Lusitanian Religion Part 2

Animals and other gods

Last week I wrote about Lusitanian’s beliefs concerning the Elements; today I will do the same concerning animals, even though information seems to be much more scarse.

In Lusitania many animals were pictured on art and on coins, but the meaning these animals had for these people is difficult to known for sure. The Lusitanian coins were decorated with sea creatures such as dolphins and tuna¹, and in art goats, he-goats, bulls and pigs were the most frequently represented². But it is also possible that the representation of some of these animals may not be only a form of art, but even a representation of gods, such is the case of the sculpture of a bull in Marco de Canaveses, which is believed to represent the tutelary deity of that Castro (fortified city on a mountain top, characteristic of Iberian Peninsula)³.

But what gives us a better idea of how this people saw the animals is how they were manipulated by Sertorius. This man was a Roman general who fought against his Roman political adversaries using a Lusitanian army, while the Lusitanians believed he was fighting on their side. Of course the Lusitanians, being barbarians, were difficult to control, and to control them he used a white deer. The general, after having received a deer as a gift and taking advange of the indigenous beliefs, kept it, and pretended that the animal would give him information about the future. The information “provided by the deer” was correct, obviously because he had informants who would tell him when they would be attacked, etc.. so the Lusitanians believed he was a man protected by the gods⁴.

Here it is possible to observe that the Lusitanians not only considered some animals sacred, but they also linked these animals to future prediction. The hypothesis of Lusitanians considering animals sacred is corroborated by the historian Diodorus Siculus who reported the existence of sacred bulls in Hispania⁵. It is also important to note that in the stone age the ancestors of the Lusitanians used dog teeth as amulets.

But it is in Portuguese folklore that we find a lot of remnants of the divination of animal life. Spiders, birds, mammals, all may be used to interpret the future.

Other gods

Even though to the modern person the worship of nature may seem very pure and harmonious, the Lusitanians were not a peaceful people, but warriors and extremelly aggressive when harassed. So, they naturally also had warrior gods to whom they sacrificed he-goats, prisioners and horses of war⁶. The person or animal sacrificed would also be used for divination:

“They prophesy through means of the vitals of human beings also, prisioners of war, whom they first cover with coarse cloaks, and then, when the victim has been struck beneath the vitals by the diviner, they draw their first auguries from the fall of the victim. And they cut off the right hands of their captives and set them up as an offering to the gods.”

Strabo, Book III, Chapter III

One of these gods of war was the goddess Trebaruna, who initially was a spirit of the house, but begun to be worshiped as a warriors goddess. As it happens with many others Lusitanians gods, her name is Celtic.

Since the gods of Lusitania were local gods, their number is immense, and probably we will never know all of them, so to finish this week’s post I will give you some examples of some gods and the areas where they were worshiped:

Deities from south of the Tagus - Carneus or Ptarneus

Some Deities worshiped by the Turdulli Vetores - Aracoaranioniceus or Coaranioniceus; Vasecus

Deities between river Monda (Mondego) and Dourus - Áries, Bandoga, Cabar, Bandioilenaicus, Tameobrigus

Deities of the Igeditanos - Bandiarbariaicus, Arentius, Revelanganidaeiguis

Deities of the Grovios (a people who inhabited the lands between river Dourus and Minho, a branch of the Bracari people) - Turiacus, Cusuneneoceus, Brutus, Durbedicus, Coronus

Deities from Bracara Augusta - Carus

Deities from Tras-os-montes- Banderaeicus, Bandua,Aernus

1. VASCONCELOS, Leite de, Religiões da Lusitânia vol.II, pág. 282

2. VASCONCELOS, Leite de, Religiões da Lusitânia vol.II, pág. 282

3. VASCONCELOS, Leite de, Religiões da Lusitânia vol.II, pág. 288

4. VASCONCELOS, Leite de, Religiões da Lusitânia vol.II, pág. 289

5. VASCONCELOS, Leite de, Religiões da Lusitânia vol.II, pág. 294

6. VASCONCELOS, Leite de, Religiões da Lusitânia vol.II, pág. 305