The Celtic Cult of Headhunting.

[Beorn]

Brainballs, Skulls and Warriors

(The Celtic Cult of the Head)


By Chris "Count von" Heath

(Originally published at Imbolc 1996)


http://www.whitedragon.org.uk/images/headcult.gif

Eric Hobsbawn observed that the past is a foreign country and the world of the Iron Age Celts is now at least 2000 years distant from us. The worlds of Arthur and Myrddin, if one places them in historical terms, are roughly 1500 years from us. This is the ocean of time that Gary Oldman talked of in the film Bram Stoker's Dracula . Even a mere 20 years can demonstrate how time alters us and our perceptions. This gulf of time, however, needn't and indeed shouldn't put us off from attempting to understand and comprehend the wisdom and truth behind Celtic spirituality. This article will investigate the world of the Iron Age Celt in general and that strange beast the Cult of the Head in particular.
Delving into the cottage industry that is the literature on Celtic religion is not a job for the faint-hearted. You will find a number of agreed attributes. However, there is somewhat of a gulf between those who write for an academic audience and those who write for (shall we say) a pagan audience. Some but by no means all the agreed attributes vis à vis matters Celtic are: (a) The role of sacrifice - both human and otherwise (b) The role of the druids (c) Votive offerings, eg the offerings at the source of the Seine to Sequana (d) Multi-facetted and multi-functional "Godforms" (e) Belief in reincarnation (f) The Cult of the Head
This, of course, leaves out as much as it includes.
Major difficulties arise from the fact that there is no direct native literary witness who can discuss matters from the inside and this has allowed the shrouding of matters Celtic into a kind of impenetrable quagmire of delusion. It has allowed many who should know better to throw all manner of unrelated stuff into the "broth" and call it Celtic religion. Funnily enough, our very own special chum J R R Tolkein hit the nail right on the head when he remarked:
"To many, perhaps to most, people outside the small company of ..... scholars past and present "Celtic" of any sort is .... a magic bag into which anything may come .... anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight which is not so much a twilight of the Gods as of the reason."
The questions I have asked myself during my reading amongst others are: (a) Did the Celtic Cult of the Head exist? (b) If so, how was it manifest? (c) Does it have any relevance for us today? For Celtic spirituality?
My discussion is more of an exploration into what is known, a synthesis. My answers are not necessarily authoritative. Indeed it may be wise to state that perhaps there are no real "answers" to our posed questions.

The Modern Commentators

I will begin by chewing over a number of quotes ancient and modern. First - modern, with Ronald Hutton PCH (that's Pagan Culture Hero - Ed) in his tour de force The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: their Nature and Legacy (pp 194-5). Anyone who has heard the excellent Mr Hutton PCH, or read any of his oeuvres, will know that Mr Hutton does not pander to the memory of cherished misconceptions and he indicates that for him the idea of the cult should be set aside. He says:
"There is no firm evidence of a "Cult of the Human Head" in the Iron Age British Iles as was once asserted." and
"The frequency with which human heads appear upon Celtic metalwork proves nothing more than that they were a favourite decorative motif."
Hutton PCH (Pagan Culture Hero - Ed) poses a number of imponderables for us which are worth bearing in mind in relation to the ideology behind the whole beast. (a) Were the skulls found in pits originally war trophies? (b) Did they belong to human sacrifices? (c) Or to beloved members of a Family or Tribe? (d) Or to social outcasts not given normal burial? (e) Or even to individuals who needed special help to get free of their bodies after death?
The problem archaeologically-speaking is that the remains can be seen as either evidence of sacrifice or as war trophies, but they do not often unequivocally demonstrate a religious meaning - Hutton is surely right when he remarks that we "cannot tell".
This opinion of scepticism is echoed somewhat by Mr Iron Age himself, a certain Barry Cunliffe, who in his 900-page magnum opus jazzily entitled Iron Age Communities in Britain (3rd edition - retailing at £75) we find one relevant sentence for us (p519):
"Decapitation is .... more likely to have been a normal part of the battle scene than the presence of the priestly cult".
Anne Ross takes a significantly different line in her well-known Pagan Celtic Britain which is now 28 years old. She devotes 78 pages to the Cult of the Head and concludes (for our purposes p163 in my edition):
"The Cult of the Human Head .... constitutes a persistent theme throughout all aspects of Celtic life spiritual and temporal and the symbol of the severed head may be regarded as the most typical and universal of their religious attitudes."
This is clearly at some variance with the opinions above. Finally the excellent Miranda Green in her book The Gods of the Celts takes to my mind a middle way in this particular debate (p32):
"I refute any suggestion that the head itself was worshipped but it was clearly venerated as the most significant element in a human or divine image representing the whole."
This for the moment will suffice for our modern authorities save to say that there is some clear difference in opinion and emphasis which no doubt can be traced to the ambivalence of what remains to be studied and understood. The problems that they address concern "society" (a problematic term in Britain and Gaul 2000 years ago).
If we had the benefit of a time machine we might be able to solve some of the difficulties as we travel back to the Celtic lands. What would we find?
First of all however there is, I should say, some debate about whether we can use the term "celtic" and whether those we happily call Celts called themselves Celts. Strangely enough a man I love to hate helps us out here with a remark in his De Bello Gallico . C Iulius Caesar says:
"Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres .... tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra galli appelantur" , or:
"Gaul is divided into three parts ... the third called in their tongue Celtae and by us Galli"
Can this little observation at the beginning of Book I allow us to extrapolate a wider Celtic identity at this time? If we return to our thoughts of what we would find on landing in our time machine, I think one of the noticeable elements would be that society in Britain and Gaul was a tribal one. Later on this allowed the Romans to play on the rivalry of the élites of the Trinovantes (of modern Essex) and the Catuvellani (of the southern Midlands and the south east). It follows, I would suggest, that a unified understanding of matters religious is not necessarily the case. Tribal identity is foremost, only then followed by a more broad, a vaguer identity which despite a certain je ne sais quoi was manifest on a number of occasions. It is therefore unwise to see all Celtic "Godforms" as recognised and venerated by all "Celtic" tribes just as it is wrong in my view to invest the Immortal Celtic Gods with pantheon-style attributes set in stone and sadly known to us all too well, eg the portrayal of the Greek divinities in flimsy Hollywood films, for example Clash of the Titans .
One of the most enduring attributes of the Celtic Gods is that they "change" and are not "static".
There are, as a short visit in the time machine would show, important similarities as well, eg the worship of Lleu or Lugh is attested by place name evidence from places as far apart as Lugudunum (modern Lyons in France) to Luguvalium (Caer Lliwelydd - modern Carlisle). It follows therefore that the same should be observed for the Cult of the Head, the practices and ideas of the Salii or Saluvii of modern Provence do not correlate necessarily with those of the Ulaidh-tir of modern Ulster.
BUT
Having taken this on board alongside some sensible caveats, maybes and probabilities, let's go and meet some authorities from the past!!

The Classical Commentators

As far as Britain and Gaul are concerned, as I indicated earlier there are no native writers. However we can dip our toes into the baths of a number of classical writers, but it is always important to keep at the forefront of our minds that these writers were not Celtic and viewed matters from an alien viewpoint - one that they would term "civilised". Chief amongst them are: (a) Diodorus Siculus (b) Strabo (c) Livy (d) C Iulius Caesar
Livy, our third chum, records the placing in a temple of the head of a prized enemy chieftain by the Boii. He also records of the Boii, who lived in northern Italy, their custom of adorning skulls with gold and using them as cups for pouring libations. He records that in 216 bce a Roman general called Postumius met his end at the hands of the Boii. After he was killed they:
"stripped his corpse, severed the head, and bore their prize in triumph to their most sacred temple. There, according to their habit, they cleaned it, decorated the skull with gold and employed it as a sacred vessel for the pouring of libations for the priests and acolytes of the temple to drink from."
Livy also recalls the Senonian Gauls who after the battle of Clusium in 295 bce collected the heads of the fallen.
Diodorus Siculus and Strabo also record the custom of embalming the heads of their most reknowned enemies in cedar oil. These were then preserved in a chest and exhibited to strangers with great pride as insignia of military prowess. Apparently their owners often refused to part with them even for their weight in gold, so highly were they esteemed.
Finally, we have the witness of one writer who travelled extensively in Gaul and visited Britain on two memorable occasions - a certain Caius Iulius Caesar. Despite Michael Richter in his Medieval Ireland I have failed to find any reference to head hunting or the Cult of the Head in his De Bello Gallico . Despite a rather in-my-face creature at the Chesterfield Pagan Federation Conference I am still convinced that this absence is significant. Caesar was writing a piece of propaganda in De Bello Gallico on a number of varied levels and our Iulius does not generally avoid the opportunity to point out the depravity of his opponents and the glories of Senatus Populusque Romanis. I let you draw your own conclusions.
Likewise, in respect that both Livy and Diodorus Siculus acquired all their information on matters Celtic from indirect sources (principally a certain Poseidonius whose main interest was the south of Gaul which itself was influenced by the Greek colony of Massilia, the modern Marseilles). So we are forced to take what is told to us by our classical chums with a lorry-load of salt.

The Mythological Evidence

The best thing to do would be to consult the Celts themselves .... and the next best thing for us is to consult the ancient mythologies. In these we can find a number of interesting stories. The first vignette of evidence that I shall present is from the Taín Bo Cualinge , called in English The Cattle Raid of Cooley . Principally this epic saga concerns the exploits of Cú Chulainn with roles from Conchobhair Mac Nessa, king of the Ulaigh who resided at Emhain Mhacha, the heroes Conall Cernach, Fegus Mac Roich, the troublemaker Bricriu and the druid Cathbhadh. The action revolves around a conflict between the Ulaidh-tir and the Connachta for the Dunn Cualinge, the Brown Bull. At a pivotal point the Ulaidh-tir are laid low by a debilitating sickness and Cú Chulainn is forced to stand alone. He defeats all who come against him but ultimately dies of his wounds. The passages from the Taín indicate the importance of head collection:
(Page 73, Kinsella)
"The warriors Err and Innel and their two charioteers Foich and Fochlam came upon him. He cut off their heads and tossed them onto the four points of the tree fork." and
(Page 166, Kinsella)
"When they found him they fought foul and fell on him all 12 together. But Cú Chulainn turned on them and struck off their 12 heads. He planted 12 stones for them in the ground and set a head on each stone."
A further Erse story is the Scéala Mucce Meic Da Thó or The Story of Mac Da Tho's Pig . This concerns a feast prepared by Mac Da Thó, king of the Laigin-tir (Leinster) for the Ulaidh-tir and the Connachta (see Knott and Murphy, Early Irish Literature p 122). Both Ailill and Medb on the Connachta side and Conchobhair mac Nessa on the other asked Mac Da Thó for a famous hound he possessed but he had managed to promise the dog to both. Down at the feast the main part of the vitals was a portion of a pig. The question was asked how the pig should be divided and Bricriu suggested that it be divided "in accordance with battle victories (ar chomramaib) ".
This sets the scene for a series of boasts and taunts culminating in a battle between Cet the Connacht champion and Connal the Ulaidh champion. Connal says at this juncture:
"I swear by that by which my people swear since I took spear in hand I have never been without slaying a Connachta man every day and plundering by fire every night and I have never slept without a Connachta man's head beneath my knee."
Later, as you would expect, there is a battle, and the Ulaidh obtain the hound which meets a painful end impaled on the shaft of Ailill and Medb's chariot.
The significance of the head in another manner is shown in a story of the Mabinogi which I am sure many readers will know. Briefly then, this story is called Branwen, Daughter of Llyr and recounts the story of Bran or Bendigeidfran (Blessed Raven) who at one point in the story commands that his head be struck off:
"And take the head he said and carry it to the White Mount in London and bury it with its face towards France."
This is later known as one of the Three Unhappy Concealments before forming one of the Three Unhappy Disclosures.

Archaeology

The final strand in my investigation involves the dry bones of archaeology. The most famous sites are both in Gaul. At Entremont in Provence a Celtic tribe called the Salii or Saluvii constructed a shrine at which when the Romans routed the tribe in or around 125 bce they found assorted statues. One pillar displays mouthless faces with closed eyes. Also extant were remains of human heads. Several adult male heads had been cut from dried bodies, some with curly head, some still bore the nails with which they had first been fixed to wooden posts elsewhere.
Nearby in Roquepertuse by the mouth of the River Rhône stone pillars beneath a lintel contained skulls and severed heads. The central lintel is surmounted by a bird figure which is usually said to be that of a goose (does anyone know of any myths that relate death to geese?). In front of these lintels there are two squatting fitures which were originally painted. The skulls here are the skulls of men in the prime of life. One of them even has a javelin head embedded within. There is little extant in the same line in Britain but there are a few smaller scale examples (though absence in archaeology does not indicate absence in the past). A similar shrine at Cosgrove in Northamptonshire is rectangular and "simple", possessing one human head buried in one wall.
Further evidence in stone is furnished from Trajan's column which shows Celts riding home from battle with the heads of their defeated enemies. Other evidence comes from the Pfalzfeld stone pillar (Germany) of the C4th or C5th bce which bears human heads on each of the four sides. There is a cornucopia of images.
http://www.whitedragon.org.uk/images/maponus.jpg

Anne Ross in her Pagan Celtic Britain has divided the images into various forms:
(a) Multiple Heads
The interesting heads of the Remi tribe who lived around modern Rheims often portrayed tricephaloi (and used by John Boorman in Excalibur (sic) when Merlin (sic) spoke to Morgana (sic) of the passing of the Old Ones). Examples from Britain are rare but Mercia has one example from Viroconium, now known as Wroxeter though at the time it has more connection with the Welsh polity of Powys. (see p111)
(b) Horned Heads
Evidence for the worship of a horned God in Europe and Britain (Cernyn) is strong. Images that survive show a distribution pattern that favours Hardian's Wall but may reflect the vagaries of modern archaeology more. The distribution map in Ross (p173) has one example in Mercia and one in Lindsey.

(c) Heads without Attributes
A category for stone heads that are significant of deity itself. Ross describes one example from Towcester in Northamptonshire and one from Oadby in Leicestershire, now in the Leicester museum. (p 124)
(d) Gorgon Heads
Despite the misuse of the classical name Gorgon these heads appear to be cognate with Green Man images. The one illustrated comes from Bath.
(e) Phallic Heads
A potent combination suggesting perhaps that for the Celts the head was the centre of the life force capable of continued independent life after the death of the body. Examples are numerous but include an example from Broadway in Worcestershire. (see p 107)
The practice of representing a God by the Head alone appears to be the result of a complex series of thought processes. Celtic deities are less bound by functional definition than their Graeco-Roman counterparts became, thus overt identification in images was less important.
Additionally, the head image had other properties; set against the background of ritual it could represent the God pars pro toto (ie a part representing the whole) - thus the power of the image would have been positively enhanced because the symbolism was concentrated on the part of the body considered most important. Portrayal of the divinity by a head alone may thus have been a deliberate method of honouring the Gods.

Conclusion

We have come some way in this exploration and there are many strands to pull together to create the weave. Can I attempt any meaningful conclusions? I set out with the prejudice that the Celtic Cult of the Head did not exist as a homogenous entity. Now I am not so sure. Perhaps the root of the problem lies in the name itself, this being perhaps a misnomer. It might be a little boring and it will undoubtedly affect the frisson that surrounds the Celts but I think it is worthwhile to be as accurate as possible. The Celts were not mere head hunters as a one dimensional reading of the evidence would suggest. They clearly carried their reverence beyond this, perhaps believing that the head was the seat of the soul, the essence of the human. Whatever one says, the cult importance of heads manifests itself but if we ask "why?" I think the true answer is that there can be no answer. And what of today's pagans? Does any of this have any significance for us? That is, once again, a very difficult imponderable but may touch upon whether we feel our Gods and Goddesses may be relevant today. They are to me, but I do not especially feel the urge to go a-head-gathering. Mystery, then, clouds the Celtic Cult of the Head, but to me there is no wrongness in mystery - only beauty.


Source (http://www.whitedragon.org.uk/articles/headcult.htm)

[Beorn]

The Myth Of The 'Celtic' Head

John Billingsley


I have been a headhunter now for fifteen years. It was a spontaneous conversion for which I have no one to blame or credit save myself....
But perhaps hunting is too aggressive a word for the gentle pursuit of seeking out carved heads, yet the pursuit is the same - one gets to know the favoured places, one seeks in those places first of all and on those lucky days one emerges with a clutch of drawings or photos and another crudely-carved head goes down on the record.

Many people know the kind of heads that I look for as 'Celtic heads', and indeed when I started researching and cataloguing it seemed that the general impression was that either the heads were actually Celtic (or Romano-Celtic), or were heirs in a continuous line of tradition from Romano-British times. This idea has come under serious scrutiny since, but is still encountered in antiquarian and earth mysteries circles.
Originally deriving from Anne Ross' masterly Pagan Celtic Britain (1967), the 'Celtic head' is characterised as a crude and stylised approximation of the human head, with certain typical features such as a pear-shaped face and lentoid eyes. Its frequency in Celtic culture led Ross to describe its religious significance as constituting a cult of the human head. However, while most archaeologists agree in general about the cultic significance of the head in Celtic religion, they also feel that the case has perhaps been overstated admittedly with the benefit of enquiry that simply was not available when Ross was writing her masterwork. I myself can see no doubt about the magical and mediatory role of the human head and representations of it in Celtic society, but I would suggest that the 'Celtic head' that we hear of today, as an object of folk-religious art, hardly exists. In all, the term 'Celtic head' seems to owe its appeal more to modem romantic notions of the Celts than to any identification of an artefact with Celtic period or culture.
Any serious investigation of the subject reveals the cultic significance of the head to not only pre- and postdate the Celts, but also that the kind of stylisation encountered in Celtic circles has much wider currency. There are several reasons to question the modern understanding of the 'Celtic head' . As I have mentioned, the human head quite obviously had mystical meaning in cultures other than the Celts, occurring the world over, including pre-Celtic Europe. Thus, the religious perception of the head was not unique to the Celts, although it can be argues that they gave more intense concrete expression to the motif than it had ever had before.

Another important caveat to Ross' work is the actual cult status of the head. Various readers of Pagan Celtic Britain have understood the expression 'head cult' to imply that the head itself was the object of devotion, and although the chapter itself in that work does not necessarily imply that, some of Ross' later work has. This literal view seems rather doubtful; the wide range of contexts in which the image is found makes it apparent to my mind that the head functioned as a symbol, which itself was a common thread between bona fide cults and folk belief.
Another problem with the 'Celtic head' is the alleged style. Again. this is not a point that Ross has strongly emphasised in Pagan Celtic Britain, but it has been reinforced by antiquarians attracted to her theory, such as Sidney Jackson.

The typical features that are typically quoted for the 'Celtic head' have so many variations that the best one can say is that it is a definition of exclusion rather than inclusion; anything which looks like portraiture or classical figurative art is not a 'Celtic head'. Yet some of those heads illustrated in catalogues of Celtic art, including Pagan Celtic Britain, quite plainly stretch this definition, too. Of the crude heads which do fit the definition, some are quite obviously deliberately carved to avoid portraiture and to present a symbolically appropriate likeness of the head, but others give rise to a suspicion that the mason just wasn't very good. It is to be borne in mind that until Romanisation, the Celts particularly in Britain - had very little experience of carving in stone, so that at least some heads that can be authentically dated to the Celtic period may be crude because they are attempts of the artisan to familiarise themself with the new material.


However, by far.the most damaging criterion to the notion of the 'Celtic head' as we encounter it today is that of date. It is not possible, of course, to date stone carving, and the most reliable evidence associating a stone head with the Celts is its recovery from an archaeological level corresponding to that period. As with many portable objects, this is not always possible, and many heads have been classed as Celtic not because of their archaeological provenance but because of their superficial similarity to carvings strongly indicated to be Celtic. This was more the case in the late 1960s and early 1970s than recent years, when it has come to be realised that quite a number of stone heads previously thought to be Celtic probably date from considerably later than that. Ross' original sample of stone heads largely from the Hadrian's Wall border region which has provided a large amount of information on Celtic religion, probably suffers less from this re evaluation of data than do heads in other areas, but nonetheless are still subject to the same reservations.

One area which shows how unreliable the term 'Celtic head' is as a descriptive label for a certain type of artefact is West Yorkshire. Here, especially in the upper Aire and Calder valleys, an astonishing corpus of crudely carved stone heads led both Sidney Jackson and Anne Ross in the 1960s to suspect they had stumbled on a treasure house of continuity, but by the early 1970s it had become apparent that caution was vital. When I took up research in this region in the late 1970s, it became apparent that very few perhaps ten percent at mod - of the literally hundreds of heads in West Yorkshire could be ascribed to Celtic origin, even bearing in mind the persistence of local placenames and customs testifying to Celtic influence and late settlement. In fact, it soon became apparent that most of the crude heads in this area, at lead, were of seventeenth century date, a time for which no claim for Celtic continuity could credibly be made1. Further research indicated that the same motif of the severed head occurred locally in the same century in furniture and judicial execution by means of the guillotine, while nationally it was found on vernacular architecture of other areas (though to a lesser extent than Wed Yorkshire) and on weaponry (topics to be discussed in future articles for Northern Earth).

The situation is, in other words, that the majority of 'Celtic heads' found in England are quite clearly not Celtic at all! Moreover, the absence of any style that could plausibly be advanced as typically Celtic further renders the term 'Celtic head' unserviceable at best and misleading at worst. There can be no denying the religious significance of the severed human head in Celtic culture, nor that the head was frequently, for deliberate symbolic purposes, carved in a highly fundamental manner so as not to resemble any human of this world - yet to describe any and every such carving as Celtic is to misunderstand the power of the head motif in cultures other than the Celts, to decry the vitality of post mediaeval folk culture in England, and to miss the very important question of why the human head, treated in a most basic and symbolic way, has maintained its important role in folk perception and resurfaced so strongly in the 17th century.

The 'Celtic head' is therefore a problem. To call a seventeenth century head a 'Celtic head' is like calling Stonehenge a Druidical monument - simple nonsense. We need to use another term that embraces all those crude stone or wooden heads which embody deliberately non classical features, whether through artifice or lack of skill, and whether undateable or known to be of post-Celtic date. We need a term which will save archaeologists and antiquarians the embarrassment of conferring prehistory upon a relatively modern object. We need a term which will demystify the Celts a little. We need a term which may remove the temptation for antique dealers, buyers ant thieves to displace a head from its original provenance. We need a term which describes accurately the recurrent cultural urge to make a human face as an image to avert evil or otherwise have dealings with the otherworld and understands a depersonalised mask as the most appropriate way to express that intention. It would seem advisable to restrict the term 'Celtic head' for use only when referring to those carved by pagan Celtic masons. As a generic descriptive for this whole class of heads, I suggest 'archaic head', for that is what they all are, whether carved in the final centuries of this millennium or the final centuries of European prehistory.

NOTE 1.In any case, the fashion for carving crude stylised human heads moves in waves, rather than as a continuous tradition, suggesting that we need to look at a somewhat more enigmatic notion - the process of 'recurrence' rather than 'continuity ' in magical and religious custom.
PRlNCIPAL REFERENCES
BILLINGSLEY, John. Archaic Head-carving in West Yorkshire& Beyond. M.A.Thesis, Sheffield University, 1993.
GREEN, Miranda. The Gods of the Celts. Gloucester, Alan Sutton, 1986.
JACKSON, Sidney. Celtic & Other Stone Heads. Private, 1973.
ROSS, Anne. Pagan Celtic Britain. London, 1967 & later editions.


Source (http://www.northernearth.co.uk/permhead.htm)

[Treffie]

Amazing to think that headhunting possibly went on just 20 miles from where I live. :)

[YggsVinr]

Great articles :thumb001:


The Celts were not mere head hunters as a one dimensional reading of the evidence would suggest. They clearly carried their reverence beyond this, perhaps believing that the head was the seat of the soul, the essence of the human. Whatever one says, the cult importance of heads manifests itself but if we ask "why?" I think the true answer is that there can be no answer. And what of today's pagans? Does any of this have any significance for us? That is, once again, a very difficult imponderable but may touch upon whether we feel our Gods and Goddesses may be relevant today. They are to me, but I do not especially feel the urge to go a-head-gathering. Mystery, then, clouds the Celtic Cult of the Head, but to me there is no wrongness in mystery - only beauty.

The significance of the head in northern mythology is really something that has always fascinated me. I haven't done nearly as much research on the Celtic as I have the Germanic, but when the author of the first article questioned the cultic importance of the human head my mind started thinking of evidence of its significance in Germanic religion and mythology. The most obvious case is that of Odin drawing information from severed heads (as in Mimir's beheading and Odin charming the head. It is noteworthy that Mimir represents knowledge. It is Mimir's head that is capable of confiding secrets to Odin). I have an interesting article in a book I have on Old English literature that discusses pre-Christian Germanic notions of the self, the intellect, and the soul. I'll see if I can dig it up. Perhaps not connected to the Celtic tradition but maybe could shed some light on the possibilities.

[Beorn]

I cannot for the life of me recollect the book or the author, but the notion that the soul and the essence of the life resides in the head was explained to me with the simple example.

# Consider the result of a surgical operation. A transplant.
You fall asleep to awake with another man possessing your hand.
You can see your hand, you can see that your hand is healthy, but your essence and perception is still within your own body; not his.

This process could go on for each part of your body, the feet, the legs, the hands, the arms, the torso. Your very heart could be given to the man now possessing all your other appendages and parts, with you only connected to a life support system, and yet you would still have your essence, your life and your perception.

The operations could go on further. The removal of your nose, your lips, your tongue, your ears, etc..., till you awake to nothing but the awareness of your life.

Yet your essence and your perception of life still resides within you, not the other man.

[Lyfing]

The most obvious case is that of Odin drawing information from severed heads (as in Mimir's beheading and Odin charming the head. It is noteworthy that Mimir represents knowledge. It is Mimir's head that is capable of confiding secrets to Odin).

Interesting, also, is Brokkr sewing Loki's mouth shut instead of chopping his head off..


XXXV. "Why is gold called Sif's Hair? Loki Laufeyarson, for mischief's sake, cut off all Sif's hair. But when Thor learned of this, he seized Loki, and would have broken every hone in him, had he not sworn to get the Black Elves to make Sif hair of gold, such that it would grow like other hair. After that, Loki went to those dwarves who are called Ivaldi's Sons; and they made the hair, and Skídbladnir also, and the spear which became Odin's possession, and was called Gungnir. Then Loki wagered his head with the dwarf called Brokkr that Brokkr's brother Sindri could not make three other precious things equal in virtue to these. Now when they came to the smithy, Sindri laid a pigskin in the hearth and bade Brokkr blow, and did not cease work until he took out of the hearth that which he had laid therein. But when he went out of the smithy, while the other dwarf was blowing, straightway a fly settled upon his hand and stung: yet he blew onas before, until the smith took the work out of the hearth; and it was a boar, with mane and bristles of gold. Next, he laid gold in the hearth and bade Brokkr blow and cease not from his blast until he should return. He went out; but again the fly came and settled on Brokkr's neck, and bit now half again as hard as before; yet he blew even until the smith took from the hearth that gold ring which is called Draupnir. Then Sindri laid iron in the hearth and bade him blow, saying that it would be spoiled if the blast failed. Straightway the fly settled between Brokkr's eyes and stung his eyelid, but when the blood fell into his eyes so that he could not see, then he clutched at it with his hand as swiftly as he could,-while the bellows grew flat, -and he swept the fly from him. Then the smith came thither and said that it had come near to spoiling all that was in the hearth. Then he took from the forge a hammer, put all the precious works into the hands of Brokkr his brother, and bade him go with them to Asgard and claim the wager.

"Now when he and Loki brought forward the precious gifts, the Æsir sat down in the seats of judgment; and that verdict was to prevail which Odin, Thor, and Freyr should render. Then Loki gave Odin the spear Gungnir, and to Thor the hair which Sif was to have, and Skídbladnir to Freyr, and told the virtues of all these things: that the spear would never stop in its thrust; the hair would grow to the flesh as soon as it came upon Sifs head; and Skídbladnir would have a favoring breeze as soon as the sail was raised, in whatsoever direction it might go, but could be folded together like a napkin and be kept in Freyr's pouch if he so desired. Then Brokkr brought forward his gifts: he gave to Odin the ring, saying that eight rings of the same weight would drop from it every ninth night; to Freyr he gave the boar, saying that it could run through air and water better than any horse, and it could never become so dark with night or gloom of the Murky Regions that there should not be sufficient light where he went, such was the glow from its mane and bristles. Then he gave the hammer to Thor, and said that Thor might smite as hard as he desired, whatsoever might be before him, and the hammer would not fail; and if he threw it at anything, it would never miss, and never fly so far as not to return to his hand; and if he desired, he might keep it in his sark, it was so small; but indeed it was a flaw in the hammer that the fore-haft was somewhat short.

"This was their decision: that the hammer was best of all the precious works, and in it there was the greatest defense against the Rime-Giants; and they gave sentence, that the dwarf should have his wager. Then Loki offered to redeem his head, but the dwarf said that there was no chance of this. 'Take me, then,' quoth Loki; but when Brokkr would have laid hands on him, he was a long way off. Loki had with him those shoes with which he ran through air and over water. Then the dwarf prayed Thor to catch him, and Thor did so. Then the dwarf would have hewn off his head; but Loki said that he might have the head, but not the neck. So the dwarf took a thong and a knife, and would have bored a hole in Loki's lips and stitched his mouth together, but the knife did not cut. Then Brokkr said that it would be better if his brother's awl were there: and even as he named it, the awl was there, and pierced the lips. He stitched the lips together, and Loki ripped the thong out of the edges. That thong, with which Loki's mouth was sewn together, is called Vartari.

Skáldskaparmál, Brodeur trans. (http://www.northvegr.org/lore/prose/145148.php)


Later,
-Lyfing