In Celtic mythology, Alaunus was a Gaulish god of the sun, healing and prophecy. A major branch of Celts called this God Fin Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, apparently the religion of the Iron Age Celts. ... Gaulish is name given to the now-extinct Celtic language that was spoken in Gaul before the Romans, the Franks and the British Celts invaded. ...

Etymology & Fundamental Nature

The reconstructed lexis of the Proto-Celtic language as collated by the University of Wales [1] suggests that the name is likely to be ultimately derived from the Proto-Celtic Alaunos. This Proto-Celtic word is believed to connote the semantics of ‘shining one’. This apparent semantic connotation in Celtic has led Dr. John Koch at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies to suggest that this personality may well personify “Brilliance” and so may be another name for Belenos or Dagda-Sucellos. This theory, if it is correct, would account for the associations with the sun and the apparent mental brilliance of the ability to heal and tell the future. Theo Venneman compares this god’s name with Basque arau ‘order, regularity’, which he asserts is from Proto-Vasconic Alaunu meaning ‘order.’ This view is not widely held. This page is a candidate to be moved to Wiktionary. ... Proto-Celtic, also called Common Celtic, is the putative ancestor of all the known Celtic languages. ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek and in greek letters σημαντικός or in latin letters semantikós, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... In Celtic mythology, Belenus (also Belinus, Belenos, Belinos, Belinu, Bellinus, Belus, Bel) was a deity worshipped in Gaul, Britain and Celtic areas of Austria. ... The Dagda is an important god of Irish mythology. ... The Dagda is an important god of Irish mythology. ... Basque (in Basque: Euskara) is the language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain and the adjoining region of South-Western France. ... Proto-Vasconic is the putative ancestor of the Basque and ancient Aquitanian languages. ...

Parallels in non-Celtic cultures?

If the theory is correct that Alaunos is in fact a personification of ‘Brilliance’, this allow one to draw parallels with such beings in the mythology of other cultures as Coeus, Polus, Hyperion, Lucifer, Zeus. // The word mythology (Greek: μυθολογία, from μυθος mythos, a story or legend, and λογος logos, an account or speech) literally means the (oral) retelling of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use supernatural events or characters to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. ... In Greek mythology, Coeus (also Koios) was the Titan of intelligence. ... Polus was an Ancient Greek Athenian philosophical figure who lived in the fifth century BCE. He was a pupil of the famous orator Gorgias, and teacher of rhetoric from the city of Acragas, Sicily. ... In the Homers Iliad and Odyssey the sun god is called Helios Hyperion, Sun High-one. But in the Odyssey, Hesiods Theogony and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter the sun is once in each work called Hyperonides son of Hyperion and Hesiod certainly imagines Hyperion as a separate... Lucifer, as depicted in Collin de Plancys Dictionnaire Infernal (1863). ... Statue of Zeus Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall statue of Zeus at Olympia about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th-century engraving. ...

Bibliography

• Ellis, Peter Berresford, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology(Oxford Paperback Reference), Oxford University Press, (1994): ISBN 0195089618
• Wood, Juliette, The Celts: Life, Myth, and Art, Thorsons Publishers (2002): ISBN 0007640595

External links

• Proto-Celtic — English lexicon