This is the fifth of five edited extracts posted on the Gate this week from my new book, Prehistoric Belief: Shamans, Trance and the Afterlife. After the Bronze Age yesterday, we now move into the Iron Age, the time of the Celts when witches and Druids began to control access to the spirit world.

During the late Iron Age at Larzac, in France, Severa, daughter of Tertiu, took a lead sheet and scratched onto its surface a most extraordinary tale. A coven of witches had been cursed by another and sought the help of a wise woman to negate the spell and diffuse the tension. The lead was then moulded around the top of a burial urn containing a woman. Could the burnt remains have been the person who had made the curse, her death being the price for peace? It is a rare glimpse of the shadowy world of Celtic sorcery and magic and the role that women played within it.

Although Severa did not record it upon the lead sheet, the women of the coven might have sought their power from a more elevated female group. Many representations of goddesses, for example, show them grouped into three and this might have mirrored the arrangement of women in the covens. The Larzac tablet mentions eight, possibly nine names, which would give three groups of three, a particularly significant number throughout the Celtic world. Although we do not know the names of the individual triple goddesses, they were probably Mother or Earth deities (‘Matronae’ in Celtic), although some may have related to springs and wet places (‘Saluviae’ in Celtic). One of the most sacred springs was the source of the Seine, in France, where people left modelled body parts, perhaps as part of a healing ceremony. It is striking that in many shamanic communities, healing is achieved through removing an intrusive spirit, thought to enter the body unbidden, which is drawn out and negated by being thrown into water (water is often seen as a portal to the otherworld). The carved body parts in the Seine spring may have accumulated as people tried to cast off invading spirits, using a model as a surrogate for their own afflicted body.

As Caesar was conquering the Celts of Gaul (modern-day France), he recorded the names of many Celtic gods but, unfortunately, used only their equivalent Roman names to describe them. More helpfully, he also noted that the Celts consider that they are all descended from a single ancestor god, whom Caesar called ‘Dis’. Other Roman commentators were a little more forthcoming about the Celtic pantheon and Lucan records the names of three: ‘Teutates’, the god of the tribe, ‘Taranis’, the god of thunder and the sky, and ‘Esus’, the good or sun god. A later commentator on Lucan’s work adds a little more detail by revealing that each required sacrifices to be offered in different ways: Teutates by drowning, Taranis by burning, and Esus by hanging. Each seems to equate with one of the traditional elements – water, fire, air – with the Mother goddesses providing the fourth: earth (and possibly their own form of sacrifice as many bodies were placed into disused storage pits).

In charge of the sacrifices were the Druids, who, with the diviners or (O)vates, and the Bards, formed the priesthood of the Celtic world. It is likely that they formalised the roles that had previously fallen to the community shamans, although, as the witch covens demonstrate, it is likely that other people held roles that also required regular interaction with the supernatural.

According to Caesar, the centre for Druid learning was Britain, perhaps focussed on Anglesey in Wales. Training to become a Druid was arduous and could last several decades. Emphasis was placed on memory rather than writing since this was considered the best way to develop the brain; entire tracts of history and lore had to be learnt by rote. Work was undertaken in groves, woodland clearings, and the association between Druids and trees may reflect the origin of their name, thought to mean ‘knowledge of the oak’.

Whilst there are references to female Druids, most sources tell of women’s role in divination. Perhaps the most renowned was Veledā, the seer with so much power that, over time, she became akin to a Goddess. To divine the future, Veledā may have watched the flow of water across the surface of specially made ‘spoons’. These have been discovered across the Celtic world and comprise a flat surface, often etched into four quarters, with a hole for the water to drain. It is likely that the flow of water across the quarters would have meant something to the observer.

Many Celtic women were buried with mirrors in their graves and whilst this might seem a suitable accoutrement for the fairer sex (one Roman historian records how he had to berate his mistress for painting herself like a Celtic hussy), it is likely that they had a deeper meaning. Mirrors are used in shamanic practice to induce trance and, rather like the modern crystal balls, if they are used to focus concentration, shapes begin to appear on their surface. This may be why many mirrors had phosphenes (the shapes of trance) engraved on their surface, emphasising their role in accessing the wisdom of the otherworld.

Other methods of divination were not so benign and there are records of women cutting open the body of a sacrificial victim and discerning the future within the entrails. Siculus, another Roman historian, records only that the seers performed the sacrifice (without stating whether they were woman) but helpfully notes that the convulsions of the limbs and spurting of blood were considered significant. At other times, women merely slit the throats of captives and drained the blood into cauldrons. It is revealing that cauldrons were often deposited into lakes and bogs and perhaps there was a circularity about draining the liquid of a person before placing the entire assemblage into water.

Whether witches or Druids, it is clear that Iron Age women were no wilting wallflowers and that they were intimately involved in the spiritual life of the tribe.