Why?

Someone posted a long screed to a pagan mailing list I'm on that he titled, "Why are We Druids?" In it, he proposed to speak for all druids by going on about how we worship nature as if that were the only reason for the concept to even exist.

I realize that the term druid has been ripped from its moorings so long that the original connection points have rotted into uselessness. I'm not annoyed at the nature-boy approach being dubbed druidry per se so much as I am at the claim all who use the term mean the same thing he means by it. I have protested the claim that all pagans practice Earth-based spirituality for a long time. I for one do not. I see conservation and related behaviors as sensible. I also know my ancestors practiced slash-and-burn agriculture and thought midden heaps were just peachy. This is why I see green paganism as a valid modern innovation instead of a return to the way the old ones would have wanted it.

I've also been making my way through Barry Raftery's Pagan Celtic Ireland recently. It contains a drawing that reconstructs the probable look of a pre-Christian temple they know was built on Emain Macha. And where there's a permanent temple, I know there were druids who were happy to be out from the rain leading sacrifices under its roof. Not so much with the communing with trees there unless you consider dead timber to be the same as an oak grove for the sake of argument. And while I can enjoy an outdoor ritual, I have issues with sunscreen and blood sacrifices to mosquitos being mandatory to my pagan experience.

So, I grant that neither the nature lover nor myself can really claim an unbroken line of descent from Cathbad in any realistic form. I was still not represented by his words. I figured my definition of druid is as good as his and posted it. To wit:

"I am a druid because I am a priestess of the Celtic gods and serve a tribe (small and scattered, to be sure) of like-worshipping people."

It's a definition I don't see used too often, truth to tell. But it's mine, and I like it.

Turning on your own kind

I like the idea of putting the internecine squabbling that happens in pagan circles in some sort of perspective. But frankly, people vandalizing and committing arson against a Christian church because its denomination supports same-sex marriage is not the way I want it.

That may be a terribly self-centered way to look at it, but I'm stunned at the whole thing. We've all been aware that the hatred of fundamentalist right-wing Christianity against what they perceive as non-Christians has even led to murder for some time. But now, some of them are turning on their own kind. I knew that sort hated disagreement in the ranks, but that's going beyond the pale.

I've heard noises about liberal and moderate Christians rising up to voice their objections to the fundamentalist fringe that's trying to set itself up as the only Christian voice in the world. I hope and pray this galvanizes them into stronger and faster action. It's wrong when pagans turn against each other over doctrinal or procedural differences. It's heresy bordering on apostasy when members of one sect of a faith physically attack another's house of worship over similar conflicts.

A declaration

Because...

• My ancestors served this country with honor and sometimes shed their blood for it and the ideals upon which it was founded...
• I believe the precepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are compatible with my faith...
• I know the Founding Fathers did not consider polytheism to be a sign of a bad American...
• I know "my country, right or wrong" means "It's my country whether it's behaving itself according to its ideals or not" instead of "love it or leave it"...
• I vote in elections and try to keep myself informed on the issues...
• I raise my voice against would-be tyrants regardless of their political bent...
• I remember that this nation was founded by people on wildly different sides of divisive issues, which means respect for diversity has been part of our ideals all along...

For all those and many other reasons, I call myself a pagan patriot.

Happy Independence Day.

Music, Maestro, please!

Jason Pitzl-Waters tipped his readership off to an article on the Grievous Angel blog that suggests modern pagans look to house music as a source of expression of our energies. GA considers it a more appropriate form for at least his own expression of faith than the usual folk, Goth or rock music. A lot of GA’s point is how Dionysian disco and its descendants are, a mood far closer to his own experience of paganism than that provided by the aforementioned genres.

In my own life, I work with ecstatic practices. I am deeply aware of how a driving beat can help pull you out of your logical brain and into a deeper communion with spirit in whatever form you're reaching for. It also leads me to appreciate the times when I'm not swimming in a Dionysian river. I want my rituals to be in touch with spirit. But I don't always want to be overwhelmed by it. So, while I do like the idea of house music as a pagan form, I don't see it as the pagan form. I think there's plenty of room for more, just as there's room for both group and individual ritual, trance work and feasts. Think of it as an adjunct to the "many roads, one mountain" concept for religions, only there are many mountains. Different music takes you different places, and there are lots of good places to go. Only approaching your faith on one vector leads to stultification if you're too rigid and chaos if you're not careful. I know a lot of pagans rejected the faiths of their childhoods because it felt too restrictive. It is always possible to run too far the other direction.

Dressing for success

Chas Clifton made note in his blog about the tendency in many pagan circles for people to dress like they're in the SCA when they attend rituals for a much more modern religion (and in some cases, for the modern iteration of older ones). I'm not one of those people who wears such attire, though I confess it's at least in small part because I just don't have the gear yet. Peer pressure has its way with me sometimes. But I don't think it's required. The notion of dressing as was fashionable when the tradition started gives CRs like myself an interesting conundrum. Do we attempt Iron Age fashion, or give up on that notion entirely and aim for what was trendy when we started?

Of course, as my last post would attest, that means we'd have to dress like the characters in The Breakfast Club. I call dibs on Ally Sheedy.

Happy proto-anniversary to us

Twenty years ago, a group of Celtic-minded pagans met up at the Pagan Spirit Gathering and compared notes, performed rituals, and otherwise started to build bonds that in many cases have continued to this day. Erynn Laurie's founding of the Nemeton-L email list a few years later sparked further developments, including the creation of Imbas. And the ball's just kept on rolling from there.

It's been and continues to be fractious in some ways, but by continuing to talk, build, and listen, we also are growing a tradition with solid footing. And much of it started then.

Go raibh míle math agat, mo chairde. Without that meeting and what followed, I know my life and the lives of many others would not be the same, and we'd be poorer for it.

Say what?

One of my LiveJournal friends tipped me off to this lovely piece of equal-opportunity humor, Things You'll Never Hear a Pagan Say. I could argue two of their four for Celtic tradition, but I think I'd wind up proving their point on one and will really have to spare the other for a different time. Playing "who was a god" with insular Celtic lore is a game for a different day.

A Midsummer Eve's moment

First, in case anyone wondered if I was being late, my Celtic League calendar says today is Midsummer Eve instead of the solstice being midsummer. Considering tomorrow is St. John's Day and there's a good bit of evidence that the British Isles Celts of at least the post-Christianization era considered that day to be midsummer, I don't see a problem with doing it myself. If there's one area where I feel a certain common ground with Celtic traditionalists despite the divides between them and reconstructionists, it's where we both believe more recent cultural patterns are just as valid a source as the older material when it comes to customs and practices. I'm attempting to build a more Celtic practice in the here and now, after all.

According to some archaeologists, the Stonehenge site wasn't used for summer solstice rituals. Rather, it was a popular spot for winter solstice rites. This is based in no small part on the remains of pig's teeth found on the site, which indicate the animals were killed while not quite a year old. That sort of pig is born in spring, so the teeth would be much smaller if they had been Midsummer sacrifices.

I am pretty sure I know how the druids of Britain will react to this data. They'll go merrily forward as they are now. Not that I blame them too much. They'd have to invest in waterproof robes to use the site in December. But if anyone thinks the concept of an outdoor festival in England in any December seems odd, they may wish to consider the evidence that England's weather changed over the centuries. After all, they used to grow wine there. That requires a more Mediterranean climate. Living in one as I do, I can assure you that a sunny December day can be pleasant enough to be outside in so long as you're wearing the right clothing. The Neolithic equivalent of a light jacket and/or sweater would be adequate, especially with a huge bonfire to keep you warm.

Horse of a different language

There's an interesting mental twitch that I get over one of my side projects these days. I'm in the cast of a production of Peter Shaffer's Equus. For those who don't know the plot, it focuses on a boy who gouges out the eyes of six horses and the psychiatrist who's trying to figure out why. It's a somewhat heavy-handed look at belief, materialism, and normalcy. I've been cast as an understudy to the horses (no, we're all the front ends, thanks for not asking). Aside from the brain-eating nature of being in my first play since 1987, the work I've been doing to evoke a horse has been interesting.

I'm not the sort of person who had a major horse fetish growing up. This makes me unusual amongst women of my race, but that's a familiar state for me. I've had my first opportunities to associate with horses thanks to this show, and I really did enjoy it. I'm having to think about a somewhat alien mentality and bring it to life. I'm also doing some spiritual work to find myself a horse to more fully flesh out the character. Shaffer purists would probably find that annoying. The seven of us who are doing the work find it helps us connect more with the show.

What I find keeps coming to me is how "equus" and Epona are so closely related. When the boy calls out to his great horse god-slave, I sense a gender-bend inherent in the situation that perhaps Shaffer didn't see. I feel the cross-connection that led to the Romans adopting Epona from the Gauls as a goddess without attaching her to one of their usual pantheon, the way most Gaulish gods were. This may be why as I work on a character for my horse, she grows more and more Celtic. Irish, to be fair, as I'm very much not in touch with Gaulish Celtic lore. But in my experience, that's how it flies sometimes. The traveler takes the recognizable route. Destination as-yet undetermined, but the ride's been good so far.

Seeking the old ways

MTFierce raised the following question in a comment:

The thought that someone has to worship "as their ancestors did" always surprised me. If people can change, and social structures can change, why not gods and rituals?

One of the main points to reconstructionist pagan religion is worshipping within the cultural matrix that the gods were being addressed in when their traditions flourished the first time. Mapping the rituals directly to how it was done in the past is occasionally awkward for the well-documented traditions and impossible for others. But there are good reasons to do it to the best of our ability for those of us who feel the need to do so. And as the gods have had some hand in the situation, guessing at their motives isn't too far out of line.

Starting from the presumption that gods change because people change, it would easily follow that gods, like people, are creatures of habit. One doesn't exist without the other. They get used to certain things being done in certain ways. Some are more prone to accept innovation than others. Attempting some degree of continuity to the older approaches gives the god something familiar to work with and grants the practitioner a certain degree of contact with tradition. When dealing with a cultural matrix other than the one someone was raised in, the contact helps deepen their understanding of that culture. This is not a reason to remain hidebound, but it is a reason to base their innovations on their best understanding of the root culture.

Putting it another way, while the gods may be fine with the new and different, they may also get nostalgic for the older ways. People have nostalgia fits all the time. It would then follow that some people would be led to follow the gods in a way that at least somewhat approximates the original forms of worship. Plenty of people will invoke gods into rituals that have little or nothing in common with the ways those gods were first dealt with. If nobody tried for the older ways, the new ones would be all the gods ever received. It might be fine for some, but I highly doubt all of them are that flexible. Most humans aren't, especially if they didn't choose their displacement. From where I sit, gods are closer to forcibly emigrated people than voluntary ex-patriates as a rule if their pagan roots have been stepped away from by any form of coercion. If you're away from home because of reasons outside your control and the new system has little room for you, reminders of what you used to take comfort in will matter.

This is why I think the gods respond both to the new and the attempts at the old. The innovators who approach the gods from outside their original culture at least call their names and pay attention to them regardless of the familiarity of the framework. Those who strive toward the older ways carry some version of the gods' old reality they can recognize. In tandem, the gods get a fair amount of attention they'd lack otherwise.

The above is no excuse to claim a new ritual is ancient. But it is part of why people strive for it. The reasons people are willing to lie about their rituals and others are willing to believe them is a topic for another post.

Followup: Times gets it right

The New York Times printed a correction of their earlier statement about Asatru:

An article on Wednesday about a Supreme Court decision upholding a law that requires prison officials to accommodate the religious needs of inmates included an incomplete description of the Asatru religion practiced by some inmates in the case. Based on the brief the Ohio attorney general submitted to the court, the article characterized Asatru as advocating violence by the white race against the "mud races." But other Asatru followers say that the use that some violent and white-supremacist prisoners make of the religion is a perversion of its peaceful and nonracist beliefs.

I confess the dodge language has me a bit concerned, though. There's ample proof that Asatru is not racist in its politics or practices as a general rule. Claiming it's a matter of what its non-prisoner adherents claim versus the court brief is privileging the latter. But it could be far worse. They could have stood by the original statement. And anyone who bothers to read the corrections will be aware of the conflict, putting them miles ahead of a lot of people in their knowledge of Norse paganism. And yep, that's my faint praise department rising up from committee to give its report.

He reviewed the book so I don't have to

Over the years, there have been several reviews of what may be druidry's answer to Plan 9 From Outer Space, 21 Lessons of Merlyn by Douglas Monroe. Ceisiwr Serith wrote what has to be the most thorough one anyone should dare essay. With page numbers provided for every error Serith chose to acknowledge (trust me, there are others), anything I'd have to say would be redundant.

Samples to whet your appetite:

"To those with an interest or fascination in THE MATTER OF BRITIAN: [his caps] Arthurian Lore (fact or fantasy), Druidism and the mysticism of Merlyn -- this book is a 'first of a kind.' Now aren't we just special.

The "3 Keys of Druidic Mastery" are "To know, to dare, to keep silent." Gee, all those ceremonial magicians got it wrong; they included "to will."

And one last point that's really close to my heart, just to close this out:

"Llyyr ab Manannan" I don't know if the Welsh is right, but I do know that "Manannan" was an Irish god, whose Welsh cognate was "Manawydan," and that he was the son of Lir, not the other way round.

Now that's credible reporting

It was announced a few days ago that the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that prison officials should make reasonable accomodations to allow inmates to practice their religion of choice. The New York Times' article about it (not linked due to its pending disappearance from their free archives) had this to say about the Ohio prisoners who brought the suit:

The five Ohio inmates who brought the case belong to nonmainstream religions, including one, Asatru, that preaches that the white race needs to use violence and terrorism to prevail over the "mud races."

Nice to know. I'll be sure to watch for the Times to point out that Christianity is a religion that supports eliminating a woman's right to vote.

Semi-vacation

I know I'm not one of those multiple posts per day sort of bloggers, but I wanted to note that I'm facing a few time pressures as of late and am not likely to pop up much until next week. I'm going on a short trip, and I'm also trying to get more focused at work.

But I will be back. Maybe I'll take some time and compose my first book review offline and pop back up sooner than I think I will.

Part of the issue?

The trend in my topical posts thus far, as well as a fair bit of what I see put forward by other Celtic reconstructionists, runs toward the negative and reactive more than the positive or proactive. We have several essays floating around about topics like "why Wicca isn't Celtic" or discussing what we do more in the context of what we don't do. Which, again, tends to run "how CR is not Wicca."

On the flip side, when someone comes along and says, "This is how I do CR," how much time do we spend flaying it for what we see as inconsistencies instead of at least starting with a few kudos for doing it at all? I'm as guilty as the next person of following this approach, mind you. This is as much about my way of doing as it is anyone else's.

I am not too sure how to deal with it. Most of us are going to face continued repetition of the usual modern material presented as ancient lore. New variations will pop up, such as the "ancient Celtic ritual of Merlin calling up the bear" that I attended at a pagan convention for reasons unrelated to wanting to bond with Mother Bear. And that kind of nonsense needs to be called for what it is.

But if we can't ameliorate our criticisms with compliments when they're called for, it's small wonder I've seen people state that they called themselves CR until they pulled the broom out of their ass. Now, some people will resent being told they can't get away with calling modern material ancient no matter how much sugar you add to the medicine. I just hope that I, along with others, will continue to work on treating the well-meaning but wrong as if they are educatable instead of inscrutably dumb.

As the ancients would have it?

We've all heard, and many of us have said, that the cultures predating Christianity knew how to live in harmony with the Earth. In fact, environmentalism is often described as part of how we honor the ways of our ancestors. Surely they wouldn't have wrecked the land around them in order to achieve a selfish end. The more I look at Irish myth and ancient history, though, the more I see that as a lovely fantasy.

The myth that points to a contradiction between the "go green" approach of neopagans and our ancestors is the history of Lughnasadh. Lugh wanted to grow grain. The best land was forested. Did he decide to abandon the idea of bread in favor of harvesting acorns? No. Tailltiu, Lugh's foster mother, single-handedly wiped out the Forest of Breg as a personal favor to her darling boy. The exertion killed her, and Lugh founded the feast day in honor of her achievements and what it provided the TdD. The main thrust of the holiday is the start of harvest. It wouldn't have been possible without one serious act of clear-cutting.

I realize the myth wasn't written down until after the conversion process had been in full swing for several centuries. But unlike the mythical and misinterpreted snakes, we know Ireland used to be very heavily forested. The peat bogs which are part of the current definition of the Irish landscape resulted from Neolithic forest-clearing practices. The Tailltiu myth is thus, if nothing else, an allegory for the rise of farming as brought in by settlers from elsewhere in Europe.

This is not to say that modern pagans should abandon environmentalism. Hardly. It's a very important approach, and more necessary now than it ever has been. The reasons, however, are not easily supportable by claiming "our ancestors would want it this way." Our ancestors used the technology they had to make their lives more comfortable and developed more efficient means of getting there. If they could have predicted the results of their deforestation, would they have done it anyway? I personally suspect that can only be answered with a question. Were they human beings?

Alliances

I received a comment off of my last substantive post that raised a thought or two with me. Greenheart wrote in part:

In other words how about more and stronger polytheist alliances? Real world, not cyber, and no, not for eclectic purposes but to say, in one voice,"One god is not enough"

I'm all in favor of making alliances. But "one god is not enough?" For whom? I have no problem with monotheism the same way I have no problem with monogamy. The fact I don't practice either is purely a statement of my own needs, preferences and biases. I will not tell anyone who believes either is the way they should live that they are wrong. I will only demur from following if they try to talk me into it.

And what sort of alliance are we discussing, anyway? Political? Social? What will we do once we form one? Most politically active pagans are already using what's out there. We write letters, stage and participate in marches, join organizations, donate money and time, and vote. And if it's political, whose politics? There are pagans in just about every organization you can think of, including conservative ones. Many pagans cling to the belief that every one of us is a lockstep progressive. It's a prejudice of many of them that all pagans should be. I for one will not give in to it. The world is far more complex than any extreme would like people to believe.

On that note, while I've been aware of the Dominionists longer than some people, I'm not yet convinced the threat they pose is more than minor. I've been looking at some of the more secular right-wing voices, such as Instapundit, in a deliberate attempt to get information from more than one perspective. I do see the influence the Dominionists want to have. I also see many Republicans getting increasingly tired of them as well as some of President Bush's domestic policies. More and more, they notice that their party of limited government is being taken over by people who think "limited" means "limit everyone else but us." Ignoring the radicals won't make them go away, no, but I think there are ways of using the mutual distaste.

While more left-leaning people will not agree with the right-leaning folks about many things, if you want to talk alliances, this may be an opening we can use. Perhaps having a nice sit-down chat or twelve with the true conservatives about how we just want to be left in peace to live our lives as citizens with full and equal rights in exchange for helping to get the ultra-right-wingers out of their party might not be out of place. If you doubt it can be done, consider this. The Economist spent lots of pages explaining why same-sex marriage would be a good idea. I think that alone shows there are ways of arguing liberty with conservatives that gets us somewhere other than the wrong side of the door. After all, some of them already agree.

There are a lot of people who would be ill-served by a Cromwellesque takeover of the US government. Sexual and religious minorities are not the only ones. And I think we'd do well to remember that when we express our concerns about the latter-day Roundheads.

Question for the RSS feed readers

Do you prefer the entries to appear as just the first few lines, or would you rather the whole thing be posted? I've set it to short for now, but I should be able to change it. Let me know (I'll check the LJ feed as well as the blog itself).

Ancient, modern, verified

Ronald Hutton, a professor at the University of Bristol (UK) and author of over eleven books about pagan and medieval Europe with a focus on the British Isles and the Celts, was interviewed a couple of years ago by the Druid Network. He had this to say about modern Druidry and its provenance:

My line on this is consistently that we know so little of certainty about the ancient Druids that really all we have is a set of literary stereotypes of them left by foreign or Christian authors. All of the latter may be wrong or misleading. This means that nobody is in a position to tell modern Druids that what they are doing is inauthentic, but it is equally true that no modern Druids are in a position to declare that what they do is the authentic ancient tradition. We're all working with flawed and unreliable images, and doing our best with them.

I admit to finding this argument compelling on some levels. He's not far off, though some would say this soundbite oversimplifies what we have of pre-Christian Celtic material. Hutton is certainly not the sort who'd be unaware of the volume of material, though. One thing nobody can deny is that no extant texts of druidic rituals performed by any tribe assigned the label of Celtic have surfaced as such. Christian Guyonvarc'h's analysis of the Colloquy of the Sages sees in its pages a codified test to determine the fitness of a druid. Past that, most of what we have are archaeological analysis and folk practices. Some of the latter might be time-degraded versions of druid-led traditions. I for one could see such events as the hobby horse parades on St. Stephen's Day as older ritual turned into children's play. But it's not what it once was, and we can't be sure what that original form was without a lot of speculation.

This is where Hutton's argument comes in. We have bits and pieces. Guesswork and maybes. Some items are less likely to have been part of the Celtic mentality than others, such as the maiden-mother-crone Triple Goddess of Wicca or vegan sensibilities. But some of the lines that get drawn in the sand in some pagan circles are even less stable than the sand. One of the claims in Celtic reconstructionist circles often taken as gospel is, "The Celts didn't work with the directions." However, they felt the compass points sufficiently important that the king's residence at Tara in Ireland was built with five directions in mind as an analogy to the five provinces (the four cardinal points plus the center). Each province was assigned a direction as well. This is not prima facie evidence they called the directions, but it is proof they knew they were there and found them of some significance. Any opinions about their usability in Celtic ritual are just that. Opinions.

Nobody has a direct line on ancient lore as it was before the Romans and monks showed up to change the Celts forever. We're all doing "best guess" work, even the people who claim they're hewing closest to tradition by leaving things out when they can't be verified in three sources that postdate the Great Hunger. I think it's one of the dangers and strengths of Celtic reconstructionist paganism. We stand at risk of needing to re-invent our wheels whenever the theories of academia run headlong into our personal practices. But in the quest to create a tradition rooted in what we know of the Celts that fits the world we live in today, we are not shackled to ritual patterns that might not make sense without, say, full fluency in Old Irish, the way some mystery traditions' rites are not fully comprehensible without knowing their source. It runs the risk of importation of truly incompatible items as well, but that is where the rigor of scholarship comes in. It's a delicate balance. I can only hope my fellow CR pagans and myself continue to see the value in flexibility paired with a just caution.

Out into the blogosphere

I've received my first comment, with thanks to the fine host of The Wild Hunt. I've added a few more pagan blogs that caught my eye and held it to the list. More will pop up over time.

I'm considering an occasional "Books I've Read So You Don't Have To" segment, thanks to my perverse tendency to get what I see as the schlocky side of pagan texts. I realize I may get some people angry with me for it. I think it's a bit late for me to worry about that, considering my role in Celtic paganism. I've seen the harsh comments about Celtic reconstructionism in certain circles, and I'm attempting to resurrect one of its first organizations. I'll just have to be careful about the quality of the company that refuses to keep mine.