Celtic Heresies

Celtic Heresies

A lot of misinformation is circulating among both the Neo-Pagan and the New Age communities about the Celtic peoples today. Much of that misinformation is falsely believed in by those who should know better. Many people would be surprised to learn just how much of what people consider to be markers of Celtic identity is simple stereotyping. As a person of Celtic descent undergoing the process of de-assimilation and de-conditioning, and thus becoming primarily identified as Celtic (i.e. one who lives from a Celtic worldview and who uses a Celtic language), I find this misinformation sickening to myself and threatening to surviving Celtic peoples everywhere. The following is a deconstruction of the assumptions that many people who assert a Celtic identity or some form of Celtic spirituality adhere to, even in the face of the current realities of Celtic communities. It is a smack-back confrontation to those misguided souls who fall into some pernicious delusions about who the Celts are, what they think, and what they do.

You may find that there is a heavy emphasis on Celtic language as a marker of Celtic identity, but that is only because it is the native definition of how one could adopt a Celtic identity and become thus accepted and adopted by Celtic communities. Contrary to what you may have seen and heard, the languages are today alive and coming back into their own, thanks to the tireless efforts of Celtic-speakers and activists.

This is not an attempt to police the Celtic identity. Nor is this an attempt to control any aspects of modern Celtic expressions. (As no doubt, some of you will try to say as you read lightly and confirm your own prejudices.) This polemic is simply a deconstruction of many of the misconceptions about the Celts and Celtic identity in today’s world.

All one has to do is to claim Celtic ancestry to call themselves Celtic

This sort of nonsense is one of the most common misconceptions about Celtic identity and culture. While I encourage all efforts to claim or reclaim Celtic identity, the work of doing so is difficult and more harm than good can be done by those who take on a few badges of identity and then think this sufficient. There are many people living in Celtic countries who are descended from the Celts and yet would have nothing to do with Celtic cultures and languages as they exist today. Likewise there are many people, usually living in America and other former parts of the English Empire, who believe that having a Celtic-sounding surname, is all the validity they need to call themselves Celtic. And everyone else just assumes this to be the case without ever investigating the actual Celtic cultures themselves to see if such an assumption holds any validity. You see, by native Celtic standards today, you are Celtic through your allegiance to and participation in Celtic-speaking communities. That is the only criterion through which your Celtic identity is formed and validated. Not surnames. Not ancestry (though that may be a powerful motivation for adopting Celtic cultures and languages). Not through some imagined ‘re-incarnation’ of yourself from a ‘Celtic’ past. Not by reading a book on Celtic spirituality or by going to a seminar given by a ‘Celtic’ teacher.

I am Celtic because my blood is Celtic

Another misunderstanding related to that pointed out above is this assumed ‘genetic ancestry.’ This is no more than a powerful fantasy. You don’t genetically inherit a cultural allegiance or worldview any more than you would genetically inherit an education or language. Anyone who disagrees with this has probably little to no experience in cultural and linguistic milieus other than their own. You aren’t born Celtic. You are simply born as a baby. Being born in a Celtic community will likely increase your chances of learning Celtic culture and language, obviously. (Unless that community is still an oppressed community that is actively giving up their Celtic identity and assimilating into the dominant society.) Cultural and linguistic allegiances are formed through experience and participation with such milieus. This is also the native Celtic conception as evidenced by the old wisdom which stated that an individual is the creator and the captain of their own destiny, regardless of familial status or the occupation of parents at birth.

I once met a Filipino-American who was studying Irish Gaelic and learned a great deal of the language, simply because he was enthralled with the Gaelic poetic traditions. His Irish could definitely use improvement, but it was certainly a lot better than the Irish-Americans who claim for themselves a Celtic identity while remaining resistant towards the necessity of acquiring the language. Hell, the Breton language movement has a lot of people within it who are not Breton by birth, some of them not even being European.

Anyway, contrary to what many people have assumed, a Celtic identity is not based on race or even genetics. There are many different strands and temperaments of people that make up today’s Celts. Many people would be surprised upon learning that there are dark haired Irish or Welsh speakers. Many so-called educated people would be surprised to learn that there have always been many differing types of physical characteristics among the Celts for as long as there have been Celts as a distinct group of people. This is acknowledged even in the earliest written forms of Celtic languages.

I practice Celtic Wicca, or 'Druidism,' therefore I am Celtic

For the vast majority of you Neo-Pagans and you New Age spiritual adherents, whatever spiritual or religious system you practice likely has nothing to do with being Celtic. Most of what is called ‘Celtic Wicca’ is simply Wicca with some Celtic deities and a smattering of Celtic language terms. Likewise, most of what today is considered Druidism by Neo-Pagans has little to nothing to do with Celtic cultures, though many variants are influenced by research into earlier versions of Celtic societies. Such Celtic-tinged or Celtic-inspired systems are more related to modern Anglo-American culture and society than with any living Celtic community. You can call yourself a ‘Celtic Wiccan,’ but that doesn’t make you necessarily any closer to being a Celt than, say, going to a Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Likewise, if you call yourself a Druid, you need to be specific. Is it Neo-Druidism as a modern Anglo-American Neo-Pagan tendency, or is it one of the surviving native strands of poetic and artistic tradition? Hell, you could very well be a Celtic Wiccan, which of course would mean that you live in a Celtic community, use a Celtic language, and for some reason have chosen to adopt Wicca as your religion. But Wicca is not Celtic anymore than Buddhism would be.

A good case in point to reflect on this reality is the fact that I practice Buddhism, even in the midst of all my Neo-Paganism. Does that Buddhist practice make me somehow an ‘Indian’ or a ‘Tibetan?’ No. So, likewise, even if you could find or reconstruct an actual Celtic spiritual system and practice it, it wouldn’t necessarily make you into a Celt. Do get where I am coming from?

I am truly Celtic at heart. Who are you to tell me I am wrong?

Being Celtic at heart, you obviously speak and use Celtic languages? You participate in living Celtic communities? Otherwise all of your cardiac-Celticness is simply conjecture and fantasy. I can tell you that you are wrong because I speak Celtic languages, especially Irish Gaelic, and as such have adopted a Celtic worldview based on the very solid and vibrant associations that only using the languages can give. In the face of all to the contrary I have adopted Celtic identity as an act of reclaiming. I can tell you that you are wrong because I can see just how Celtic-at-heart you really are by simply addressing you in a Celtic language. You must not have a very strong sense of being ‘Celtic-at-heart’ if you haven’t made any serious effort to learn one of our languages. Why don’t you go play act as something else for a change?

The Celts are/were a magical people who were attuned to their environment.

As flattering as a stereotype that can be among some people, it is still very wrong. It was also used in times past to show how the Celtic peoples themselves were unfit to govern themselves, thus justifying the colonization of their countries and the destruction of the cultures and languages. (One must remember that until recently the West was under the influence of thoughts like the Great Chain of Being which eventually lead people to posit that there were inferior classes of beings and likewise inferior classes of people. Those who were considered "close to the earth/land" or "attuned to the environment" were at the bottom of the triumphal colonial hierarchy and not deemed worthy of self organization or government.) Celtic people, living as they do much as other people, are people and one would be very hard pressed to find evidence of such a stereotype such as being "close to the land," "attuned to nature," or "magical." The land and environment was, and still is in places, very important to Celtic cultures but not exactly in the way modern environmentalism expresses such concerns. (Though there is an ongoing confluence of interests between Celtic land-based expressions and modern environmental concerns.) It’s important to remember that.

Another thing related to this that pisses me off is that a lot of occult shops will have ‘Celtic magic’ book sections even though none of the material is in any Celtic language, nor is any of it translations from any real Celtic source material, nor does it have any relevance to Celtic cultures as they exist today. To see just how absurd this is, think about such occult shops having a ‘Scandinavian magic’ or a ‘Latin magic’ section that would have similar spuriously written books based on poor research. So, put away your Celtic Tarot decks, and your Celtic Wicca (especially that book about that made up system called ‘Witta’), and put away all your Celtic jewelry and designs. None of that impresses us Celts, who need none of that junk to assert our own identities.

The Celts are related to the fae/faeries.

Now, we Celts do have a lot of traditional lore which relates to that class of spiritual beings known in English by the common term ‘fairies.’ But, if you look around, so do many other cultural continuums. As far as relations are concerned, I don’t know who made up all that crap. There are some very fine and entertaining myths which show Celtic humans and fairies interacting and intermingling, but those are stories, my friends. Just stories. Far be it for you to know just what the hell is really going on with the Celtic cultures and the people adhering to them, if you’re not even familiar with the damned languages.

Reading the translations of Celtic Mythologies and Stories is enough for me to understand who the Celts are/were.

Right. Just like reading stories about samurai will allow you to understand the subtleties and nuances of Japanese civilization? Sure. You can keep thinking that to yourself, but it doesn’t make it any more true, no matter how often you may repeat it. Our stories and myths in translation may provide you with a heavily Anglo-American tinted window of some Celtic ideals and practices. But that is nothing compared to the simple mindblowing experience of reading or hearing the stories and myths in their original source languages and contexts. How can you know that Gaelic-speakers feel differently than English-speakers about even such things as European history if you are unable to hear or read the Gaelic accounts of that history? How can you even begin to fathom the Celtic conceptions of Britain, Ireland, or even the European continent, if you cannot speak a Celtic language? Likewise the Celtic outlook on such so-called universal things such as family, community, and relationship to the environment. These are important concepts to understand if one is to really know the myths and stories in a visceral way.

You can read and take inspiration from any cultural source you can find, and this is very likely a good practice. But try to understand that you are reading and imbibing of sources that are most likely translated and packaged through the cultural media you are used to. It is important to have this perspective. You can come close to an understanding of who the Celts are/were via the translations of myths and stories, but you will still be at a lack compared with those who can think in Celtic languages and have access to the stories within the context they are told. I don’t mean to discourage your searching and your enjoyment of Celtic myths and stories, I just want you to remember how much deeper you can go.

Celtic languages are difficult and not widely spoken, so they are not necessary for those living today who are ‘Celtic at heart.’

If you are going to go through all the trouble to practice Celtic-tinged spirituality and/or spend money on Celtic Wisdom books and all that crap, you may as well get to learning one or more of our languages. Many people who call themselves Druids make this very mistake of asserting that they can actually learn the gems of our cultural wisdom traditions without actually bothering with the trouble of learning another language. Usually such people are Americans who are so used to mono-lingualism anyway that they are lazy when it comes to other languages. Celtic languages are no more difficult to learn than any other language, though the way they tend to organize concepts and express perceptions tend to be, even on the surface, radically different than languages such as English, French, or Spanish.

You may believe that wisdom is universal and therefore you can easily glean Celtic systems of wisdom, perception, and spiritual/intellectual mastery via some of the more excellent translations of our lore and teachings. However, you miss out on the entire world of Celtic sensibilities, ways of perception, and the many-layered associations that exist within the living Celtic languages. (And more astute readers of Celtic literature and myths will sense this.) There is no way around this. You may object to this by making the assertion of the well known facts that systems such as Kaballah, Alchemy, and Hermetic traditions keep their symbolism well through any spoken language. That is true because those systems are inherently visual systems. Though this is true for those systems, it is untrue for Celtic systems of wisdom which are bound up with all of the associations of spoken language. Keep in mind that part of the development of those systems had to take into account the multiple languages their adherents would be speaking. Thus they needed to make them trans-lingual. This is not the case with Celtic systems at all. Whether it is from historical accident or conscious decision, there are even some Celtic visual systems that are poorly understood outside of the language contexts from which they have sprung.

Now, if someone or some group could somehow synthesize a Celtic-based wisdom tradition that could be trans-lingual, that would be wonderful. But such people would still need to imbibe of the traditions from their source. And any of their followers would then be practicing a Celtic-based tradition, not a Celtic tradition. There is a difference.

To say that translated materials from Celtic languages are all one is interested in is to support the lie that Celtic language materials have no value in their own right. This is really a conscious support of the colonization and destruction of the Celtic people. Do you know that there are many beautiful things that can be expressed in Celtic languages that can’t even be approached in other languages? How can you be aware of the fact that there are some verbal tenses that exist in Irish that English doesn’t even have unless you spoke Irish? Language is the paramount expression of consciousness, at least for human beings…and Celtic consciousness is expressed through and stored within the Celtic languages.

If you are truly Celtic at heart, then why are you arguing against the necessity of learning and adopting the most vital facet (the languages) of Celtic identity today?

Which brings me to the next silly bit of idiocy…

One has to be Celtic-blooded to be able to speak Celtic languages.

You might think that such a silly belief is only to be laughed at. You are right. But there are scores of people who still believe this drivel. I have met many of them. One even went so far as to claim the Gaelic language could only be spoken by those of Celtic descent/genetic ancestry because it requires a special tongue muscle that other ethnic groups do not have. I laughed at this person until she left me alone.

If ancestry was all one needed, then why all the effort by many of us Celtic-descended people to relearn these languages? Why can’t we just speak them with ease upon being exposed to them? Anyone who has encountered difficulties in learning any language may wish that such a thing were true, in jest of course, but the ability to successfully acquire another language has nothing to do with ancestry or genetics.

The idea that language is a genetic property has been thoroughly debunked by modern linguists who have done extensive fieldwork. I have engaged in many cultural milieus and have first hand experience with people who have learned other languages successfully and on a par with native-speakers. (I have even learned to communicate with others in languages that are far different from European languages, such as Thai.) I have met Europeans who have learned to speak Thai fluently, and I have met Thais who can speak English virtually accent free. If language was a genetic property, wouldn’t this sort of thing be impossible? Likewise, many people in Celtic-speaking communities are descended from historically non-Celtic peoples, if one is to look strictly at ‘bloodline.’ As I mentioned elsewhere, Celtic cultural inheritance is not genetic at all…it has nothing to do with race or blood.

The Celts were/are an oral culture…i.e. ‘illiterate.’

The Gauls from two-thousand years ago were literate. Even the Romans and the Greeks acknowledged this fact. So why is this not talked about today? Probably because many people confuse the Druids’ own self-prohibition on writing down certain Druidic teachings and concepts with the state of Celtic society as a whole. (This is due to an emphasis on living spiritual concepts being interdependent-fluid and thus it was very distasteful to try and ‘trap’ them into the fixated patterns of written words.) Non-Druids, the vast majority of Celts, had no such prohibitions on themselves and recorded all sorts of things in written documents, most of which haven’t survived from before the early 1100’s simply because of the degradability of the materials used. Irish Celts had libraries in which documents were written in ogham letters. Some such libraries were destroyed by Christian evangelists, and the remainder were decimated by the English conquests. Irish Gaelic in Roman letters is the oldest written language in Europe outside of Latin and Greek. It should also be pointed out that recent discoveries in France have shown that the Gauls were writing using both Roman and Greek letters even earlier than their Irish cousins, though not nearly as much evidence survives in Gaulish.

In terms of poetry and language arts, there was and still is an emphasis on oral proficiency, but that is as common in highly literate societies as in non-literate societies. It certainly is a lot more lively to hear a story told by a live speaker than it is to simply read a text version of the same story, and there is much more room for individual nuance and improvisation that way. Thus one could hear the same story, song, or poem by three different people and get three different creations around the same basic theme.

Regardless of when the Celts first started writing, they have been doing so for at least two thousand years, and today there is no argument about the vibrancy of modern Celtic literatures, especially Irish and Welsh.

Choosing an overt allegiance to Celtic culture is a limiting, backward, and provincial minded thing to do.

There really is no evidence to support this assertion. What does it really say? It says that Celtic cultures are small, petty, provincial, and limited. That’s what it says. And you know what? Besides being wrong, that assertion is really ethnocentric, prejudiced, and imperialist. Any culture or language, no matter how small the number of its adherents, has an entire universe of limitless expression embodied within itself. And when that culture and language is destroyed or forgotten, than that entire universe and wealth of knowledge is lost, no matter what pieces of its literature are translated. Any one who speaks more than one language and participates in more than one cultural milieu knows that there are many things that cannot be translated or transferred from one to another easily. Ignorance of this relativistic reality is a sad thing to see displayed by the modern Global-village adherents.

Choosing to adopt a Celtic language and to maintain an allegiance to Celtic identity is not a limiting act at all. It is in fact an opening of possibilities. It is an opening to another way of seeing the world and of speaking about it. In no way does this detract from a passionate interest in any other culture or language. Hell, in my own life, I have studied a great deal of other languages, even becoming conversant and literate in some of them. My adoption of the Irish language as one of my main languages in no way detracts from my ability to interact in any other language or culture. It adds more appreciation for them all. I would venture to say that this happens to a great deal of assimilated people of the Celtic diaspora who decide to adopt or re-adopt Celtic cultural allegiances.

Celtic Pagan society converted peacefully to Christianity.

This is not explicitly an error believed in by Neo-Pagans, many of whom have researched the historical reality. It is often repeated, however by both many Christian-identified people interested in Celtic cultures and by many self-professed Druids from the British Druid Orders that formed in the Romantic period. (Note: These Romantic period Druid orders were mostly English and had nothing to do with contemporary or ancient Celtic cultures or practices. The exception to this was the unique Welsh Gorsedd movement.) The reasons for this historical oversight are rooted in those Romantic Druidic groups which were largely Christian. They needed to portray the Celts as a sort of ‘proto-Christian’ society, thus vindicating the ancient Druids from the slanders of history, while also being able to stomach the idea of themselves ‘practicing Druidism.’ As honorable as it is to vindicate the ancestral Druids and the Celts, the idea of a peaceful conversion to Christianity is false. Many Druids opposed Christianity and Celtic literatures and myths contain many examples of Druids and Christians bitterly opposed, even in Ireland, which is oft cited as the land that most peacefully converted.

Many Celtic areas at the time of Christian evangelism were without potent Druid groups, many of which had been either destroyed or lost to social attrition during the period when most Celtic lands had been ruled by the Roman Empire. Many Druids simply Christianized themselves in order to maintain ease of travel and freedom of practice after the Roman Empire officially recognized Christianity as legitimate. However, though many areas had no violent conflict between those Druids who stuck with the old ways and those people who were converting to Christianity, the social processes can not be called peaceful. Celts, under the influence of the ancestral Druidic idea that all paths to the source of life are equally valid, did not persecute Christians even when they practiced aggressive evangelism. But the Christian missionaries did often resort to violence to persuade many Druids to either give up their social positions, or to go into exile. Even so, in Ireland, many differing groups that sprang from the professional Druidic class were able to press for their rights and have their status legally recognized in the converted communities. The Christians had to be careful in many Celtic areas because of the pre-existing status of many Druids. As it became clear to Druids that their societies were converting, many of them had to either hide their older religious beliefs or convert. But the surviving accounts of this are always portrayed with a certain bitterness.

Eventually, in most Celtic areas, a symbiosis developed between Christian and Pagan expressions of religion. This is not surprising, considering the nature of earlier forms of Christianity which, after conversion was socially complete, could afford to relax and allow older traditions to remain valid. But this symbiosis isn’t the norm for all Celtic areas, especially after the evangelistic Christian movements in the 1700 and 1800’s which not only wrecked a lot of earlier traditions, but also greatly changed some Celtic communities, reshaping their cultural expressions in the image of a more intolerant and strict form of Christianity than most moderns would find palatable.

In many Celtic areas, especially parts of Ireland, people may carry on older traditions that could be linked to Pagan expressions, but this sort of "paganism" could appear too Christian for a lot of Neo-Pagans, influenced as they are by the dominance of Wicca (which originated from middle class English ideas) and by the purist idea that Paganism should be divorced from Christian expressions and ideas (even though that purist stance does not hold water from a polytheistic viewpoint.) A lot of people may be consciously attempting to bring back rituals or recreate them because they feel such things to be important aspects of Irish culture (and this is happening in other Celtic areas as well), but no matter how "Pagan" these things may be, many people participating in them may be perplexed at Neo-Pagans from America or England attempting to tell them what is or is not "really" Pagan, as the label or identity of being "Pagan" may not be as important in Celtic communities. Which brings me to my last topic:

Celtic Paganism is more authentic than Celtic Christianity

This idea is probably rooted in the America Neo-Pagan antipathy towards Christianity more so than any reality. American Neo-Pagans tend to be influenced by American Christian spirituality in its insistence on "purity" and "either/or" mentalities. As pointed out in above, Celtic spirituality is a symbiotic relationship between native conceptions and Christian ideas. It could be useful to think of modern Celtic religion as having four strands (while noting that in some areas one or more of these strands are dominant): both the surviving pre-Christian pagan ideas and the more modern consciously revived or developed Pagan ideas; and both native developments of Christianity and the influence of stricter versions of modern Christian sects.

There have been Christian Celtic communities for at least 1500 years now. Christianity is the dominant spirituality of all modern Celtic countries today. So to say that any form of Paganism, especially a modern reconstructed Celtic (Neo-)Paganism is more authentic or true to the Celtic cultures is simply being ignorant of the last millennium and a half. Usually those who dislike the place that Christianity holds in Celtic cultures are simply prejudiced. To these people I say: It doesn’t matter what you would like or wish to be true among Celtic cultures. They are the way they are regardless of your personal preferences.

That many strands of the old Paganism have survived really says nothing about which religion is more true to the cultures since the label "pagan" means almost next to nothing within the context of native outlooks. In many cases, the label "pagan" is used as an insult. Even a modern Irish worshipper of Mór might take offense if you called their worship "pagan," unless it was clear what context you were talking about. In many other cases the word "pagan" may mean partying, drinking, and sex. Which may or not be viewed highly, depending on the area.

Celtic cultures are Christian, and have been for so long now that it is absurd to think of them in any other way. Just because you want the whole world to be Pagan, and just because the Celts are one of the peoples whom the Neo-Pagans like to often rip-off, you wish that modern Celts would be like the pagans in your fantasies, doesn’t make it so. Nor should it be so. If you want to learn about the Celts, you need to get over your Neo-Pagan religious prejudices.

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC / Neamhoirmhinneach Aodh, CCN (Coinneoir na Chao Naofa)

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