Spirituality, Community, and Diversity

Anyone who's been in the modern pagan or polytheist community for more than, say, 5 minutes will probably have noticed that we're a pretty contentious bunch. We are, in point of fact, usually much better at splitting hairs than at building bridges, something that I've written about more than once. You see I'm of the opinion that we should worry less about whether or not the person next to us folds their altar cloth left to right or vice versa*, and more about whether we share the same Gods and the same general goals and outlooks.

If you go by some people its impossible to interact with or associate with people who don't follow the same spiritual path you do, who don't believe what you believe, or do things the same way you do. Others are a bit more lenient, willing to associate with people who are similar enough in the most important theology. Why is this impossible? Well the reasons vary, from concern that it will offend the Gods to be around people who don't believe in them correctly to the idea that it just personally offends the individual to have to put up with someone so different in philosophy.

I was never that person by the way, with my liminal ways and my friends all over everywhere. Even before the great Pagan-Polytheist Divide I was that person with friends who were Christian, Jewish, Atheist, Wiccan, Thelemic, Satanists, trad witches, Recons - that person who would gladly get into conversations with almost anyone. Of course I myself am someone who straddles worlds, identifying as more than one distinct thing. As to whether that's a strength or a weakness, well that depends on who you ask. Some people praise me for it, others...not so much. I'd argue though that whether its a strength or a weakness, its a flexibility that is important in a world that is constantly growing more complex.

I'm getting ready for the 3rd annual Morrigan's Call Retreat, coming up in less than two weeks. As part of this Retreat I'll be acting as a priest/ess in several rituals for a diverse group of people with a diverse group of co-facilitators. In the past my co-priestesses have included people on many different paths whose views agree and disagree with my own to varying degrees - and yet our ability to work together has always been good and the rituals themselves have touched people in meaningful ways. We come together to offer a conduit for the Morrigan, both to be honored and to reach out to those honoring Her. And it has always worked, and she always seems to appreciate it. I would argue that our diversity is an undeniable strength and that our ability to serve our community comes directly from it.

Spirituality is ultimately a solitary thing, even when we practice it in a group because it is something that lives in our heart. Our spirituality may be expressed around others or in a group setting some small amount of the time but we are always within ourselves contemplating and doing whatever it is we do in our daily lives. This 24/7 spirituality is far more important, I think, than what we may do in the small amount of time we spend religiously with others. No two people then are exactly identical in their spirituality, although they may be very, very similiar.

Our community is diverse, whether we want it to be or not, because no matter how much we try to surround ourselves with people just like us, people who believe like us and act like us, we will always fail. Its not human nature to have that much sameness, nor looking at history has it ever been. At the height of the Norse pagan period there were atheists among the Norse. There is an open, unanswerable question about whether the Tuatha De Danann are the aos sí or part of but distinct from them, and each person has to decide for themselves how the Irish Gods fit into the beliefs about the Good Folk. In spirituality there are always going to be more open questions than answered ones, and more than we'd like to admit the answers we do have are less certainty than faith. We believe what we choose to believe based on our own experiences and knowledge. And so each person has slightly different views and opinions. We are diverse.

And there is beauty in that.

*that's just a snarky example to illustrate how extreme the divisions can get. As far as I know altar cloth folding isn't an actual source of contention between anyone

10 Questions About My Fiction

And now, as they say, for something completely different....
I thought it would be fun to switch things up a little bit and do something for people who enjoy my fiction. For those unfamiliar I have a four book series called 'Between the Worlds' which is something between an urban fantasy and paranormal romance with a lot of Celtic mythology and folklore thrown into an alternate reality mix. Its something I really love to write and it gives me a creative break from my non-fiction and translation work. So for today's blog I asked people to give me 10 questions relating to the series that I'd answer here.

1. Where did you get the idea for merging the two worlds? - Where I live we sometimes get really foggy days. I was driving across a bridge on one of these days and just started thinking that it was like something out of an old fairy-story, where someone wanders into the mist and out of our world. And I started thinking of what it would be like if you could just drive from our world into Fairy, and from there the idea of the two worlds being physically merged into one world grew and developed.

2. What was growing up in elven society like for Jess and Bleidd? - Elven society is very rigidly structured, and very matriarchal in a way that favors women (much the same as we could say patriarchy favors men). So for both of them growing up male in that sort of society means having limited control over your own life. On the same hand the elves are the highest ranking beings in their world so they were also in a social situation to have a lot of pride about who they were and their society. 
   Bleidd had a lot of freedom and an easier time for much of his life than most because he had an older sister, which meant that his only potential value to his mother was either in being used for an alliance marriage or doing something that reflected well on his family. He was very close to his sister, and she favored him in a way that allowed him a kind of unprecedented freedom. Because he had magical talent he joined the Elven Guard and trained as a mage. When his sister died he was already well established in the Guard and not in a position for his family to manipulate as easily. He's a bit unusual in that respect, and a lot of his personality reflects that he was given more free reign and allowed more individuality than most men in his society. 
   Jess, being the second son out of only two children, and having no particular magical talents (in a world where that extra talent counts for a lot) had a harder time. Jess really is a product of his society - the Law means a lot to him, as does doing the right thing, and being a part of a community. 

3. And what it was like for Allie growing up? - Allie's childhood is complicated. She spent the first 10 years or so with her mother, in the Dark court, caught in this weird place of being female and so privileged as her mother's heir, but also half human and so running into a lot of prejudice from her extended family, who see humans as even lower than the other Fey. Allie has an older brother, something that's alluded to in the fourth book, but without giving away any spoilers for future books I'll say he isn't particularly nice, and he is very ambitious. Her mother believed that if anything happened to her Allie would probably end up - one way or another - as someone's puppet and so she gave her to her human father when Allie was 10. She lived with him for two years, happily, until he died in a car accident, then she went to live with her grandmother, where she faced the same basic problem she had with her mother's family but reversed. Her grandmother and cousin were very prejudiced against elves, so Allie has always lived with a message that her ancestry is not acceptable, which is why she takes the rather risky approach of trying to 'pass' as human. She's never had much long term stability in her life, so that's something that she really strives for.

4. You have the traditional two courts of Fairy, but they seem different. How do the Dark and Light courts work? - In the reality of Between the Worlds, before the two worlds joined (in 1914) things were basically as we know them as far as human history and what we have from folklore goes. There were two main power structures in Fairy, the Light court which is generally pretty well inclined towards humans and the Dark which isn't. The Light court is structured based on Laws and an adherence to social order; the Dark is structured based on power and the strong ruling over the weak. Where the Light prides itself on being civilized to a fault, the Dark is brutal; both can be cruel in different ways. When the two worlds merged there was a huge and drawn out war, or more precisely many wars all over the world which became that reality's equivalent to the World War. It went on for decades, into the 1930's, and only finally ended when both sides realized that no one was going to win and the only viable option was detente. Because the Dark court had fought harder and suffered higher causalities the Light court was able to basically pull off a political coup within the existing Fairy holdings (their equivalent of countries) and force the Dark court into submission and going along with the idea of peace. The result however was that the Dark court went underground and became, functionally, very much like the Mafia during prohibition or a similar well organized criminal organization. They still exist, and they still believe that the world should belong to those powerful enough to rule it without mercy, so their long term goal is to regain enough influence to take back their former power. 

5. Why do most elves who are Outcast die? Why didn't Bleidd? - Elven society is based on extended family units and elves are taught from birth that one should only risk strong emotions like love on blood kin, because anything else is too fragile to be trusted. They are generally extremely loyal to their own immediate families, extending out to their clans by degrees. Being Outcast is considered one of the most severe possible punishments because it legally severs these ties and leaves the person alone and with no support system in a world that doesn't normally have that possibility. Most elves who are Outcast die because they cannot process the psychological impact of the extreme change from one to the other - the solitude and isolation from society -, and because they have been taught that its better to die than live with that kind of shame.
  Bleidd, however, is unusually independent for an elf, especially a male, and he is very stubborn and a bit self centered ( a significant flaw in his culture actually). He survives initially because he's so angry at the injustice of being wrongfully punished that refusing to die is his way of metaphorically flipping the bird at the people who cast him out. As time goes on he develops enough basic coping skills to adjust to being outside the society, but he also heavily self medicates with alcohol and excessive self-indulgence. 

6. Why can't the Elven Guard captains get married? - Because the job is one that consumes their lives 24/7 and they cannot have the distraction of divided loyalties; you can't have a marriage contract and commit to trying to give someone else a child when you are literally working whenever you are awake. It is however a job that you can voluntarily step down from, and become simply a mage in the Guard if you wanted to. 

7. Ashwood is a human town that is stuck between the two worlds - are there any Fairy equivalents in other places, where its a Fey town that is the bordertown? - Yes, although that is less common. Bordertowns in general are rare and act as the points of passage between the joined worlds, like bridges, since even though the worlds are joined you still can't simply walk from an earth area to a Fey one. Most Bordertowns are human because there were just more human places than Fey ones when the worlds joined. 

8. Why does magic effect technology? - Basically magical energy is very similar to electrical energy, enough that the presence of magic tends to overcharge and short out anything electrical. In order for things like computers, cell phones, toasters, cars, etc., to work in a Bordertown they have to be shielded from the magical energy, which ironically can only be done using magic. There are people whose entire careers are based on this.
   Even with that though the fully magical atmosphere of Fairy makes it almost impossible to keep anything electrical working for long, without using a specially designed Farady cage*, so the amount of tech in the Fairy Holdings is extremely limited.  

9. Are the spells in the books real? - I try to make all the magic in the books as real as possible, including the spells. 

10. If elves have both magical healing and human medical technology now, why do they still have such a high maternal and infant death rate in childbirth? - Magic and tech still have their limits in this world, and magic doesn't make the elves omnipotent. You have a population that has a low fertility rate to begin with, which favors male children 3 to 1, and where a woman may have two to three children in the course of five or six hundred reproductive years. You have a population with fewer women, where pregnancy is not a common occurrence, and where even healers only deal with it - even in larger populations - a few times a year. In smaller populations a healer could go years, or even decades between dealing with a pregnancy. Add into that the fact that they are very prone to dangerous complications and you end up with healers who simply don't have the practical experience in dealing with every possible problem that can arise. Also magical healing can address certain types of emergencies particularly those that are more trauma oriented- a torn placenta for example, or infection - but not things that are purely physiological like the baby being too large to pass the mother's pelvis, or the mother's heart failing during labor. Human technology can help in some cases but only if its used and this is a difficult area, because elves are both extremely proud of their own culture and also very slow to change. Since electronic tech doesn't work well in Fairy the baby would have to be delivered in a Bordertown where both tech and magic are available, and that would not be something most elves would want to do. 



*a Farady cage is an enclosure made of a conductive metal, like copper, that blocks electrical fields, and in this case magical ones as well.

The Value of Anecdotal Evidence, Older Books, and Modern Experience

  Generally speaking when you start to look for books on paganism one of the first pieces of advice you might get is to avoid things published prior to and during the Victorian era*, or books that rely too much on these as sources. Generally speaking this is good advice as this period was a time when scholarship was heavy on unsupported supposition and opinion and short on factual evidence. There is however one large exception to this general rule that I'd like to address today because its an important one, especially for those who have an interest in fairylore.

There was a movement during this same time period for folklorists and anthropologists to begin collecting the stories of the people, both the old folk tales that had been passed on for generations and also stories of personal experiences and family lore. The motives for doing so were likely less than ideal in some cases but the result is a multitude of books that are full of stories which relate people's first or second hand experiences with the Good Neighbors and the complex of beliefs surrounding them over the last several hundred years. For modern people, especially those interested in the Fairy Faith as a viable system these stories are vital. While the usual rule of thumb may be to avoid books dated prior to the mid 1900's or so when we are looking at books of folklore the rules are different. Although I still advocate being careful with anything sold as 're-tellings' because those usually involve a lot of fictitious additions and translations because they often alter material in the translating there are many important folklore collections to be found from the 1800's.

Of course when we read these stories we must still be cautious to watch for the editor's influence on them. It is usually easy to tell where the person writing them down has inserted their own opinions into the narrative or where they have simply written down exactly what they were told as it was told to them. In many cases we get a mixed result where there may be a great deal of wonderful anecdotal information preserved, but we must pick through secondary opinions to get to it. We see this with the Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, which espouses some popular theories of its time that should not be trusted now - like the fairies as native British pygmies - while also giving us some valuable folklore. We shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, but rather learn the discernment to judge what is valuable and what is just some Victorian academic's personal opinion.

We also need to keep in mind something else. Anecdotal evidence is not limited to a hundred years ago - it still exists today. We have the strangest habit as a culture (speaking especially of Americans here) of giving some credit to people a hundred years ago for actually possibly having had some genuine experience of the Otherworld while simultaneously doing everything possible to rationalize away people in our time saying the same things. We can believe that a hundred years ago someone saw or experienced Fairy, but simultaneously believe that no one can really have those same experiences today except intangibly in dreams or meditations. And yet people do still see and experience Fairy as they always have; we are just more reluctant to talk about it today because of the strength of the disbelief. Not to say we should immediately believe every claim by every person, because discernment is always valuable, under any circumstances, but I'd caution against deciding that our own cynicism should be the measure for everyone. What we personally see or understand is not the limit or ability of everyone else. It may be best to find a balance between a healthy skepticism and an attitude that espouses, as Shakespeare said that 'there are more things on Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy'. There have been some efforts to collect modern anecdotes, such as 'Seeing Fairies' by Marjorie Johnson and Simon Young as well as an excellent documentary 'The Fairy Faith - In Search of Fairies'. These modern collections re just as important as the older ones because they show that the beliefs are still vital and alive, if less visible.

Ultimately anecdotal evidence is important because it gives us a snapshot of the beliefs of the people at different points of time.  It shows us not only what they believed but in practical terms how they felt the different worlds interacted and effected each other. Reading a range of anecdotal evidence across different periods of time is important, and for those interested in fairylore its essential to see the beliefs in different areas and the changes to beliefs over time. We can learn a great deal from this material, if we are willing to embrace the older as well as the new.

*with the exception of much older manuscripts, particularly myths

Robert Graves Influence on Modern Paganism

 I won't lie - I'm no fan of Robert Graves and I doubt you'll find many Reconstructionists who are. Writing in the 1940's Graves still had the Victorian mentality that said it was perfectly fine to invent history if the story you were spinning seemed logical to you. And in fairness Graves was no scholar but rather a poet and his work is the work of a poet. There is an excellent book by Mark Carter called 'Stalking the Goddess' which dissects Graves book the White Goddess and sheds a lot of light on how it came to be what it is, and I highly recommend anyone interested read both Graves' book and Carter's.

   Before we get into what exactly Graves created, why the false history is problematic, and how these ideas are now shaping paganism, I want to be clear about one thing. Many of the concepts Graves put forth do have great value today and believing them or following them isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact some of them have led to very deep and meaningful theology and that should certainly be kept. Where the problem comes in is with the idea that these things are far older than they actually are and with a pervasive attempt to retrofit the original pagan culture to fit modern concepts that are foreign to them. When Graves wrote he called his product Celtic and attributed his ideas to the pagans of the various Celtic cultures in ways that were at best misleading and at worst intentionally duplicitous and that has left a seemingly indelible mark on neopaganism.
   The White Goddess was published in 1948 and is arguably one of the single most influential books to shape modern paganism as we know it today. It is from Graves that we get many concepts that are foundational to mainstream paganism including the triple goddess, oak and holly kings, 'Celtic' tree calendar, and the Druidic gods Druantia and Hu Gadarn. To be clear all of these concepts as they are now understood in paganism don't date back before Graves' book and are not historically Celtic*. Nonetheless because of Graves work the majority of people believe in the historicity of these things and they have been perpetuated as genuine in countless subsequent books and other resources.
   The idea of the triple Goddess as outlined by Graves was based on the relationship between the poet and the 'muse' which was his Goddess. He describes her in various ways throughout the text, from a bride, mother, and 'layer out' (i.e. death goddess) to a girl, woman, and hag, although clearly it was as maiden, mother, and crone that we came to know her best. He related this triplicity to spring, summer, and fall as well as to the new, full, and waning moon. His views and description of this muse/Goddess are entirely in relation to the male poet and are, in my opinion, heavily misogynistic in tone: his main triad is the Mother/Bride/Layer Out based on the idea that it is the mother who births and nurtures the poet, the bride who marries him and is his lover, and the layer out who kills him, thus encompassing his entire life. In other words his muse/Goddess is structured on how the male poet is cared for/served by this female energy throughout his life. This concept however was taken and expanded - and obviously heavily edited and re-shaped - by modern paganism to form the more familiar Maiden/Mother/Crone triple Goddess most of us are familiar with. There have also been numerous attempts to create a male triple counterpart to the female one invented by Graves, to balance it for those who like the system.
   From a historic perspective there is no, to my knowledge, Celtic triple Goddess as Graves envisioned her. Generally when we see Goddesses in groups of three, such as the Morrigan or Brighid, they are age-equals, usually sisters. When we look at examples like the Gaulish Matronae we sometimes see one younger woman with two older ones, but never the range of young, middle aged, and old. In fact as far as I know it is unusual to see Celtic goddesses depicted exclusively as elderly - although of course many of them can sometimes appear so, they are understood to be ultimately ageless. This becomes a problem when people who do like the idea of the Triple Goddess try to fit pagan Goddesses into the mold which, in my experience, rarely seems to work well. In contrast though I have seen some amazingly intense results from people connecting directly to the, for lack of a better term, archetypes of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone.
  The Oak and Holly Kings are similarly an idea that was first suggested in that form by Graves. Drawing on Frazer's idea from 'The Golden Bough' of a divine King and looking at a variety of paired deities in mythology including Lugh and Balor and Llew and Gronw Pebr, as well as myths of the Robin and Wren, Graves suggested a seasonally reoccurring battle for dominion of the year that would happen at the solstices. At the summer solstice the Holly King would win and usher in the dark half of the year, while at the winter solstice the oak king would win and bring back the light half. This idea of course has been widely adopted by many Wiccan and neopagan groups and has become a familiar theme to the Wheel of the Year.
    The problem, such as it is, with the Oak and Holly kings isn't that they don't work well as a modern concept but only that they didn't exist as one historically. While they may be loosely based on similar mythic themes the Kings themselves are decidedly an invention of Robert Graves. Its telling that Graves chose the solstices, two holidays that we have no existing significant information about in Irish mythology, and not the far more important Bealtaine and Samhain as his turning points of the year. We do know from surviving myth and folklore that it was at Bealtaine and Samhain that the year turned from dark to light and back again, so it is highly suspicious to think that there would have been an old belief about Kings fighting and turning the year six weeks later at the solstices. The theme itself is clearly sound and rooted in older motifs, and I don't think anyone disputes that, but the particular iteration of Oak and Holly Kings and the fight on the solstices to eternally turn the year are unique to Graves.
    The tree calendar may be my biggest personal pet peeve to come from the White Goddess because it is constantly and ubiquitously spread around as ancient and druidic when it is neither. I highly recommend Peter Berresford Ellis's article 'The Fabrication of Celtic Astrology' and Michel-Gerald Boutet's 'Celtic Astrology; A Modern Hoax' for in-depth debunking of the tree calendar and related Celtic astrology, but the short version is that Graves made it up. We have no surviving information on the exact calendar used by the pagan Irish, but we can be certain it wasn't based on the Ogham because we do have a great deal of surviving Ogham material, none of which references calendar use. Also looking at the 13 month calendar created by Graves we can see several red flags. He begins his calendar not in November around Samhain (the beginning of the new year and shift to winter) or aligned with the moon phases, but rather on December 23 to line up with the winter solstice and the birth of a sun god - except the Irish have no deity born on that date as far as I know, and most explicitly solar deities in Ireland are female (the word for sun is female as well). Also in order to make the calendar work Graves had to cut the letters down from 20 to 13, which he did by ignoring the work of some of the premiere Ogham scholars of the day, including his own grandfather Charles Graves who was president of the Royal Irish Academy, and relying instead on the work of a highly controversial and criticized fringe scholar of the time (Ellis, 1997). He also focuses exclusively on the Tree Ogham, despite the fact that this was only one of many types of Ogham in use, and was no more or less significant or likely to be used for any purpose than any other Ogham. Basically he took what suited him of the available information and just ignored everything else to form what he wanted. It is certainly a workable modern system and many people today like it, but it did not exist before Graves created it.
   Now on to the Druidic Gods Graves claimed - Druantia and Hu Gadarn. To start with Druantia, the Goddess that Graves suggested Druids worshiped: simply put she never existed at all historically. The name seems to be based on the same root as the word Druid, one might assume meaning oak. However there is no evidence of this Goddess anywhere prior to Graves book. Hu Gadarn, his universal Druidic God is a real mythic figure at least, but not a God of the Druids, rather Hu comes to us via Iolo Morgannwg's (aka Edward Williams') highly controversial and forged Myvyrian Archaiology, although Iolo didn't make him up either (Jones, 2009). Hu has a really complex history, coming from a French tale to Wales, possibly as an older reflex of an original Celtic story, but ultimately we can say very little with certainty about Hu except that he seemed to be associated with plowing (Jones, 2009). He certainly wasn't the Welsh horned God or Druidic deity that Graves imagination painted him to be. Both of these figures have found a solid place in modern neopaganism appearing now in books and websites on Celtic paganism and referenced as if they were in fact truly ancient. I will never criticize people who feel a genuine connection to any deity and if you honor either of these beings and find them present and receptive, good. I can only lay out the actual history of each of them as we have it.
  The White Goddess has clearly had a profound impact on modern pagan theology, although in ways that people are often not aware of. It is not the new theology itself that is the ultimate problem with Graves' work, but the way it has found a place in modern paganism under the guise of ancient beliefs that make some people dislike it. I am not the only person, by far, who takes issue with Graves work and its muddying effect in modern paganism by the way. Ronald Hutton in his book 'The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles' referred to the White Goddess as "a major source of confusion about the ancient Celts and influences many un-scholarly views of Celtic paganism" and Hilda Ellis Davidson in her 'Roles of the Northern Goddess' said about Graves that he "misled many innocent readers with his eloquent but deceptive statements about a nebulous goddess in early Celtic literature". In other words, it's books like this that portray poetic inspiration and the author's opinions as ancient pagan belief that actively harm modern paganism by giving us a false basis to build from. Rather its better to be clear on what is inspiration and what is modern belief and embrace it for the value it has rather than cling to an idea of a history that never existed and is easily disproven.
   I encourage people who have adopted Graves ideas to read the White Goddess for themselves and see how the author originally presented the concepts, as it is quite fascinating to see the seeds that have grown into such deep rooted theology in the last 68 years. It really is quite amazing to think of the way that, within three generations, more or less, the pagan community has seized on these ideas and incorporated them so thoroughly and in such important and vital ways. Its hard to imagine modern paganism without the imagery of the triple Goddess or the seasonal Kings turning the wheel of the year, and I say that as someone who doesn't even adhere to those traditions. But please, lets stop calling the tree calendar 'ancient' and 'Druidic', and lets not try to frame the modern triple goddess and Oak and Holly Kings as the powers worshiped by the pagan Irish a thousand years ago. Call a spade a spade and understand these things for the modern concepts they are, which in no way lessens their practical value but certainly changes how we might understand the past cultures.

*I'm choosing to focus here specifically on aspects of the White Goddess which have impacted modern pagan theology; an entire other blog could arguably be written just about the book's misrepresentation of Celtic mythology itself. For one example see Brian Walsh's blog entry 'Desecrating Graves (Introduction to the Song of Amergin Part II)' which discusses the serious problems with Graves' treatment of the Song of Amergin in his book.

References
Ellis, P., (1997). The Fabrication of Celtic Astrology http://cura.free.fr/xv/13ellis2.html
Jones, M., (2009). Hu Gadarn
Graves, R., (1948). The White Goddess

the Nature of the Gods: how I define Deithe and an-deithe

The subject comes up occasionally - what makes a God a God?

It's a good question, really, especially if you haven't thought about it before. I'm pretty strongly against the idea of omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience - basically all the omni's usually attributed to monotheistic deities - as qualities of individual deities. There's just a level of cynicism in me that finds it impossible to to believe that anything that, well, grand for lack of a better term could or would have any interest in me on an individual level and my own experience does support the idea that we matter to the Gods and spirits in some way. I do believe there is some grand transcendent divine consciousness that holds everything together, beyond even my understanding of the individual Gods but I do doubt that such a thing would be any more aware of individual beings as I am of the single cells in my body or of the separate grains of sand in a desert. If there is such a grand divinity I would think it is so vast and beyond our ability to comprehend that it would effectively be almost impossible to connect to or engage with. Rather I think, perhaps, that this grandness is the spirit of our reality itself*.

Which is where the individual Gods come in. Whether or not we accept that there is a larger grand divinity - and I don't know that it matters whether we do or not - I do believe that there is a hierarchy of Gods and spirits that we can perceive and interact with. I base this concept on my own personal observations and experiences, so I won't claim that its some sort of universal truth or spiritual absolute, but its an approach that works for me. I like to use the concept of a hierarchy because I find that is basically how it works with the beings at the highest level having both the most power and the least interest in humanity and those at the lower levels having the least influence and the most interest in humanity.

At the highest level we have the most powerful spirits, beings that for simplicity's sake we call Gods**.  Gods have the greatest and most pervasive degree of influence over the widest areas, and the fewest limits on their actions and influence. I have seen Gods take an active interest in individuals for both good and ill, and I think it is always unwise to forget the level of power a deity is operating with. There is a range, of course, from an upper end of extremely powerful to a lower end of still-a-god but not as powerful. Gods also, again in my opinion, have the greatest scope of knowledge both of current events and of things yet to come. Why do Gods have an interest in individual people? Well that's going to vary by each person, but ultimately the Gods have their own purpose and agenda, and sometimes they need us to forward that. They work on a scope and scale that is so vast it can be hard sometimes for us to understand the why - although sometimes its pretty obvious. They need us, and we need them, on different levels.

Besides the Gods there are also a wide array of spirits, including those who are almost Gods themselves to those who are almost on the same level as humans, and those below us (influence-wise). Many of the Good Neighbors can be just below the Gods as far as influence and power goes, which is part - I think - of why they have always been so respected and feared. Others however are much closer to us and less dangerous to us. And if you take, for example, a spirit like most ancestors or human ghosts, they are very close to us indeed influence wise and while they can and do help us and provide us with information they usually aren't a significant threat to us unless something unusual is going on (or unless it is an ancestral spirit that has been or is being elevated to a higher level, which is possible - nothing is fixed, everything is fluid). The closer a spirit is to us the more logical it is for that spirit to want to help us or to need our energy.

All of this is of course very loose and there is a lot of grey areas. What I might call a God someone else might call a fairy and neither of us would necessarily be wrong. And I do believe that there is the potential for movement both up and down in this system, so that an ancestor who is honored and prayed to by enough people over enough time can become a deity and a deity who is forgotten and ignored for long enough can lose power. Much like so many other areas of life nothing is set in stone; rather our relationship with the Gods an spirits is a symbiotic one where both sides benefit. I'd also argue that ultimately it really doesn't matter whether what you are connecting to is a god, per se, or a powerful spirit, or one of the daoine maithe, if it does benefit you to have that connection.


*as an animist I believe that all, or almost all, things have spirits, including the world itself, and the solar system, and so on. When I sat down to contemplate this article I had to carry that idea outwards and admit that it is possible that there is, ultimately, a spirit of the manifest universe which could be viewed or perceived as the divine source. Whether or not other realities have their own such spirit I could not say.

**there really is not good definition for god or deity that isn't just circular logic. For my purposes I tend to define 'deity' as extremely powerful being who can influence all levels of reality to the greatest degree; following along with that however not-Gods or 'spirits' are beings with lesser degrees of influence.

words for Fool in Old Irish

I can't stand April Fool's Day, but in the spirit of the holiday (no joke) I thought I'd do a fun short post on the different words for fool in Old Irish and their contexts. Much like my previous blog about the word 'witch', saying fool in Old Irish isn't a straightforward matter because there are a variety of options each with different nuances.
   First we have the words which are used for people with diminished mental capacity - equivalent in English to simpleton or halfwit: amal, amlán/amalán (literally 'little amal'), or ammatán, buicell (but can also be a type of satirist), buicne, cáeptha, óinmit^
  Then we have the legal terms, used to describe mental incompetence: báeth (also used for people lacking morals, implying animalistic behavior), fer lethcuind (halfwit), druith (imbecile)
  Entertainingly there is also a  term for a fool that is also a word for a young cow: báethán
  Straightforward words meaning foolish, unwise people: ainecnae, báethlach (clearly related to the similar legal term, implies boorish behavior), díuit, duí, meile, meraige (someone who is feckless or flaky), óinsech (particularly a foolish woman), tibre (of the sort being mocked by others),
  Professional fools, ie jesters (drúth* is the overall name for this type of fool): boibre, bocmell, buicell, óinmit^, rindainech,


^óinmit is a bit of a special case. It is used to refer to someone who is simple minded but also could be clever in certain regards - what we might call an idiot savant. It is thus also a term for one of the prefessional grades of jesters
*Drúth is a complicated word meaning a variety of contradictory things including a professional jester, imbecile, prostitute, and later confused - probably as a homynym - with druí

Irish - or Celtic?

Recently a news article hit both the Irish cultural community and the pagan community. Titled 'Man’s discovery of bones under his pub could forever change what we know about the Irish' the article discusses an archaeological find, the genetic analysis of the bones found, and one main academic response to it. The response focused on is that of Barry Cunliffe, professor of Archaeology at Oxford University, who sees the find as supporting a lack of Celtic presence in Ireland; however what many readers don't seem aware of is that Cunliffe has been advocating for this view since at least 2001. John Koch, who is also quoted in the article, was the co-editor of 'Celtic from the West' with Cunliffe and is another strong proponent of the theory. So it should be clear that the article has some serious issues with bias out of the gate. While reading the article may indeed give the impression that this find is hugely significant for Irish culture it really doesn't seem to be, and offers little that is new or revolutionary.

In the 15 years that Cunliffe's 'Celtic From the West' theory has been circulating, so far nothing has radically changed in academia regarding the Irish as Celts. This finding really isn't that groundbreaking - we already knew that at that time in Ireland the people were pre-Celtic and while its interesting that there's a genetic tie to modern Ireland other studies have also shown a strong genetic tie to Spain which does support a Celtic migration to Ireland. So its all still up in the air - and none of the genetics really explains the cultural end anyway.

Some basic points about all this:

1.  The bones were found in 2006; Cunliffe's first 'Celtic from the West' anthology was published in 2010 as a follow up and expansion to his 'Facing the Ocean' published in 2001. So in short this idea of Celtic culture originating on the Atlantic seaboard is not new at all, nor is the idea that the Irish may have been the origin of Celtic culture or perhaps even that what we call insular Celtic may have been a separate culture that merged or influenced Celtic culture on the continent. 
2. DNA is not culture. Just because the bones show that 2,000 years ago people had a genetic tie that isn't to known Celtic peoples and is related to modern Irish people doesn't actually mean anything from a cultural perspective. Culture isn't transmitted genetically. Also, again this is old news dating back several years at least when genetic studies started to come into vogue.
3.  The Irish don't stop being a Celtic culture just because Ireland had pre-Celtic inhabitants and modern Irish people are genetically related to them. Celtic is a language group with loosely associated cultural markers like shared art forms and related myth. What made a culture Celtic was speaking a language within the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages. Irish is a Celtic language, and while the article does suggest that this may be re-assessed until it is and until the Celtic languages are reclassified as non-Indo-European and specifically until the Goidelic and Brittonic languages are re-classified as non-Celtic by the standard academic definition Ireland did have a period where Celtic culture influenced it and is still considered a Celtic country today*. I would personally be really, really surprised if that ever changed. 
4. Let me repeat: Celtic is a language group with loosely associated cultural markers like shared art forms and related myth. What makes Irish paganism Celtic from a certain point on is the language spoken and patterns of myth and deity that are shared with other Celtic cultures, although it should be noted that the language is the main factor. This really only matters to scholars, for the most part. The modern pagan idea of 'Celtic paganism' has always been a vague generality that causes more problems then it fixes. The only thing this article does for Irish pagans is to highlight the fact that Irish paganism is and has always been its own thing, only tangentially related to its 'cousin' Celtic cultures (although for a variety of reasons that have little to do with anything in this article). 

 In the end the article is interesting but it is far from groundbreaking and should in no way effect you personally as an Irish pagan (or pagan following Irish Gods). We already knew that the pre-Celtic people's at the very least had influenced and shaped the Irish Celts into the unique culture that they became. How much or how little is an intriguing question but one that ultimately shouldn't change how we as individuals approach our spirituality. It is still tied to the land, to the myths, to the folklore. It is still everything it was before, whether we call it Celtic or we call it Irish or we call it something else. Academia will be arguing over this for a long time to come and short of necromancy will probably never know for certain what language those pub bodies spoke or what Gods they honored, whether they were the source of what we now call Celtic or whether it grew in Eastern Europe and spread west - and for us, even as Reconsctructionists - it doesn't really matter. I'm an Irish Reconstructionist Polytheist, however you slice it, and while there's a convenience in using the term Celtic I've always been aware of its limitations and pitfalls. Nothing about my beliefs or practices is changed by this article, nor should yours be, because knowing the ultimate source of Irish culture as we understand it historically is interesting but in the end neither essential nor impactful to modern paganism. 

*Celtic outside academic classifications does have some problematic connotations and misuses, but its beyond the scope of this article to address those, and as well the misuse of the term in my opinion shouldn't in this case effect its usefulness as an academic discritpor.