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And it is the case that in ‘New Age’ bookshops around the world, titles on Celtic spirituality
are found on the same shelves as Aboriginal and Native American material in the same genre.
However, be warned that I heard the distinguished American sociologist Michael Waltzer in a
recent lecture dismiss excess spirituality as ‘the solace of a conquered people’.
Before we move on to more solid ground, let me just mention Frank from Boulder, Colorado.
After spending twelve years with Native American teachers, Frank took part in the Sun Dance
ceremony of the Lakota people, an experience which set him on the path to discovering his Celtic
heritage. He now describes himself as ‘a poet, ecopsychologist and visionary teacher in the Celtic
spiritual tradition’. Frank leads pilgrimages to the Scottish Highlands to promote what he calls
‘Highland cultural soul retrieval’.
The range of emotion covered by the Celtic umbrella is vast, from a feeling of displacement
and affinity with aboriginal groups, to a successful marketing tool, to a political rallying call, to the
focus for sporting identity, even fanaticism. Can genetics lift the veil and see what lies beneath?
Faced with this multiplicity of meaning for Celt and Celtic, what range of possibilities should we
expect genetics to reveal? Might we be able to detect the waves of a large-scale migration
envisaged by Edward Lhuyd? Or might we find evidence that what we now call Celts have been
here all along? Will we find any genetic similarity between the present-day Celts and the people of
the rest of Britain, or will there be a sharp divide? And where should we look for origins? Though
not absolutely essential for success in historical genetics, it is always best to formulate some
scenarios that can be tested.
One of the most striking emblems of the Celtic brand, the intricate naturalistic knotwork that
inspires the modern Celtic jeweller, had its origin not in the Atlantic communities linked by a
common language, but in central Europe. The evolution of this highly distinctive art form coincided
with the rise of rich settlements north of the Alps, centres which controlled the trade of goods like
amber and tin, flowing south to the Mediterranean world and their exchange for luxuries, such as
wine and jewellery. In all likelihood, these luxury imports were used by local chieftains as a badge
of status and also distributed among their subordinates in exchange for favours and services.
The trading settlements spanned the heartland of Europe where its great navigable rivers
converge in a relatively small area in eastern France and Switzerland. The Loire going westward
to the Atlantic, the Rhône south to the Mediterranean, the Rhine north to the North Sea and the
Danube east to the Black Sea. These were the arteries of prehistoric Europe along which flowed
the life-blood of trade. Whoever controlled the heads of the rivers and the land between them
controlled the trade – and grew very rich on it. At the peak, around 600 BC, there was enough
wealth to stimulate and support the production of a local style of craftwork, and this is where we
see the first appearance, principally in the delicate metalwork, of what we now call Celtic Art.
The La Tène style, which we now most strongly associate with the Celtic brand, began not on the
ocean coasts of the Atlantic, but within sight of the Alps.
But was it just the goods and the ideas that moved, or was it the people migrating en masse
from central Europe to the far west? Although there is very good archaeological and historical
evidence that people from this region did indeed move in numbers east and south to Greece, where
they attacked the temple at Delphi in 273 BC, before finally settling in central Turkey, there is no
evidence at all that the ancestors of today’s Celts of the Isles took the opposite track and ended up
in Britain. Yet, although support for the popular notion that the Celtic people of the Isles travelled