Professor Ronald Hutton

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248 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 2 Aug

Professor Ronald Hutton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Empire: World History · 383. Romans vs Druids: The War For Celtic Britain (Ep 1) · 2 Aug 2026 podcast

Sometimes humans can go there and the spirits and deities can pretty well always cross into our world.

A lot of peoples think that worlds are on different levels.

You have the terrestrial one and then the heavens and the underworld are for the non-human beings.

Other cultures believe that there are parallel dimensions on Earth which you can access by going into water or sailing across it or by moving through gateways into hollow hills or through portals in woods.

And then you're simply moving sideways and encountering the fairies, the elves, the gnomes or the gods.

The Irish aren't alone in this, but they produce this fantastic medieval literature which talks about the other world or other worlds.

Once again, they're not consistent in where it is.

To some, you have to get into a cara, a boat, and sail into the ocean, and then you start landing in the other world.

Absolutely so.

To others, you go into hollow hills like the enormous Neolithic burial mounds in the Boyne Valley or into natural hills.

So the Irish are not sure where the other world is and how you reach it, but they're absolutely sure that somehow or other it's there.

It's found absolutely everywhere and it's related to a fact which traditional peoples incorporate into their everyday culture and the modern West tries desperately to ignore, which is that there is a substantial minority of people in every society.

who simply see and hear things that the majority don't, who encounter visibly non-human beings that are like humans, call them fairies, elves, if you like, and sometimes actually have interchanges with them.

Well, it's chosen people, chosen usually by the other beings who get to meet them and tend to cross into their world.

Some spend a long time there.

Some actually form romantic relationships with the other beings.

Mostly, and especially in modern times, the apparent meetings with these fairy-like beings are very brief and very transitory.

But there's an enormous literature and an enormous folklore of more extended contacts.

I mean, these contacts used to be essential to humanity in that traditional peoples who are utterly dependent on...

A very often hostile and difficult natural environment for survival will be forever negotiating with the spirits of it.

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