Hrolf, we’ve had some of this discussion before. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the historical angle again. The tack that the org that I (and, as it happnes cyberwolf) work in uses a formula something like:
early post-christian accounts of pre-christian belief + archeology + later gaelic and british folklore + comparitive studies of ritual and practice from other nearby Indo-Euro cultures = best guess at what the ancients did.
**Historically speaking, the great Druid academy at Anglesey (Ynys Mon) was wiped out by the Romans. **
It is important to remember that Druidic religion survived for hundreds of years following that in the Gaelic range. Patrick’s mission didn’t come close to ending Paganism in Ireland - that took another 300 years, easy, during which time Druids ran the religion of the people.
**In Ireland, St. Patrick did a superb job of religious syncretism and adopted all that was good from Druidism in Ireland into Christianity. **
By which you mean all that fitted his doctrines. In our opinion he left out the most valuable stuff, such as polytheism. Myself I’m not much of a believer in ‘Celtic Christianity’ as a historical thing; as far as I can tell early Irish Christianity was just latin with an Irish accent.
The Picts? Exactly how much do we know about the Picts?
‘Pict’ is a term the Romans used for the tatooed peoples of north Britain. There’s no reason to think the Picts were other than British Celts, not very different from their Welsh or Cornish cousins, who merged easily with the Gaelic influx.
OK, the Welsh did a good job with the Mabinogion (which is lovely) but that is their mythology not their religious practices.
The Mab is really quite late - we pay more attention to the Irish material, the Book of Invasions, etc. The tales in the Mabinogion are more like medieval romances than like myth.
From what I can observe, modern neo-paganism is based upon Victorian precepts which have absolutely nothing to do with historical reality.
If you mean Wicca, you’re largely right. Wicca was constructed based on scholarship considered good in 1940 or so, including Frazer, Murray, etc. In the last 20 years or so Pagans have been moving toward better, more modern scholarship. In the Druidry we practice you’ll find no 19th century irregular masonry, no medieval grimoire ritual forms, and no left-over unitarian theology.
Given the fact that the religion of many of our ancestors met its demise well over a thousand years ago, what assurances do you have that what you are doing is what our ancestors did? I have that assurance as a Roman Catholic.
Here’s the thing. Religion doesn’t depend on historical authenticity for it’s value. Religion is a body of human skills, invented by humans to help us relate with the divine. A skilled poet could create a new religion from whole cloth tomorrow, and it would be likely to be effective for some folks. Now, I do think that classic forms are more likely to be effective for a larger number than completely new forms, just as more people comprehend depictive art than abstract art. Thus, we make an effort to develop our modern forms in ways that resemble what ancient religion was. We have good records of the rituals and forms of several Indo-European religions (though we lack them for the Celts). We apply these related forms to the known mythic lore to produce our new synthesis.
Even Wicca, with it’s weak scholarship by modern standards, continues to go from strength to strength. It is entering its third generation of practitioners and will surely be active 100 years after its founding, and beyond. We hope that our newer forms, based on (we think) better scholarship, will do at least as well.
Ian
