The Irish Lebor Gabála Érenn counts six companies that came to the island in turn. After the peoples of Cessair, Partholón and Nemed come the Fir Bolg, then the Tuatha Dé Danann, the people of Danu, and last of all the sons of Míl take the land. Once beaten, the gods withdraw into the mounds beneath the ground, and from that day they are called the aes síde, the people of the mounds.
The Celtic world has no Theogony. The Irish material was written down from the eleventh century onward, centuries after conversion and by the hands of monks, the Welsh Mabinogi survives in fourteenth century manuscripts, and the Gaulish gods are known almost entirely from Roman inscriptions. This chart shows the descent those manuscripts record, not the register of a lost religion.
155 figures6 invasions4 fire festivals17 lineages and groups
Key facts
The Lebor Gabála Érenn counts six companies that came to Ireland, and the Tuatha Dé Danann, the people of the gods, are the fifth of them.
Lugh's father Cian is of the Tuatha Dé and his mother Ethniu is the daughter of the Fomorian king Balor, and at the second battle of Mag Tuired he kills his grandfather with his own hand.
The four fire festivals fall at the midpoints between the solstices and the equinoxes, which is why the Sun stands near the middle of a fixed sign on those days.
Lugh and Lleu, Manannán and Manawydan, Nuada and Lludd are the same name in Irish and in Welsh, while pairing Danu with Dôn is a modern proposal.
The chart covers 155 figures and draws on the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Cath Maige Tuired, the Dindsenchas and the Four Branches of the Mabinogi.
Main line: from the invasions to the mounds
The chart runs left to right: the ancestral roots and the first invasions, the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Danann who both come from the line of Nemed, the generation of the Dagda and Nuada, the children of the Dagda, Lugh and the line of the sea, and at the right Lugh's son Cú Chulainn with the heroes of Ulster. The Welsh branch sits at the upper right in three group boxes of its own and is not joined to the Irish line. Large clans appear as dashed group boxes; tap a box to open its list below. Drag to pan, Ctrl/⌘ + wheel or the buttons to zoom.
Ancestral rootEarlier invasionGreat Tuatha DéTuatha DéSea and waterFomorianLand and riverSovereignty and warHeroGroup (opens list)
Elatha is both a king of the Fomorians and, in the genealogies, the father of the Dagda and Ogma. The manuscripts never separate the two, so the chart shows them as one figure and says so in the note. There are likewise several figures named Macha and several named Delbáeth.
Lineage explorer: who is whose child?
Type a name or tap a box in the chart. The card that opens shows the parent, partner and child links recorded in the manuscripts and says which text each link comes from. "Not recorded" means no link is drawn for that figure in this chart, not that none exists in the sources.
Close kin: grandparents · parents and partners · figure and siblings · children
Lineages and groups
All 155 figures in the chart are listed here by lineage and group. The chips above filter by type; tap a name and the explorer opens that figure.
Who are the Tuatha Dé Danann and what does the name mean?
The name is said roughly as 'Too-a Day Dan-an' and means 'the people of Danu'. According to the Lebor Gabála Érenn they descend from Iarbonel, a son of Nemed, learn magic and craft in the northern islands and come down into Ireland out of the mist. They beat the Fir Bolg and then the Fomorians, but when the sons of Míl defeat them the poet Amergin divides the island in two and the half below ground falls to them. That is why the people of the mounds in Irish folk tradition, the aes síde, are the old gods themselves.
Which gods do the four Celtic fire festivals belong to?
Imbolc, the first of February, is the feast of Brigid and is tied to the ewes coming into milk. Beltane, the first of May, takes its name from the fires of Bel according to Cormac's Glossary, and the herds are driven between those fires. Lughnasadh, the first of August, is the funeral games Lugh founded for his foster mother Tailtiu, and it opens the harvest. Samhain, the first of November, begins the dark half of the year, and Cath Maige Tuired sets the union of the Dagda and the Morrígan on that night.
What do these festivals have to do with astrology?
The four festivals are the quarter days that fall halfway between the solstices and the equinoxes. Halve the distance from a solstice to an equinox and the Sun stands near the middle of a fixed sign, around the fifteenth degree of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. The calendar dates of 1 February, 1 May, 1 August and 1 November have drifted from the true midpoints over the centuries, and the astronomical midpoints now fall roughly three to seven days after them. Medieval Irish texts make no such calculation in signs, and the link rests on where the festivals sit in the season.
Are the Irish and Welsh equivalences real?
Some of them are solid. Lugh and Lleu, Manannán and Manawydan, the Irish Lir and the Welsh Llŷr, Goibniu and Gofannon are the same name in two languages. The bynames of Nuada Airgetlám and Lludd Llaw Ereint match word for word, and the Nodens inscriptions from Britain tie the three to one root. By contrast, pairing Danu with Dôn, Rhiannon with Epona and Bile with Beli Mawr are proposals made by modern scholars, and the medieval texts say nothing of the kind. Two gods who share a name also tend to behave quite differently in their stories.
What sources is this family tree based on, and how reliable is it?
The Irish backbone comes from the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Cath Maige Tuired, the Dindsenchas and Tochmarc Étaíne, the Ulster section from the tales around Táin Bó Cúailnge, and the Welsh branch from the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. All of these texts were written by Christian monks, and the earliest copies date from centuries after the gods were forgotten. In many places the descent is the compiler's own arrangement, and the copies contradict one another. The chart does not hide those contradictions; the notes say which link comes from which text and which is a modern proposal.
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See where the fire festivals sit in the sky
Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain fall at the midpoints between the solstices and the equinoxes. With the calendar tools you can work out for yourself what date and what degree each crossing falls on.