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Vātes ( m / f , Latin "seer", "prophet") is one of the three classes of inspired people in Celtic society. "Inspired" means the cult functionaries, ie priests in the broader sense.

Surname

The three classes are called Latinized druides ( druids ), vātes ( seers ) and bardi (poets, bards ). In pre-Christian Ireland the corresponding terms are druïd , fáithi and baird or filid , in Wales ( Cymrian language ) dryw or derwydd , dewin and bard or awenydd . On the etymology of vātes and dewin , J. M. Jones writes:

The etymology of these names is instructive in several ways. "Vātes" (more correctly: "vātis"), which is also valid in Latin, where it is perhaps borrowed from Gallic, belongs together with air. [Old Irish] etymon "fáith" and kymr. [Cymric] "gwawd" , me. [Middle Irish] "fáth" (poem, composition; prophetic wisdom) to an idg. [Indo-European] root "* uāt-", which means "to be mentally excited, to be inspired" and in German to "anger", but also in the name of the Germanic wind and inspiration god Wōđan (north. Óđinn) is available. The “vātes” is therefore the one who is breathed on by higher knowledge. [...] Kymr. “Dewin” is a Roman borrowing from the Latin “dīvīnus” (divine).

Another designation for the vātes was carag [i] i , from which the misspellings euhages and ovates result from the Greek spelling ούάτεις . The latter word is still very common today in "Neudruid" circles ( Ovaten ).

education

The training of all those who were inspired was a purely oral transmission of traditional knowledge.

The inscription is not a failure, but a failure, a conscious rejection and a conscious persistence in one's own cultural profile.

People with the so-called “second face” also existed in ancient times, and they still play a major role in the island celts today. The training of the seers, however, included a certain learnable technique that was practiced by the druides and vātes . In this oral transfer of knowledge, the triad form was common as an element of text structuring to make it easier to learn ("Truth in our hearts, strength in our arms, fulfillment in our tongues"). However, it was precisely a Goidelic-speaking druid who invented the Ogam script as a mnemonic system between the 2nd and 4th centuries .

The training of both druids and seers encompassed - albeit to varying degrees - mythology , tribal ethnology , history of druidism, traditions, prayers, cult ceremonies, mantic procedures , medicine, ethics and legal knowledge .

function

An exact delimitation of the areas of responsibility of druids and seers is hardly possible because on the one hand the druids also carried out mantic practices (fortune telling), on the other hand this was the actual activity of the vātes . How the work of the one differed from the other, if at all, remains fairly open. Their prophetic function strengthened the political importance of the seers both among the mainland Celts and in the British Isles. They prophesied from the twitching of sacrificed people, by inspecting the intestines of sacrificial animals and through the augurium , the prophecy from the flight and cry of birds. After a conversation with the Gauls Diviciacus , the Roman Cicero was astonished that they interpreted the flight of birds in the opposite way to the Romans.

Another common task was the making of sacrifices (especially human sacrifices), which needed an inspired person as executor. Other researchers assume a stricter separation of functions, so that the father was above all the sacrificial priest, seer and prophet.

In Christian times, when the druids were "replaced" by monks and priests or were absorbed in this status, the seers and poets then took on many tasks alone, especially the mantic.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J. M. Jones: A Welsh Grammar. Oxford 1913, p. 233.
  2. ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , p. 896.
  3. ^ Gerhard Dobesch : The European "Barbaricum" and the zone of the Mediterranean culture. Their historical interaction and the historical picture of Poseidonius. Holzhausen, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-900518-03-3 , p. 12. ( Tyche , supplement volume 2)
  4. ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , p. 912.
  5. ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , p. 909 f.
  6. ↑ Tibor Köves: Les vates the Celtes. In: Acta ethnographica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 4, 1955, pp 201 ff.
  7. ^ Ingeborg Clarus: Celtic myths. Man and his otherworld. 2nd Edition. Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3-491-69109-5 , p. 43.