Mountain Magic: Celtic Shamanism in the Austrian Alps

By Christian Brunner

If you are looking for authentic European magical traditions and practice, this book will give you insight in Alpine customs and where they are rooted in, opportunities to practice, and a framework which you can build upon or which you can integrate in your already existing magical work.
The author is Austrian and therefore grew up with these traditions, practiced that kind of magic for over 40 years, and, as a Druid of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, is able to tie these local customs to the larger Celtic world of spirituality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781678134730

Book preview

Introduction

I honour the books

But also

What they don’t say.

I

s it wise to start a book with this particular seed thought? The quote should obviously not keep you from reading on. But it should truly seed a thought in your mind: This is a book about shamanism, about ancient healing methods, and ways to connect to the land. These are all activities that require from us to not only study a book but to actively engage. It can’t, like any other book about shamanism and magical work, claim to replace practical experience with reading, or to deliver recipes like a cookbook, almost guaranteeing success. Much rather, the purpose of this book is to prompt you, the reader, to seek knowledge in practice, to go out there and connect to the land, to listen to what it has to tell you, and to search for answers from tradition and lore.

But where to start? My hope is that this book will provide you with ideas on how to go about that quest, how to find the shamanic tradition that sings to you, a tradition that hugs you warmly like the arms of a mother. And it is just for that reason that I ask you to read on. When you leaf through the following chapters, be sure to digest only as much food for thought as you feel appropriate, and then maybe take a break, absorb, and, most importantly, implement the knowledge gained. This is as much a work book as it is a store of wisdom from an area of the Celtic lands, where these mystical people of old first appeared.

The urge to write such a book came during my research for my novel Fliegenpilz (Fly Agaric or Toad Stool) published in German in 2007. I realized then, that there is little to no literature about the spiritual practice of the Celts in the Alps. There has been much written about shamanism in the Irish, Scottish, and Welsh traditions, and also much about the Gauls and the druids. But all these works, including those about druidry in general, are usually heavily concerned with lore from the British Isles. That is not meant as a critique, but merely states a fact; and illustrates that I felt something was missing.

I would be remiss to leave out that we may find books about the Celts in the Alps and in Southern Germany, but those books are mostly of pure historical nature, thus making my wish to fill this spiritual gap even more urgent.

Mind you, all these books are important pieces of the mysterious puzzle the Celts left for us, and many of these volumes have influenced Mountain Magic. But none of these books particularly discuss the spirituality of the Pre-Christian Celts in the Alps.

There is a good reason for that, of course: we only know so much about the spiritual practices of the Celts, and the available bits and pieces of knowledge are mostly second hand, or from the work of Celtic Reconstructionists¹. Because of this void, I decided to create something similar to what John Matthews and Tom Cowan were able to do with their books The Celtic Shaman – A Handbook and Fire in the Head – Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit, respectively; to give applicable instructions for magical practice under the wide umbrella of the anthropological term shamanism. While Cowan and Matthews discuss shamanism of the British Isles, I chose to explore traces of Celtic roots in lore and folk customs in the Alps, and how this information can be linked with modern spiritual practice.

The region over which the Celts spread, eventually, stretched from what is now Portugal and Spain, France, Belgium, up north to the British Isles, east along the arch of the Alps, Southern Germany, Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) all the way to Hungary, with pockets in Northern Italy and even Turkey.

With such a vast geographical expansion, the Celts weren’t a homogenous people, but more likely a conglomerate of many tribes who moved – as it is well documented – all over Europe. What unified these different tribes was their culture, identical, or at least very similar from tribe to tribe, in regards to government, traditions, spirituality, arts and crafts. As important, they differed from the Germanic² or the Etruscan-Roman cultures.

Considering the horrid historical events that took place in Germany in the early 20th century, events which spilled over to my homeland Austria, I need to clarify that I, when discussing the Celtic culture, do not intend to imply in any way or form that it is superior to any other culture. What I would like to accomplish is to show the seeker that there was a lively practice of shamanic spirituality in the Alps, and that searching for spirituality is not limited to non-European cultures, such as the Native American, Siberian, or Tibetan alone.

Also, nothing could be further from the truth than me trying to keep anyone from walking these paths. I myself have for some time studied Native American traditions and even used some of their methods in my work with clients. In that respect, I would like to paraphrase Dr. Charles Tart, Professor of Psychology at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, when he says:

"To have one singular, particular point of view is like owning a Swiss army knife: a great tool for many situations, but still, you can’t do everything with it, for example pound in a nail. For that, you would need a different tool. In the end, we must always employ what is best for the client."

In essence, what I would like to avoid at all cost is to encourage a competition between cultures. My vision is to deliver ideas about how Europeans and those interested in that culture can find ancient shamanic methods in their homelands, whether that is one’s own ancestry or not.

Let me relate a little story in this context.

In 1994, I travelled to the USA for the first time, where I visited an ancient pueblo cave dwelling of the Anasazi in New Mexico. The site was located on a table mountain and had a large ceremonial place on the mountain’s flat top, which was open to the South. At the end of the plaza, the terrain fell straight down in a vertical descent over hundreds of feet.

We had a great vista from up there, overlooking a vast plane covered with sage brush. All around us, other table mountains projected from the flat ground into the blue south-western sky.

My wife and I weren’t the only ones enjoying the view; there were also three Native Americans who were visiting the pueblo.

We introduced ourselves to each other, one of the Native American women exchanged wrist watches with me, and we began a lively conversation. They belonged to a modern pueblo town on the reservation not far from where we were. The ancient place, where we were sitting on an old wall nibbling the greasiest potato chips I’ve ever had, belonged to the ancestors of the three natives. Over several hours, they told us everything they knew about their history; who was related to which historic chief, what they had accomplished, and what kind of ceremonies were held on the plaza of the ancient village.

Then they asked about our ancestors and their deeds, about our stories.

This was when I realized what cultural exchange really means, and that I was far from being prepared to participate. I had learned a lot of new and authentic things that afternoon and was not able to give back anything adequate to these nice people. I just didn’t have any knowledge of something – anything – from my ancestors and culture that was compatible with what I just had learned. Sure, I knew about castles, churches, wars, and monarchs. But this is all empty knowledge without any power. On that mountaintop, I should have told them about ancient European traditions from a time when our spirituality was similar to theirs. I should have told them of the three Goddesses, of the Blessed Ladies, of ibex and lynx, of fending off bad weather and dowsing for water with the Hazel rod. Back then, I was completely oblivious to these things. And while I didn’t have a concept of what it was that I didn’t know, I still knew, in this very moment, that I needed to learn.

Now, more than twenty years later, I am even more convinced that Europeans must keep their cultural heritage alive in the same way they wish – sometimes even expect – other indigenous cultures do. Only when Europeans know their own culture really well, can they learn from others with a clear consciousness; only then are they able to let members of other cultures participate in the indigenous European culture.

If I had participated in a Pow Wow – a meeting among Native American tribes where sometimes non-natives are invited – back in 1994, I probably would have attended in attire I would have considered American Indian. How boring that would have been for the Native American participants! Today, I attend such cultural events in traditional Alpine clothing called Tracht. That alone gives me some talking points about Knickerbockers made of stag leather – the stag having been a holy animal that accompanied the shamans into the otherworld; and about belts with beautiful ornaments indicating your profession, stitched with pinfeathers.

Wouldn’t that be so much more enriching for someone of another culture than me wearing their clothes?

In the same way the Foundation for Shamanic Studies works hard in helping indigenous societies preserve their culture, Europeans have the choice to revive, and keep alive, their aboriginal culture. They need to be able to offer an adequate barter object in the worldwide cultural exchange; this way Europeans not only take, but also give.

What you are holding in your hands, is the result of this my quest for the treasure I’d like to share with other cultures on this fine planet, the Celtic-shamanic roots of my Alpine ancestors.

Let me briefly mention Christianity in this introduction, even though I will discuss this particular spiritual path and how it relates to the Celts in more depth in subsequent chapters of this book. Naturally, Christianity plays an intricate role in Celtic heritage. At this point, I would like to explore the often heard argument that the reason for the evolution of the European culture as we experience it today lies in the rise of Christianity.

One can’t deny that it looks as if science, in particular, had its origin in Christian monasteries, and that European culture was almost exclusively determined by that religion. This viewpoint, however, rests solely in the fact that already existing knowledge was written down in those monasteries, which doesn’t necessarily mean that it was developed there; at least not in its beginnings.

Christianity has thus contributed massively to the transmission of such knowledge, which is a great merit in itself. However, to claim that this knowledge originated within these monastery walls is inherently wrong.

Approaching that argument from the angle of science-philosophy also proves this claim to be wrong because the systematic eradication of the druids, witches, and other people who were keepers of the old knowledge, deprived us of a control group. Only such a control group – had it not achieved the same cultural accomplishments (like placebos commonly don’t achieve the same results as the medication in the study group) – could verify the argument that only Christianity, and no other society was able to produce what has become our cultural accomplishments, as well as our knowledge today. Thus, we will never really know, in the empiric-scientific sense of the word, if the education and knowledge of druids and (proto-)witches, and the culture of the Celts as such, could have produced the same level of sophistication.

Celtic behaviour is often claimed as evidence that they were a brute people, and nothing good could ever have come of their survival. Yet, Celts and Roman Christians were in many ways on par with each other. The knowledge and wisdom of the druids were admired in the ancient world, and some scholars contemplate that the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras was strongly influenced by the knowledge of Galatian druids – not the other way around. Pythagoras the mystic might also have adopted the principle of the immortality of the soul from the druids, long before the Christians did. The druids were, after all, known for speaking the language of the Gods.

But the two groups weren’t only similar in their positive aspects. Admittedly, it does hold true that the Celts were, for a large part, wild warriors. And their general behaviour was much more uncivilized compared to today. For example, punishment for criminals was much cruder, and how folks arrived at verdicts was, more often than not, questionable at best.

Yet the Romans, who basically invented genocide, were no different. One has only to think about how the Romans originally treated Christians. In fact, the brutality of the latter trumped the wildness of the Celts by far.

This leads us to the rather pragmatic conclusion that it is a romantic fairy-tale that Christianity spread by token of its original philosophy of altruism. Much rather, the success of the Roman Catholic Church was based on its superior brutality and sly manoeuvres like the baptism of newly born, despite its great principle of loving thy neighbour like thyself.

Contemporaries of the Celts reported that sometimes their armies would march onto the battlefield ready to fight, but then the druids of either party would negotiate a truce. Often enough, they were able to avoid bloodshed. The Roman soldiers, in comparison, who occasionally accompanied Christian bishops on their missionary journeys, only knew massacre as a method of conflict resolution, often as a prophylactic measure.

Under these considerations I would argue that, had the Celtic culture had the same chances to develop almost unbothered over the past 2000 years as Christianity had, we would live in a similarly developed, maybe even more peaceful world.

We will probably never know.

There are a number of practica in this book. While I hope that the historical, mythological and mystical aspects of them are interesting for all readers, some of the practica require basic knowledge of shamanic journeying. There is a wide array of literature and workshops available to learn exactly that. Workshops are particularly recommendable for learning shamanic techniques, because there you can directly profit from, and communicate with, experienced teachers. To discuss all this in detail would, however, go far beyond the framework of this book. I therefore included only a brief description of shamanic journeying in the chapter Shamanism.

Other practica help you find your own magical techniques such as wizardry using words, druidic fog, and elemental magic.

Naturally, a large part of the knowledge that found its way into this book comes from other literary work. Wherever I am quoting someone, you will find a citation. To not let the citations get out of control, though, I would also like to draw your attention to the bibliography at the end of the book, which is a comprehensive list of works from which many a fact in Mountain Magic is derived. However, it is sometimes hard, or virtually impossible, to pinpoint the actual originator of a thought or concept, for so many opinions are so very similar and it is somewhat nebulous as to who said what first.

Last but not least I have inserted reports of shamanic journeys I did myself. These accounts of otherworldly travels done in my own practice are completely subjective and would not withstand scientific testing. They are also not meant to.

The Celtic Peoples

When it came to their demise as independent actors in the ancient world due to the brutal northwards expansion of the Roman Empire, the Celts themselves had left an astonishing history in their wake.

Georg Rohrecker

I

find it a very unfortunate reality that the fact that the Celts dominated Europe during the last millennium BCE is more often than not simply overlooked, or worse obscured in mainstream literature, and in today’s school curricula. When my thirteen year old son learned about the ancient world in middle school, he was taught about the cultures of the Mesopotamians, the Greeks, Romans, of India and Egypt. The Celts were not even briefly mentioned, nor did they find their way into the school books. I myself remember that they were only mentioned ever so briefly in history lessons during my time at school in my native Austria, and when I learned Latin, I was taught that town names like Vindobona (Vienna) or Carnuntum (a nearby settlement expanded into a fortified Roman garrison) were supposedly Latin words. This is, however, inherently wrong. VINDO BONA, for example, is clearly ancient Celtic, meaning White Castle. There are quite a few names, actually – of settlements, mountains, rivers, and cadastral sections – that can be traced all the way back to ancient Celtic. The Austrian towns Villach and Felden are named after the Celtic God BEL(ENUS); Danube comes from DANUBIA, a river the Celts named in honour of the Goddess DANU; all towns with HALL (Hallstatt, Hallein, etc.) in their names indicate that they are connected to salt, a holy substance for the Celts; the Dead Mountains (Totes Gebirge) are in reality sacred to the Celtic tribal God Teutates; and the Hell Mountains (Höllengebirge) are actually holy because they are the seat of the Great Mountain Mother.

When the Bavarian tribes, already speaking a form of German, invaded the Celtic Alps, where folks still spoke Celtic-Roman, the language barrier caused a number of interesting new names for the places of old. The Bavarians simply Germanized the words, often by replacing the original name with a similarly sounding, albeit wrong, German word.

For example, a mountain called KIN EGG by the Celtic locals, meaning Holy Height, was Germanized into König, meaning king. In Upper Austro-Bavarian, spoken in the valleys overshadowed by this mountain, KIN EGG and König just sound alike. But the Bavarians did not leave it at that, for they also understood what name the locals had given the mountain. It is rather high, after all, and so the invaders just put their own word for KIN, which is hoch in German (high in English,) right in front of König. Therefore the mountain is known as Hochkönig or High King today. In reality though, when considering the original name of KIN EGG and what the Bavarians made out of it, we end up with the quite interesting literal name for that mountain: High Holy Height.

What looks almost like hair-splitting actually illustrates nicely how language barriers created new names for ancient places, names that hide their Celtic origins as much as some historians have tried to hide the whole culture. In addition to the germanising of the Celtic names, the Catholic Church, condemning everything that was holy to the Pagan Celts, simply renamed landscapes in ways that expressed their disgust with everything heathen and natural. In that manner, the Holy Mountains, for example, morphed into the Hell Mountains.

The following map shows how expansive the area in Europe was, which was inhabited and influenced by Celtic tribes:

Distribution of Celts in Europe from 800 BCE to 200 BCE

© 2005 DBachman

As the Celtic culture and its traditions spread over big parts of Europe and later the British Isles, their knowledge expanded over the ancient world as well. There are actually quite a lot of handy tools the Celts invented, such as the wheel with spokes, which improved transportation of agricultural goods or the scythe that brought an end to the backbreaking work with the short-handled sickle. The scythe is still being used in high Alpine regions where mowing machines don’t have the necessary traction. They equipped the plough with wheels, thus revolutionising farming, mined the Noric³ iron, which became the base ore for high-quality steel and was sought after throughout the ancient world. Ironically, Noric iron contributed to the demise of the Celts, for it was used to forge the gladium, the Roman legionnaire’s short sword.

To transport these goods, the Celts built paved roads over wild Alpine mountain passes long before the Romans did. Still today, the mountain pass called Plöckenpass in Austria – which appeared in old maps as „plechuntir weech" – refers to a way (weech) paved with wooden blocks (Pflöcke). Wooden posts or blocks were typically used for Celtic roadwork (Resch-Rauter, 1992.)

Nowadays, the Celtic traditions are much more upheld in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales than in the Celtic cradle, the heart of the Alps. Especially, since the little town of Hallstatt, which gives its name to the earlier of the Celtic cultures, is located in this European mountain range. That is, however, not surprising, because the Alpine region was romanised much earlier than England. Scotland to the North, Wales to the West, and Ireland as an even farther away island, were all more or less protected from Roman intrusion and influence for a much longer time. Christian missionaries were also fiercer on the European continent than on the British Isles.

With the expansion of the Roman Empire, the British Isles became the Celtic Fringe. Now they are the heartland of Celtica. In this time of turmoil, the still very much active Irish druids could not only keep Christianity at bay for quite some time. They even were able to – cunningly, if you will – co-design this new religion imported from the Near East, when it finally spread over these westernmost parts of Europe.

The refusal of the Celtic shamans to write down anything relating to their knowledge is a huge problem for the Pagan community today. To write knowledge down was viewed equal to freezing it, to ending its natural and organic development.

I have only heard of one exception to this rule. Apparently, druids threaded leaves on lines in long buildings, with each leaf corresponding to the name of the tree it came from. The druid novice would walk along the lines reading, literally leafing, through the text. Since this alphabet of leaves was made by the Gods rather than man, and was perishable, it was seen as allowable to use for teaching purposes.

We must also understand that, for the typical Celt, only oral tradition was truly alive. While the druids, particularly the bards, had to memorise over 350 epics, people also wanted them to add to and adapt these legends as needed. Additionally, bards were expected to be inspired to compose new epics. With their artistic creativity, the bards wove history and otherworldly experiences into catchy story lines that not only entertained their audience, but also taught them life lessons.

Contrary to this organic oral transmission of knowledge and history over millennia, we nowadays study information that is written down and printed. Unfortunately, we forget most of it in the course of a life time! However, when it comes to oral traditions such as fairy tales – ancient tribal teachings, really – we easily retain these stories we were told as children and have little problem remembering them when it is time to retell them to our own children or grandchildren. These myths have changed over time as well, but still form a backbone of the Western cultural tradition. That the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and others collected and penned down these folk stories was a nice exercise, but I am convinced it was not needed to keep them alive.

Finally, I would like to touch upon the fact that German is the official language in a big part of the Alps, despite them being originally inhabited by Celts. Many see us Austrians speaking this language as evidence that our roots are actually German, a notion that was excessively abused by the Nazis in the previous century. One thing is true: Austrians speak German; more precisely Austro-Bavarian. The Bavarians themselves weren’t originally German either, since their heritage goes back to the Celtic tribe of the Boii. However, there was some German influence later, when the Boii merged with the Bajuwari. With the Bavarians, their language invaded the lands of the old Celts, and was established mainly because nobility, particularly the Bavarian House of the Babenbergs, governing this part of the Alps, spoke it.

This may explain why German is the language spoken in Austria, but it does not mean that the ancestry of Alpine folk is the same as their cousins’ in the Saxon territories and Scandinavia, both true German lands. Insofar, Austria’s fate is similar to that of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The latter all have a language rooted in the Celtic tongue, yet their official language is English, the language of their former occupying force and with whom they currently form a nation.

Celts in Europe

It was shortly before Samhain and this year as in the nine years before a warrior of the Túatha Dé Danann with the name Aillen Mac Midna came to Tara and caused chaos among the Fianna. He burned all roofs of Tara with his magic and made the warriors of the Fianna sleep with his faerie music.

From the Fenian Cycle

I

rish-Celtic tales like the one in the seed thought were still told in people’s homes and hearths in mediaeval times because the Irish were spared the influence of Romans and Christianity for quite some time. Later on, the Irish monks, often trained as bards or druids themselves, had the unique opportunity to transcribe these stories in almost their original form, even though the Church required the scribes to alter these ancient tales to meet dogma.

The big question is, however – and scholars do not agree entirely on this matter as one would think – how much the Celts of the European continent actually merged with the inhabitants of the British Isles, the Britons, Cymri, Irish, Picts, and Scots. Some scholars even doubt any noteworthy invasion of the Isles by the Celts. As it is with so many questions about these early Europeans, this one can also not be answered with certainty, and therefore we have to search for evidence of today’s heirs of the Celts by looking at what we still can observe. Some academics, like the Viennese Celtic scholar Helmut Birkhan, say that it is language what determines whether people are Celtic or not, thus locating the successors of the Celts in the northern and western part of the British Isles – in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Cornwall – and on the Continent in Brittany. In all these regions, we still find remnants of Gaelic languages.

Others argue that only archaeological findings pointing at former Celtic presence tell us where their descendants are today. Similarly, objects found on sites on the British Isles and the Continent do sing of a common culture. A third group looks at ethnic similarities between Celtic groups and what differentiates them from other cultures of Europe. DNA analysis delivers yet a different set of answers.

I see all these various vantage points as equally valid, as long as none of the groups presenting them claims that theirs is the one and only truth. For the purpose of this book, I’d like to suggest that all of the above pieces of evidence we find in the Alps and in Alpine customs and folklore today are in fact remnants of Celtic Europe. Traces of a Celtic language were found on coins and stone pillars in the Alps; archaeological findings of Celtic origin are plentiful in the Alpine region and what has been found in the rest of Europe, including the British Isles shows great similarities with the Hallstatt Celts. If these cultural similarities are not enough on their own, Pythagoras reported of druids in Marseille and Caesar did the same in both the Continent and the Isles. The Roman general and later emperor mentioned the druids of Anglesey as they tried to fend off his soldiers from their island; and he also named a druid of the Aedui, a tribe in Gaul in the northwest of what is the Alpine country of Switzerland today.

But it is not only these scientific clues that tell us the story of a Celtic Europe. I find the similarities between folklore on the British Isles and the Alps equally intriguing. Take the Cailleach in Irish lore for example, which is so similar to the Alpine "Mother Perchtl." They are both considered scary, often seen as old hags, have a close affinity to death, and are also parts of Goddess trinities.

The apple is another example of similar symbolism within Celtic Europe. It is an emblem of immortality both on the Continent and on the Isles, and we can find traces of the word apple in important places or figures on both sides of the English Channel. In the Alps we know of the giant Abfalter (Old High German for apple tree) – we will learn more about him later – and in England there is the mystical island of Avalon – having its word root in apple as well.

There are many such parallels and I will discuss several of them in subsequent chapters. Yet, as much as these individual pieces of evidence are intriguing, the most important, albeit simple message is that there are such similarities, suggesting a single Celtic culture on the European continent and the British Isles.

Turn of the Tides

Europeans were sort of the first ones to lose shamanism due to the conquest by