The Gods of Brittania

The Isles of the Many Gods: An A-Z of the Pagan Gods & Goddesses Worshipped in Ancient Britain During the First Millenium Ce Through to the Middle by David Rankine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sorita D’Este and David Rankine have put together an awesome book that discusses all the Gods and Goddesses tht were were worshipped on the British Aisles. I think there were clese to 147 of them give or take a few. The deities come frm a variety of different pantheons ranging from Welsh, Irish,Gaulic,Saxon, Norse, Roman, Greek and Egyptian. There might have been a few I missed. That’s a big infusion of Gods and Goddesses. The Britsih Aisle have been invaded by score of different people over the last millenia or so. The Roman and North European invasions have brought over the largest contribution of deities worshipped. I think the Romans brought over most of teh foreign deities save for the Norse and Saxon ones. The Romans conflated most of the deities or equated them to corresponding deities in their pantheon. The most popular was Jupiter.

Most of the entries are encylcopediac and numerous . There is a chart on the top which tells you their place of origin, where they were worshipped, what literary evidence reamin of them and their other names. The entries tell the reader what they were worshipped for and what areas of life they were in charge of. Entries also expalin what artifacts of them remain. Most deities have roughly half a page to maybe a page of information on them pending availability of knowledge available. Sometime there are scant remains or scant references to the various deities. Other deities have sometimes up to 5 pages on them and they are detailed.

For those who work magic and wish to work with British deities then this book gives a great over view. If you are using the kindle addition there is one drawback and that is not the fault of the author’s but rather the technology. The charts are not big enough to fit on the page and there are these little arrows that make the other half show up. On some of there longer charts this can get rather cumbersome. Excellent book.


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