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Taranis is the Celtic god of thunder – his name is related to the Celtic word for "thunder" (cf. Welsh taran). The Roman poet Lucan names him in one breath with Teutates and Esus as one of the great Gaulish deities. Taranis is the lord of the sky and the storm.
His emblem is the wheel. Numerous images show a bearded sky god with a spoked wheel in his hand – interpreted as a sun, sky or thunder wheel. Small bronze wheel pendants were worn as amulets; the wheel was the Celtic thunder and sky sign par excellence.
Taranis belongs to a large Indo-European family of weather gods. The parallel to the Germanic Donar and the Norse Thor is obvious: a strong, bearded lord of the sky who protects people with thunder and a weapon/sign. Where Donar swings the hammer, Taranis holds the wheel – the same role, a different visual language. The Rhine separated two related worlds of belief, not utterly foreign ones.
"Wits must he have who wanders wide, but all is easy at home."Hávamál 5, after Henry A. Bellows 1923 (public domain)
Taranis is the Celtic brother of Donar and Thor: the thunder god whose sign was not the hammer but the wheel. More in the overview Celtic Religion.
Celtic Religion · Lugh · Teutates · Wodan, Donar & Ziu · Cernunnos.
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