The Forgotten Sky of the Irish

In the chronicles of western astrology, a silence endures. The Irish and the wider Celtic peoples, whose vision of the heavens shaped law, ritual, and imagination, remain seldom acknowledged. For countless generations, the people of Ireland have lifted their eyes to the night sky in pursuit of understanding and insight. Their forebears constructed remarkable edifices, such as Newgrange at least five thousand years ago, which aligns with the Winter Solstice and resonates with facets of the mythos associated with Age of Taurus, forming part of a wider complex of sites oriented toward the stars, including the Pleiades at Knowth and Deneb at Fourknocks.

For more than a century and a half, research has relied on a handful of studies, the most serious of which appeared in France in 1902 and now require re-examination in light of modern revaluation of ‘his-story’. The starlore of the Draoi presents formidable challenges, as English colonisation diminished much of the Gaelic learned class, dismantled traditional systems of education, and dispersed the wisdom they safeguarded. Manuscripts were lost to fire, while stories of the fabled Druids, a learned class effectively suppressed following Patrick’s Christianity in the fifth century, became embellished for the entertainment of the wealthy Plantation class at evening gatherings. Writers such as Robert Graves, with his imaginative ‘tree zodiac’, wove lore from hearsay. Christians, the Normans, and, more violently, the Crown undertook systematic efforts to erode the Irish language and the knowledge bound within it.

Some aspects of the ancient Irish ways have been preserved in the traditions of the Scottish Gaels, whose language, poetry, and oral lore maintain a closer continuity with Irish practices than with those of other Celtic peoples, and whose communities retained more of their traditional practices, escaping the systematic erasure that Irish culture endured.

The Celts, from which the Irish are reputed to have descended, by the third century before Christ, stretched from Ireland in the west to Galatia in Asia Minor, from Belgium to Cadiz, from the Alps to the Sea of Azov. They were one of Europe’s formative peoples, and Greek and Roman writers describe them as seekers of wisdom in the stars. Martial recorded that they conceived of the earth as a sphere. Hippolytus, drawing on earlier sources, spoke of their foretelling through numbers and ciphers, reminiscent of the Pythagoreans. Clement of Alexandria even suggested that Greek philosophy itself may have borrowed from Celtic speculation.

The most enduring witness to this cosmology is the Coligny Calendar. A bronze tablet of the first century before Christ, yet derived from far older reckonings, it unites lunar and solar cycles with a sophistication that astonished modern scholars. Garrett Olmsted traced its computation back to around 1100 BC. Its structure reveals striking parallels with Vedic cosmology, reminding us that Celtic and Sanskrit cultures sprang from the same Indo-European well.

When we turn to Ireland itself, the story deepens. The earliest names we can give are monks and abbots of the sixth and seventh centuries, such as Mo-Sinu of Bangor and his pupil Mo Chuaróc, who composed works of astronomical calculation. Cummian of Clonfert followed, and Aibhistin, who wrote on the tides in relation to the moon. These men’s writing reveals that Christianised Ireland had inherited both native sky-lore and the Greco-Latin forms that came with the Julian calendar. By the ninth century we find Irish astrological charts preserved in continental libraries, evidence that the art was practised with the same seriousness as in the wider Roman world.

With the twelfth century came Arabic learning, carried by Irish scholars returning from Bologna, Padua and Montpellier. Irish physicians, already renowned, absorbed Arabic medicine, philosophy, and astrology. Many of their manuscripts survive, though countless remain untranslated, storing centuries of astrological practice. This influence reshaped Irish astrology in line with the rest of Europe, yet the older terms and images lingered in the language.

When the Milesians, the legendary ancestors of the Irish, said to have conquered Ireland from the Tuatha Dé Danann (the fabled first people), finally set foot upon the land, Amergin - the Draoi / poet / mystic - intoned his epic poem, claiming the terrain and invoking both unseen as well as the tangible forces of nature. In one passage, he turns first to the moon, then to the sun.

Who smooths the ruggedness of the mountain?
Who declares the seasons of the Moon?
Who marks the place where the sunset falls?

The Gaels read the stars in a manner akin to Vedic astrology in India, where the Moon is said to be in different ‘houses.’ This ancient Irish system of neamhrinnfheitheamh (heavens-consideration) is now almost entirely lost, yet traces of réadóireacht were still practiced up to the end of the nineteenth century. Those who had the ‘gift’ of understanding ‘the movements of the heavens’ were regarded as being extremely wise, possessing the ability to foretell the future and held a position within the community akin to a seer or philosopher. However the réadóir, especially in the case of a woman, was also held in fear in Christianised Ireland, as it was believed a réadóir mná could become a messenger of misfortune.

As Greco-Latin forms grew dominant in European language, native imagery shifted: Leo, for example, became An Leon, the Lion; Capricorn An Gabhar instead of Pocán (the kid). Similarly under Arabic influence, translation gave way to simple adoption: Orion was no longer known as the High Man, or An Selgaire Mhór and simply became Oirion. His Belt was no longer seen as ‘the enclosure of the enlightened’, Buaile an Bhodaigh, but Crios Oiríon - Orion’s Belt! Mercury is now Mercúir instead of Budh – the enlightened one and the Moon is now An Ghealach, instead of Ré, which refers to ‘age’ or ‘time’.

By the modern era, Irish astronomical language mirrored English in its reliance on loan-words, leading early twentieth-century researchers to imagine that Ireland had no tradition of its own. That said, some star names have survived in areas where Irish was spoken (the modern Gaeltacht), especially stars that were used by fishermen or for telling time.

As Micheál Ó Tuachair noted in 1940:

“I’m certain that he isn’t alive above the ground the person that is able to describe that [the names of stars] to you.”

Yet despite all this loss, fragments remain offering glimpses of the ancient majesty seen by our ancestors when they looked up at the night sky: zodiacal carvings on high crosses, glossaries preserving older names, references in myth and law, and annals recording eclipses and comets. Ireland has managed to persevere one of the most advanced sky-traditions in Europe with both Draoi and monks casting birth charts, determining auspicious hours, and seeking the right moment for undertakings.

Through aggressive suppression in the seventeenth century much of this tradition was driven underground, the traces remain. But we do not truly know how the Draoi and their ancestors saw the sky, as their lore was largely oral, and therefore, lost during their extermination. We have, however, some remnants of a ‘Dark Age’ astrology, which was predictive, practical, yet always suffused with myth and symbol, spoken through calendars and carved in Christian crosses, as well as the law-text and annals.

We know that there are strong links between Ireland and the Vedic tradition in India, and we can only speculate on the extent of that co-creative relationship has had on their mutual astrology.

But one thing is clear, the Irish, like the Celts before them, lived within a cosmos alive with meaning. Their astrology was no idle ornament. It was a way of aligning the soul with the rhythm of the heavens. It is my hope, in time, this tradition is recovered and Ireland is restored to its rightful place as one of the great star-cultures of the world.

Images: ‘Réaltshiúlóirí’ banner watercolour & Cosmic Tree watercolour - StarWaves / Kamila Ami Lizis, last image by unknown.