Double Spiral Meaning: Neolithic Ireland Before the Celts

The double spiral is often sold as a Celtic symbol, but its most famous examples are far older than any Celtic culture. The spirals carved into the great stones of Newgrange and Knowth in Ireland's Boyne Valley were made by Neolithic farming communities over five thousand years ago, and what they meant to their makers is unknown.

Carved in stone at Brú na Bóinne

Newgrange was built around 3200 BC, older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza. It is part of Brú na Bóinne, the Bend of the Boyne, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that also includes Knowth and Dowth. The huge kerbstone at the entrance to Newgrange is carved with spirals, lozenges and arcs, and spirals, including double spirals that turn inward and then out again, appear across the monuments.

Why is it called Celtic?

Celtic art, which flourished in the Iron Age and later in early medieval Ireland, also used spirals, and the nineteenth-century Celtic Revival adopted ancient Irish motifs of every period as national emblems. The result is that Neolithic spirals are routinely labelled "Celtic" even though they predate Celtic culture by thousands of years.

What did it mean?

No one knows. Interpretations include the sun's yearly path, water, life and death, or the journey into and out of the passage tomb. At Newgrange the rising sun lights the inner chamber around the winter solstice, which makes solar readings tempting, but the carvings themselves carry no text. The honest answer is that the meaning belongs to people who left no writing.

The double spiral in jewellery

A double spiral design connects its wearer to one of the oldest carved symbols in Europe. Take a look at the AURYN Double Spiral charm, read about the Celtic Cross, carved in Ireland four thousand years later, or meet Cernunnos, the antlered god of Celtic Europe. For how carved symbols like these can and cannot be read, see our guide to petroglyph symbols.