Foundation (History of England Vol 1) Read Online Free PDF

may also be glimpsed within the sacred geometries of Iron Age art (still known inaccurately as Celtic art). It was an art of vision, penetrating beyond the appearances of things. It traced living lines of energy and purpose with spirals and swastikas, curves and circles, whirling together in an intricate network of shapes and patterns. It is in no sense primitive or barbaric; on the contrary it is ingenious and complex, showing a mastery of artificial form and linearity. These intricate patterns are clearly related to the whorls, spirals and concentric circles carved upon Mesolithic passage graves several thousand years earlier; they suggest a broad continuity of belief and worship throughout the prehistoric age.
    At the core of Iron Age religion were the persistent and continuing native beliefs of England, enshrined in certain sacred places. Caves were often holy. The Druids themselves are known to have congregated in sacred groves, where ancient trees provided the setting for ritual practice. Powerful gods had to be propitiated. An early Bronze Age barrow in Yorkshire yielded up certain drum-shaped idols carved out of chalk, with what seem to be human eyebrows and noses. 2,000 years after these images were carved a British writer, Gildas, was still moved to condemn the ‘diabolical idols . . . of which we still see some mouldering away within or without the deserted temples, with the customary stiff and deformed features’. So there was a long tradition of worship that may have had its earliest origins in the Neolithic period. The image of the horned god Cernunnos has been found at Cirencester. The horse goddess Epona has been discovered in Wiltshire and in Essex. A carving of the hammer god Sucellus has been unearthed in East Stoke, Nottinghamshire. The mysterious god, Lud or Nud, is still commemorated by Ludgate Hill and Ludgate Circus in London.
    Religious sanctuaries were established all over the land, and it is safe to assume that even the smallest settlement had its own central shrine. They have been discovered in hill forts, within ditched enclosures, along boundaries, and above barrow graves; they are often marked by the subsequent presence of Roman temples orearly Christian churches. Certain places were deemed to be blessed. Many English churches will be lying upon prehistoric originals. In Iron Age England, it was believed that the cock served as a defence against thunderstorms; that is why cocks are still to be found on church steeples. They became known as weathercocks.
    Human sacrifice helped to sanctify the land. A male body was found in a bog in Cheshire; he had been bludgeoned in the head, and his throat cut before being deposited in the marsh. Many skeletons have been found at the bottom of pits in southern England, their bodies flexed in an unnatural posture. There is also the known prehistoric affinity for severed heads, believed to be the site of the soul or spirit. Skulls have been found lined up in a row. The bodies of defeated enemies were often beheaded, and their heads buried or placed in running water. Three hundred skulls, dating from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, have been found in the Thames. The river was once an English Golgotha, the place of skulls.
    Caesar’s account of the high priests of England, the Druids, adverts to the practice of human sacrifice. They created images of wicker-work which ‘they fill with living men and, setting them on fire, the men are destroyed by the flames’. In his account the Druid priests are the lawmakers of the land who determine rewards and punishments. They settle disputes over boundaries and over property.
    The Roman writer Pliny records that they ‘esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe’; the high priests ‘select groves of oak, and use the leaves of the mistletoe in all sacred rites’. The sacrificial victim was tied to the trunk of the oak tree, and his priestly killers wore chaplets of oak leaves. They practised divination, magic and