Iberian Peninsula - Blog Posts

New Banner Feature:  Iberian Tribes: pre-Roman Iberia was awash  with tribes of varying heritages, many of which gained Celtic layers, as the focus here on individual tribes often reveals.

The Iberian peninsula prior to the Carthaginian invasion and partial conquest was a melange of different tribal influences, with the Celtic influx being the most  recent and most pervasive as this map shows.

Espiritus de Invierno

The representations of the oldest masks are masks of animals, like those found in the paintings in the Lascaux cave in France. Some of these masks are still visible in contemporary rites around the world.

The correlation between the masks worn during these rituals and the anthropomorphic figurations of the Upper Paleolithic are striking. In many parts of Europe and especially in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal and the Basque Country), archaic and mysterious figures regularly haunt carnival rites since the Middle Ages (but referring according to some specialists, like A.Darpeix, member of the historical and archaeological society of Perigord, to a distant shamanic and Neolithic antiquity).

They are masks adorned with skins of animals, vegetables and straw, surrounded by bells and bones,often crowned with horns and woods.

Thus arises the wild man within modern paganism as to symbolize the rebirth of nature emerging from winter. The figures are essentially ambiguous, as at the crossroads of nature and culture. Masks always speak of the mysteries of existence: in traditional societies, they were or still are the figure of ancestors and spirits of the dead, that of protective or evil spirits.

Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Kaysani,

Proud Citizen of the Zirid Dynasty: Part 2

Ok, so now we can confidently say that the Zirid Dynasty makes sense as the homeland of Yusuf. I was going to get straight into the history of the Zirid Dynasty but honestly, there's nothing straight about this blog. I wrote one line about the city of Kairouan being founded by the Umayyad's on the site of a former Byzantine outpost and came to the conclusion that some more context couldn't hurt. Let's zoom back out for a minute and get a feel for some of the regions historic context, it's relationship with "Italy", and also get some context for "the Franks" feeling of entitlement towards the Levant.

Keep your eye on the city of Carthage as we go, that's modern day Tunis. Phoenicians founded the city in 814 BC and it became the centre of the Carthaginian Empire. Carthage was the trading hub of the Ancient Mediterranean and was an incredibly rich city.

This is probably where a textbook would start, ignoring the Amazigh peoples that inhabited the region for at least 9,000 years before the Phoenicians sailed up the coast. We'll come back to that another day. For now, have a look at Phoenicia itself on the map. Doesn't that region look familiar? People sailing around the Mediterranean and claiming other parts of it was nothing new in 1096 AD.

The rise of the Carthaginian Empire and the rise of the Roman Empire brought them into conflict. This lead to the Maghrebi region of the Carthaginian Empire becoming the Roman province, Africa Proconsularis.*

*This link is not objective and contains blatant historical bias but it was the most accurate, least biased one I could find.

In the 4th century Christianity began to spread throughout the Roman Empire after Constantine I co-signed the Edict of Milan. He was the first Christian Roman Emperor, and he founded the new Roman capital city, Constantinople (now Istanbul not Constantinople).

Christianisation was messy and complicated. There was a rich diversity of indigenous religious beliefs throughout the regions beforehand, despite the uniform picture painted by the term "pagan", and the early adoption of Christianity was varied in its sincerity. But that's a whole other story. It seemed relevant to note that it's rarely ever as simple as "us" and "them".

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, Africa Proconsularis became the Kingdom of the Vandals. Note that the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire) was still going strong. The fall marked the beginning of the Middle Ages, also known as the "the Dark Ages".

The Kingdom of the Vandals was conquered by the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century, when it became the Exarchate of Africa. The Byzantines held it until the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century. (Why yes indeed, those are both just links to Wikipedia. The other articles I could find were all a mess. The wiki entries at least acknowledge the existence of the regions indigenous peoples and both entries have referenced sources.)

As the Byzantine Empire expands and contracts during the Middle Ages you can see that it extends as far west as Carthage and southern Spain in the 6th century, that it includes Anatolia and the Levant in the 5th and 6th centuries, and that it recovered a portion of Anatolia and the Levant in the 12th century following the First Crusade.

In the 7th century Islam spread throughout the Arab peninsula, (the prophet Muhammad lived from 571-632 AD). Over the course of the next few hundred years Islam spread from the Arabian peninsula as far west as the Iberian peninsula and as far east as northern India.

By the late 7th century "Tunisia" was part of the Umayyad Caliphate. The caliphate mostly kept existing governments and cultures intact and administered through governors and financial officers in order to collect taxes. Arabic became the main administrative language. Non-Muslim subjects paid a special tax. Although many Christians migrated out of the region following the Muslim conquest there was a sizeable Christian community up until possibly as late as the 14th century.

And here we are, we've reached the 10 image per post limit so we'll finish working our way up to the 11th century next time!

Hopefully, dear reader, this gives you a slightly richer sense of the First Crusades historic context, some sense of "Tunisia's" historic cultural influences, and a sense of "Tunisia's" significance within the wider Mediterranean world.

maps: 1, 2, 3, 4

Proud Citizen of the Zirid Dynasty: Part 1

could you tell us of your religious journey? i've never had any real religious beliefs, but i've been trying to explore and it's hard to know where to start, so i was wondering if you had anything you could share that could help. maybe even some blogs you could point me to?

hey anon! i just got back from work so sorry if my thoughts are jumbled, but this is a great question!!

so like a lot of folks around here, i was raised catholic before i became pagan. i considered myself agnostic for a while after getting confirmed, but after about a year and a half, i had to reckon with that because of apollo reaching out to me! it was a crazy feeling, i jokingly say he was "tugging on my sleeve" for a while till i got the picture haha.

after that i just kinda ambled through religion for a while, cuz i was like 15 and didn't really know what i was doing, and just kept tacking gods onto the list of gods i wanted to worship, though i didn't really do anything for them. see, when i'm not in my dorm, i've got to practice in secret (still do), so i was sort of limited in what i (thought) i could do (until i started learning more about devotional activities and whatnot).

i'm not sure what made me stick specifically with the hellenic pantheon, but that's what i did for about 4 years. it took nearly 3 of those 4 years before i actually started researching the gods, the ancient cult they received, and ancient practices, so that's when my religious practice really started to finally take shape. i saw what others were doing and tried to work it into my practice in a way that worked for me, so i began doing morning prayers and weekly libations. it's important to make sure that you do these in a way that works for you instead of just parroting someone else! there are tons of academic books you can read about ancient greek life and religion, which a lot of blogs on here have links for. if you can't find any by just scrolling through the hellenic polytheism tag, i have a google drive of my own that i can hook you up with.

then, last july-ish, i became interested in learning more about the ancient gods of the place where most of my family came from, so i began researching the pre-roman gods of the iberian peninsula (specifically the area that later became portugal). from there, learning about them turned into wanting to connect to them, and after a year of on-and-off learning i'm finally beginning to do that! it's been a much more delicate process, because there's little surviving information on these gods, so it's been a big puzzle game of piecing together what information i have with practices from other areas and faiths to fill the gaps.

for as long as i've been a pagan, i've always been sort of an ominist, though i didn't know there was a word for it for a while. so it's really been a matter of putting out feelers about what i want to do, and what gods i want to include in my practice, and seeing what works (and being okay with something not working!). so my biggest advice is really just to stay open minded, and see what interests you instead of feeling a need to do things like everybody else.

this turned into quite the ramble lol but i hope this answered your question!! if you have any other questions, feel free to reach out again!

Celtiberian Roots

I thought for my first personal post, going back my ancient historical roots would be apropriate, so hereby I present you:

Celtiberian deities

The Celtiberian were one of the many barbarian people and cultures that lived in the Iberian peninsula (aka. Spain and Portugal today) before the Romans conquered them.

As the name may suggest, they were a mix between the Celts that inhabited the North-West and the Iberians, on the Eastern part of the peninsula. They lived in the middle area, and had their own settlements, culture, societies and religion.

Today I did a little bit of research on their known deities, since, being from that area, I thought it would interesting to explore the ancient gods of my land, get to know them and… who knows? Maybe bring them back to memory from the depths of Roman erasure, and give them live again.

Here are the more detailed ones:

• Ariconā - goddess of tribal protection and dogs

• Banda (Bandis) - goddess of the entrance to the Otherworld, water protection

• Besenclā (Besenclae) - a community and house protector

• Cernunnos - horned God or God of fertility, life, animals, wealth and the underworld

• Corvā - war and defense goddess

• Dēvās Nemucelaecās - celestial goddesses

• Epona - godess of horses and passing/ride through the afterlife

• Erbina - a goddess of wild animals, hunting, and domestic security

• Harācos - agricultural and prosperity god

• Icconā - healing and medicine goddess

• Laneana (Laneanis) - a goddess of springs and floods

• Lidā - land and fertility goddess

• Limia - goddess of the Lima river

• Matres Termegiste - a triad of mother goddesses

• Moricilos - a god of winds, sky, and battle

• Nabia (Navia) - versatile goddess

• Neton - a war god

• Nimedos - a military protection god

• Reva (Reua) - personification of water flows

• Senaecos - a primordial god

• Sūliās - goddesses associated with medicine and springs

• Tarbucelis - war god

• Togotis - a god of community protection, war, and oaths

• Turculā - a boar goddess

• Vaelicos - a god of wolves and wild animals

Here I leave some useful links to some websites (some in English, some in Spanish) with the little information that is available about Celts, Celtiberians and their cultures and deities

https://www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/iberian.html

http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/la-religin-cltica-en-la-pennsula-ibrica-0/html/001186c0-82b2-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_2.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Celtic_deities

https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celta

https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celt%C3%ADberos

~ Enthrelle 🧙🏻‍♀️

Its really funny and weird how, of all the european pagan mythologies, greek is the one white ppl know the most of by far.

Like, of course it makes sense, greco-romans were hailed as the peak of civilization by white european elites at least like, twice in history, but it’s still really wild like. We’ll know the names of every olympian and what exactly their deal is, know like 20 different random greek monsters who only appeared in like One Story,

but then u ask abt the british isles, site of a people who would eventually colonize the fucking world, and its like “uhhhhhh theres morrigan? Also some fairies. Is morrigan a fairy? I think there were some tree worshippers. Some dudes put blue paint on their body and had big shields i think?” and a book’s gonna claim there was an irish potato god and you’re going to believe them bcs you’ll be so wrapped up in the potato famine thing that you’ll forget potatos were IMPORTED FROM THE ANDES MOUNTAINS.

And then like folks will be familiar with like 4 norse gods maybe 5, know some words like asgard and ragnarok, but ask them who fenrir is and theyll be like “Is he important?”

Also if you ask them about germanic mythos they will draw a fucking blank bcs even tho the general public are familiar with at least a few germanic mythos things, we completely stripped out the germanic origins from them when we called them generic “fairy tales.” Same for france and the iberian penninsula i think. Also dont ask me which fairy tales come from where bcs i am a prime example of this, i do not fucking know, i just vaguely remember that they came from certain places and then spread from there.

Oh And absolutely FORGET about anything east of germany fucking forget about it. The slavic regions have a rich mythos and even ppl who are pretty knowledgable abt the stuff i said above won’t know shit about it, case in point, me! Go ahead! I know a bunch abt celtic stuff and norse stuff and a lill bit of german stuff, but ask me to bring up ONE slavic story! The only thing my brain is cookin up is that one about the lindwurm, and even that one i cant remember if its actually slavic!

Now Think abt how many white people claim heritage from places in europe that arent greece and italy. Think about how little those same ppl know abt their ancestor’s prechristian stories and beliefs. Im hispanic i know like one thing abt pre-christian spain and its that they had a funny word for fairies (i don’t even remember the name!), just as an example. Like isnt that fucking insane? You’d think a buncha colonizing douches competing with each other to take over the world would put a bit more effort into educating ppl abt the ancestral stories that set these guys apart from each other, but no, not really. And like dont get me wrong its not like this doesnt make sense. It does. The roman empire and later christianity overtook like all these myriad cultures years before colonialism and white supremacy was even a pipe dream, to say nothing about the internal strife that happened in the iberian peninsula and the british isles.

But at the same time, in recent years there’s been massive pushes to recover this lost culture (especially in those british isles places that arent england), and even with this effort, so much is unknown to a fuckton of people who, i repeat, claim heritage from these places. (In fact, one of those efforts probably set us back bcs it got caught up in bullshit ideology and mysticism and grabbed stuff from totally different people to support a bullshit point. Looking at you, nazis.) and it’s just kind of insane. Overall this is just a peak example to me of the hollowness and artificiality of the concept of whiteness. The master race can’t even remember their own ancestors, and ancient history had to be wiped away or made generic in order to support the notion that these people have something in common, and thus, something setting them apart from everyone else.