Celtic Spiritual Mysteries

This research paper has taught me a lot about researching in general. The Celts were such mysterious people in the sense that, up until the mid 1900's, there wasn't a lot of information about them. Finding reliable sources has been a challenge and I think that it's a good thing that I came upon this problem. There are legends and then there are facts. When first researching the Celts I found it incredibly difficult to distinguish between the two. Luckily the first book I found was a history book that allowed me to get a basic understanding of the Celtic people and their every day lives. However, that wasn't what I wanted to do my paper on. I was much more interested in their spirituality and why they lived the way they did. This is where my problem began. My second novel was very much based on the speculation of the professor who wrote it. Much of it included facts that I found in my first novel, but it expanded upon them and spoke of legends. It took extra research to realize that some of the key components, such as some of the Gods talked about, were just from tales that the Celts told their own children. Researching has helped me form a more specific topic as now understand how the Celts structured their stories and their history.

In having to do extensive research, I was able to determine the Celtic spirituality that I will be writing about. There is not a lot of solid facts about the spirituality of the Celts before Roman Catholicism, but there is enough to create a strong comparison between pre-Catholicism influence, and post-Catholicism influence on the Celtic religion and culture. I will be comparing the two and explaining how the traditional Celtic practices blended with Catholicism and its beliefs. I hope that by the end of my paper I'll have pieced together answers to my own questions. How could such a strong culture be wiped from all of Europe, but not from Great Britain? Why were the Celts so mysterious before Roman Catholicism? There are many more questions that have popped up during my research process, but these were just a few that I found significant. I'd like my paper to help the reader understand the true impact that religion can have on a society and how one can change another. I'm excited for people to read mine if they so choose!