Deities
This can be a sticky subject, due to the amount of diversity in religoius views of the Druids.
Generally Druids use deities from the Celtic faiths in their work, but there are a great number of Christian Druids, for whom these deities are saints. An example of this is the Celtic Goddess Brighid who has been Cannonised as St. Bridget. Other deities that have been Cannonised are Cernunnos, the antlered lord of animals and forests, who becomes Saint Cornely, and Belenos, a god of fire, patron of the festival Beltane, who became Saint George the Dragon slayer.
To give a list of Celtic deities here is fruitless as countless lists appear all over the internet, some "accurate" some "mixed". The fact is that there is not a single Celtic pantheon, each Tribe had their own variations on a deity. For this reason we recommend that those interested in finding a list visit godchecker.com where they will find a down to earth list of Celtic deities with many variations of their names, with easy to understand information and not a small amount of humour.
One thing is for certain. Each of the Celtic Gods has a parralel in the other religions of the world. For instance, My patron deity is Cernunnos who has also been called Herne, is associated with Hu Gadarn, Odhinn (Norse), Bayan Hangai (Buryat Mongol) , Ea (Sumerian), Silvanus (Roman) and Pan (Greek) among many others. Another very famous Deity venerated by the Celts and standing as a vegetation version of Cernunnos is known simply as the Green man, his power in the Celtic faith and people is so strong that he has even been brought into Christianity, whether as a marking on the walls of churches or as the "pagan counterpart to the Christ".
But in the Celtic faith it is the Goddess that recieves most veneration. Be that the Goddess of the Earth, a River Goddess (Most rivers in Britain take their names from river goddesses), a Goddess of Death (Who sometimes appears on Christian Churches as the Sheela-Na-Gig) or a Protector Goddess (such as Briganttia who bacme Britannia and still stands proud on some of our coins and in other places.
Celtic deities are NOT demons, they are just not solely "light", this is because most Celtic deities began as ancestors. They have been remembered for their qualities and stories have been written of their deeds that were so amazing, that these ancestors have gone down in history as Gods and Goddesses. Remember, this is possible because in Druidry we believe that the soul is immortal. For more information on this kind of "immortality", I refer you to my article: Storytelling, the Importance of an Oral Tradition & the Creation of Immortals (pdf).
One thing is certain, whether monotheistic (One God) or Polytheistic (Many Gods) the Druid knows the importance of a balance between the sexes, without the male there is no seed, without the female, there is no egg, thus creation could not be. This is why there are both Druids and Druidesses, and why we call on some form of both the divine masculine and the divine feminine when we work as without both, the desired result of our work, can never happen.
