Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarions's "History of the Heavens"

by J. F. Blake; Camille Flammarion

M. Fillioux, the curator of the museum of Guéret, who has studied these coins with care, after having sought for a long time for a clear and concise method of determining exactly the symbolic and religious character of the Gaulish money, has been able to give the following general statements.

The coins have for their ordinary field the heavens.

On the right side they present almost universally the ideal heads of gods or goddesses, or in default of these, the symbols that are representative of them.

On the reverse for the most part, they reproduce, either by direct types or by emblems artfully combined, the principal celestial bodies, the divers aspects of the constellations, and probably the laws, which, according to their ancient science, presided over their course; in a smaller proportion they denote the religious myths which form the base of the national belief of the Gauls. As we have seen above, for them the present life was but a transitory state of the soul, only a prodrome of the future life, which should develop itself in heaven and the astronomical worlds with which it is filled.

Borrowed from an elevated spiritualism, incessantly tending towards the celestial worlds, these ideas were singularly appropriate to a nation at once warlike and commercial. These circumstances explain the existence of these strange types, founded at the same time on those of other nations, and on the symbolism which was the soul of the Druidical religion. To this religious caste, indeed, we must give the merit of this ingenious and original conception, of turning the reverses of the coins into regular charts of the heavens. Nothing indeed could be better calculated to inspire the people with respect and confidence than these mysterious and learned symbols, representing the phenomena of the heavens.

Not making use of writing to teach their dogmas, which they wished to maintain as part of the mysteries of their caste, the Druids availed themselves of this method of placing on the money that celestial symbolism of which they alone possessed the key.

The religious ideas founded on astronomical observations were not peculiar to, or originated by, the Druids, any more than their zodiac. There seems reason to believe that they had come down from a remote antiquity, and been widely spread over many nations, as we shall see in the chapter on the Pleiades; but we can certainly trace them to the East, where they first prevailed in Persia and Egypt, and were afterwards brought to Greece, where they disappeared before the new creations of anthropomorphism, though they were not forgotten in the days of the poet Anacreon, who says, "Do not represent for me, around this vase" (a vase he had ordered of the worker in silver), "either the heavenly bodies, or the chariot, or the melancholy Orion; I have nothing to do with the Pleiades or the Herdsman." He only wanted mythological subjects which were more to his taste.

The characters which are made use of in these astronomical moneys of the Druids would appear to have a more ancient origin than we are able to trace directly, since they are most of them found on the arms and implements of the bronze age. Some of them, such as the concentric pointed circles, the crescent with a globule or a star, the line in zigzag, were used in Egypt; where they served to mark the sun, the month, the year, the fluid element; and they appear to have had among the Druids the same signification. The other signs, such as the ∿, and its multiple combinations, the centred circles, grouped in one or two, the little rings, the alphabetical characters recalling the form of a constellation, the wheel with rays, the radiating discs, &c. are all represented on the bronze arms found in the Celtic, Germanic, Breton, and Scandinavian lands. From this remote period, which was strongly impressed with the Oriental genius, we must date the origin of the Celtic symbolism. It has been supposed, and not without reason, that this epoch, besides being contemporaneous with the Phenician establishments on the borders of the ocean, was an age of civilization and progress in Gaul, and that the ideas of the Druids became modified at the same time that they acquired just notions in astronomy and in the art of casting metals. At a far later period, the Druidic theocracy having, with religious care, preserved the symbols of its ancient traditions, had them stamped on the coins which they caused to be struck.

This remarkable fact is shown in an incontestable manner in the rougher attempts in Gaulish money, and this same state of things was perpetuated even into the epoch of the high arts, since we find on the imitation statues of Macedonia the old Celtic symbols associated with emblems of a Grecian origin.

In Italy a different result was arrived at, because the warlike element of the nobles soon predominated over the religious. Nevertheless the most ancient Roman coins, those which are known to us under the name of Consular, have not escaped the common law which seems to have presided, among all nations, over the origin of money. The two commonest types, one in bronze of Janus Bifrons with the palus; the other in silver, the Dioscures with their stars, have an eminently astronomical aspect.