wine, and the sun god Lugh came to her in a dream. She and her fifty maidens vanished as a flock of swans and were later found at the Boyne, where she had borne a son. That child grew up to be Cú Chulainn, the greatest hero of Ireland.
The Cailleach: Winter Queen of Ireland and Scotland
The Cailleach is the ancient hag of winter, known by many names across Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. She controls the weather and the seasons, striking the ground with her staff to bring frost and snow. She is a builder of mountains, dropping stones from her apron to make hills and cairns. In many tales she struggles each year with Brigid, winter against spring, and the outcome decides how long the cold will last. Read more in our guide to the Cailleach.
The Continental Gods
Cernunnos
Cernunnos is the antlered god who sits cross legged among the animals on the Gundestrup Cauldron, holding a torc and a ram horned serpent. His name appears just once, on a Roman era pillar found beneath Notre Dame in Paris, and no ancient story of him survives. He has become the much loved Horned God of modern Paganism. Read more in our guide to Cernunnos.
Taranis
Taranis is the thunder god of the continental Celts, whose name is linked with the word for thunder. He is often shown with a wheel, which many read as the turning sky and the cycle of the seasons. Storms were his voice, and the rain they brought made the land fertile. Few stories survive, but his name is found in ancient writings and inscriptions.
The Horse Goddesses: Epona, Rhiannon and Macha
The horse was the great Celtic sign of sovereignty, and three horse goddesses share its meaning.
Epona, whose name comes from the Gaulish word for horse, was so loved by Roman cavalry that she was honoured across the whole Roman Empire and given her own festival day in the Roman calendar. Rhiannon rides into the Welsh Mabinogi on a white horse no one can catch, chooses Pwyll as her husband, and bears a cruel false accusation with great dignity. Macha, in Ireland, is forced to race the king’s horses while heavily pregnant; she wins, and her curse falls on the men of Ulster when they need their strength most. Together they show the sovereignty that carries you, and that turns on you if you dishonour it.
The Welsh Goddesses
The Welsh gods come to us mainly through the Mabinogi, a set of medieval tales in which they appear as princes, queens and magicians rather than as gods. Look a little beneath the surface and their divine shape is clear.
Arianrhod
Arianrhod, “silver wheel”, is a daughter of Dôn, linked with the moon, the stars and the turning sky. Her fortress, Caer Arianrhod, is said to show as a line of rocks off the coast of Gwynedd at the lowest tides. In the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi she is shamed in front of the court and lays three curses on her son Lleu. Many readers now see in her a woman who refuses the roles forced upon her. Read more in our guide to Arianrhod.
Cerridwen
Cerridwen is the keeper of the cauldron of inspiration, often called the Celtic goddess of witchcraft. She brewed a potion of wisdom for a year and a day, but three drops fell on the finger of the boy Gwion Bach. She chased him through a string of shapeshifts, hare and greyhound, fish and otter, bird and hawk, grain and hen, until she swallowed him. He was reborn as Taliesin, the greatest of the Welsh poets. Read more in our guide to Cerridwen.
Blodeuwedd
Blodeuwedd, “flower face”, was made by the magicians Math and Gwydion from the blossoms of oak, broom and meadowsweet, as a wife for Lleu. She fell in love with another man and plotted with him against Lleu, and was turned into an owl as punishment. Her name is still a Welsh name for the owl. Many people today feel deep sympathy for her, a woman made for someone else’s purpose who wanted something of her own. Read more in our guide to Blodeuwedd.
Branwen
Branwen, daughter of Llŷr, is the fairest woman in Britain, sometimes remembered as the white blossom daughter of Llŷr. Married to the king of Ireland and badly treated there, she trained a starling to carry word home to her brother, the giant Brân. The war that followed destroyed almost everyone, and Branwen died of grief. Her grave is said to lie beside the river Alaw on Anglesey.
The Lady of the Lake
The Lady of the Lake belongs to the legends of King Arthur, where she gives him the sword Excalibur. In some tellings she is revered as a Celtic water goddess, and in one tradition she is one of the ancient ones, an ageless keeper of wisdom who can see the paths ahead and guides travellers at life’s crossroads. She is often linked with Melusine, the water spirit of old tales. Her stories come from medieval romance rather than ancient Celtic texts.
What Is Celtic Paganism?
Celtic paganism means two quite different things, and it helps to know which is which.
The old religion. The ancient Celts lived across much of Europe from around the eighth century BCE. They honoured many gods linked with nature, war, fertility and craft, made offerings at wells, rivers and groves, and had a learned class of druids who kept their knowledge by memory rather than in writing. Because they wrote so little, almost everything we know comes from archaeology, from Greek and Roman writers, and from Irish and Welsh tales written down centuries later by Christian monks. The four fire festivals, Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh, are genuinely old.
The modern revival. From the seventeenth century, antiquarians began to imagine druids at Stonehenge, and the Romantic revival of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries layered poetry and imagination over the old sources. In the twentieth century came modern witchcraft, revived druid orders and Celtic Reconstructionism, which tries to build practice straight from the old texts. Ideas such as the full eight festival Wheel of the Year, with its solstice and equinox names, and Robert Graves’s tree calendar are modern, even when they feel ancient.
Most people who follow a Celtic path today draw on all of these. The heart of it is honesty: loving the old stories, knowing where they come from, and building a living practice with care. If one of these figures keeps catching your attention, our guide on how to know which goddess is calling you is a gentle place to begin.
Questions People Ask
Who are the main Celtic gods?
The best known Irish gods are the Dagda, Lugh, Manannán mac Lir and Aengus Óg, alongside the goddesses Danu, Brigid, the Morrígan and the Cailleach. From Wales come Rhiannon, Arianrhod and Cerridwen, and from continental Europe, Cernunnos, Taranis and Epona.
Who is the most powerful Celtic goddess?
There is no single ruler, but Danu is the mother of the Irish gods, the Morrígan holds fate and sovereignty, and Brigid is the most widely loved, honoured for centuries as both goddess and saint. Many people see the Cailleach, who shapes mountains and weather, as the oldest of all.
Who is the Celtic god of the moon?
The Celtic tales do not have one clear moon god. Arianrhod, the silver wheel, is the figure most often linked with the moon today, and the Morrígan’s three forms have been read as the waxing, full and waning moon. Our guide to moon goddesses covers lunar deities from around the world.
What is Celtic paganism?
It can mean the ancient religion of the Celtic peoples, which we know mainly from archaeology and later written tales, or the modern spiritual paths inspired by it. Modern Celtic paganism honours the old gods, the land and the ancestors, and keeps the fire festivals of Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh.
Who was Danu in Celtic mythology?
Danu is the mother goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the divine people of Irish myth, and is linked with rivers, fertility and abundance. Few stories of her survive, and her Welsh counterpart, Dôn, is likewise known mainly through her children.
Are Celtic gods Irish or Welsh?
Both, and more. Celtic gods come from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Brittany and the wider ancient Celtic world. Some, like Lugh, appear in several places under related names: Lugh in Ireland, Lleu in Wales and Lugus in Gaul.
For a Celtic goddess altar, a goddess body crystal carving makes a quiet focal point, or choose a palm sized mini goddess body in black obsidian or labradorite to sit beside your offerings.
Keep reading: The Morrígan · The Cailleach · The Dagda · Cernunnos · Brigid · Which Goddess Is Calling You? · Samhain Meaning