http://americymrunet.jamroomhosting.com/feed/group_discuss Mon, 06 Apr 2026 03:53:39 +0100 http://americymrunet.jamroomhosting.com/ceri-shaw/group_discuss/165/the-old-and-the-new http://americymrunet.jamroomhosting.com/shan-morgain/group_discuss/165
My discussion point is about how we regard the ancient knowledge compared to new inspiration today.
One attitude is to lovingly, slavishly stay with the sources. To rediscover, unearth, record, and redistribute the same things our ancestors said and did. Celtic Reconstructionists of the strictest type belong here as do many academic scholars. At its extreme this can be a stuffy, and limited zone.
At the other extreme is our merry eclectic. Often identified with Jungian thought the eclectic sees a great pool of world myth which is really all the same 'underneath' or 'at the centre.' So anything can be pulled off the shelf of a divine supermarket and combined with anything else. Anything can be added that seems to pretty it up. This can too easily exploit native traditions as a 'spiritual strip mining.'
So how do we find a moderate middle where we respect our ancestors, and yet respect our own freedom to be creative carriers of the traditions we love?
Well to begin with I suggest keeping a clear distinction between vision now, and vision then. Simply SAY when something comes from sources: 'According to the First Branch ... ' or not as in, 'My own idea of this, my own vision is ...'
Not to do so is dishonest. It also doesn't help others learn as it is not clear where to look to check, or go further.
Next I suggest that there is no such thing as a core religion, a One Truth Fits All. The consept of Archetypes is seriously flawed as all cultures do not share the same views of basic images. (Mothers for example vary a grat deal across cultures) Also where in Celtic spirituality do we find sin? tainted babies? permanent hell? These belong to an eastern religious import.
To me the Celts understood this very well. Relinquishing this One Truth idea allows us to respect the ancestors without being fundamentalist about them. They are a set of respected voices, but we have voices too. As the Mother of the Craft, Doreen Valiente said, who told the first witch how to do it?
Let us have ancestral respect and bouncing modern vigour too. But let us not confuse the two else we disrespect both.



]]> Fri, 04 Mar 2016 23:29:23 +0000 http://americymrunet.jamroomhosting.com/ceri-shaw/group_discuss/164/a-short-pre-christian-story-from-ireland http://americymrunet.jamroomhosting.com/brian-y-tarw-llwyd/group_discuss/164
A Short, Pre-Christian Story from Ireland
 
— Adapted from various sources, including “Celtic Myth and Legend” by Charles Squire, originally published in 1905.
 
Long after the Partholonians had come to Ireland, and long after the Nemedians had come to defeat them, and long after the Fir Bolg came to defeat the Nemedians, the Tuatha de Dannaan came to Ireland and defeated the Formorians.  These people of the Goddess Danu were beautiful, tall and powerful, and today we recognize them as ancestors of the elves.
The Milesians, the ancestors of the Celts, had by this time reached Spain.  It happened that a Milesian named Bregon built a great tower, and one day one of his sons, named Ith, sighted a far-off land across the seas.  This land had been unknown to the Milesians and Ith set sail to find and explore it.  Ith landed on the west coast of Ireland and met three Tuatha kings, grandsons of the Dagda.  When Ith praised Ireland very highly, the kings became afraid that Ith’s people would invade their land and so they killed him.  Ith’s companions returned to Spain with his body, and the Milesians set sail to exact revenge on the Tuatha de Danaan.
The Milesians landed in Ireland on Beltaine.  When the Milesians reached Tara, the three Tuatha kings requested that the Milesians leave Ireland in peace for three days.  Amergin, poet and Druid of the Milesians, agreed that they would withdraw their ships the distance of nine waves.  They would then return and try to take the land in battle.  The druids of the Tuatha raised great storms and mists to prevent the Milesians return.  However, Amergin chanted a magical lay which dispelled the storms and mists and the Milesians were able to land.  After a great battle the Tuatha were defeated.  The division of the land was given over to the druid Amergin.  The land below and across the sea to the west was given to the Tuatha, and ever after this the Tuatha lived either across the waves or below the hills, while the Milesians — the Celts — built their society above.
The Milesians flourished, and traded with, and sometimes fought with, the Tuatha, and even occasionally married each other.  Centuries passed and there came a time when the Irish king Cormac determined that Ireland needed a standing army to defend the coasts of Ireland.  The army was called Fianna Eirinn, or the Fenians.  Three regiments were raised — 3000 warriors — and placed under the command of one Fionn mac Cumhail, or Finn mac Coul.  The legends of Finn and the Fenians are legion, but this story is about a young lieutenant named Ossian.
The Fenians were hunting near Lake Killarney when a lady of more than human beauty came riding up to them, and told them that her name was Niamh, daughter of the Son of the Sea.  Such was Niamh of the Golden Hair, Manannan’s daughter, that it was small wonder that, when she chose Ossian from among the sons of men to be her lover, all Finn’s supplications could not keep him.  Ossian mounted behind her on her fairy horse, and they rode across the land to the sea-shore, and then over the tops of the waves.  As they went, she described the country of the gods to him in just the same terms as Manannan himself had pictured it to Bran, son of Febal, as Mider had painted it to Etain, and as everyone that went there limned it to those that stayed at home on the earth.
As they went they saw wonders.  Fairy places with bright sun-bowers and lime-white walls appeared on the surface of the sea.  At one of these they halted, and Ossian, at Niamh’s request, attacked a fierce Fomor who lived there, and set free a damsel of the Tuatha de Danaan whom he kept imprisoned.  He saw a hornless fawn leap from wave to wave, chased by one of those strange hounds of Celtic myth which are pure white, with red ears. 
At last they reached Tír na nÓg, the “Land of the Young,” and there Ossian dwelt with Niamh for three hundred years before he remembered Erin and the Fenians.  Then a great wish came upon him to see his own country and his own people again, and Niamh gave him leave to go, and mounted him upon a fairy steed for the journey.  One thing alone she made him swear — not to let his feet touch earthly soil.  Ossian promised, and reached Ireland on the wings of the wind.
But like the children of Ler at the end of their penance, he found all had changed.  He asked for Finn and the Fenians, and was told that they were the names of people who had lived long ago, and whose deeds were written of in old books.  The battle of Gabhra had been fought and the Fenians destroyed, and St. Patrick had come to Ireland, and made all things new.  The very forms of men had altered;  they seemed dwarves compared to the giants of his day.  Seeing three hundred of them trying in vain to raise a marble slab, he rode up to them in contemptuous kindness, and lifted it with one hand.
But as he did so, the golden saddle-girth broke with the strain, and he touched the earth with his feet.  The fairy horse vanished, and Ossian rose from the ground, no longer divinely young and fair and strong, but a blind, gray-haired, withered old man.
Stranded in his old age upon earthly soil, unable to help himself or find his own food, he was taken by St. Patrick into his house to be converted.  The saint painted to Ossian in the brightest colors the heaven which would be his own if he would but repent, and in the darkest the hell in which he tells Ossian his old comrades now lie in anguish.
Ossian replied to the saint’s arguments, entreaties, and threats in language that was extraordinarily frank.  He would not believe that heaven could be closed to the Fenians if they wished to enter it, or that God himself would not be proud to claim friendship with Finn.  And if it be not so, what is the use to him of eternal life where there is no hunting, or wooing fair women, or listening to the songs and tales of the bards?
Said Ossian:  “No, I will go to the Fenians, whether they sit at the feast or in the fire.”
And so he died as he had lived.
]]> Fri, 04 Mar 2016 23:27:31 +0000 http://americymrunet.jamroomhosting.com/ceri-shaw/group_discuss/163/the-celts http://americymrunet.jamroomhosting.com/brian-y-tarw-llwyd/group_discuss/163
The Celts
 -adapted from “The Druids”, by Elis; “The Great Cosmic Mother”, bt Soor and Mor; and “Women of the Celts”, by Markale. 
[Editor’s note:  I can’t be any more specific on the references, because all that information has been lost several computer crashes ago.  This was originally put together at Samhuinn, 2000, and since that time more evidence has come to light about the Celts having been as far north as southern Denmark and western Germany.  Also genetic evidence shows that the Irish and Welsh share a link with the Basque people, and that the Basque people are more like these British Isles’ peoples in that respect than the Basque are to the French and Spaniards who are much closer.  This supports the old legends about the Celts (the sons of Mil, or the Milesians) having originally come to the British Isles from “Spain.”]
In the Fifth Century B.C., Hecateus of Miletus and Herodotus of Halicarnassus were the first to record the existence of “Keltoi.”  Their “place of origin” was identified at the headwaters of the Danube, the Rhine and the Rhone, and archeology would support this contention.  By the time that these first classical Greek references were made, or rather, those which have survived, were being written, the Celts were spread across Europe from Ireland and Britain in the West as far east as the Central Plains of what is now Turkey, and from what is now Belgium in Northern Europe to Cadiz in what is now Spain, and were also established south of the Alps in northern Italy with the Apennines constituting their main southern borders. 
The Celts had a highly advanced weaponry, having learned the art of smelting iron.  Formidable axes, billhooks and other tools allowed the Celts to open up roadways through previously impenetrable northern European forests.  Not only did the new metal working allow the Celts to become more mobile and to excel in farming techniques, but it provided them with new armaments of swords and spears which rendered them, for awhile, militarily superior to most of their neighbors. 
By the Fifth Century B.C., they were in northern Italy and beginning to encounter the Etruscans and Romans.  They populated the Po Valley and settled with the Apennine Mountains as their southern border and established themselves as far south as Ancona.  About 474 B.C. these Celts defeated the Etruscans near Ticino and were in total control of the plains of northern Italy.  Under their leader, Brennos (the name could mean a title, as “Brenin” is still the Welsh word for a king), the Celts defeated the Etruscans again, and when the Romans came to the aid of the Etruscans, the Romans themselves were defeated.  This was in about 390-387 B.C., when, after their victory at Allia, the Celtic army poured into Rome itself and the Romans were forced to pay a large ransom to persuade the Celts to withdraw. 
In 366 B.C. Celtic mercenaries were being employed in Sparta in their war against Thebes and playing a decisive role.  Large groups of Celts were following the Danube Valley and reached the Carpathians, establishing settlements as they went.  Soon the Celts were on the northern borders of Macedonia, and Alexander the Great journeyed north to meet the Celtic leaders on the banks of the Danube in 335-334 B.C. in order to arrange a peace treaty of equals.  With Alexander’s death, the Celtic leaders considered the peace treaty null and void.  They had, in 298 B.C. under Cambaleus conquered and settled Thrace.  In 280 B.C. three Celtic armies were poised on the northern borders of Macedonia.  The following year one of these armies, under Bolgios, defeated the Macedonians and slew Ptolemy Ceraunos, the heir of Alexander and his once favorite general, in battle.  Another Celtic army lead by Brennos and Acichorios, entered the Greek peninsula, defeated the combined army of the Greek states, commanded by Callippus of Athens, at Thermopylae.  They sacked the temple at Delphi, site of Pythiao Delphi, the Greek oracle and priestess of Apollo. 
The Celts were eventually granted lands in central Asia Minor and established the Celtic state of Galatia, becoming the first Celtic peoples to later convert to Christianity by Paul of Tarsus, to whom he wrote his famous epistle.  Back in Greece, a further 4,000 warriors and their families were recruited by Ptolemy the Second, the pharaoh of Egypt, and went to serve him there.  Other bands of Celts decided to serve as mercenaries and armies of various kings such as those of Carthage and Syracuse, and even Syria. 
The bravery of the Celts in battle was a byword in the ancient world and Aristotle claimed that they feared nothing: ‘neither earthquakes or waves.’  The classical writers have much to say on the battle tactics of the Celts, who excelled as cavalry which, with their superior iron weapons seemed to have given them the initial edge over the Mediterranean world. 
Within Celtic society there was a band of professional warriors and this warrior class had their own rituals.  They were professionals who sold their expertise to whoever would hire their services.  Their world might be more quickly understood by comparing them with the Samurai, the military caste of Japan which was finally abolished at the turn of this century.  This Celtic warrior caste is also parallel to Hindu society, which had a warrior class just below the caste of the Brahmins. 
Celtic society had four main classes, very much similar to other Indo-European societies:  the intelligentsia, the warriors, the producers of goods, and the menials or manual workers.  By the time the Irish law system was codified, five basic classes had emerged which consisted of:  the various forms of kings or chieftains, the intelligentsia or professionals, the officials and magistrates, the clansmen who worked the land and formed the army in time of war, and those who had forfeited their civil rights, which consisted mainly of criminals undergoing punishment, prisoners of war, and hostages.
The Celts were not patriarchal.  Robert Graves has traced their Ogham script back to Anatolia, and relates the original Celtic people to the remains of the neolithic matriarchies of the Near East.  Since ancient Anatolia (now Turkey) was once called Galatia, and branches of the Celts were called Galateans, or Gauls, this connection makes sense.
The Roman historian Tacitus wrote of the Celts:
Their wives are to every man the most sacred witness to his bravery.  Tradition says that wavering armies have been rallied by women... They believe that the sex has a certain prescience, and they do not despise their counsels or make light of their opinions.
The Celts did not believe in capital punishment.  Their tribal councils were attended and often presided over by women, and their inheritance of property and also kingship was matrilineal.  Their male leaders were elected, and they had a reputation for democratic practices.  As the Celts moved into new areas, they assimilated much of the native Neolithic culture.  Ancient pre-Celtic influences survived liberally among Celticized people in Ireland, Wales, Brittany and the Basque country.
In Celtic law and custom, women were relatively free and powerful.  They enjoyed greater economic, social, and sexual autonomy than women in modern day Britain, France or America.  The early Celtic Christian church was suspect to the Roman Catholic orthodoxy precisely because it was pro-woman -- women celebrated mass.  Women priests, called conhospitae , administered the sacramental wine while the male priests distributed the wafers.  St. Patrick and Roman Christianity finally ended Druidic worship in Ireland, but the Irish church retained much of its pagan mysticism.  Wales and Ireland, even in medieval times, preserved Celtic language, art, and literature, including the visionary ollave and bardic tradition of the Goddess with its sacred tree-alphabet.
The tuath (tribe) was the basic political unit in Ireland, owning the land communally.  Cattle, not land, was the basis of wealth and the medium of exchange.  Women also owned herds.  The ruler of the tuath was commonly a man, but the queen was entitled to one-third of all war booty.  There were many famous queen warriors, like the British Queen Boudicca in 61 BC.  Powerful legendary women, like Queen Maeve of Connaught, were undoubtedly based on real people.
Celtic women owned their own property and were free to choose their mates, or “husbands.”  In marriage, women didn’t enter legally into the man’s family, but retained independent status and property.  Desiring divorce, the woman simply took back her belongings and dowry.  Marriage was not a religious ceremony, and there was no concept of adultery.  There were even “annual marriages,” entered into by both women and men, in which both parties agreed to be bonded for one year; at the end of each year the bond was mutually renewed, or abolished.  Polyandry was practiced by some tribes; children belonged to the tuath .  Legal contracts were made by the “wife” independently of her mate, and women were often the economic “heads” of families, with daughters inheriting equally with sons.  Celtic heroes were named after their mothers -- and “heroism” was not confined to men.  When upper-status Celts officially mated, she gave him a fine horse and a sword -- and he gave her a fine horse and a sword.  The mutual exchange of nobility was the ceremonial band.
By the first century B.C., however, Celtic settlements and influence had been driven back from Thrace along the Danube out of areas such as Illyria, Pannonia, Norcium, and with Germanic tribal pressure from the northeast, the Celts were being pressed back westward over the Rhine, the great river whose Celtic name meant “the sea.”  Only Gaul proper remained an independent Celtic territory, together with the islands of Britain and Ireland.  Everywhere else the Celts had fallen either to the remorseless military machine of Rome or to the Germanic tribes.  One of the clever devices used by the highly patriarchal Romans to divide and conquer the barbarians was to mock the tribal males for being “ruled by women.”  Romans took captured men aside and laughed at them for “allowing their women” to be powerful and influential.  The Romans promised them enhanced power and pleasure in the new regime if they would only turn against their women and become dominators of women, like the Romans were.  When the tribal males succumbed and disavowed their strong women as leaders and equal partners in war and love, the tribes of Europe collapsed into disarray, making Roman conquest easier.
Between 58 B.C. and 55 B.C., Julius Caesar and the Roman armies defeated most of the Gaulish leaders.  So successful were the Romans that in 55 B.C. Caesar was able to take an invasion force and land on the southern shores of Britain and defeat the Celtic Cantii (the tribe who gave their name to Kent).  By 51 B.C. the Romans conquered the last independent Gaulish Celtic territory in a bloody campaign that ended around the hill fort of the Aquitani, although every few years the Gauls rose in unsuccessful attempts to regain their independence. 
In about A.D. 40 - 43, the Romans invaded southern Britain but were never able to completely conquer Britain.  Eventually they gave up the idea of subduing the northern part of the island, building the famous Hadrian’s Wall from coast to coast to mark their northern frontier.  During the 360 years or so that southern Britain was part of the Roman Empire, insurrections against Roman rule occurred. 
New conquerors now threatened what remained of the Celtic world.  Jutes, Angles, and Saxons began to raid and settle in Britain and eventually annihilated large sections of the Celtic populations in the area which was to become England, causing those that remained to migrate in large numbers either to the western and northern areas, to Ireland, or to the European mainland.  Only in Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall have the Celts survived in Britain until modern times.  Large numbers of Celtic refugees split to Brittany, where their Celtic descendants remain to the present day. 
Today the Celtic peoples have been pushed back into the islands and peninsulas of northwestern Europe, where they constitute a population of sixteen million, of which only two and one-half million still speak a Celtic language.  These are the hearty survivors of the former predominant civilization of northern Europe which once spread from one side of the continent to the other and from north to south.  It should be noted, however, that European Celts have migrated to the New World in large numbers at various times, and have also settled in New Zealand and Australia.

]]> Fri, 04 Mar 2016 23:23:29 +0000 http://americymrunet.jamroomhosting.com/ceri-shaw/group_discuss/162/old-group-comment-wall http://americymrunet.jamroomhosting.com/ceri-shaw/group_discuss/162
Jennifer (aka Garan Gwyn) March 18, 2014 at 4:33pm
Oh...Yes, I do remember that showing up on my page as well. And if we were going to use that, we should get her permission, as the tree is not in public domain. However, I personally think we could come up with something better to represent the spirit of "Pagan and Druid" brothers and sisters if we put our heads together. We might have to "borrow" it as well, though... Reply
Brian y Tarw Llwyd March 18, 2014 at 3:57pm
Oh, btw, the logo that still shows on my home page here is Jen Delyth's Celtic Tree of Life, so perhaps she might be willing to officially allow us to use it? Reply Edit Delete Brian y Tarw Llwyd March 18, 2014 at 3:55pm No, sorry, I don't have the logo. If the group was started by Hugh Roberts (as in dicated above) then I imagine he might have it still. I will give your idea some thought, and see if I think of something that doesn't step on too many toes. hehe 
Ceri Shaw March 18, 2014 at 3:29pm
Diolch for posting here Shan and Brian...I certainly plan to be active on this group ( and others ) when the reconstruction process is sufficiently advanced Meanwhile a question for you Brian....do you still have the group logo? I cant find it anywhere and I wondered if you originally posted it and still had it lying around somewhere? If not....no worries, we can always devise a new one. In fact perhaps we should discuss what the logo shold be on this wall?
Shan Morgain March 15, 2014 at 7:28am
Grey Bull I come to your call. I agree absolutely the way to fight such spiteful stupidity is to rebuild and better. After all our ancestors rebuilt many times, and our descendants will also. 
Brian y Tarw Llwyd March 15, 2014 at 7:12am
As a result of some juvenile sabotage, all the articles, comments, stories, and pictures that were here seem to have been erased permanently. While that is extremely irritating, I suppose there is nothing to do at this point except view this as an opportunity to create something even better. Anyone who was a member of this page will have to re-join the group, just like I had to moments ago. Let's try to have some fun with this, shall we?
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