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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Iain Mac an tSaoir (talk | contribs) at 05:00, 24 March 2006 (→‎Gaelic Traditionalism?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Be kind. This is my first Wikipedia entry and I'm still learning the conventions. I've read the tutorial and everything but this entry is lacking "wikifying" and perhaps more extensive external sources or even more internal sources and connections. I'll try to work on it some more later but any tips or suggestions for improving the language or to make it more "Wiki" consistant would be extremely welcome. Paul Pigman 06:43, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate Terms

What do you think would be the best way to discuss the alternate terms for Celtic Reconstructionism or branches/variations of CR, such as Celtic Restorationism, Neo-Celtism, Senistrognata, Seandagnatha, Ildiachas/Iol-Diadhachas, Gaelic Traditionalism, and so on. Whateley23 19:30, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Additions

Added another couple of brief paragraphs on the history of CR, and the importance of balancing the scholarly and the mystical. Paul and I worked together on clarifying some bits of his initial entry.

Added a couple more names of sub-trads. Removed GT from the CR sub-trads as, though the GT groups we're aware of initially considered themselves CR, they don't any more.

Today's initial changes are under 63.22.0.227, as I hadn't created an account yet. Kathryn NicDhàna 21:12, 19 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

yeah, i understand that the GTs don't consider themselves CR, but they make use of the same general methodologies (and some still associate closely with predominately CR organizations). since CR can be considered a methodology rather than a religion in itself (though it can also be considered the latter - the term has become somewhat ambiguous), i felt that it was appropriate to include it. Whateley23 22:30, 19 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Many people do consider CR a religion itself or, perhaps more accurately, an umbrella term covering a number of religions and spiritual traditions. Perhaps we will need to do more work to clarify when we are using "CR" to mean an approach, and when we are using "CR" to mean a religion. As an approach, yes, the polytheistic, split off from CR, GTs use the same methods; but as a community - very different feel and goals. And "Celtic Traditionalist" is another thing as well. Some GTs are closer to CT than CR. Other GTs (the ones with an older claim to the term) are actually Catholics. Kathryn NicDhàna 04:39, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

CR vs Neo-druidism

The article would benefit from a discussion of how Celtic Reconstruction differs from Neo-druidism, if in fact it does differ from it. Also "human sacrifice, slavery, and other strongly patriarchal elements" is far from NPOV, so I'm removing the "other". --Angr/tɔk tə mi 18:42, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

i've added a section discussing the differences between neo-druids and crs, though i am not entirely happy with it. this may be due to my dissatisfaction with attempts (including my own) to define by differentiating in the past. i did try to emphasize that there is quite a bit of similarity, but that there are differing objectives. Whateley23 22:32, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Gaelic Traditionalism?

since there has been no discussion beyond the two comments, i'd like to put the matter up for a vote. feel free to include a short sentence, if you like:

Include Gaelic Traditionalism

1. they use entirely CR methods, even if separating themselves as a community and their conclusions vary slightly Whateley23 23:13, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Do Not Include

1. and 2. Paul and Kathryn here. "they use entirely CR methods" - agreed wholeheartedly. The fallacious claims of a couple of GTs that they had inherited family traditions are simply not credible, and at least one of these individuals has now changed his backstory. Sorry this is not NPOV, but we don't know how else to say it. "even if separating themselves as a community" - agreed. "and their conclusions vary slightly" - we would say, at least among the GTs we've encountered, their conclusions and goals vary greatly. I know Kym and Eric agree with this, and I'm pretty sure Erynn does as well (ask them. They're just not on Wikipedia). While we are fine with people knowing that GT is a faction that split off from CR, and that some GTs once called themselves CR, we are not comfortable with being publicly associated with them in any way that would confuse the two traditions as they now exist. One clarification: when we are talking about GT in this statement, we are talking about the faction that split off from the modern, polytheistic, Celtic Reconstructionist movement in the 1990's. The term has also historically been used for a long time by Irish activists in Ireland, usually Catholics. These are a totally different group of "GT"s.

If you insist on mentioning GT in this, please only do so as an historical footnote. We are adamantly opposed to simply listing GT as a "sub-trad" of CR. Paul Pigman and Kathryn NicDhàna

So, it would be reasonable to mention the derivation of GT commuity in the historical development of CR, indicate that they have since diverged, and give GT its own page if it does not already have one. --Nantonos 03:38, 11 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]


02:00, 24 January 2006(UTC)
Hi, this is Iain Mac an tSaoir. All of this was brought to my attention. Maybe I can clarify a little. Gaelic Traditionalism came up independently from CR. In the late 1890's an English woman wrote disparagingly about Irish people not giving up their indigenous ways, and these she termed "Gaelic traditionalists". The term sat fallow from about 1896 until mid-1994. In July 1994, based upon personal experiences with, and encouragement from, Native American Traditionalists, I coined the terms, "Gaelic Traditionalism" (a way of life expressed by living the Gaelic cultural traditions as the culture alone defines that), and "Gaelic Traditionalists" (those who hold steadfast to the cultural traditions as the Gaelic cultures alone define them). I also founded the Clannada na Gadelica to attempt at standing up for the historical Celtic and Gaelic traditions as the cultures alone define those, and, bringing the Gaelic Traditions to Gaelic Diasporan peoples.

I was not raised in a Gaeltacht, nor did I have the benefit of a family who had retained the cultural traditions. It was a long hard road to find them, and it was as hard to change from being a typical sassanach into a cultural Gael. In its infancy the CnG did have errant materials. However, the dedication was always to the cultural tradition as the culture alone defines that tradition. Hence, as more was learned those errors were corrected. It took a couple of years but it finely got square. I wish that so many people did not have to witness my growing up into a Gael, but they did. Some few still hold against me things from before I became culturalized. I have apologized for those things and tried to make restitution where such was needed. More yet, most of those with a grudge, hold against me my refusal to let the Clannada na Gadelica be anything other than a place for Gaelic Traditionalism. Probably not so much what I my goal was as how I went about it. But like I said, eventually things got into square.

To be concise, Gaelic Traditionalism is about the Gaelic cultural traditions as the Gaelic cultures define them. There are some who have other ways of addresseing the implementation in daily living, particularly to how to form and maintain communities. Yes, early on there were some CR people involved in the Clannada. But they didn't stick around. It was a difficult time then. As pertains to your entry, no GT is not a subset of CR, because while it came public around the same time, it did so independently, and with a focus on bringing the cultural traditions, as the cultures defines them, to people who want to live them.
I hope this helps. Iain —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Iain_Mac_an_tSaoir (talk • contribs) .

  • Thanks for this; it is helpful for those wanting another POV on GT, if perhaps a bit more detailed/lengthy than needed on a CR Talk page. Why did you remove the longer version of this from the GT Talk page? [note--it's still there in the history of the talk page, for those who want to read it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AGaelic_Traditionalism&diff=36439879&oldid=36438362 .] Would you mind if we revert the GT talk page to include your comments? Though what you wrote there really belongs in the GT article itself, not the talk section. Your version is a different and far more accurate history than is in the current GT Wiki article. This piece here, if edited for NPOV and merged with your piece on the GT talk page, would make a better foundation for a GT article than what is currently there. Kathryn NicDhàna 06:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, to be quite frank, I stopped doing anything with it because I *cough* could not figure out how to work the system <sheepish grin>. To be frank again, I had never been to the Wiki cite before I was drafted, and didn't even have a clue what they were talking about when they said they need sources. I started listing books. I did get some of it down when I was yanked out of slumber to start helping in the corrective actions on the GT article. I believe it is done, and as accurate as circumstances will allow. The most blaring problems with the article are handled. I've also been learning about problems to which I was oblivious. Sure would love to see olive branches exchanged. Now back to my regularly scheduled motorcycle ride. Mar sin leat Iain Mac an tSaoir 05:00, 24 March 2006 (UTC)Iain Mac an tSaoir[reply]

"Method" vs "Tradition"

Paul Pigman and I have been discussing this. He should have titled this Wikipedia article, like the linked CR Essay, "Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism (CR)". The disagreements we are starting to have in this entry seem to me to stem from some of the participants in this process seeing CR as primarily a spiritual tradition, and others as simply a methodology - a type of Celtic Studies with some sort of action coming out of that study. The former is a much more focused, and smaller entity, which a group of us have been working to define for the past fifteen to twenty years. The latter is something much huger than the spiritual movement we are describing in the early versions of this entry, and which seems to encompass anyone doing any sort of reconstruction work, whether or not they share any of the same religious/spiritual values. I don't think these two visions are harmonious enough to coexist indefinitely, and maybe we should split the categories in two in some way. If not, we must tackle these somewhat conflicting (and somewhat overlapping) views soon or I suspect this will be rather confusing for people. Kathryn NicDhàna 05:33, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seriously thinking of changing the heading of the entry. What I envisioned this article to represent is much closer to the specificity of "Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism" rather than the issues of a broader and more general use of the term "Celtic Reconstruction". I think it would be an excellent idea to split these apart. This would alleviate the confusion obviously inherent between people attempting to merge these differing strains. --Paul Pigman 05:55, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

i think that it would be best to try to explain that there are two primary concepts which are referred to by the name "Celtic Reconstructionism". i'd like to think that i've already made some effort to disambiguate the two usages a bit in the article as it stands, but i don't think i've been slighting either usage, either. Whateley23 06:26, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Moved and ReNamed the Entry

Well, I've gone ahead and moved the entry, renaming it "Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism". I think this solves some of the problems. If there is a desire to create a different entry attempting to encompass a much broader perspective, please do so. By specifying the Paganism component, I think it is more strongly oriented toward the religious and spiritual aspects in addition to the purely methodological approach. This was my original intent in starting this entry. Note that I used only the "Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism Essay" as an external source for this entry. This is because I was attempting to describe this particular NeoPagan tradition, not the general use of the term CR.

Because of this new title and more specific focus, I'm going to start revising the entry to more accurately reflect this shift. --Paul Pigman 06:56, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

General structure

This is a good article (as it stands on 11 Sept 2005) but could do with a little more structuring. General Wikipedia practice is to have a short introduction that defines the term and sets it in a context (the first couple of paras do that well) and then headings for the other sections. The remainder of what currently looks like the introcuction moves between historical development and methodology. perhaps these could be pulled into two sections, with headings, History and Methodology? First historical mention, on the other hand, would make more sense as a subhead of history. Other sections which should be added are References (where would CR be without references!) and Bibliography. The typical Wikipedia order is References, Bibliography, External Links. There is already one reference , "Spring, 1992 issue of Harvest Magazine" which should be added in the references section (ideally with a page number). Wikipedia:Manual of Style and in particular Wikipedia:Cite sources may be useful. --Nantonos 04:02, 11 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Looks great, thanks for taking care of this. The annotations are helpful. --Nantonos 15:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I can't locate my '79 edition of Drawing Down the Moon. If any of you find yours before I do, could you check something: I'm pretty sure the quote from Isaac is also in the original version. I credited it to the revised edition because it's all I could find at the time, but if we can confirm its place in the original edition, that's the one that should be cited. Kathryn NicDhàna 06:24, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions for References

I added a couple of items to the Bibliography, but maybe it would be better to mention them in the context of historical development of CR as well (and thus, move them to References). The 1994 What We Don't Know About the Ancient Celts by Rowan Fairgrove is a much cited work that I believe had an impact on the development of CR, and Alexei's Apple Branch is also much cited (although I don't consider it his best work, by a long way, it undoubtedly had an impact on developments). --Nantonos 04:02, 11 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have to re-read Rowan's article (btw, typo on the article page - you called her "Robin"), as it's been a long time and I don't remember what I thought of it at the time. Also, though Alexei has become a strong influence in some branches of CR, a number CRs do not consider "Apple Branch" a CR book, per se. Kathryn NicDhàna 06:33, 12 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

typo fixed (blush) - this is Wikipedia, you can fix typos as you spot them. I'm one of the people that does not particularly rate Apple Branch - in fact it put me off Alexei until I got to know him better on some mailing lists. To me its 'Green-tinged Wicca' though he claims that wicca was not an influence. I can't deny that it is widely recommended and had a big influence, however. What other books would people suggest for refs and bib? --Nantonos 00:52, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with your "Green-tinged Wicca" opinion. Alexei himself has become a valuable contributor to the Imbas list, and has a lot of influence in that branch of CR, but I think too many CRs are not comfortable calling the book CR (or, at least not without a long list of books besides it). However, do we really want to haggle about what does and doesn't belong in this biblio? We have an extensive biblio with the CR Essay, which was worked out by consensus. We could do a shorter biblio for this entry, but there are only a few of us participating in this Wikipedia entry right now, while the CR Essay was written collectively by representatives of a number of longstanding CR sub-trads. I've been tending to see this entry as a shorter version of that essay, but with room to cover some of the things we didn't go into there for space reasons. Right now any biblio has to be rather long and diverse, as I think Erynn's book is the only one really written about CR practice so far. Others will hopefully be published soon, but aren't in print yet. Kathryn NicDhàna 19:58, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"do we really want to haggle" - my apologies for making apparently unwarranted assumptions. I was trying to get this article to be appropriately referenced; my way of prompting such a dialog was to suggest a couple in the hope that other, perhaps better ones, would be suggested also. Since the main contributors seem to be CR practitioners, I did not think that the virtues of backing up statements with references (or the differences between references and bibliography) needed to be spelled out. So, to be more direct, this article has zero references and needs to have some, to conform to a higher standard of quality. --Nantonos 22:54, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Gaelic Traditionalism

There is a current discussion at Talk:Gaelic Traditionalism that touches upon this article and that the regular editors of this article may be able to provide helpful input about. Jkelly 20:18, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Fascinating. I can certainly agree that the articles should not be merged. The extreme POV mischaracterizations of CR by one of the posters on the GT Talk Page are unfortunate, but I don't care to fight about it over on their page as I don't think it would accomplish anything. I do support the calls for review of the GT Article, as a number of long-term participants in the Celtic communities have noted the blatant POV and misrepresentations in the GT article. Some of these have been corrected (such as the earlier version that implied the movement was 100 years old or somesuch), but that article is still mostly original research and I have to agree that it reads like a personal essay (which is what the piece started as, IIRC). The two movements, CR and GT, sound similar because the modern, polytheistic GT is a spinoff from CR. But currently there are major divides around issues both ethical and political. I see some of the posters on the talk pages are claiming independent origins, but those who've been around for a while remember what happened. Again, it would not work to merge the articles, and I oppose it. - Kathryn NicDhàna 22:27, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, the only person who I know of who ever referred to themselves as a Reconstructionist was me, years back when I refered to myself as a Gaelic Reconstructionist for a time, and AFAIK no one else of the ACTG or CnG ever considered themselves CR. Gaelic Traditionalism evolved seperately and distinctly from CR as it was not me who first started using that term. I do happen to agree that the statements regarding CR were distinctly non-NPOV and would like to see both movements go on about their business without attacking one another, as to do so is foolish, pointless, and just detracts from the good works BOTH movements have done, so I would like to officially bury the hatchet here and now. We are all adults, I would think it is high time people on ALL sides began acting as such. Celtic Reconstructionism and Gaelic Traditionalism are two very different roads to very different goals, and do not and should not be at loggerheads as they take differing approaches and are not in competition. The character assassination, mischaracterization, vitriolic attacks, ad-hominems, flagrant insults, etc. going back and forth between members of both movements only serves to debase those people and the movements they are a part of. I say we ALL stop it, bury the hatchet, and move on with our lives. Breandán 20:53, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • CnG originally called themselves CR, though they may have phrased it "Celtic Reconstructionalist". This was during the time when they asked Erynn Laurie to be their Ard-Fili (mid-nineties, IIRC, before they had a web-presence). In 2000 your "Tuatha MacTire" website said "Celtic Reconstructionist", and the metatext and keywords at the bottom of your website (visible by highlighting) here: http://ciarraide.org/index2.html still contain the "Celtic Reconstructionist Pagan Celtic Reconstructionalist Celt Celts Pagans Celtic Paganism" text you swiped from my website when you used mine as a "template". The Cáirdean Ceilteach Ameireaga site, which is in your GT resources section, which also lists at least one ACTG member tribe, also includes "Celtic Reconstructionst" in the keywords (they are also based on the swiped text). ACTG member Pàdraig MacIain called himself CR up until fairly recently, and still has this article http://users.indigo.net.au/darke/treubh/art_whatiscr.html on his site. Agreed, two totally separate groups now. The two groups probably always had separate goals so it is good the two names are now established as representing different groups. However, you, MacIain and Cáirdean Ceilteach Ameireaga may want to update your websites to reflect this. Kathryn NicDhàna 04:19, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]


        • Hi, Iain Mac an tSaoir here. As founder of the CnG, and the guy who did most of the web design, maybe I can shed some light on these things. Luckily, I've kept archives of most things ever surrounding the CnG. It should be known that at no time did the CnG refer to itself as CR. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Iain_Mac_an_tSaoir (talk • contribs) .

(Additional text removed and put on Iain's User page in the interests of condensing discussion. --Paul Pigman 04:25, 1 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]

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