Pagan Tropers Unite!

That's... a link to a video about a theory saying Yzma killed Kuzco's parents (The Emperor's new groove)

Damn it. This should be the right one.

It came about because fluffy-bunnies frequently prance around spouting bad history, not really LEARNING so much as "latching onto one or two authors and treating their work as a pagan Bible," and often being obsessed with proving how witches and magic were given bad publicity after "tHe BuRnInG tImEs!!!!221!"

A lot of folks mention that fluffy-bunnies never grew out of the teenage-rebellion stage, which explains a LOT, to be honest.

Edited by Sharysa on Sep 14th 2019 at 9:22:15 AM

I think I just had a flashback to a girl I knew who thought she knew Welsh history just from reading The Mabinogion.

Yep, she sounds like she'd fit in nicely.

Well, that's just silly. Everyone knows you have to read The Chronicles Of Prydain to truly know Welsh history. And isn't The Burning Times that documentary about Witches? Is that where it came from or is it just a coincidence.

@Sharysa: I took your advice about the offerings. A lot of the details are too personal to get into, but she did answer. So, thanks for your help. :)

Cool!

Also, the Burning Times is indeed a documentary... by two of the most famous "fluffy-bunny favorites" authors gearing up to talk about feminism, and it's not liked that much by historians.

Edited by Sharysa on Sep 23rd 2019 at 10:08:02 AM

The cackle I just let out might have ruined my sinuses.

Anyway, why I initially came here can anybody here give me a primer on Celtic polytheism. I've been in other circles and I feel like I've been walking into echo chambers.

I'm glad I can help in some way at least. I'm afraid that I can't tell you much about Celtic polytheism (help you anyway I can though). General advice though, learn the basics and then work it out what feels right to you. I hear you about echo chamber. I learned a lot from another forum, but after awhile I'd hear it all. And most of them were very closed-minded in the end.

My understanding of Celtic is that it's a category for a language group, and the cultures that developed with those languages. Gaulish, for example, is part of the Celtic language group even though its region (if you're looking for pre-Christian religious customs) would have been in France...which, maybe is not what most people think of when they hear "Celtic". Galicia in Spain also has plenty of Celtic influences. It might help to narrow it down, whether you're looking into Goidelic or more Brythonic(?) or Gaulish or whatnot.

If you want to broaden your scope, though: Here's a link to a sort of comparative religious/linguistic ritual based on expanding to Proto Indo European in case that's more helpful than narrowing down to specifics. I hope this helps!

Yeah, "Celtic" polytheism is a REALLY broad term for the practices of modern-day Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man. You might need to narrow it down to one country.

Thanks for the heads up, you guys. I was aware of the Goidelic and Brythonic Gaels but not of the Gauls or Asturia and Galicia.

Also, and this was due to my poor wording, I have (kind of) narrowed it down to Ireland. I initially came to knowledge of the Irish pantheon through Maman Brijit, a spirit in Voudoun who was sycretized with Brighid. I just wanted some more background from someone who practices it or just has more knowledge than me on it.

Edited by KeironCioran on Oct 6th 2019 at 1:51:06 AM

Oh! You might want to start with Lebor Gabala Erenn although my favorite beginner resource for bardic mysticism is this book and you can get some text about The Religion of the Ancient Celts for free.

I personally found myself drawn more towards the "low mythology" or folklore (ancestral veneration, animism, and faelatry) rather than "State religion pantheon" of gods that every Irish polytheist/pagan reconstructionist at a pagan convention would know the names of. So, for me it's more the "votive stones into bodies of water, leave milk or a portion of food out for the Others to take the toradh" sort of practice.

Thanks, but what's faelatry?

-latry suffix meaning "veneration of".

Bardolatry, veneration of William Shakespeare a.k.a. The Bard.

Idolatry, veneration of idols.

Hagiolatry, sadly not the veneration of hags.

Faelatry, veneration of the fae or fairies...but, in a more W.B. Yeats Celtic Twilight sort of thing where he asked a villager "Do you believe in fairies?" And the villager responded something like, "Believe in them? I'm downright annoyed with them!"

Sharysa upthread has had some bad run-ins with the Folk and has kept more to the Tuatha De Danann (who are more legendary figures, ancestral gods, may or may not have been human or at least are definitely more familiar with How To Appropriately Human than many of the Folk are)—and I think that's perfectly understandable, and might be more helpful for what you're looking for too.

Somebody tag her, how do you tag in this thing...?

I'm not sure we can tag people in the forums even though everyone complains about not being able to, lol.

There's a lot of shiny, New Age fairy-lore where nature-spirits have gotten MUCH Lighter and Softer, because leaving offerings is mistakenly believed to "attract good luck."

Folks who follow the traditional Gaelic and Filipino fairy-faiths (but really, there's a common if not universal trend where LOTS of ancient cultures have some version of The Fair Folk) point out that historically, leaving offerings was much more on the line of "paying the mafia their 'please don't snipe me' fee" because it placated them into LEAVING YOU ALONE. Any "good luck" you got from them would probably be on the Equivalent Exchange lines because "hey, you keep up with your offerings, so I'll do you a solid."

Going on my mom's stories about how Filipino fairies cursed a relative with MINOR POLIO for accidentally stepping on an anthill when he was a kid (in the Philippines, anthills are believed to be the homes of goblins), "mafia protection" is an apt description.

Edited by Sharysa on Oct 7th 2019 at 12:00:40 PM

Damn. I knew fae were less than repudiable, but that's just petty. What are the Tuatha Dé Danann like?

Edited by KeironCioran on Oct 9th 2019 at 4:51:52 AM

I’m a Chinese/Greek/Norse/Japanese believer myself. In that particular order.

Keiron: Irish fair-folk were also reputed to cause heart attacks and other sudden/inexplicable deaths, before medicine advanced, so they can get REALLY temperamental.

that's actually quite terrifying.

Yeah, basically anything that our ancestors couldn't understand was put down to "fairies." Your new child is suddenly acting Cloud Cuckoo Lander? Someone kidnapped your real baby and swapped them for a fairy child. Modern doctors/psychologists immediately understand half of the "changelings" to show symptoms of autism, or to have some sort of personality disorder, and the OTHER half is usually explained by the physical side of conditions/deformities.

Meanwhile, the heart-attacks and inexplicable deaths/crippling was put down to elf-shot—people had a habit of finding random stone arrowheads in strange places, and they figured someone magical must be shooting them through walls/stone to attack people.

Edited by Sharysa on Oct 12th 2019 at 8:48:35 AM

Well, I guess my mother's only son was stolen, then.

So you're a bard, what does that practice entail in the Modern age?

I attempted to make mead last night.

Edited by KeironCioran on Oct 13th 2019 at 10:44:16 AM

The Onion wrote up an article about a deity exchange program.

How'd the mead-making go?

surprisingly good. I couldn't drink it myself, but I have it to a neighbour and they said it was great.