why Wicca is not Celtic

[Alexander]

for the full article go to http://www.clannada.org/wicca.php

Why Wicca Is Not Celtic v.3.2

by Iain Mac an tSaoir and Dawn O'Laoghaire

The following is by no means an indictment of the religion called Wicca. Wicca is indeed a valid and powerful path for those who truthfully walk it and understand it. However, there is a body of people who believe that Wicca is the descendant of the religious ways of the Gaelic or other Celtic peoples (or 'Celts' as a general nomenclature). This simply is not the case.

The following is a brief comparison of the Wiccan religion and Celtic religion. The purpose of this exercise is to dispel the notion that Wicca is Celtic, or derived from Celtic religion. It is by no means to be taken as an in depth survey of either religion. There are a great many questions that could be answered for people if they would visit with the elderly people in the rural areas of the Old Countries, or at least read books written by solid academians instead of profit oriented, new age writers. We will place at the end of this article the sources that can be used to substantiate what is said herein. I encourage you to investigate each source given, to check the veracity of the statement for yourselves

continued at link shown above.

[Stritheil]

I was tempted to move this thread to either the Wiccan or Indo-European forums, but since it addresses both areas, I'll leave it here unless one of the other moderators thinks it should be moved. But I must say, without meaning any offense, that I consider the article you're quoting to be based on some rather silly and mistaken notions.

First of all, I've never met a member of a Wiccan tradition who claimed that Wicca is based solely on Celtic concepts, so the authors are just setting up a straw man to knock down. Why they'd want to do that, I don't quite know, but they don't seem to know much about Wicca.

Secondly, anyone who thinks that Celtic spiritual concepts in "the Gaelic lands" have survived unchanged over the centuries doesn't have a clue. If they're talking about western Ireland or the western Highlands of Scotland, there are still some traces of the Gaelic language and some distinct Gaelic customs in those areas, but the people are generally devout christians, and these days they're mostly unilingual English speakers. And while the catholics seem to have retained a bit more of their folklore and some possibly Pagan derived customs than the protestants have, traditional Celtic spirituality has largely vanished into the midsts of time.

I suspect that the people who wrote the article you quoted are Celtic recon types who want to believe that the "Celtic spirituality" they're invented and/or reconstructed from shards and fragments is the one true way of pursuing a Celtic spiritual path. IMO, such a rigid approach shows that they haven't yet escaped the shackles of the christian belief in an eternal, timeless and never changing set of dogma and spiritual practice. Whereas I think the ancient Druids would have understood that the way that we interpret and celebrate our relationship with the Gods can and should change over time, to meet new conditions, and to address the changing needs of society. IMO, that's why in many places christianity is being swept away and replaced by more polytheistic and experiential belief systems. But the process seems to be happening much more slowly in conservative rural areas like "the Gaelic lands", where christianity is still quite strong.

[Alexander]

"IMO, that's why in many places christianity is being swept away and replaced by more polytheistic and experiential belief systems. But the process seems to be happening much more slowly in conservative rural areas like "the Gaelic lands", where christianity is still quite strong." quote from Stritheil

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If you are speaking of the Euro situation I'm not not sure it is Just Christianity that is being repaced but all existing belief systems including wicca. Replaced by what you might ask. The religion of ME, self worship, worship of material goods and the ego. Probably too soon to say anyway. We need more time to evaluate it all. Now if you didn't like this article I have another I will post at some point that says the Druids were not, at least early on, really Pagans. That should send your blood pressure up. :)

[Stritheil]

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If you are speaking of the Euro situation I'm not not sure it is Just Christianity that is being repaced but all existing belief systems including wicca. Replaced by what you might ask. The religion of ME, self worship, worship of material goods and the ego. Probably too soon to say anyway. We need more time to evaluate it all.
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And what evidence do you base this opinion on? There have always been those people, including a lot a christian leaders, who seem to value money and power more than anything else, but what I see happening right now is a spiritual renaissance. A lot of people are still looking for their sense of direction, but at least they're looking.

If some people are naive enough to get conned out of a lot of money by some new age huckster, I don't think we should make fun of them for it. That sort of thing just shows the huge spiritual void that was created by the protestant capitalist "kill and eat the poor" type of mentality. And Neo-Paganism and other modern spiritual movements are blossoming to fill that void, like lillies on a muddy pond. At least, that's my way of looking at it.

[Stritheil]

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Now if you didn't like this article I have another I will post at some point that says the Druids were not, at least early on, really Pagans. That should send your blood pressure up. :)

Not really. Anyone who says the the Druids weren't Pagan is disagreeing with all of the modern academics and all the writers of the ancient world who ever studied and wrote about the Druids.

The learned class of the Celts that we refer to in a general sense as "the Druids" can be clearly shown to be a typical phenomenon of the Indo-Europeans, who were clearly "Pagan", if one defines that word in terms of polytheism and earth based spirituality. And we know the names and/or titles of several of the major Deities that were common among Celtic groups in Gaul, Britain and Ireland 2000 years ago. While we admittedly know less about the Deities worshipped by Celts in Spain and northern Italy, the inscriptions and statuary they left behind during the post Roman conquest period makes it clear that the Romans and Greeks were correct in describing them as polytheists whose learned class was similar to that of any other Indo-European group, except that it was more developed and more powerful than was the case among the Romans, Greeks, Germans, Slavs, etc. However, both modern academics and the ancient Romans agree that those men and women who actually held the title of "Druid" were the public administrators of Celtic religion, and the spiritual advisors of kings. It was the Ovates who more closely resembled what we would think of as Pagan priests and priestesses.

Every once in a while, a person with no academic creditials comes along and "proves' that the Druids were monotheists or High Priests from Atlantis or invaders from another galaxy, but that isn't anything that an educated person would take very seriously, IMO.

But since the topic of this thread is why Wicca is not Celtic religion (a proposition that any Wiccan would agree with, despite some Celtic influences being evident), let's get back to that.

[Alexander]

"But since the topic of this thread is why Wicca is not Celtic religion (a proposition that any Wiccan would agree with, despite some Celtic influences being evident), let's get back to that." quote from Stritheil

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2 posts and how many paragraphs to say..................you don't argue the original point of the article. Why not just respond, " I never said it was " ?:)

[Alexander]

"But since the topic of this thread is why Wicca is not Celtic religion (a proposition that any Wiccan would agree with, despite some Celtic influences being evident), let's get back to that." quote from Stritheil

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Since you do not take exception to the original point of the article, there is not much left to discuss.

[Stritheil]

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Since you do not take exception to the original point of the article, there is not much left to discuss.

I do take exception with the original point of the article, as I've already explained. The authors seem to believe some fantasy that Wiccans claim that Wicca is exclusively Celtic, which they don't. And in attempting to disprove something that Wiccans don't believe, the authors make numerous inaccurate statements about both Celtic spirituality and Wicca. After reading their article, I'm not sure they even understand that not all Celts are or were Gaels. And their comments about Jung show a lack of awareness of the extent to which he got his central ideas about the human person, archetypal images, et cetera, from occult sources. IMO, it's just a very poorly written article, from start to finish, so I have to wonder why you'd bother to quote it. Why go dumpster diving for poorly written material when there are a lot of well written articles and books about Wicca, the beliefs of the ancient Celts, the beliefs of modern Celts, Celtic Reconstruction and the works of Jung, all of which are handled poorly in that article, IMO.

[Caliban]

Wicca isn't Celtic because it is an Old English (Anglo-Saxon) word, meaning a (male) sorcerer, making it Germanic. ;)

The way I see it, Wicca is a synthesis of many elements from many cultures, but can easily be seen as a continuation of an occult tradition in Europe, from Italy to Iceland, that really got rolling around the Renaissance and hasn't slowed down since.

Broad swaths of this general movement have been determinedly Christian, but there has also been a strong current of sympathy for Classical paganism and local fairy-faith all along. Wicca is simply one of the most recent and successful manifestation of this end of the spectrum.

Having studied the Celts, and been Wiccan, I have to agree that there is really nothing in it that is explicitly Celtic, save for the names of some seasonal festivals.

My two cents.

[Stritheil]

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Having studied the Celts, and been Wiccan, I have to agree that there is really nothing in it that is explicitly Celtic, save for the names of some seasonal festivals.
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I'd argue for some possibly Celtic overtones in the manner in which solar and lunar energies are combined in the wheel of the year, as well as in the respect Wicca gives to both the feminine aspect of Deity and to women themselves. Also, IMO, Wiccan views on reincarnation were likely borrowed from Celtic rather than eastern sources. Of course, we could probably debate endlessly about the nature of Celtic spirituality without reaching an agreement, given that our understanding of it is based on archeological remains, old Irish and Welsh manuscripts that were recopied by monks, the misinterpretations of ancient Greek and Roman writers, and the efforts of folklorists, some of whom seem to have injected their own ideas into the mix. And even if one accepts that there are some Celtic influences in Wicca, it probably came from Gardner's friendship with Ross Nichols, the man who first began the process of putting Paganism back into revivalist Druidry, and who was the leader of the Druid organization that was the precurser to OBOD, currently one of the largest modern Druid groups.

I can agree with your overall placement of modern Wicca in the context of a longstanding occult and Pagan revival that seems to have come out of the Renaissance. Certainly the Masonic influences in Gardner's Wicca are quite obvious. However, I'm not certain how successful Wicca has been. Some would argue that the quasi-Wiccan mush that currently fills the bookstores is a sign of its impending doom. I think that in the long run, Druidry may have a more promising future as the torch bearer for the Pagan revival.

[Caliban]

I'll agree that we have very little to go on in respect to pre-Christian Celtic religion, and that certain modern Druid groups tend to have a much better head for scholarship regarding the pagan past than, say, your average Lady Silver Twinkle-Star's Coven of the Rainbow Unicorn. :)

But magic deals in Archetype, as well as tradition and history, and whatever Wicca may or may not be, witchcraft is first an formost a practical matter of using what works. What we imagine, and what engages our wonder, is useful in that regard. And if the tastes of some of those drawn to the mysteries are a bit mawkish and tawdry, that may be unfortunate. But if it actually serves to bring even a tenth of them into contact with the mysteries, I think it is forgiveable.