SOURCE: The Druids and Their Heritage, Gordon & Cremonesi, 1978, pp. 91-115.

In the following excerpt, Rutherford investigates the pantheon of Celtic gods, and the beliefs—notably in the transmigration of the soul after death—held by their intermediaries, the Druids.

While it is easy to understand the astonishment which seized the classical writers at the involvement of what they regarded as ministers of religion in such a multiplicity of functions, it is also easy to understand how it came about.

Societies like the Celtic, believing that they alone occupied the Great Cosmic Centre, the very point at which the numen reached out to make its contact with humanity, were convinced that it was their acts, more than anyone else's, which sustained life and kept the world on its axis. As Soustelle points out in describing the centrality of religious observance to Aztec life, it is only by rituals faithfully...