#Celtic Way

[taldigi]

In Nomine Celestia, Alicornae

[rosalind-hawkins]

I hope these haven't already been done

[llyfrenfys]

See, I personally find this quest to find pagan/pre-Christian elements in Welsh/Irish literature quite unnerving - I don't know about anyone else.

There's something to be said about genuinely discovering pre-Christian elements in a narrative or story and that being where evidence and study has led you. But I see some people on this fruitless quest to find pagan elements in very Christian texts and sometimes it feels like if no pagan elements can be found, people start making stuff up out of whole cloth - and that can be very dangerous for already not-well known texts in minoritised languages!

There's already so much misinformation out there about Irish/Welsh texts and literature in general - so it hurts to see people carelessly adding to the misinformation either out of ignorance or lack of respect for the source material.

I promise you the source material being Christian doesn't ruin it - you can in fact, enjoy these myths without making them into something they're not!

[laurasimonsdaughter]

How loathly is the lady

The motif of the loathly lady shows up primarily in (Celtic and English) Medieval saga's and Romances and it typically involves a knight or warrior who is confronted by a physically repulsive woman and shows her hospitality (The Daughter Of King Under-Waves; The Saga of Hrolf Kraki), agrees to kiss/embrace her (The Adventures of the Sons of Eochaid Mugmedon), or agrees to marry her (The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle; The Marriage of Sir Gawain; The Wife of Bath's Tale). When this respect is shown, the loathly lady transforms into a beautiful one, sometimes this takes a further proof that the knight is willing to let her decide about herself instead of imposing his will on her.

But to my surprise I recently learned that the Scottish ballad King Henry (Child ballad 32) is also considered a Loathly Lady tale. This lady does a whole lot more than require respect, however:

In "King Henry", the king spends the night in a haunted hall during a hunting trip, and meets a lady who seems like she is no less than "a fiend that comes from hell". In a way, she does ask for hospitality, but she does it by demanding that King Henry let her eat his horse, his greyhounds and his goshawks. Which hurts him a great deal. Finally she tells him to make her a bed out of heather, lie down with her and take her for his bride. He complies with heavy heart, but in the morning he wakes to find the fairest lady he has ever seen lying beside him, who tells him: . “I’ve met with many a gentle knight That gave me such a fill, But never before with a courteous knight That gave me all my will.”

This behaviour is quite a bit more on the monstrous side, from where I'm standing. Especially since the king does not know the loathly lady. It would make more sense to put him through such terrible trials if he was atoning to win a lover back.

Interestingly, this story does share some notable elements with The Daughter of the King Under-Waves, where there really is an element of atonement. In that tale the hero Diarmaid wins his lady with hospitality, but loses her after they are married, by breaking his promise to never bring up how repulsive she looked when he met her. He brings it up in anger when she gives his greyhound's puppies away. When he loses his supernatural wife, his beloved greyhound also dies. When he goes to find his wife, he finds she is suffering from an illness and can only sleep on a bed of rushes. He manages to cure her, but in the process falls out of love with her. She accepts this, because they are from different worlds and cannot live together. In some versions her last gift to him is restoring his greyhound to life.

Irish folk singer Tom Reid wrote some fitting extra verses to finish the ballad of King Henry: the lady tells the king to bring his horse, hounds and hawks' skins and feathers and then brings them all back to life before they marry.

I haven't been able to find a recording of that one but The Furrow Collective and Matt Williams both have nice renditions of this ballad. But my favourite is actually a German version by Faun called Herr Heinerich, which subtly changes the lady's ending speech to:

Many a knight I caught myself Yet none have acted right You are the first to sleep with me All the blessed night

[preciouspatriots]

one uppercut of a quote followed by another

[bogunicorn]

Like, it's fine to relate songs you like to fiction you like. That's good and fun! Hozier's music is often political commentary, but it's also about love and emotion and has inspirations in other genres of music and fiction (esp Unreal Unearth, which is explicitly based on Dante's Inferno).

The trouble comes not with linking, you know, a love song to your favorite blorbo, it's when you reduce Hozier the person into a magical sad fairy man stereotype Too Good for This World in a way that both reduces the influence of black music and artists on his work AND fetishizes Irishness as a whole as if Ireland is a fantasy kingdom of the past and not a real place populated by real people.

[ceo-draiochta]

Just to make something clear, Gaelic paganism (and folk practices) is not closed, you do not need any initiation and anyone telling you need "celtic" blood is just a racist. Anyone in the world from anywhere in the world can do it.

That doesn't mean you can pick and choose what words and figures you like from it, remove them from their original contexts, add nonsense information and claim it as fact (UPG should always be labeled as such especially if its in complete opposition to established lore). And then claim these terms and ideas actually have nothing to do with Ireland, The Isle of Mann and Highland Scotland. This is appropriation. Especially when this is all being spearheaded by English people in the 50s.

[wildbasil]

gwyn and edern (and blodeuwedd)  i wanted to design a gwyn ap nudd that isn't just herne the hunter 2.0. i like gwyn's association with the mist and dark, lonely places. i think blodeuwedd would be his friend i also like to imagine edern is an annoying little brother lol

[bethanythebogwitch]

I wonder if the legends that you can't eat the food of the fae without terrible consequences and should therefore refuse food given to you by others started as the ancient Celtic version of "don't take candy from strangers"

[voiceoftheoldways]

I heard the Old Gods from an early age. A wordless something that spoke of a magic that could equally not be described nor defined by regular language. Nonetheless this voice was too loud to dismiss. It clawed at my heart, not as something trying to get in but as a realisation fighting its way out; summoned by the moonlight, the steadfast trees, the musky scent of hawthorn. An awakening that defied the creed into which I was born and within which I was raised.

PaganThreads

[divine-crows]

Does anyone by chance have any good Druidry books/sources for someone who can't practice everything yet but wants to study it or get an idea of it before I jump into it?

I know I've read a couple during 2020 when I had nothing to do all day (using online PDFs from sources that offered it), but most stuff I find on Druidry is more like a rigorous class which I can't safely do yet.

Even if it's recommendations for celtic mythology books, stories from all across the celtic regions... literally I'll take anything at this point if it helps me get a robust knowledge or an idea of what I would be doing!

[c-vs-paganism]

Samhain just passed and it has once again amazed me how different cultures can be and how people within one culture dont necessarily interact with norms and traditions in the same way.

Samhain is traditionally celtic, although its been spread around the larger pagan communities for a good while, so obviously we have to take into consideration how non-pantheon specific pagans and non-celtic pagans have added to the common modern practices and beliefs. We also have to take into consideration of how the internet and the mysticization (ik ik i cant think of a better term) of paganism have played on how people view popular holidays like samhain, yule, and ostara. A lot of what we consider the typical "witchy" traditions have very little to no actual historical record or tradition, and were instead made introduced into the social culture of paganism, which we can see on platforms like tiktok. That's not to say that those new practices are less significant than historical ones, bc imo we are our own religion: we define whats important to us and base our practices off if those feelings and beliefs.

That being said, however, I think it's also important to recognize when we're making traditional practices out to be stuff their not, taking from closed cultures (*cough cough* white americans using indigenous practices *cough cough*) and when theres influence of colonization and cultural appropriation. Im indigenous and its a HUGE point that rubs me the wrong way when i see people using items or pieces of tradition that they (knowingly or unknowingly) have taken from a closed practice. Stop and do your research. ABOUT. EVERYTHING. Sorry if it's too much work or it slows you down but its so important.

Even for open practices: do your research. If you are using traditions and practices from somewhere and you dont know where it comes from there is still the potential for appropriation.

I personally urge all pagans to research every little thing. Why do certain herbs have these properties? Where does this practice come from? Just because something is available to you or you can kind of make stuff up along the way doesn't mean you should.

All this in mind, ive noticed Samhain has been merged with the modern idea of Halloween (dont give me a history lesson guys, ik the origins of halloween: im talking about commercialization) and i personally find it enjoyable. I grew up trick-or-treating, the decor is fun, etc. I know yall are bored atp but all of this was leading up to this question:

How did yall, as pagans, celebrate the past few days (if you celebrated at all)?

Im mainly just curious to see how social cultural norms in paganism span through the different sections and beliefs of the people i can reach on the internet.

[birdsofrhiannon]

Elen of the Ways - Andre Toma 

[caraecethrae]

"Among the Continental Celts, it appears that the cosmology had a vertical architecture, with the three worlds comprising the living or physical world, the celestial Otherworld above, and the chthonic Otherworld below. The Irish seems to wrap this up a little differently, with the three worlds of land, sea, and sky being seen less in a vertical architecture and more as parts of a mutually interpenetrating, nested whole. Here there are still some parallels between the land as the realm of the living world, the sky as the celestial realm, and the sea as the deep realm, not an underworld in the Continental sense but an Otherworld accessed through the deep places."

— The Magic of the Otherworld: Modern Sorcery from the Wellspring of Celtic Traditions by Morpheus Ravenna

[wolves-in-the-world]

accessory of the day is this decorative dogtag pendant from the runway job that somehow hints both at a target and at crosshairs, an objectively sensible choice for the fashion-conscious hitter.

[fortunaestalta]