Written by Branos Carnutodrûidion/Urādos – Gutuatir of BNG
Social justice is sometimes spoken of as though it were something separate from our spiritual lives, something political outside of ritual, offerings, prayer, and devotion. Within Bessus Nouiogalation, we do not see such a clean separation. Everything about being part of a community is social. We do not exist as isolated practitioners concerned only with ourselves and the Dêuoi. We live among other people. We live upon land shared with countless other beings. We inherit customs from those who came before us, and our actions help shape the world inherited by those who come after us.
Our bessus cannot end at the edge of the altar.
What Do We Mean by Social Justice?
Social justice, as we understand it within BNG, begins with a relatively simple idea: how we live together matters. How we treat other people matters. How power is exercised matters. How we respond to exploitation and oppression matters. How we care for the land, water, and air matters. How we treat people whose experiences, identities, cultures, or ways of life differ from our own matters. This does not mean that every Nouiogalatis must belong to the same political party, support the same candidates, or agree on every question facing modern society. BNG is not a political party.
But neither are we indifferent to the world in which we live. Our customs already ask us to consider our relationships and our conduct within the world.
The Tricaddontoi, the Three Sacred Ways of BNG, provide one example of how these responsibilities are already woven into our bessus.
- Dêuontos, the Way of the Dêuoi, concerns our relationships with the Dêuoi through ritual, offerings, and prayer. Even here, our responsibilities do not exist entirely apart from the world around us. To honor the Dêuoi is to enter into relationship, and the values cultivated through those relationships should have some bearing on the people we become and the way we move through the world.
- Anationtos, the Way of Souls, expands that field of relationship. It teaches us to recognize anation—soul, life-force, breath—and to take our relationships with the beings and environments around us. This includes care for the land, water, and air, as well as respect for Indigenous peoples and their relationships with their lands. It shows us that we do not live in a world made only for ourselves.
- Biuontos, the Way of Living, brings these relationships into the realm of conduct. It concerns how we live, how we relate to others, our virtues, our customs, and our responsibilities to both the Nouiogalatis community and the society around us. It shows us to take what we cultivate through devotion and relationship and consider how it is expressed through our actions.
The three are not isolated paths. As our understanding of the Tricaddontoi has always emphasized, they cross, diverge, and meet again. Devotion shapes relationship. Relationship shapes conduct. Conduct gives expression to the values we claim to hold. This is where social justice enters the conversation. Not as a fourth Sacred Way added onto our bessus, but as one of the places where the Three Sacred Ways meet the world in which we actually live.
A History That Includes Resistance
As Gaulish Polytheists, we also inherit a history marked by encounters with imperial power. We should be cautious here. The ancient Gauls were not modern people, and it would be historically dishonest to project twenty-first-century concepts of social justice onto them. Ancient Gaulish societies had their own hierarchies, conflicts, inequalities, and institutions that cannot simply be transformed into modern political ideals. But resistance to domination is nevertheless part of Gaulish history. The Roman conquest of Gaul was violent. Communities were attacked and displaced. People were killed or enslaved. Political independence and sovereignty were progressively lost as Roman power expanded. And throughout the conquest, different Gallic peoples resisted. The uprising associated with Vercingetorix in 52 BCE is perhaps the most famous example, but it was not the only one. Resistance occurred repeatedly throughout Caesar’s campaigns.
We should neither romanticize that resistance nor turn it into something it was not. But we can remember it. There is one moment in that history that holds particular meaning. As the Gallic uprising was taking shape in 52 BCE, Caesar tells us that the Carnutes volunteered to take the first risk:
“While these things are in agitation, the Carnutes declare ‘that they would decline no danger for the sake of the general safety, and promise’ that they would be the first of all to begin the war…”
— Julius Caesar, Gallic War 7.2, trans. W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn
Again, we should not turn this passage into something it is not. The Carnutes were not articulating a modern theory of social justice. They were preparing to resist Roman domination. Yet there is something within their words that is worth contemplating: a willingness to accept personal danger for the common good, joined with an expectation that those who stand together will not abandon one another.
For us, remembering this does not mean taking up the weapons of our ancestors. It asks us what resistance, solidarity, and responsibility look like in our own time. For a modern Gaulish tradition, the experience of conquest and resistance raises questions that remain worth asking:
- What do we do when power becomes domination?
- What responsibilities do we have toward people being mistreated?
- When should we speak?
- When should we act?
And what does resistance look like when the weapon required is not a sword, but courage, compassion, solidarity, service, or simply the refusal to participate in cruelty?
Activism as Part of Living Our Values
Activism is not something added to BNG; it is ingrained within our bessus. That word can conjure a very particular image: protests, signs, marches, and political movements. Those certainly can be forms of activism, but they are not its only forms. Activism can mean feeding people. It can mean helping someone find shelter. It can mean protecting a forest, river, or sacred place. It can mean standing beside a marginalized community. It can mean challenging racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, religious persecution, or other forms of dehumanization when we encounter them. It can mean supporting Indigenous sovereignty and respecting boundaries around Indigenous traditions rather than treating them as resources available for our use. It can mean volunteering, mutual aid, or creating communities in which people are treated with dignity. It can mean recognizing when we possess power ourselves and considering carefully how we use it.
Not everyone can do the same work, nor should everyone be expected to. Our circumstances differ. Our abilities differ. Our communities have different needs. Someone caring for a neighbor may be doing work every bit as meaningful as someone carrying a sign through the streets. What matters is understanding that our responsibilities do not disappear because we have finished our prayers.
This understanding is not new to BNG. It is already woven into how we observe our Îuoi. Through Îuoi in Îanê—Holidays in Virtue—we have long encouraged Nouiogalatîs to connect our sacred days with acts of service. Alongside rites, offerings, feasting, and celebration, our holidays remind us to turn our attention outward: toward animal welfare, care for the land and water, the needs of children, food and housing, healthcare, social justice, and the well-being of marginalized and underserved people.
Some of our Îuoi make this connection particularly explicit. Samolitus calls our attention to social justice and to the hope that the blessings of samos may be shared by all. Trinox Samoni remembers those who struggle for justice and encourages us to support those who place themselves at risk in that struggle. Catus Alisiâs turns the memory of the fall of free Gaul, and of those who suffered between the battle lines at Alesia, toward the very tangible act of feeding those who hunger.
These acts are not separate from the observance of our sacred days. They are one way those observances move beyond ourselves and into the communities around us. Nor do we believe these responsibilities begin and end with a holiday. As we have written in Îuoi in Îanê, these causes do not need our attention only once a year. The Îuoi give us moments to remember something that should remain with us throughout the year: there are those who need help and support, and there is almost always something we can do. Our Îuoi show us something already present throughout our bessus: in our virtues, in the Sacred Ways, in our holidays, and in our relationships with one another. What we practice together should make some difference beyond ourselves.
Virtue Must Be Lived
This brings us naturally to the Îanoi, the virtues. A virtue that exists only as a word is not much of a virtue. We can speak endlessly about justice, hospitality, courage, generosity, truth, and right conduct. Eventually, however, circumstances require us to decide whether those values will influence what we actually do.
This is where social justice becomes more than an idea. If we value hospitality, how do we treat the stranger? If we value justice, what do we do when we witness injustice? If we value courage, what happens when doing what is right becomes uncomfortable? If we value community, are we willing to make room for people whose voices have traditionally been pushed aside? If we understand ourselves as existing in relationship with the land, what responsibilities follow when that land is threatened?
These questions cannot always be answered by a rulebook. They require judgment, reflection, and sometimes disagreement.
Against Domination
There is another principle underlying much of this: opposition to domination. Domination occurs when power ceases to be relational and becomes a means of controlling, exploiting, silencing, dispossessing, or dehumanizing others. Our ancestors experienced imperial domination. Our modern world produces its own forms. They are not always equivalent, and we should resist easy historical comparisons. But remembering conquest should make us attentive to the ways power operates around us. Being a Galatis does not mean reenacting the battles of our ancestors.
We can remember those who resisted Caesar without imagining ourselves on an ancient battlefield. We can honor that spirit whenever we refuse to accept that exploitation, cruelty, or domination should simply be tolerated because they are powerful, profitable, traditional, or convenient. Resistance can take many forms. Sometimes its loud, and sometimes resistance is standing beside someone and saying: You do not stand alone.
The Galatis in the World
BNG has often emphasized that bessus encompasses much more than what modern Western culture commonly calls “religion.” If being a Nouiogalatis meant only performing rites and leaving offerings for the Dêuoi, social justice might reasonably seem like something external to our tradition. But Dêuontos is only one of the Three Sacred Ways.
Anationtos asks us to understand ourselves within a world filled with other beings and relationships. Biuontos asks us how we are going to live.
And eventually every one of us must answer that question. Our answer will not always look the same. We will disagree. We will make mistakes. We will learn from one another. Our understanding will continue to develop as our community develops. But we should never become so concerned with reconstructing the customs of the past that we forget we are living people in the present. We are Galatîs here and now. Our communities exist here and now. The land beneath our feet exists here and now. The injustices experienced by our neighbors exist here and now. So does our opportunity to do something about them.
Our ancestors left us many things to contemplate: their gods, their languages, their art, their customs, their relationships with the land, and the fragments of their stories that survived conquest and the passage of centuries. Among those stories are stories of resistance. We do not need to become our ancestors. But we can remember that they stood. And in our own ways, when circumstances require it, so can we.
Social justice is not something added to our Gaulish praxis. It is an old fire carried forward, a flame that warms, illuminates, and guards the sovereignty of every soul against those who would diminish it.
