In Celtic mythology, Taranis is the god of thunder, who was worshipped primarily in Gaul, Gallaecia, Britain, and Ireland but also in the Rhineland and Danube regions, amongst others. Taranis, along with Esus and Toutatis as part of a sacred triad, was mentioned by the Roman poet Lucan in his epic poemPharsalia as a Celtic deity to whom human sacrificial offerings were made. Taranis was associated, as was the Cyclops Brontes in Greek mythology, with the wheel. , created between 200 BC and 300 AD, is thought to have a depiction of Taranis on the inner wall of cauldron on tile C Many representations of a bearded god with a thunderbolt in one hand and a wheel in the other have been recovered from Gaul, where this deity apparently came to be syncretised with Jupiter. The name as recorded by Lucan is unattested epigraphically, but variants of the name include the forms Tanarus, Taranucno-, Taranuo-, and Taraino-. The name is continued in Irish as Tuireann, and is likely connected with those of Germanic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Greek, Slavic, and Sami gods of thunder. Taranis is likely associated with the Gallic Ambisagrus, and in the interpretatio romana with Jupiter.
The wheel, more specifically the chariot wheel with six or eight spokes, was an important symbol in historical Celtic polytheism, apparently associated with a specific god, known as the wheel-god, identified as the sky- sun- or thunder-god, whose name is attested as Taranis by Lucan. Numerous Celtic coins also depict such a wheel. The half-wheel shown in the Gundestrup cauldron also has eight visible spokes. Symbolic votive wheels were offered at shrines, cast in rivers, buried in tombs or worn as amulets since the Middle Bronze Age. Such "wheel pendants" from the Bronze Age usually had four spokes, and are commonly identified as solar symbols or "sun cross". Artefacts parallel to the Celtic votive wheels or wheel-pendants are the so-called Zierscheiben in a Germanic context. The identification of the Sun with a wheel, or a chariot, has parallels in Germanic, Greek and Vedic mythology.
Later cultural references
In 2013 a British combat drone system developed by defence contractorBAE Systems was named Taranis in reference to the Celtic god. Taranis and Toutatis are often mentioned by characters of the Asterix series.
