Everything you Know About British and Irish Ancestry

Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands

By Stephen Oppenheimer

Stephen Oppenheimer's books "The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story" and "Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World" are published by Constable & Robinson

* * *


The fact that the British and the Irish both live on islands gives them a misleading sense of security about their unique historical identities. But do we really know who we are, where we come from and what defines the nature of our genetic and cultural heritage? Who are and were the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and the English? And did the English really crush a glorious Celtic heritage?

Everyone has heard of Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. And most of us are familiar with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes.

Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words "Celtic" or "Anglo-Saxon." What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis (see note below) indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years.

The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language.

Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix.


Many myths about the Celts

Celtic languages and the people who brought them probably first arrived during the Neolithic period. The regions we now regard as Celtic heartlands actually had less immigration from the continent during this time than England. Ireland, being to the west, has changed least since the hunter-gatherer period and received fewer subsequent migrants (about 12 per cent of the population) than anywhere else. Wales and Cornwall have received about 20 per cent, Scotland and its associated islands 30 per cent, while eastern and southern England, being nearer the continent, has received one third of its population from outside over the past 6,500 years. These estimates, set out in my book The Origins of the British, come from tracing individual male gene lines from continental Europe to the British Isles and dating each one (see box at bottom of page).

If the Celts were not our main aboriginal stock, how do we explain the wide historical distribution and influence of Celtic languages? There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement; even so, some people must have brought Celtic languages to our isles. So where did they come from, and when?

The orthodox view of the origins of the Celts turns out to be an archaeological myth left over from the 19th century. Over the past 200 years, a myth has grown up of the Celts as a vast, culturally sophisticated but warlike people from central Europe, north of the Alps and the Danube, who invaded most of Europe, including the British Isles, during the iron age, around 300 BC.

Central Europe during the last millennium BC certainly was the time and place of the exotic and fierce Hallstatt culture and, later, the La Tène culture, with their prestigious, iron-age metal jewellery wrought with intricately woven swirls. Hoards of such jewellery and weapons, some fashioned in gold, have been dug up in Ireland, seeming to confirm central Europe as the source of migration. The swirling style of decoration is immortalised in such cultural icons as the Book of Kells, the illuminated Irish manuscript (Trinity College, Dublin), and the bronze Battersea shield (British Museum), evoking the western British Isles as a surviving remnant of past Celtic glory. But unfortunately for this orthodoxy, these artistic styles spread generally in Europe as cultural fashions, often made locally. There is no evidence they came to Britain and Ireland as part of an invasion.

Many archaeologists still hold this view of a grand iron-age Celtic culture in the centre of the continent, which shrank to a western rump after Roman times. It is also the basis of a strong sense of ethnic identity that millions of members of the so-called Celtic diaspora hold. But there is absolutely no evidence, linguistic, archaeological or genetic, that identifies the Hallstatt or La Tène regions or cultures as Celtic homelands. The notion derives from a mistake made by the historian Herodotus 2,500 years ago when, in a passing remark about the "Keltoi," he placed them at the source of the Danube, which he thought was near the Pyrenees. Everything else about his description located the Keltoi in the region of Iberia.

The late 19th-century French historian Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville decided that Herodotus had meant to place the Celtic homeland in southern Germany. His idea has remained in the books ever since, despite a mountain of other evidence that Celts derived from southwestern Europe. For the idea of the south German "Empire of the Celts" to survive as the orthodoxy for so long has required determined misreading of texts by Caesar, Strabo, Livy and others. And the well-recorded Celtic invasions of Italy across the French Alps from the west in the 1st millennium BC have been systematically reinterpreted as coming from Germany, across the Austrian Alps.

De Jubainville's Celtic myth has been deconstructed in two recent sceptical publications: The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention by Simon James (1999), and The Celts: Origins, Myths and Inventions by John Collis (2003). Nevertheless, the story lingers on in standard texts and notably in The Celts, a Channel 4 documentary broadcast in February. "Celt" is now a term that sceptics consider so corrupted in the archaeological and popular literature that it is worthless.

This is too drastic a view. It is only the central European homeland theory that is false. The connection between modern Celtic languages and those spoken in southwest Europe during Roman times is clear and valid. Caesar wrote that the Gauls living south of the Seine called themselves Celts. That region, in particular Normandy, has the highest density of ancient Celtic place-names and Celtic inscriptions in Europe. They are common in the rest of southern France (excluding the formerly Basque region of Gascony), Spain, Portugal and the British Isles. Conversely, Celtic place-names are hard to find east of the Rhine in central Europe.

Given the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe, it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to the British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the English south coast.

Further evidence for the Mediterranean origins of Celtic invaders is preserved in medieval Gaelic literature. According to the orthodox academic view of "iron-age Celtic invasions" from central Europe, Celtic cultural history should start in the British Isles no earlier than 300 BC. Yet Irish legend tells us that all six of the cycles of invasion came from the Mediterranean via Spain, during the late Neolithic to bronze age, and were completed 3,700 years ago.


Anglo-Saxon ethnic cleansing?

The other myth I was taught at school, one which persists to this day, is that the English are almost all descended from 5th-century invaders, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the Danish peninsula, who wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England.

The story originates with the clerical historians of the early dark ages. Gildas (6th century AD) and Bede (7th century) tell of Saxons and Angles invading over the 5th and 6th centuries. Gildas, in particular, sprinkles his tale with "rivers of blood" descriptions of Saxon massacres. And then there is the well-documented history of Anglian and Saxon kingdoms covering England for 500 years before the Norman invasion.

But who were those Ancient Britons left in England to be slaughtered when the legions left? The idea that the Celts were eradicated—culturally, linguistically and genetically—by invading Angles and Saxons derives from the idea of a previously uniformly Celtic English landscape. But the presence in Roman England of some Celtic personal and place-names doesn't mean that all ancient Britons were Celts or Celtic-speaking.

The genocidal view was generated, like the Celtic myth, by historians and archaeologists over the last 200 years. With the swing in academic fashion against "migrationism" (seeing the spread of cultural influence as dependent on significant migrations) over the past couple of decades, archaeologists are now downplaying this story, although it remains a strong underlying perspective in history books.

Some geneticists still cling to the genocide story. Research by several genetics teams associated with University College London has concentrated in recent years on proving the wipeout view on the basis of similarities of male Y chromosome gene group frequency between Frisia/north Germany and England. One of the London groups attracted press attention in July by claiming that the close similarities were the result of genocide followed by a social-sexual apartheid that enhanced Anglo-Saxon reproductive success over Celtic.

The problem is that the English resemble in this way all the other countries of northwest Europe as well as the Frisians and Germans. Using the same method (principal components analysis, see note below), I have found greater similarities of this kind between the southern English and Belgians than the supposedly Anglo-Saxon homelands at the base of the Danish peninsula. These different regions could not all have been waiting their turn to commit genocide on the former Celtic population of England. The most likely reason for the genetic similarities between these neighbouring countries and England is that they all had similar prehistoric settlement histories.

When I looked at exact gene type matches between the British Isles and the continent, there were indeed specific matches between the continental Anglo-Saxon homelands and England, but these amounted to only 5 per cent of modern English male lines, rising to 15 per cent in parts of Norfolk where the Angles first settled. There were no such matches with Frisia, which tends to confirm a specific Anglo-Saxon event since Frisia is closer to England, so would be expected to have more matches.

When I examined dates of intrusive male gene lines to look for those coming in from northwest Europe during the past 3,000 years, there was a similarly low rate of immigration, by far the majority arriving in the Neolithic period. The English maternal genetic record (mtDNA) is consistent with this and contradicts the Anglo-Saxon wipeout story. English females almost completely lack the characteristic Saxon mtDNA marker type still found in the homeland of the Angles and Saxons. The conclusion is that there was an Anglo-Saxon invasion, but of a minority elite type, with no evidence of subsequent "sexual apartheid."

The orthodox view is that the entire population of the British Isles, including England, was Celtic-speaking when Caesar invaded. But if that were the case, a modest Anglo-Saxon invasion is unlikely to have swept away all traces of Celtic language from the pre-existing population of England. Yet there are only half a dozen Celtic words in English, the rest being mainly Germanic, Norman or medieval Latin. One explanation is that England was not mainly Celtic-speaking before the Anglo-Saxons. Consider, for example, the near-total absence of Celtic inscriptions in England (outside Cornwall), although they are abundant in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany.


Who was here when the Romans came?

So who were the Britons inhabiting England at the time of the Roman invasion? The history of pre-Roman coins in southern Britain reveals an influence from Belgic Gaul. The tribes of England south of the Thames and along the south coast during Caesar's time all had Belgic names or affiliations. Caesar tells us that these large intrusive settlements had replaced an earlier British population, which had retreated to the hinterland of southeast England. The latter may have been the large Celtic tribe, the Catuvellauni, situated in the home counties north of the Thames. Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul "the language differs but little."

The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion. In support of this inference, there is some recent lexical (vocabulary) evidence analysed by Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster and continental colleagues. They found that the date of the split between old English and continental Germanic languages goes much further back than the dark ages, and that English may have been a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic language before the Roman invasion.

Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans. These are consistent with the intense cultural interchanges across the North sea during the Neolithic and bronze age. Early Anglian dialects, such as found in the old English saga Beowulf, owe much of their vocabulary to Scandinavian languages. This is consistent with the fact that Beowulf was set in Denmark and Sweden and that the cultural affiliations of the early Anglian kingdoms, such as found in the Sutton Hoo boat burial, derive from Scandinavia.

A picture thus emerges of the dark-ages invasions of England and northeastern Britain as less like replacements than minority elite additions, akin to earlier and larger Neolithic intrusions from the same places. There were battles for dominance between chieftains, all of Germanic origin, each invader sharing much culturally with their newly conquered indigenous subjects.

So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets.


Note: How does genetic tracking work?

The greatest advances in genetic tracing and measuring migrations over the past two decades have used samples from living populations to reconstruct the past. Such research goes back to the discovery of blood groups, but our Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA are the most fruitful markers to study since they do not get mixed up at each generation. Study of mitochondrial DNA in the British goes back over a decade, and from 2000 to 2003 London-based researchers established a database of the geographically informative Y-chromosomes by systematic sampling throughout the British Isles. Most of these samples were collected from people living in small, long-established towns, whose grandparents had also lived there.

Two alternative methods of analysis are used. In the British Y-chromosome studies, the traditional approach of principal components analysis was used to compare similarities between whole sample populations. This method reduces complexity of genetic analysis by averaging the variation in frequencies of numerous genetic markers into a smaller number of parcels—the principal components—of decreasing statistical importance. The newer approach that I use, the phylogeographic method, follows individual genes rather than whole populations. The geographical distribution of individual gene lines is analysed with respect to their position on a gene tree, to reconstruct their origins, dates and routes of movement.

The Culture of Reconstructionism and New Paganism

I've been involved in Pagan reconstructionism for over a decade now, and I have found it to be a useful and powerful outlet for my spiritual wants and needs. I've seen and heard many perspectives within the recon world, and even embraced many perspectives from time to time, before my heart settled on its present course. At the end of my day yesterday, I had to finally open a discussion with a dear friend of mine, a discussion about labels and reconstructionist perspectives.

I'm afraid that my work with the unseen world has done what it was intended to do: brought me into close contact with my inner life and the internal workings of the Fateful weave that I call my existence. My entire perspective on being a modern religious Pagan in the modern day is enormously different from that of others chiefly because I am not just a religious person- I am a mystic, a person who intentionally works with extra-ordinary states of consciousness, for the purposes of contacting extra-sensory reality and directly tapping its timeless sources of wisdom and healing. This is central to understanding who and what I am, though it is just one aspect of me.

And in the modern day, in the world of reconstructionist religions, this makes for a problem. I am typically not surrounded by people who perform the same task, who operate in the same way. I'm surrounded by people who usually go no further in their relationship with Gods or Spirits than lifting a horn for them and belching out a toast, before going back to talking about other things.
Even in the scholarly end of reconstructionism, dominated as it is by decidedly non-mystical types, many people try to deny that the ancient Indo-Europeans had spiritual specialists, of a type we might describe in modern language as "shamanic" or trance-using mystics, even though we know they did. In a hurry to distance themselves from the dreaded "new age", a lot of people who should damn well know better have put on intentional blinders to the presence of mystical traditions among our Ancestors.

But my letter today isn't about how blind some (most) recons are towards people who work in mystical ways today. I don't care about them, because I was long ago made aware of why they choose to ignore facts and embrace falsehoods- and sadly, I understand some aspects of their fear and frustration.

My letter today is about what a person can do when they realize that there's no label for them, no way of fully expressing in words what they "are". As a mystic, (and like mystics from all times and places) I often don't feel "in place", no matter where I am. Most people know me as the Seid-man, the Witch, and the Asatruar; those words are fine to me, and they express something important to me. All are correct when taken in context- but to me, they are just labels. And they mean different things to different people. There is a danger here.

For some Asatruar, for instance, "Seidmadhr" or Seid-man means that I am a possibly gay idiot drama-queen new ager who wants to play wicca within the context of Asatru. For some other Asatruar, it means that I use trances to do sorcery, for the good of the people I am working with. Big difference! One of these definitions is correct, the other, very wrong, at least from MY perspective.

Here's another example- for some people, "witch" means "baby-killing Satan worshiper who does black magic". For others, it means a goodness-and-light follower of the ancient God and Goddess of the old days". For others still, it means "a person who does sorcery, works with spirits, and seeks for odd corners of wisdom". Two of these definitions are incorrect from MY perspective; one of them is quite right.

Shall I continue? What about the example of "Asatru" or "Asatruar"? For some, this means that I am a horned-helmet wearing idiot neo-pagan who swills beer and thinks he's a viking. For others, it means a follower of a polytheistic faith born in the group-soul of the Germanic peoples. One of these definitions is correct; the other not.

Recently, I've grown tired of fighting the definition war. People, I have discovered, use labels as a means of force, a form of violence- even if they don't realize it, sometimes they still do it. To label someone gives you permission to force them into a "place", even if it is a place they don't belong, and even if it bears no relationship to reality- labels are all in our heads. But we live in a world of labels, and we wrong other people regularly by labeling them. We take our labels and assume that we know them, that we know what they stand for, when usually, we don't.

I'm aware of the many times I've done it, and I'm very aware of how much I've suffered in the label game. People want to know where you "belong", but as a mystic, I don't belong anywhere. No label exists that is sufficient for me- there ARE words that satisfy some aspects of who and what I am, but no single word fulfills the task.

That I am a vision-seer and mystic is only a small part of it- even people who have never had a vision in their lives are also impossible to label. Even the simplest person is still a magnificently complex being, if you know how to see them correctly, and labels don't really work for them as well- if anything, what makes a person "simple" is how easily and readily they accept labels for themselves from others.

Now, I'd like to stop this line of thinking for one second, and go into my next point, which will relate, of course. My next point is the culture of reconstructionism.

Reconstructionist Pagans spend a considerable amount of time looking back to ancient cultures to get their ideas about life, their framework for belief, and clues as to how to deal with life's moral and ethical issues. They do this in their (correct) belief that the Ancestors were very wise, and that their words and behaviors are worth paying attention to.

But where does this go? I know some recons who think that they are whatever ancient people they look back to, reborn in the modern day. In their minds, there is no real difference between them and the ancients- just a time-frame difference, and some annoying cultural realities that are different, but which they dream of changing.

I also know some recons that are very much aware of the fact that they are modern people, who are looking back to older cultural traditions for guidance. They don't think that they are ancient Celts or Germans or Greeks or Romans.

This brings up my idea of "Recon Culture". I am a reconstructionist Pagan, but I don't think that I am "exactly the same" as the Pagans of the past- indeed, how could I be? I am a modern person, subject to the same modern forces and understandings as everyone else in my cultural sphere. I have taken the initiative to re-examine my cultural assumptions in light of ancient cultural assumptions, but what does that make me? An American who really likes the past, or has a preference for ancient philosophies and beliefs? To this, I answer:

Recon Culture is it's own reality. It is its own culture- a religious culture- that exists in the modern day, and it is comprised of modern people who look to ancient models of culture and religion for guidance as to how to believe today, but also how to face life's trials. I am not just an American or a modern person who really digs the "old days"- I'm a reconstructionist, to use a label that I just got done complaining about. As often as labels hamper our understanding of each other, sometimes they help to understand.

At any rate, "Reconstructionist" means something specific. It's true there are many ancient cultures that recons look back to, and that means that there are many reconstructionist sub-cultures, but the over-arching label still means something.

And here we arrive at the next issue- reconstructionists, being human, allow themselves to fall prey to the dangers of labeling, every bit as much as the next person. Apparently, looking to the wisdom of the past doesn't grant anyone any immunity to the idiocy that sometimes follows along in the world of human efforts!

It is true that our Ancestors in the past were very devoted to the idea of their own cultures, their own tribal or social beliefs and customs. Some people say that our Ancestors weren't very "free" as we know the word, because they were so constrained by tribal custom and social duty. Personally, I disagree with these angles because they aren't taking into account a broader perspective, and (to me) emphasizing only the negative aspects of ancient societies.

What these cynics never point out is that ancient societies were very aware of one another, and traded and traveled and inter-married a considerable amount. Some of the biggest extremists in the Recon world- the so-called "tribalist" Recons who refuse to have anything to do with people who are "outside" their tribal boundaries, and who seek a "tribal" identity at all costs, even the cost of ignoring reality, really hate to hear this sort of talk.

But when you have temples of Isis in Britain, Viking gold showing up in Cairo, Egypt, Runes scrawled on pillars in Byzantium, tales and evidence of inter-marriage, exchange of Gods, and people from different cultures taking part in the worship of other people's cultural Gods, you simply can't justify your cultish, isolationist fear anymore- at least not by looking to the past for an example. There's plenty of idiocy in the modern day upon which you can base some dogma of separation and distrust upon, but not so much in the past.

Somehow, our Ancestors in the past managed to hold on to their own ways, their own Gods, but also live among other peoples who had other ways and other Gods, and not compromise their cultural identity, even when they traveled or adopted new Gods. Worshiping German and Celtic Gods didn't stop the Romans from being Roman; adopting Roman Gods didn't stop the Celtic people of Gaul and Britain from being what they were; the Greeks adopting Egyptian Gods or Goddesses didn't stop the Greeks from being Greeks. When the Romans picked up the idea of using soap from the Celtic peoples, they didn't stop being Romans. When the Gauls started drinking Roman wine, they didn't cease being Gauls.

I don't want to belabor this point; I just want to say it enough to tweak the misbegotten noses of the fools out there who have caused me so much trouble in my time among the Asatru.


Now the dreaded words have to come out- we are "new Pagans". Perhaps you believe that your soul is very old, and that you were Pagan before, long ago. Maybe you think that the elements of these bodies, and the elements of the world, are very ancient, and therefore, nothing is really "new". Points all taken. But your mind and personality, constructed as they are from modern influences, is new, and your decision to be a Pagan in a modern, non-Pagan culture, marks you as a new Pagan with a big job ahead.

Now, if you're smart, you chose to be a reconstructionist Pagan, and gained access to the greatest resources available to you, in understanding the Ancestors- history and scholarship. If you're not so smart, you'll make up some stuff (or buy into those who have made it up) and claim that those things are what the Ancestors really believed. Of course, you'll end up dis-satisfied, as the Truth has a way of making itself known.

Either way, whether you are the pink cotton candy new-ager, or the hard-core scholarly reconstructionist, you're a new Pagan. We may fancy ourselves THE Greeks or Celts or Norse from history, but we aren't; we're just their fans, their descendants, their admirers, in the modern day. We're their students, their apologists, the lovers of their literature, their sacred stories, and their religious aesthetics. That's what we are.

There is a danger in getting sucked too far into some form of ancient "identity" that begins to conflict with your modern self; I've met far too many idiots in costume who really think that they are Norse or Viking Warriors, straight out of history, alive in the modern day. They import their own stupid ideas of racism and cultural superiority and graft these things directly onto the ancients, and assume that people have always believed they way they as modern people believe now. This is wrong; it is a caricature of the past, it is a crime and it's the worst sort of narcissistic immaturity imaginable.

I've met too many people who think that THEY are the "Romans" or the "Celts" now- quite absurd, when you think about it, on all counts; What does it mean to be "Germanic"? To be "Celtic"? With these two broad cultural definitions, there is no real way to know. These people in the past were countless tribal cultures, spread across the map-board; they went everywhere, mingled with everyone they encountered, and eventually vanished themselves from the pages of history, either through war or cultural change. What, are the Germans today "The real Germanics"? What about the Spanish, who live in a country that was founded largely by the Visigoths? Were the Visigoths not Germanic? What about the French, who live in a country founded by the Franks? Were the Franks not Germanic?

"Germanic" has little meaning, in the sense of "being Germanic". In RECON CULTURE, however, to be "Germanic" means to adore the cultural ideals that Asatru has studied and listed as "Noble"- the Nine Noble Virtues, and to adore your Germanic Ancestors, working hard not to disappoint them.

But what about the people who are more than just Germanic in Ancestry? Sadly, I know too many people who ignore 90% of their ancestry in favor of the 10% that had sufficiently Germanic sounding last names.

What about those pesky Celts? No culture has been more ransacked and dishonored by the forces of new-age marketing than Celtic- but what is "Celtic" culture? I've been to many of the Celtic lands. I can assure you, the people I spoke with all had this idea that THEY- and not the others, were the "real" Celts, and they were all quite different. The Irish and the Welsh were very different from one another, in a somewhat good-natured yet competitive way. Both were hospitable, but the Welsh were different, not as flamboyant or as "in your face" as the Irish that I encountered. Both lived on sacred Lands full of much mystical power; I could feel it. The blood in me could feel it, as I bear an ancestral connection to these places.

But what does it mean to be "Celtic"? What, is it that Hollywood-created "rebel" hard-drinking spirit, which thrives under the strain of mistreatment by evil empires and invaders? I hope not! That stereotype is a dry riverbed. Does "Celtic" mean that we all walk around wearing cheap Celtic knotwork Tide-dye clothes, and waving around copies of "The Mists of Avalon"? I REALLY hope not- give me "The Fields of Athenry" stereotypes any day over that! I hope being from some cool Irish place like Dublin isn't your claim to Celtic fame- the Vikings, after all, founded Dublin.

I could do this forever, just to point out that there may be general features of culture, like "Irish" or "Welsh" or "Scottish" that can be found, but "Celtic", no.

To be a Reconstructionist Celtic Pagan, however, is to look to certain strains of literature from Ireland and Britain, literature which is believed to stem from pre-Christian roots, and to look to the histories of these lands (these histories including Gaul), when seeking inspiration regarding religious practice and guidance for one's spiritual and moral worldview.

People take the term "Celtic Reconstructionist Pagan" or "Germanic Reconstructionist" and they see what they want to see- normally, they see "Celtic" or "Germanic", and they miss the "Reconstructionist" part.

I feel a great amount of love in my heart for the ancient world, and I imagine, sometimes, that maybe if I could find a time-machine and be transported back to that world, perhaps I'd find the religion to my liking, and some aspects of the culture to my liking. But I don't have any illusions about the hardships or the alien things that I would see and encounter. I may be of British, Irish, and Anglo-Saxon ancestry, but I am also a modern person, seeking to live as best I can in alignment with the ancient wisdom of those peoples. I'm not a "Celt" or a "Teuton"- I'm a modern man who reconstructs their ancient religions and worldviews, as best he can within a modern context. I may spiritually view myself as an heir of their great wisdom, and I may believe that my ancestral line, including this spirit, was once a part of their world, but there's one last thing that has to be said, has to be understood- I am also a part of this modern world. That qualifies everything, brings a needed perspective to this entire "Recon" enterprise.

I encounter people who can't see the "Reconstructionist" aspect of their culture, and only see the ancient cultures involved, and they really believe that they are THE Greeks, THE Romans, THE Celts, or what have you. They take the label, and immediately (hilariously) begin looking DOWN on other people for belonging to a reconstructionist faith that takes its inspiration from a culture that historically conquered their culture or had conflicts with them.

Yes- as amazing as it may sound, I know Celtic Recons who HATE Asatruar, probably thanks to Marion Zimmer Bradley and the recent movie "King Arthur" presenting the Anglo-Saxons as baby-devouring bloody barbarians bent on murdering every Briton they came across. That's not historically what happened, but there is an idea that the Germanic and Celtic Traditions have to be in conflict. This idea is fantasy, but it's a reality to many Recons.

I know many Asatru that believe anyone worshiping non-Germanic Gods is a traitor to Asatru- and yet, they talk till they are blue in the face about the importance of honoring one's Ancestors. Where does that leave people like me, (and there are many like me) who have mixed ancestry? Let's just come out and say it- EVERYONE has mixed ancestry, both now, and even in the past. What am I, a descendant of Ireland and Bernicia, to do? I worship the Gods of Asatru because it is part of my heritage, and because Asatru is a great Reconstructionist faith, with many resources and a large community.

But my wife is Irish; my daughter is named after the great Queen in the mound in County Sligo, and my family prays to the Gods of Ireland and Britain, too- in a fully Celtic Reconstructionist context. This isn't a new thing; Celtic and Germanic Gods have been prayed to together in many places, for a very long time. Roman and Celtic Gods and Roman and Germanic Gods were also prayed to together. Oh no! Ideas and labels of "purity" have just been flushed- except that those ideas were never based on reality.

"Asatru", according to some, means "True to the Gods"- but are people who pray to Zeus and Athena, or Brigid and Lugus, not "True to the Gods" as well? Just because the word "Asatru" may be in some Germanic language, that doesn't mean that the idea doesn't apply to many polytheists.

This is where labels come home to haunt us. I know that no label really serves to identify me perfectly, and I think this same thing can be said for everyone- we DO use labels, but how many of us really feel that the few labels we've chosen fully serve to explain us to ourselves or to the world? I feel sorry for the people who can label themselves perfectly- Oscar Wilde said "Only shallow people really know themselves".

My modern mystical vocation forces me to realize the truth about myself- I am a modern person who deals with trance-work and spiritual contact. In every culture of the human world, there have been people like me- and they have been called many things. I know what Pagan cultures I am ancestrally related to, and I proudly engage in the activity and method of Reconstruction, when it comes to guidance and religious practice. But I cannot label myself as just one thing or another, and expect to feel satisfied.

My dear friend told me something interesting last night- she told me that she prayed to the Gods of ancient Wales when operating in a formal context. But personally, in her own private religious life, she didn't use names at all- she merely communicated from the heart to those Gods or spirits that she desired contact with. I understand what she meant; even though I do use names in my private religious life, I think this idea of "Formality" is important- when I work with the Idavoll Kindred, on that formal level, we call upon the Gods of Asatru. When I work with my wife and daughter- my true family and deeper kindred- it is less formal, but still a formal level, and we pray with all earnestness to the Gods and Goddesses of Ireland and Britain.

As for me, privately, non-formally, well, that's the very best of me, and I save that one all for me.


It's more important for me to be a mystic, a seer and healer, than anything else. Of course, as an Ancestral pietist and a polytheist, I could never and will never ignore my Ancestors or what they believed. But I am not just them. My capacity for vision or mystical insight is something apart from my Ancestry; it is a universal quality of humankind that I express, not something tied to one culture. To Asatruar, I express it in the language they (sometimes) understand- Seidr. To those who are heavily invested in Irish or British Paganism, I call it Taibhsear, Druidry, Draiocht, whatever they need to hear to understand. To the Greeks, I may say "Iatromantis".

To someone from Dr. Michael Harner's foundation, I would say "Shamanic practitioner". Among my traditional Witch friends, who are by far the easiest to communicate with, I'm just Robin, that Witch and pain-in-the-ass of many. I enjoy Dr. Harner's description of Witchery as a descendant of the shamanic wisdom of old Europe, which is a definition that I happily subscribe to, for obvious reasons.

But I've become weary of labels. I use them because people expect them, but I don't use them with any real gravity. They are just so many words to me- what is real to me are the Gods, the spirits I have felt and seen, and the "other sight" that allows me to find guidance for my life, and healing for myself and others. How does a person label that? I have no choice at this point but to use the term "reconstructionist" for my religious label, but being of mixed ancestry and worship, many won't have me- which is, of course, fine; I wouldn't want to be a member of their narrow-minded clubs, anyway. So long as my family and friends are well, all is well.

But damn! Communication is hard, because everyone wants a label that they can look up in the dictionary or online, to figure out "who and what you are". I hope people will, one day, have the power to see through labels and realize that we read far too much into the labels we give other people, and into the labels they give themselves.

Recon Culture is useful insofar as it gives people a platform to build a relationship with the Gods, and helps them to be better people. But the issue has deeper angles, which will need to be explored by each in his or her own time. Until then, when people ask me "what I am", (meaning religiously) I have little choice but to tell them a polytheist- a person who worships the Gods and Goddesses of his ancestors from ancient Britain and Ireland. I am also a vision-seer, a shamanic healer and worker, but that's not something a person often gets around to asking, nor me telling.

Requiem for Brad Dement

A few days ago, a gentleman that I had been corresponding with via email passed away. He was in his early 40's, and from my letters back and forth with him, he seemed vibrant and enthusiastic about his spiritual life. He was a fellow Pagan, and a fellow man of British Heritage- both Germanic and Celtic. He used the religious names "Ethelwulf" and "MacAlbion".

I understand that quite well, as I live a dual-traditioned life, honoring both sides of my own heritage, Germanic and Celtic, as Ule and as Cuan. It's demanding, but the Germanic and Celtic ancestral streams come together in the Holy Isles of Britain. Brad understood this; he was respectful to the people of Britain, both those alive today and those of his own family that had gone before.

Brad's guardian spirit must have been happy that his Fate called for his death now, in the Beltaine season- like Samhain or the time of the Wolf's Nights, it is an easy time for any living creature to make their transition, their journey across the dividing line between the living and the dead. I know that he may have carried some regrets or attachments with him, like nearly all of the living who are called to make that journey, but I also know that things went well for him, and are going well for him.

I didn't know him well, but I know one thing about him, one thing that might be as important as anything else: he was brave enough to resist the dominant streams of modern social pressure, reflected in the dominant Christian religion, and embrace the old ways of his Ancestors. As I have pointed out elsewhere, that takes boldness and bravery. He was brave and he died a Pagan.

He lives now, on his new journey- still a Pagan, who is ever more open to the regenerating influences and the appearances of the after-world than any Christian could be or will be. While Christians are longing for the appearance of their savior and their deliverance, they will only face the long journey, and the appearance of spirits, most of which they will believe are demons. Those peaceful few who can accept them as "angels" may have a better time of it, and to them, and to all who must die, I extend a wish for peace and success.

Death is a time for the settling of accounts and for the quenching of the fire of hateful emotions or disturbing attitudes. I hold no grudge against any of this world's dead, even those I disliked. In death, we all pay our debts back and we become justified.

I know Brad is doing well because a brave person always does well when they have to face the unknown. Being brave is about being fully aware of whatever presents itself to you, no matter how unexpected, difficult or frightening it might be, and keeping your sense of self intact, along with your moral reasoning, your dignity and your poise. A brave person may suffer from fear, but they never lose themselves to it; they never become its victims.

Brad has no choice but to make a journey now, and I know that he'll face what he has to face in a brave manner. He faced this life with a brave will to do what he felt was right, even though most people in the society around him discouraged his choice of religious lifestyle.

It's not easy to go against the great religious current that sweeps nearly everyone along, unthinking, into the fate created for them by organized faiths. Those who can face the weight of 2000 years of social pressure are going a long way towards preparing themselves to face the immense forces that meet us in our death-transitions, and which may try to urge us in directions that we might not wish to take. The life-journey takes bravery; the death-journey also takes bravery.

The virtues we create in ourselves in this life are each person's true companions on the death-journey, and they are the things that we all "take with us". You can forget about making deals for an easy afterlife; the cost of a good afterlife is paid here and now, in our daily activities and personal development.

I have had many disturbing and powerful dream visions in the last 5 days, coinciding not only with this holy season, but I believe with Brad's death. I can come up with no other explanation. These dream visions are causing changes in my life and in my spiritual life which I am soon to implement, as I will explain in my next post to this blog.

But until then, Brad is journeying and must be given a proper requiem. I have one here, "reclaimed" from Carmina Gadelica, for a cousin that I never knew well, but to whom I wish I had written more. Where he has gone, I will go one day, and so will you, so read this requiem for him, and mean it in your heart. What you do for him will be done for you.


The Death Song

You are going home this night to your home of winter,
To your home of fall, of spring, of summer,
You are going this night to the home of all,
To your perfect rest, to a lasting bed beyond what is
seen.

Sleep you, sleep, and away with your sorrow,
Rest in the visions that will come, peaceful, without
sorrow,
Rest you, rest, and away with any sorrow,
Be at peace, dear one, in the lap of the Mother.

Sleep this night in the breast of your Mother,
Sleep, dear one, She herself soothing you;
Rest you this night on the Great Mother's arm,
Rest you, dear one, She herself kissing you.

This rest is beyond earthly sleep,
Hurt and grief pass away, and onward go you,
This is the sleep of youth, an awakening to the
young-land,
The healing sleep of the Lord of Light.

The peace of the seven lights be yours, friend,
The peace of the seven joys be yours, friend,
The peace of the seven sleeps be yours, friend,
On the arm of the Shining One, who has defeated
darkness.

The shadow of death is on your face, friend,
But the Shining King has his arm around you;
Go now to the Three Mothers, and bid farewell to pain,
Your beloved is standing in front of you, with peace
in her mind.

Be now in the calm of all calm,
Recieve the guidance of all guidance,
Be now in the love of all loves,
Go now, our dear one, with the Lord of Life;
Rest now, our dear one, in the God of Life.

The Hammer and the Harp: The Two Great Families of the Pre-Christian North, and Sane Paganism/Heathenry

"The Hammer and the Harp" is a clever term I heard used to describe the twin revivalist Pagan religions of the Celtic peoples and the Germanic peoples. The Hammer of the Thunder God, such a common motif in pre-Christian times, has come to represent nearly all revivals of Germanic Heathenry or Paganism, while the Harp, with its timeless connection to the Bardic lore of the Celtic peoples, has joined the triskele as the unofficial symbol of Celtic Paganism.

Despite the over-romanticized and definately over-simplified ideas held by most regarding the relationship between the Celtic and Germanic peoples, there is no great "conflict" between the metaphysical realities and traditions of these historical peoples. The work of fiction writers like Marion Zimmer Bradley would have us believe that bloodthirsty hordes of monstrous Anglo-Saxons invaded peaceful Romano-Celtic Britain and attempted to rape and slaughter every person in sight.

My friends and I have always laughed at the scenario: the people who take "The Mists of Avalon" as holy writ really believe that there was some co-existence between the kindly Goddess Worshipping Pagans and the stern Roman Christians, and that the dark Germanic Horde came to destroy everything.

In reality, the Germanic invaders, led by the semi legendary Hengist and Horsa, were Pagans themselves. The Christian Romans in Britain had plenty of reason to fear; Christianity in Britain was submerged by the Heathen invaders, and Paganism and its related worldviews came to be the accepted ways of life Britain again for centuries, until Christian missionaries managed to (once again) commit cultural and spiritual near-genocide on the new mixed population of Anglo-Saxons and British peoples, again at the behest of greedy, politically motivated kings.

It was the Roman fear of the "barbarian conspiracy" that led to the propagandistic stories of the "evil" Anglo-Saxons coming to destroy the noble, civilized Roman outpost of Britain, and to destroy the church there. To think that the Anglo-Saxons were baby-eating barbarians who only desired the end of all civilization requires us to buy into Roman Christian propaganda.

The Anglo-Saxons didn't come to commit genocide; they came to find a home for their people. The pressure on them to move was due to pressures on the continent; the volkerwanderung- the Wandering of the Folk- had begun, because of the invasions of Eurasian tribes further east. Rome was gasping out her last breath; the world was changing. It was Fate.

As genetic studies have shown, the Anglo-Saxons didn't wipe out every person they could find; they mixed, as every other invader of the Holy Isles had done, back into pre-history. They brought a revival of Paganism, with a Germanic cultural flavor, and they laid the foundations for the greatness of England today. The Norse and the Danes would come later, to settle in Scotland and Ireland, and even to create the Danelaw in England proper, adding their own Pagan legacy to the again Christianized peoples, and to bring more of their adventurous spirit. I won't sit here and say that they were peaceful people who smiled and made friends with everyone they met; clearly, there was conflict and war. But like every other struggle from history, it ended and the peoples joined together over time.

Few people of British Isle extraction can claim no Germanic in their blood; it's almost impossible. Even places as "pure Irish" as the City of Dublin was founded by the Vikings. There's no need to fight it, and even less need to retreat into fictions and fantasies spun by the imaginations of neo-pagan disciples of Marion Zimmer Bradley and other writers. The Paganism of Britain- indeed, the very "Matter of Britain"- is a cauldron, in which the many noble peoples of the North have mixed their blood and their Gods.

I know well what I speak of- I am of Bernician heritage, myself. The kingdom of Bernicia in southeastern Scotland was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, and its people were a mixture of the native Britons and the Anglo-Saxon tribes that came to that far northern place. That places me in a unique and somewhat uncomfortable place in my own religious path, as I have an ancestral connection to Germanic Heathenry, as well as the native mysteries of Britain, those carried by its native peoples, and the Celts who came to the Isles before the Germanic peoples.

I also happen to live in a world where the very small amount of people who still believe in the pre-Christian Gods of the North are influenced by a smaller, more foolish minority who preach that people can't worship the Gods of more than one ancient culture, never mind the historical proof we have that the ancients did worship Gods they found among other people.

The Romans were incapable of telling apart Germanic tribes from Celtic; there is a reason for this; the Teutons borrowed heavily from the Celtic peoples they came into contact with. In much the same way the Celts in Galatia worshipped local Greek Gods, the Celts and Romans also worshipped together, and the Romans and Greeks were more than happy to see their own Gods among the Gods of the Northern peoples. The simple fact is that the Gods are beyond the very human construct of culture.

We preserve the cultural names, beliefs, and practices that our ancestors used to reach the Gods out of love and respect for those ancestors, not because the Gods would ignore us if we used some other ritual or cultural approach. I don't believe that the Gods are so closed-minded as to do such a thing; we are their children and kin and they would not abandon us because we failed to use Old Norse or Gaelic invocations to call on them. We know and we feel our own inner ancestral power in relation to the ancestors of our family lines, and we honor that, because it is a natural, in-born channel to personal knowledge and strength.

But "culture", even in ancient times, was not what many people make it out to be today. Culture was a shared set of practices and understandings that were handed down from generation to generation, and it encapsulated things the people found sacred and worthy. It protected the order of their societies and helped add a sense of identity to the people of a kin-group or an area. And culture was never static. More on this in a bit.

I laugh at the people who try to make it sound like some "cultural purity" or even "racial purity" existed in the past, or that we should "return" to some ridiculous modern notion of it in the modern day. Respect for my ancestors and their Gods requires me to see a broader picture than that, and no one alive today can claim some "racial" purity that would exempt them from that task, as well.

For me, the problem is almost non-existent; I have long studied and written about Traditional Witchcraft and Germanic Heathen systems of religion and mystical practice- my two books thus far cover both subjects. I have been a follower of the "Truth of the Gods" for years. I have also studied the native mysteries of Britain, in the form of modern Druidry, for as many years. I see no conflict between these powerful and unique expressions of human spirituality. I am proud to be a son of Bernicia, and a scion of the Beornheard tribe, which is today the Burnett family of Scotland.

I make blots to Woden and Thunor, and I practice Seid- a form of shamanic mysticism that deals with trance-induction and seeking oracles on behalf of other people. I have also become a scholar of modern Runic mysticism, and plan to soon join Edred Thorsson's Runegild, as I have several friends who are members, and it is the next natural step on my journey; I have seen few mystical systems as powerful as the Runes in their modern sorcerous usage.

But I also pray to the Gods of Britain, the Mother Don Mam Cymru and Beli, her consort; I am Cauldron-Born, a person who has submerged his mind in the deep world of Annwn, to become wise to the mysteries. Anyone who cannot see the harmony between the Quest of Woden to hang from the Tree for Nine Nights and plunge his own consciousness into the deep void of Hel, to win the secrets there, and the submergence of Taliesin's own self and consciousness into the cauldron and womb of Cerridwen to win his own illumination, is either attempting to create and maintain false boundaries for their own personal ends, or they are perilously stupid.

My vocation as a shamanic practicioner allows me to draw from the boundless and deep resources that are spiritually present in all sides of my ancestry, and I unapologetically do so. It is my right and honor as a person with my grandmothers and grandfathers that I can do so.

And that brings us to the heart of the problem. While my cousins in Celtic Pagan paths have been very open-minded and kind, showing a rare breed of wisdom in their own faith and perspective, many of the Germanic heathens that I have had the displeasure of knowing, (and especially the so-called "authorities" who set up cults of personality around themselves, and attempt to command the thinking of so many modern Heathens) are nothing short of ignorant, racist fools, and they also tend to be re-writers of history.

Germanic heathenry has enough problems in image today: it is tainted with hints of white supremacy and racism, and there is a reason for this: racists and pseudo-scholars dominate much of the field. Because of these people, I actually withdrew from participation in many heathen forums and correspondences. But I have recently seen the error of my ways, in the most fateful of ways. With the birth of the Kindred around me, I have found my voice again, and have dedicated myself to destroying the modern dogmas and myths that are choking the life out of the revival of modern Paganism and Heathenry.

This is not the time to fully describe the myriad problems with many modern Heathen pieces of dogma: I will write articles in which I soundly refute the notions of "folk soul", "UPG", "Germanic Race" and the like. I will demonstrate, in future posts to this blog, the futility of trying to create some "orthodoxy" of belief from the few sources we have detailing Norse and Icelandic Paganism.

Needless to say, the idea of "race" is flawed to the core, as science has amply demonstrated, and peoples in ancient times- even the Norse- were travelers, explorers, and settlers who did not hesitate to marry other peoples anywhere they went in the world, bring home new technologies and customs, leave their own lands and settle permanently in others, and the like.

This is because they were no different from other peoples in Pagan Europe, with respect to how they dealt with other people; the absurd notion of "hard boundaries" between peoples and "races" and cultures and religions is foolish, and not factual. Racism as we know it today was not yet dreamed of, in the Pagan past that I am discussing. Surely cultural elitism was known, (the Romans specialized in it) and cultures were preserved not by race, but by tradition, among everyone from the ancient Irish and Romans, up to the Norse and Finns. To be Roman was to do as the Romans did, to practice their culture. But culture also continually underwent organic evolution, from contact with other peoples, technologies, and customs.

Today, when we practice the Old Ways, whether we do adbertos to Lugh and the Morrigan, or blot to the Allfather and the Thunderer, we are preserving and interacting with streams of power that flow to us from very distant times. When we preserve the values that we in modern times have extrapolated from reading the Eddas or Early Irish Sagas, we are doing the honor to the ancients that modern men and women owe them.

We are not Vikings; we are not ancient Celts or Norse. Not a single person who practices Seid or sings Vardlokkur or casts Runes today learned their craft from the ancients, or from people who learned them from the ancients. We have all looked at what sources we could, applied our senses, our intuitions, and created modern working systems. That is the Truth, and there is no room for "authority" or ego-games in this Truth. We are not the ancients, and yet, spiritually, their luck-force and wisdom lives in our blood.

We are modern Celts, modern Anglo-Saxons; we are the product of the last 2000 years. Our ancestral power has passed down to us, just like it passed down to them when they made the amazing leaps of culture, politics, and technology in their transition from the Stone Age and the Iron Age into Antiquity and the Dark Ages.

Despite the spiritual devastation brought by Christianity, very little has changed in the power of each of us- and the Gods are certainly still alive and with us, along with our ancestors. Reclaiming the Gods is good and important, but the reason we look to the past is because the polytheistic, animistic, and clan-centered worldview associated with the Pagan past is missing, and we need it. Deep down, the wisdom of our spirit knows that we need it.

These things can help us make our way through this modern world, by giving us new (and simultaneously old) spiritual and ecological perspectives. These old worldviews help us to define a new sense of "relationship" between ourselves and between human beings and the world, a new kind of thinking that we need, to head off the forces that thrive on separation and materialism and greed.

The fact that we speak new languages with tons of foreign influence, or that we eat foods that our ancestors never ate, or drive cars, is not a problem. The way our Pagan ancestors lived and talked and existed in the Iron Age was radically different from earlier ages; even their languages had undergone mutation and (yes) gained elements from other languages and cultures. That's life; that's reality. This in no way interrupts our relationship with the Gods and the Holy Kindreds.

But the "Edda-Beating" fundamentalists who have poisoned modern Germanic Heathenry are villains of the worst kind; they spend their lives surgically selecting their favorite modern interpretation of history, and expecting everyone to believe that "this is how it was" with insert ancient people ______. They project their own fantasies about the ancient world ONTO the ancient world and lash out with fierce stupidity at people who know better. Worse yet, some try to set themselves up as "scholars" of the history of the ancient peoples of Britain and Scandinavia, though few have the credentials to back that up.

The modern "scholars" who dominate the internet with their precise Edda-quoting and linguistic analysis of this or that phrase are typically ego-driven, home-bound victims of Asperger's Syndrome who only feel sufficiently powerful when they are befuddling other internet-Pagans with a mountain of scholarly-sounding bullshite, and looking like the finest, smartest person on whatever forum they happen to be on.

What they fail to realize, on the deepest level, is that no clever analysis of the linguistics behind the word "Blot" can express the true meaning of sacrifice; no amount of knowledge about the history of the Blot can compare with actually standing around a harrow or in a Ve and taking part in the simple austerity of the ritual.

What all these terribly clever people regularly forget, and indeed, never want to realize, is that modern studies and conclusions about the past (particularly Pagan religions from the North) are highly interpretive. There is no room for debate on this point. People- including scholars- tend to see what they are trained to see, or what they want to see. Everyone- including scholars- have pet theories and cherished ideas about things.

Scholars don't tend to make the best interpreters of spiritual and mystical subjects, considering that 99% of the men and women who make scholarly studies of Druidism, Germanic Paganism, or the like, are either atheists, agnostics, or Christians- none of whom study the shards of remaining evidence from the proper open perspective. They typically write from the "I must publish or lose my job" perspective of the professor, or the "I must make money" perspective of nearly everyone else.

Everyone is looking for an angle, a unique angle, and few care about the truth. Pinioned by the lack of evidence, and the multitude of modern assumptions that most people today are taught to accept, most modern scholarship on Paganism is simply awful. But nothing could be more awful than the fact that this same scholarship is used by self-appointed "Pagan Elders" to bolster their ego-ships and their tiny spiritual fiefdoms.

I am certainly not suggesting that we throw away all scholarship, only that we stop doubting ourselves and other people, and siding with scholarship, without questioning it. And I'm certainly calling for all modern Pagans to look closely at the men and women who try to set themselves up as our "elders". Do they serve the Gods? Or do they manipulate words and scholarship to support their imaginations, egos and agendas?

If there was a true "idolatry" in the modern Pagan world, it would be the worship of scholarship, and the unspoken notion that it "must be true" if someone with some degrees writes it in a book. One must look at the multitude of factors and powers and situations that surround every event that happens- the Web of Wyrd as it were- and see how and why things are written they way they are. We must divine how and why people say the things they say, how and why they come to the conclusions they come to, how and why they believe what they believe. Would you want someone who thought Odin was "false god" analyzing and explaining his myths to you? Naturally not.

My friends and I have long ago made the conscious decision not to subject ourselves to the foolishness that defines so many organized "Pagan" and "Heathen" groups. I am surrounded daily by people like myself who feel a draw back to the Old Ways- to the paths of Northern Paganism, both British and Germanic. My friend Seth, who has now sworn faith to the Old Gods of he and I's Germanic ancestors, has been a shining example to me of what a resourceful person can do when they find their calling in religion. My wife is true to the Gods, as well as our other friends. At nine nights old, my daughter was "sprinkled with water" in her heathen rite of consecration and named, her Fate in our path set.

We feel the living presence of the Gods and we have much peace and prosperity. We support one another, give our loyalty, and live our lives. That is the essence of the Old Way. Why do I focus more on my family and friends and personal practice, than on acceptance in some nonexistent "broader Pagan community"?

The answer is simple: any notion of a "Pagan community" today is a farce; few Pagans can agree on the color of horse shite, much less on religion, and this is how it should be. There is no need for Pagan "popes". "Organized religion" has shown us that it does not and cannot work, and not a single Pagan would be what they are, if they were satisfied with pre-packaged dogma being disseminated among massive congregations of people.

Clans, Kindreds, and Communities all over the Pagan North, in ancient times, believed as they believed, without some over-arching orthodoxy of belief. It is no different now. Everyone's personal and localized experience of the Gods and the Unseen World is different. It was so in ancient times, as well. It is absurd to imagine that all Germanic heathens everywhere in history acted according the stories and lore in the Eddas, or even knew them. It's safe to say that they didn't all have the same bodies of myths, the same sagas, or songs.

It's safe to say that they worshipped many Gods in common, as Gods tend to cross cultural and tribal lines, but it's also safe to say that they did not all have the same lists of Gods and "pantheons" as we call them today. Everyone knows about Odin and Thor; but who today worships Mogons or Mongontia? What about Tuisto? Dozens of Gods and Goddesses that were very important in ancient Germania and Celtia are either unknown to us, or no longer actively worshipped.

The bottom line is this: sanity in modern Paganism and Heathenry or Paganism is possible, if you keep one thing in mind: no one alive today has ever stepped into a time machine and traveled back to the past, to learn all the lost myths, sagas, and rituals that we have lost. No one really knows the full story of Pagan Europe.

What we do have are myths and sagas that show us how our ancestors faced life's difficulties, and some of how they approached the Gods. We can follow that example, in the modern day, in the context of modern reality- it isn't hard to do, if a person is ready to be bold and confident. I would say that this idea, the idea of looking to the past for exemplary models of behavior isn't just possible; it's imperative.

But there is no place for "authority" in Pagan Religion. Scholarship cannot and does not give us the entire story of the spirituality of the past. It serves us well in its own way, and sheds much light on the everyday life of our ancestors and the like, but spiritual "remains" are far more intangible and difficult to re-capture.

I daresay more people come back to the Old Ways to re-discover a spiritual relationship with the Gods and Ancestors, rather than to reconstruct how to weave or build houses like people did in 200 BCE. This being the case, we have to look to what we DO have, which can lead us to the spiritual connection we all long for- the Gods.

The Gods are alive and powerful now just like they always were, and we must worship and connect with them, and be open to the kind of relationship they want with us, as opposed to what other people tell us we should believe, if we want acceptance in some "modern Pagan community". The accusation of "unsubstantiated personal gnosis" is one of the more common charges you'll hear from the mouths of the nithings who exist on both sides of the Pagan fence.

The reality: what we know about the past is small compared to the glory that once existed. What passes for "substantiated" gnosis is usually anything but; the problem lies with HOW we can know something for a fact, through the lens of scholarly interpretation. What we DO know is that the world that the Germanic and Celtic peoples lived in was MASSIVE, and very, very few of their tribal stories, myths, and religious practices have come down to us today.

The ultimate dishonor we can do to the Heathen spiritual past is to try and force it into the narrow mold of the modern mind, which only has some Norse and Icelandic sources to go on, and the mentions of some Roman writers regarding some tribes in Germania. The Celtic myths and sources are the same way; nearly all come through the lens of Christian writers, just like the Eddas did.

This "shaky ground" is not a curse, as most people think, but a blessing; it forces us- if we are intelligent- to keep an open mind, to not be limited in needless ways. It forces us to become introspective and open to the living presences of the Unseen. Because the final truth is this: the line of ancestral power in each of us is the first and last "authority" on the faiths of the past that we will ever get, and they will only emerge from us in our own modern terms, colored by our present-day understandings.

That's fine; that's who and what we are. We can still be honorable people, and we can still experience the mystical truths from the old times. We need honor, especially in these days of so much argument.

Was Saga the Goddess of Memory? Most would say yes; some would say no. Those who say no would point to the description of her hall in Grimnismal, and use it as evidence that she was none other than Odin's wife Frigg. Is the Valknot the symbol of Odin? Almost everyone says "yes", but nowhere in the lore can this be confirmed. I could write a book on the controversies in modern interpretations of Celtic myths and Norse myths, or any myths. Who's right? I don't think it's for any one person to say.

What does a person do, when faced with fragmentary histories, myths, and collections of stories? What do you do when faced with a lost past, and when you find yourself paging through sagas and accounts, looking for how it was most likely done or believed?

There is only one thing TO do: trust yourself and the Gods. Understand the difference between modern ideas and modernistic assumptions, and the ideals and assumptions of the past, and don't imagine that you can just mix these things haphazardly, or that you can drop yourself directly back into the past. You can't. We have to live today, in the modern world, but we can live here today as heroes and heroines in our own right, if we are brave, and if we really let ourselves listen to the ancestors and the Gods. There is no greater "Heathen path" than that.

All That is Green and Good

Some of the most profound teachings and aspects of the Old Ways are the simplest. The modern occult world, so used to complexity in "ritual" and rigid forms of rote ceremony and worship, has colored modern forms of religious Paganism with a strange expectations. In much the same manner that people who come from "high" Christian backgrounds (like Catholicism) often cannot adjust to the more minimalist forms of prayer and worship common in low Protestant churches, modern Pagans seem to have a subconscious need for their theologies and rituals to have more structure than perhaps is necessary. The result of this is a feeling of dis-satisfaction with very simple rituals or devotions, and a suspicion of modern Pagan theologies and worldviews that are not "complex" enough.

The influence of the old Hermetic and Cabalistic societies on modern mainstream Paganism is profound- the "LBRP" or the "Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram" and the "Opening by Watchtower" which was the cornerstone of nearly every ritual expression in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn has found it's way, heavily altered, into modern Wicca, and from Wicca to many strands of Paganism.

Today, your chances of finding a "Pagan" group that doesn't start its rites without praying or chanting or tracing odd symbols to the "four quarters" or the four directions, are not good. "Calling the Quarters" is almost cliche now, and practically omnipresent in modern Pagan liturgies. And it's always something that I found a difficulty with.

The founding mothers and fathers of the modern "reconstructionist" Celtic movements were some of the first people to dispense with the "quarter calling" logic of mainstream Paganism. Their reasons were good; they found much evidence to support a Triune system of seeing the "realms" of the world; as opposed to a "four element" system, visualized through a Greek-Hermetic lens, they looked to the traditional Celtic "Oath of the Elements" whereby men and women swore by the Sky, the Seas, and the Earth.

The "Three Realms" appear in other places as well- a trinity of realms: Land, Sea, and Sky. It not only captures the great "triskele" of Nature, but it aligns the thinking of people to the inexhaustible power of Three. Three is a most powerful number and spiritual concept; without Three, no manifestation is possible. Without at least three legs, no stool or table will stand; without at least three legs, no cauldron will stand; three are the child, mother, and father; and where Land, Sea, and Sky meet, there life is formed.

Look at the world to see this simple fact shown: The fertile Lands of Europe, green and forested, are perfect mixtures of the earth, the waters, and the sky above. Lands where one of the realms is lacking are barren- such as the scarcity of water in the desert. In deserts, where Land and Sky are dominant, and the watery realm, or the "Sea" realm is far weaker, life has a harder time, though it is not absent.

If you were to go above our atmosphere, where air is lacking, you may find watery and earthy materials floating in the void, but without the Sky, the life-giving airs, what shreds of life can survive out there?

The Three Realms idea is very organic and easy to align yourself to, wherever you go. As I said, some things that are most profound are also the most simple. A simple walk on the Green Land itself can re-invigorate a person, in a way that simple rest cannot. I feel it all the time, when I go for a walk in the forest, or when I get to gaze out over a green expanse of Land: there's a goodness in it, something regenerative about it.

And it never gets old. The visions that flash forth from all Three Realms, they never get old. You will, one day, become a little tired of even your favorite movie, if you watch it enough times. Even the most enjoyable books finally get put down for the final time, flashy clothes fade and get worn out. But when you stare at the sunrise or the sunset, or see a brilliant full moon in the sky, you might as well be seeing it for the first time. It is easy to stare at it, to get lost in it. The forest scenery is the same way; the deep green of the treeful canopy just draws your eyes away. And it never gets old.

Emerson was the first to point this out, and he gave a good reason for why you could watch the moonrise a million times and never get tired of it: because Nature was an expression of an Eternal Spirit, and it was timeless, ageless, forever old and forever new, simultaneously. The evidence for this is in the simple fact that you *never* get tired of gazing upon the manifestations of Nature's beauty.

Few teachings from the Old Ways could be more profound than that. The constant modern need for "evidence" for "God" or "Eternity" or "Spirit" is discovered in something as simple as taking a walk on the green and good Land, and just being unafraid to open oneself to the immensity and power of it all. The vital power of life in the Three Realms pulses and rushes forth like a waterfall. The only reason most people don't feel it is because they have gotten so used to feeling it, that they become numb to it. They categorize the constant feeling of life, within and without, as just the "mundane" or "normal" feelings of their day to day existence; many are surprised to "re-cognize" the fact that what they call "mundane feelings" are in fact subtle and mystical powers of life and regeneration forever presenting themselves to us.

Most people do things like take walks or go camping or spend time outdoors because, whether or not they realize it, they are gaining a form of physical, mental, and spiritual regeneration from these activities. It is a religious communion of a very ancient, primal, and simple kind. And it is no less profound for this.

Modern Pagan rituals need not stray from the simplicity of the direct experience of the flow of life around us, in the Land, and surrounded by the Sea, and under the Sky. And the constant invigoration we get on all levels from opening ourselves to those Three Realms must not be forgotten as one of the central "goals" of both ritual and our everyday lives.

The Dark Season

I give worth and honor to the Grandmothers and Grandfathers who have lived before us, and who still live in a state of mysterious perpetuity inside the Land we all walk upon. They passed their life-force and wisdom on to us, their children, through the ritual of love and birth and blood.

This is the time of Samhain, the fulfillment of the moon of Samonios. While most modern Pagans only celebrate Samhain on a certain day, i.e. October 31, November 1, or the like, the historical reality was a bit different. According to the Coligny Calendar, a native Celtic method of time-keeping that was discovered decades back in France, the month of Samonios, which marked the beginning of the new year, was the time in which the festival of Samhain was celebrated- and the beginning of Samonios could fall on different days on different years, due to the fact that it is a lunar calendar.

Samhain originally probably wasn't a "day", but a fortnight-long festival. The Full Moon that began Samonios occured on the 8th or 9th of October, meaning that the fourteen days that followed it was the time of Samhain's festivities. Tonight, there is no moon; the moon has gone dark, making this the "Returning night" of Samonios.

Modern Pagans can celebrate this season at any point, realistically during October or November, so unless you are a historical calendar reconstructionist (like me) it matters not. Samonios will always fall in October/November, and on the average, it manages to land near the end of October.

When to celebrate Samhain is not such a big problem; if you are in touch with the world around you, you already know: you celebrate when the cold really comes back, and when you "feel" the world turn towards darkness. The cauldron of the year finally boils down to nothingness in the Dark Season of Samhain, bringing about a profound spiritual event- the destruction of the world and all the worlds. As all the worlds were born from their living source ages ago, so one day, the ancients believed, they would all fall apart and become overwhelmed by "Fire and Water"- the elements in their destructive form. After this came a period of rest- the Holy Night of the Gods, before the worlds were regenerated from the womb of Sovereignty.

Samhain is a chance to consciously participate in the reversal and overturning/destruction of the worlds. It is the time we celebrate the end of things, and the dark night that follows, waiting for regeneration. The end of things isn't a mere "stop"; it is a radical reversal, as the horn of Misrule sounds. It is, perceptually, a wild and phantasmagoric event. It is a radical reversion to the hidden and mysterious roots of all things.

A human being experiences their own Dark Season when they die- and death is a sudden inversion of life, as the mindstream of the dead person is thrust into the Great Otherness, and visions of many kinds, ranging from the peaceful to the frightening are experienced. Much wisdom waits to be found in the moment of Truth that death brings to us, but we must learn to deal with fear and the "other side" of life, before we will be prepared to "recieve" the death experience properly.

There is no "good and evil" in any of this. Death is not "evil" while life is "good". Life is the name we give to the perpetual nature of our existence, whether as human beings, or as the Sidhe-spirits on the "other side" of this world; "Death" is the name we give to the point where we move from one of those conditions to the other. Death is the "point between" one kind of existence and another; "death is the center of a long life", as they say.

We have to keep our minds on our own deaths, every day of our lives. It may sound macabre or morbid, but I assure you, it is a great key to wisdom. If we consider our own bodies dead, lying silent in the ground, being consumed by the earth and by animals, or if we see ourselves glowing bright orange and black as we are consumed by flames on our own pyres, we will be forced to consider what is important in our lives. We will also reconsider what we think is important now. I have searched long and hard for what outlasts death, and my search was successful- the love we have for our wives, husbands, lovers, and children, and the affection we have for our friends, those meaningful and powerful bonds are what we "take with us".

The secret was so simple, and it was hiding in plain sight- you can really FEEL what is important in life, and it happens freely, with love and joy at human company. It bathes us with its power, and so many of us don't recognize it. There is no money or possession that can make us happy or accompany us at the level of our spirit, but love, love is the heart of every joy that will last. I can tell you now- the "Great Mystery" eluded me until I saw it in the one place I was meant to see it- and far from hiding in some cavern in the Underworld, I saw it in the face of my newborn daughter.


The Dark Season allows those whom death has taken to the Otherworld to visit us, in a very real and immediate way. When we turn our thoughts to our own mortality, and when our eyes see the coming of the winter, the end of the year and the mystical moment "between" where the new year waits for its regeneration and birth, and when we see that same pattern reflected in our own mortals lives and deaths, we are putting ourselves into a very receptive state of mind, a state of mind where all our assumptions about the world break down.

Who really knows the meaning behind it all? To be born, to live, to die, to be reborn- why the great Round, the Great Cycle? Why the endless fear, wonder, the questioning? Death shatters our illusions, and life gives us time to consider the nature of illusion. We are becoming stronger and wiser through seasons of life and events of death. When you hit that "space between" in your own mind, when you doubt the things you always wanted, always accepted, that's when the ancestors can speak to you from the "other side" of life.

The ancestors have become wise, gone among the Sidhe, the Dead, and seen their mortal illusions fall away. In that timeless condition, they dance their planxtys, and reach out for communion with us, as it is their nature to do. We are all connected, the living to the "dead", and the "dead" to the living. Perhaps they wonder at us and our world like we wonder at theirs; or perhaps, they are far more aware of us than we could be of them, a timeless mode of perception that they share with the Gods.

Not all of the dead become so wise; but those who do become our timeless and tireless protectors and guides. When death rises up to overwhelm the world, or even our mortal bodies, we are thrust into an inverted, frightening, and surreal "space between"- and in that indeterminate space, a gap opens up, mentally, that lets the wisdom of those who dwell in that space come to us.

I pray that we will all recognize it, and give up on trying to fix ourselves down with too many "solid" notions and assumptions about ourselves and the world- we are all greater and more fluid powers than we realize.

The Dark Season teaches us this lesson: life is water, not stone. Death reduces bodies to dust, just as water reduces rocks to sand. The worlds have fallen into the darkness of the unmanifest, now in the Season of Samhain, and in the strangeness of that place, the wisdom of our ancestors drones on, sacred chants of the people Below the Hills. The worlds have been washed away, and their noise has fallen silent. We couldn't hear our own inner voices, or the voices of our ancestors before, but now we can.

Now is the time to hear it- go outside at night, light your candles and fires, put the apples that are the food of the dead at the roots of trees, and really listen to the darkness. Soon, a vision of great fire and light will flood over the world and all things will begin again, and wisdom will be there with it, waiting to be heard and discovered, forever.