Why it's lore, not holy writ

It's a good thing Celtic Reconstructionists know better than to take every word written by the monks who wrote about pagan Ireland seriously. Otherwise, we'd have to buy into this segment from The Life of Adamnan and ask ourselves some odd questions:

Cumalach was a name for women till Adamnan come to free them. And this was the cumalach, a woman for whom a hole was dug at the end of the door so that it came over her nakedness. The end of the great spit was placed upon her till the cooking of the portion was ended. After she had come out of that earth-pit she had to dip a candle four man's hands in length in a plate of butter or lard; that candle to be on her palm until division of food and distribution of liquor and making of beds, in the houses of kings and cheiftains, had ended. That women had no share in bag or in basket, nor in the company of the house-master; but she dwelt in a hut outside the enclosure, lest bane from sea or land should come to her chief.

But it's easy when it's obviously propaganda and not the subtler workings, such as some of the odd encodings in the myths. I still wonder if anyone who wants to recreate the "real" old ways will ever be caught taking this one seriously.

Oh, yeah, right...

Yesterday was my blog's first anniversary. Go me for getting there.

And one of these days, I'm moving this to my own domain. Blogspot's been eating older comments I've received. That is not nice. The setup's been done, I have bookmarks telling me how to migrate from this to Wordpress, and the rest is spare time and choosing to apply it. Heh.

Why I don't resent the Christians so much, one in a series

Philobiblon provides a discussion of part of the impact of the pre-Christian Roman invasion of Celtic Britain in What the Romans did TO us (i.e. women). Say what you will about the Roman Catholic Church's attitude toward women, they saved female babies from being treated as disposable. Besides, nobody's yet proven that any Christians performed mass slaughters of Druids (hint: when you see an Irish saint's life story, treat it as propaganda, not historical fact). The Isle of Mona massacre was not run by a bunch of priests.

And in yet another moment of modern innovation for me, I refuse to let history tell me how to react to Nova Romans. I prefer a more balanced perspective on modern times.

The point and purpose?

I've argued in the past about certain elements of the hagiography of St. Patrick that demonstrate a political intent on the part of its writers. In a far more comprehensive fashion, Lisa Bitel argued for similar approaches to St. Brigit's hagiography in her essay, St. Brigit of Ireland: From Virgin Saint to Fertility Goddess. The timeline of her life story's development and the historical context are a fascinating bit of perspective into what so many of us base our beliefs upon as modern pagans. Some might argue Bitel's perspective is a bit too focused on the idea that the pre-Christian gods of Ireland were closer to a literary invention than legitimate gods, but I'd suggest they keep in mind that to those Christian writers, those gods were not as real as they are to us. Cultural context means so much in all of this.

The darker side of CR

I've been logically aware of the fact Celtic Reconstructionism is not perfect for the entire time I've been involved with it. I came in as an adult, after all. I know when you put human beings into the mix, you'll wind up with problems. But a recent conversation showed me exactly where we as a tradition are facing severe growing pains.

Many if not most of the people reading this blog are probably aware of the modern orders, both Christian and pagan, who watch over Brigid's flame. From the nuns in the saint's abbey in Kildare to the Daughters of the Flame and Ord Brigideach, the fire that was re-lit in Ireland now burns around the world. I myself am a member of OB and keep a 20-day vigil cycle.

One thing none of the currently extant organizations are is CR. OB and DotF are more generi-pagan. OB has a clear policy of accepting Christians (I can't speak for DotF). This attempt to be all things to all Brigid worshippers leads to a lack of common liturgy and in some respects, a sense of community in the membership in my experience. Others are quite happy there, but I've been backing away from it very slowly aside from lighting the candle when I'm supposed to.

Noises started being made not so long ago about putting together a CR order to keep the flame. Liturgy would be designed, flames distributed to the 19 members, and so forth. This first one is being designed to be all-female in keeping with the pattern established with, at least, the nuns of Kildare. Intellectual honesty compels me to note that there's no hard evidence of the practice starting before the Christians showed up. Nobody's about to ask the nuns to let them do a complex archaeological dig where they have to, say, put their vegetable garden.

Personally speaking, I don't do well in all-female groups unless it's a small social circle of a temporary nature. "Women's space" feels wrong to me, even if only via e-mail. I'm very much female. I just prefer mixed company. So I would not be able to participate in that all-women's CR Brigidine order for long before it got to me. My husband was wanting something similar, so he broached the idea of a gender-blind flamekeeping order in a public space.

I wish I could frame some of the objections in a civil manner. I can't. They weren't civil, even if politely phrased. I don't mean the people who dislike the idea but are willing to admit they aren't Brigid's police force. I might be a bit sad about those, but I'm the last person to expect everyone to agree about how to handle the lore. I mean the ones who started making sweeping pronouncements about how men should never honor Her in that fashion and should be happy with alternate approaches regardless of the call they feel. The fact the nuns of Kildare give the flame to all comers was dismissed as a modern innovation by Roman Catholics who weren't in touch with the real truth behind the ritual.

That's the dark side. The orthodoxy of the convert. Forgetting when it's convenient that we're not working with a set of static images from a dead culture. If an innovation by members of a living Celtic culture is forbidden to members of CR because it contradicts older material, not just something that makes someone uncomfortable but an influence that must be ignored by all right-thinking people, we should stop lying about being willing to engage the modern cultures and make like the Society for Creative Anachronism clone we get accused of being.

Be vewy, vewy quiet...

Humorous twist on the title aside, I'm going to risk being politically incorrect and speak out in favor of Daven and the others I'm aware of who are essaying bunny hunts in pagan fora. Why? Many of the same reasons he cites. Misinformation hurts our image as a valid set of religions. Argue how a bad start can lead to good development all you want, but if that's your response to the hunters, riddle me this. How else are the clueless newbies going to get past the first phase of stupidity? Random flailing, the way the rest of us did? How fair is that? So long as the "hunting" is done with respect, I don't see where the problem is.

We have experienced people in multiple paths, from my own Celtic Reconstructionism to Wicca, Asatru and more, who are able to ease the transition of the uninformed and misinformed to at least disagree with them on a more educated basis. Insisting they should be left alone to stew in their ignorance out of some misinterpretation of kindness is patently ridiculous.

Sloppy studies

I know I'm a bit late to the party in discussing the latest attempt to see if prayer conforms to the scientific method. I still feel like chiming in.

Here's my beef with it. You're talking about attempting to apply the scientific method, which works splendidly for non-sentient forces like gravity, onto a sentient, independently operating entity. It's like attempting to predict humans. You can get autonomic and reflex behaviors pretty well down, but when it comes to the softer stuff, like emotions and whether you can get your neighbor to feed your cat, there are variables science can't eliminate. The will of a deity to act like a performing seal has to be even slipperier than black ice. Frankly, if I were a god and knew those prayers were being done purely in the name of proving my existence, I'd have a bit of fun with it so long as the results didn't mess with the broader picture. And I rather doubt the Christians' god is above such behaviors himself. I respect him as much as I do any god I don't have direct allegiance to. I just find that most gods I deal with like to have their occasional joke. I've seen no evidence that Jehovah's any different. He's just as slaved to the web of nature as the rest of us, too.

The only way I think any prayer studies will ever be trustworthy is if they manage to find a situation in which the targeted deity is required to answer. I don't think that's going to happen.

It's a sad phenomenon

Those who are paying attention to the appropriate areas of modern American journalism have noticed a fairly steady stream of stories about plagiarism in the mainstream media. In CR circles, we're not immune, unfortunately. All the talk about virtues of the ancestors can't trump the desire for self-aggrandizement through theft with some people. Yellojkt's Foma*: A Plague of Plagiarists focuses on the secular world's problems with it, but the words still hold true. Though I suppose a pagan excuse set would have to include items like, "I was doing automatic writing; I can't help it if the god quoted you."

Oddly relieved

I came across the Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters in my wanderings while home sick from work today. I noticed a few interesting details:

1) The majority of human superheroes are Christian.
2) The vast majority of villains are anti-religious, areligious, or atheist.
3) There's only one listed character who has even a tenuous link to Celtic practices.

The first two don't surprise me, but I think the writers are missing some real opportunities by pandering to mainstream American assumptions like that. The third has me relieved. My Asatruar friends have enough of a love-hate relationship to Marvel's depiction of Asgard's finest as it stands. I'm not sure I want to seek out anything depicting Dr. Druid, though. The description on Marvel's site is more than enough for me.

So I have promised, so I have done

I said a few months ago that I wanted to put up a post about the misconceptions surrounding St. Patrick that run riot in the neo-pagan world. I just did this little coredump onto an LJ community. I'll share it here as well to prove I wasn't kidding. It's not as scholarly as I had planned, but it covers the message I want to put out well enough.

---

Let's get this one settled out here and now.

The myths surrounding St. Patrick that need to be squelched have already popped up elsewhere on the Internet this year. Perhaps a bit early; I think the odd winter weather's sprouting them funny.

These are, to my knowledge, the correct statements about the big three misapprehensions about the saint that neo-pagans fling around this time of year and any other time his name comes up. I'm sorry if this runs long; it's a pet peeve of mine.

1) Patrick was not the first Christian in Ireland. He wasn't even the first bishop sent by Rome. That honor went to Palladius, who showed up the year before Patrick did. Best hypothesis is that Christianity first appeared in Ireland sometime in the second or third century of the common era. Palladius was sent to serve as the representative of Rome to those Christians, who were in the south of Ireland. Patrick was sent to start evangelizing the northern Irish. His inflated importance to the Irish Catholic church was due entirely to the Leinster diocese's propaganda. See St. Brigid for the other success of their PR campaign.

2) The snakes he drove out of Ireland were not symbolic of druids, pagans, or goddess worshippers. They were, quite simply, snakes. The tale was lifted from the life story of St. Hilaire, who was said to have evicted the snakes in a section of France, as an explanation of why there are no native snakes in Ireland. That piece of plagiarism explicative text was added in the 10th century. Earliest versions of Patrick's story don't include it. They do, however, include direct claims of him besting druids in magical combat and argument, as well as having druids in his personal retinue. Catholic saints' stories, by and large, do not truck in allegory. To cite a different reptile story, they really did mean to say that St. George killed a dragon. I have never seen anyone who's bothered to study the way Irish saints' lives were written down and embroidered take the snakes to be symbolic of anything. It is a neo-pagan invention to assign that story any degree of symbolism.

3) Most of the druids, and many other pagans, were still around when Patrick died. It took a century or so after his death to finish the conversion process, and it was hardly what you'd call a complete success. This proves he didn't show up with an invading army and cut down all protesters. If he had, I think he'd have been the first Christian martyr of Ireland. They didn't get any blood martyrs there until the Vikings started showing up and poking at monasteries. The conversion process was one of social pressure and legal wrangling to switch power to the churches, not one of swords and bloodshed.

Thank you. Good night. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Please skip the green beer. You don't know where it's been.

The Laws of UPG

I was going to write something else, but the concept of the Laws of Undocumented Personal Gnosis came up during the first one and seemed to be a much better topic than ranting about the Plastic Paddy Racist of the Month (Na Astaraichean, if you want to Google the loon).

The laws, in first draft:
1) No UPG is allowed to contradict known facts about the associated pagan culture and stand as more than a modern invention. It is also probably useless unless you don't care for accuracy.
2) If a UPG does not contradict known facts but cannot be verified within the same body of knowledge, it remains a modern invention. This does not mean it is useless.
3) If a UPG turns out to fit a gap in known tradition in a fashion that does not activate the first law, it is worth pursuing further.
4) If a UPG that meets the second or third law is arrived at by people who have had no real contact with each other, it remains modern but is Shared. This means the group just may be getting somewhere interesting.
5) If a UPG becomes a SPG and said SPG is adopted outside of the groups who first thought of it, it becomes a modern tradition.
6) There is no way for a UPG to become Ancient Lore unless it is kept mostly intact for at least 1,000 years.

Any refinements that y'all might want to suggest, leave them in comments. I'll be grateful.

Time to blog?

I'm at Pantheacon this weekend. Time to blog is at a very tight premium accordingly.

Personal bits update

The contract-to-hire position I mentioned late last month is reaching the "to-hire" part next week. It's a very good environment for me. My boss is mellow about my paganism as far as she's been exposed to it (my description of Pantheacon was met with, "Oh, that sounds pretty cool"), the company encourages its people to do more than act like a cog, and I see lots of room for growth in my career there. They know I blog. They don't care as long as I'm not divulging company secrets or abusing company time to post.

This does mean my thoughts of migrating to a different blogging software package and domain are in abeyance for now, though. I'm not chafing at this setup so much that my lesser quantity of free time is crying to be sacrificed on that particular altar.

A lovely debunking

Every so often, Barry Fell's claims about ogam in the United States come around. Monroe Oppenheimer and William Wirtz did those of us who have large issues with Fell a big favor by laying out exactly where he went completely off the deep end.

New with potential

Brehon Law Project is a new blog which looks to serve as an adjunct to the website and real-life symposia on the subject. I hope it lasts a good long time.

Personal note

If any of you are planning on being at Pantheacon this year, I'll be around. My husband and I co-edit the convention newsletter. We're also participating in two rituals. On Friday night, we'll be working the Pomba Gira ritual. I'll be on stage helping with the singing. Sunday evening's Brigid ritual includes me as one of the three Brigids. Both promise to be excellent, even if I do say so myself. I'll also be hovering around from place to place, as is my wont at Pantheacon.

Identity politics of a different sort

One of the more personally disheartening divides in modern Celtic paganism is over the matter of gay rights. One individual who identifies as Gaelic Traditionalist (I'm led to believe some GTs would rather he stop making them look stupid, thus the dodge language) recently snarked that "the bridge crew of the USS CR" hauled its personal politics into Celtic religion along with them. I put it as "them" because I wasn't there for the start of it. I just happen to agree wholeheartedly with keeping Celtic reconstructionism a safe place to be queer.

In a large respect, the pro-gay stance of CR/senistrognata is indeed an import with no easy proof our ancestors would have felt comfortable about it. Same-sex marriage was impossible under brehon law, albeit for heavily biological reasons. Marriage and children were linked to where some of the lesser degrees of it were designed to protect the interests of both the mother and the offspring gotten by a one-night stand or a rape. Brehon law is mostly silent on the topic of homosexuality. The modern concept of a queer identity was non-existent then. But the fact some people had same-sex relations was well known. One of the valid grounds for divorce under brehon law was discovering your spouse was only interested in having sex with members of their own gender. My readings in early Irish Christian penitentials has led me to discover very specific descriptions of same-sex activities that were frowned upon by the Church, so the behavior was religiously proscribed under that tradition. But the pre-Christian attitude in Ireland is not noted.

Greek writings about the behavior of Gaulish soldiers may shed some light, though. Those men had no problem with at least situational homosexuality with little respect for military rank in their choice of partners. We're not talking Theban pair-bonding, which was blatantly pederastic. The writer made it sound as if the soldiers' idea of a good night off would be fit for a Castro District porn store shelf. Was it just because the women weren't there? Quite possibly. But that to me indicates a more flexible attitude toward sexual behavior than that of modern times. Your average American male would see extended time away from women as a reason to learn new variations on what his dominant hand can do. I've also seen a translation of Roman graffiti in which one man declared he was abandoning all attempts at dating women in favor of men. No identity labels were involved, just a statement of behavior.

It would be easy to romanticize the situation based on scanty evidence. At the same time, I am hard put to see where refusing to treat queers as equals is inherently more Celtic than embracing the concept. And if it's more Celtic to sneer at the notion of supporting rights for all regardless of sexual orientation or identity, then I think I'd rather be American for that aspect of my beliefs. Self-hatred is quite definitely not one of the Celtic virtues, and I know what I'd rather be Gaelically incorrect about.

A small poke at presumption

Circle Jerk at the Square Dance invites people to play Spot the persecution. I see in this both a critique of the fundamentalist right wing of modern Christianity and perhaps an unsubtle reminder to some of my fellow pagans about the difference between social difficulty and persecution.

Personal update

I am about to start a contract-to-hire position performing software QA at a startup. I realize I've been a once-a-week poster already, but it's possible this will drop even further down my priority list depending on how the rest of my life fares around my day job. It may be a hiccup where I only do the first three weeks and the company decides I'm not worth keeping after all. I may have more leisure at the job than I've been warned about. Either way, I wanted to make note of the change in case I get even more quiet than usual here. I'll try to maintain some contact with blogging, though. I've been enjoying this.

They will know we are pagans by... what?

I mentioned in my last entry that I've embarked on a dedication to Manannán mac Lir. One of the conditions of the dedication is my wearing a symbol of it on a daily basis. After due meditation, I chose a mermaid as the symbol. Other events confirmed that I chose properly. So far, there's been no reaction to my wearing one around my neck. I recently added what I will charitably call a fan art cloisonne pin of Jessica Rabbit as a mermaid to my purse to make sure I have a mermaid no matter what (I sometimes forget to wear the necklace). But should someone ask why, I am duty-bound to answer.

This leads me to contemplate what it means to have a closer walk with my god and being more open about it than I used to be. It's sensitizing me to how others approach it in their lives. I'm one of the last people to think we need to evangelize the unfaithful. One of the aspects of my tradition that I appreciate is how we don't think we have all the answers. And I know there are people in situations where being out isn't a wise idea. But I think some of us, myself included, can be too cautious about this.

I live in one of the most liberal areas of the United States. I am also primarily surrounded by free-thinkers in my social circles, whether they're pagan, atheist, Christian or Jewish. I still get touchy about revealing some bits of my beliefs. That's common in pagan circles. I see people online who claim to be pagan but never discuss their faith, even in their own blogs. There's a wide difference between admitting what some of your beliefs are and sharing oathbound material, but some pagans don't seem to want to do even that much

I do know there are places where it isn't safe to admit much. But as with the gay rights movement, which I've had contact with longer than I've been a pagan, the question comes down to this: how long does keeping silent act as a safeguard, and how long does it act like a means of maintaining the status quo? Does our refusal to admit what we are perpetuate the reasons to keep it to ourselves? And when does the burden of speaking the truth outweigh other considerations?