When I came to Hampshire, the original plan for my Division II was to study Archaeology and Anthropology, with the eventual hope of moving into the field of Celtic Archaeology. I studied Native American archaeology and anthropology, primarily, that of the Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest. From these classes I learned methods of study and research, and the cultural lenses and prejudices that information can be viewed through as it is interpreted. I became very critical in my thinking about my own experiences as well as in my reading of othersÕ research and I acquired the ability to always question my sources and to try, as best I can to approach the cultures I study from the most objective, open-minded position possible and to understand these cultures as from within, or at least be aware and admitting when I have no basis for comparison or comprehension.
With these new understandings and perspectives, I eventually realized what I wanted to do was to better understand how my culture, Euro-Christian, had imposed on the cultures of the native peoples whom I had been studying. I wanted to know why and how Christianity became the superpower in world theology that allowed it to take over so many indigenous belief systems across Europe and eventually the Americas. I set out to understand the religious background of the particular cultures that Christianity ran into and consumed on its path of destruction across the northern hemisphere.
More specifically, I am interested in how Christianity infiltrated the Celtic regions that are today known as France, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Having been raised as an Irish Catholic I was very aware of the differences between my Traditional Irish Catholic upbringing, and the Christianity I was learning about in my classes. In addition I started a personal investigation of a non-Christian, polytheistic approach to spirituality, I discovered that much of modern paganism is based, to a certain degree, on Celtic history and religion, with this realization I became even more intrigued by how the histories of the Celtic world and of Catholicism intersect and interconnect.[1]
As my education about Christianity, increased I began to see similarities between it and the other religions it encountered as it spread from the Middle East, through the Mesopotamian world, and across Europe. It was my understanding that the earliest roots of Christianity began at around 500 BCE in the Judaic culture on one side, and in the Greek and Roman cultures on the other.[2] I was only interested in following the movement of Christianity up to the 14th Century, the end of the Middle Ages. The sources I used spanned the areas of Religion, Literature, History, Archaeology and Anthropology, but with a definite emphasis on theology, ritual, mythology and folklore.
The main question on which I founded my Division II was: What were the influences of indigenous Pagan and early Judeo-Christian religions on each otherÕs cultures and societies as these two worlds met? In following this pursuit I began exploring how the history of Christianity was influenced and shaped by its relationships to other contemporary ancient religions, primarily those of the ancient Greeks, Romans and Hebrews. Then coming from a completely different geographical reference, I studied various themes in early European myth and religion, specifically in the Celtic cultures of Ireland, France, and Britain in order to understand the world Christianity later moved into. It was my intent to understand, as thoroughly as possible, how these cultures are interrelated and interdependent on their development as they occurred. Christianity quickly became the dominant religion, and what I wanted to understand was how this was possible. What were the pre-existing religious cultures like that they allowed such an apparently complete takeover of their belief systems to occur? Alternatively, if they were not completely overtaken, what parts remained to be incorporated into Christianity, why, and how?
Because of the antiquity of my pursuits, I was required to learn to research and successfully use historical documents, literary sources, vernacular mythology, popular folklore and archaeology. In many cases these vestiges of former religions have shown themselves to be very faint and obscure simply because many of the medieval manuscripts, ancient mythologies and archaeological evidence have been lost. Because of this many of these pre-existing influences must be inferred from modern folklore, superstition and other folk customs. These often have origins in pre-Christian pagan customs that have survived into the cannons and practices of modern culture. This will be explored even further in my Division III, in which I will examine in depth how religion, myth and folklore are interrelated in the Irish Catholic tradition of the Cult of St. Brigid.[3]
The stories of the Old and New Testaments that make up the Christian Mythological Tradition have many unmistakable similarities to other Indo-European archetypal myths.[4] What that implies about Christianity and its relationship to these other cultures was especially intriguing to me. Did that mean that the writers of the Biblical traditions simply co-opt these stories? Or did most ancient cultures have the same understandings of the world? Regardless of why, it was also puzzling to me that with so many similarities, Christianity could have evolved into an entity so intolerant of polytheistic and other non-Christian religions.
From a non-academic point of view, one that I find equally important, is my own personal religious background and interests. My motherÕs side of the family is very Irish-American Catholic, and this had a huge influence on my early childhood worldviews. Since then I have decided not to belong the Catholic Church or follow its teachings, but its influences on my life and perspectives on religion and spirituality are not so easily put aside. I have become very interested in religion as a major element in society and specifically the rituals that form at least half of the existence of a religion. The other half of that existence is the beliefs and theology that distinguish one religion from another and this is where the mythology of a religion takes center stage, or as the case may be, the pulpit.
There is a certain image of what Christianity is in America, that is founded on post-Reformation Protestantism and post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism. I began to see that Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, is not the pure un-defiled by heathen practices that it often claims to be, but rather has always been closely tied to the practices and religions it attempts to convert away from. The image of Christianity as the opposite of Judaism and Paganism is a distorted one; in fact one might even say that Christianity is indeed the child of Judaism and Paganism, in theory and practice. Here I will briefly outline what those influences were that allowed the Christian religion to become what it did, which will hopefully explain why all these studies and projects are relevant.
Christian:
I obviously needed some formal training in the study of Christianity, beyond my CCD[5] classes and independent inquires into the Catholic Church. I was always extremely interested in what the Bible actually said, and knew a lot more about the Bible than most of my peers. As a regular churchgoer for 17 years I knew what the practices were, the rituals and the reasoning behind them. Most of them, anyway. Academically, I found the official positions of the Church was very important to understand, as well as the social atmosphere that accompanied the many changes in the religion that took place over the past two thousand years. These were often different than what the actual practices of Christianity included in certain eras, but the current times were always reflected in the changes in doctrine.
One of the most rewarding experiences I had during my studies of Christianity was the chance to visit two different working Benedictine monasteries. One in Pelham I visited where we only went to a regular Sunday service, which did have the traditional Gregorian Chanting. However, at Regina Laudis in Connecticut, which I visited with my Social History of European Monasticism class, we got the opportunity to follow the monks (all of whom were women with at least Masters Degrees) through the entire 24-hour day of a Benedictine monastery. We worked in the garden, performing manual labor, as required by the Rule of St. Benedict, the cycle of prayer times, called the Opus Dei, including Vespers at 3am. The entire experience was very intense, especially getting up in the middle of the night in silence to chant in Latin. The women at the monastery were also extremely fascinating, since they all had led very different lives prior to taking orders. They were all extremely open-minded, aware of the very earth-based nature of the Monastery, and the Romano-Celtic symbolism and history of the monastery as an institution.
One of the Sisters I talked to at length, Sr. Praxedes, is a metal smith, who made the iron statue of a lamb spurting blood into a chalice that decorates the altar. When I asked her about the imagery of the lamb, and the symbolic role of metalwork, and the nature of Regina Laudis, she admitted that it was very much in touch with the earth, the elements and cycles of the year, all things that are generally used to describe pagan religions, both modern and ancient. The women were very honest about their close association with the seasons and cycles of the year, and of the slightly more-than-Christian worldview this can present.[6] For them there was no conflict between this worldview and that of the Benedictine Order. It was fascinating to see what a real working monastery would have been like in the Middle Ages, as far as structure of the day and prayers and the traditional Chanting.
Judaic:
Christianity was founded on Judaic scriptures, by the followers of a man who was a Jew. Originally the religion was not separate from Judaism, but merely a faction within Judaism, however that changed in under a century. Still, much of the foundations of Christianity, the laws, the moral atmosphere and more than half of the textual authority of the religion is the same as its Judaic origins. This is why, in addition to my other Christian-oriented studies of the bible, I thought it important to examine the Bible from a Judaic/Israelite point of view, and to understand the culture and religion of the earliest Christians. What I found is that there was a high amount of ritual and structure of the physical worship process and hierarchical structure of authority that is based directly on the Israelite religion.[7] With few exceptions, the Old Testament is the source of most of the rules and moral standards of Christianity as well as Judaism.
Greek/Roman:
This was the first culture that Christianity encountered and was accepted by. Therefore in order to better understand Christianity, I had to understand the cultures that it grew into, and out of. There were obviously many influences on early Christian ritual and thought from the Greco-Roman period.[8] Much of what is now thought of as exclusively Christian architecture was taken from in this culture for example the basilica, the cathedral and the cloister. Also, much of the ritual in Christianity is not coincidentally very similar to that of many of the ancient Greek and Roman religions.
It is generally accepted that it is through Roman emperor Constantine that Christianity became the popular and powerful religion that it was in the Middle Ages because he was the first ruler of the ancient world to not only stop persecution of Christianity, but to accept it, and be baptized as a Christian. With the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century CE, the Roman army became the primary bringer of Christianity into the rest of the European world.[9] The version of Christianity they practiced was not unlike the religions they had previously practiced: public rituals in temples performed on altars involving blood and bread, male dominated, but with special positions of privilege for certain women. This was true of almost every cult practiced in the Greco-Roman world, from the mysteries of Demeter to the Mithraic cults, and from the worship of Aphrodite to Zeus.
Celtic:
Irish Monasticism was one of the most influential forms of Christianity in the middle ages, and much of the texts from antiquity that still exist today do so because of the preservation by Irish monks. Ireland was the only place where Christianity was not introduced by force--there were no martyrs, no bloodshed and no accompanying military invasion. Why was the new religion so easily accepted? I was especially interested in the way in which pre-Christian deities were incorporated into the pantheon of Irish Saints. For example some of the deities, like Brigit and Gobnait were merely turned into saints, lives were invented for them and they became bastions of the Catholic Church in their new incarnations.[10] The give away to their true identities is that many of the ÒsaintsÓ were worshipped in the exact same places in the same ways as they were before their conversion to Christianity.
This practice, among others, is what served in part to make the line between Christian and Pagan so fine as to be almost non-existent in the earlier years. Besides retro-active canonization, another way the pagan gods remained active within Irish culture was to take on the guises of fairy kings and queens that are the realm of folk legend. Rituals and ceremonies became mere superstition and paranoia, and their original meanings were lost. Protection from the fairies consisted of actions and objects whose original roles in the religion of the pre-Christian Irish can only be guessed at. Much of my understanding of the Celtic influences on Christianity came from my studies in Ireland at UCC[11] and in independent study.
Modern Paganism:
Almost all of what I studied in the realm of modern paganism or neo-Paganism was done as independent study and internet research. What is modern paganism? There are as many answers to that question as there are pagans, if not twice as many. What I mean by modern paganism, or Neo-Paganism, is the practice of polytheistic, non-Judeo-Christian religions/spiritualities that are generally based on one or more indigenous ancient belief systems. Many of the neo-Pagan ÒdenominationsÓ practice a ritualized worship of the God and Goddess, the most popular tradition being the Wicca, founded in the 1950Õs by Gerald Gardner, a Manx Civil Servant.[12] The Neo-Pagan community is, in general, highly literate and high-technology. Therefore, there is a large number of pagans who are regular users of Usenet, e-mail mailing lists, and the World Wide Web who focus their on-line time to the discussion of the various forms of modern Paganism. I did much of my research of neo-Paganism on line, in books, as well as by meeting and living with a group of pagans in Ireland who had been friends of Gerald Gardner in the 1960Õs and Ô70Õs.[13] There are many hundreds of books on how to practice Wicca in all itÕs various forms (there are several traditions within the general category ÒWiccanÓ) as well as other neo-Pagan traditions.[14]
My particular interest in neo-Paganism and specifically Wicca, comes from its close ties to Celtic practices. Most forms of modern Paganism follow the eight festivals of the Celtic calendar, and much of Wicca is very recreationist in its rituals and beliefs, various Celtic deities are almost always invoked in ritual (along with other deities), but I was continually amazed at how little the practitioners seemed to be concerned with the historical accuracy of Celtic traditions and culture.[15] Another phenomenon I noticed was in the rituals themselves, the tremendous similarities to Christian rituals, specifically that of the Mass or Church service. All of the implements used in the Catholic mass, for example, are paralleled in both form and function by tools generally used or recommended for many neo-Pagan rituals, especially those of the Wiccan tradition.[16]
Travels in Ireland
While I was studying at the University College Cork, I took the opportunity to live with a group of modern pagans, settled Travelers[17] who had been primarily Wiccan through most of their adult lives. They now own property outside Cork city and have set up a ÒPagan-friendlyÓ environment where people can pitch a tent or live in the barn or tipi and have a safe space to practice any rites and rituals they want. They have lately begun formally celebrating the eight Celtic festivals[18] attracting large numbers of people from all over the world. In the spring of Ô96 I celebrated Bealtaine (roughly May 1) with them, and the summer of Ô97 I was part of the Midsummer celebration (around June 21) that included the performance of ShakespeareÕs Midsummer NightÕs Dream, in which I played Helena.
This past summer I traveled extensively throughout Ireland, visiting many ancient Celtic, pre-Celtic and early Christian sites. While the trip was mostly for pleasure, I did keep an extensive journal, took hundreds of photographs and collected information from tourist information offices about the sites if possible. Also during the trip I spent a small amount of time in Scotland and France (about a week each) where I also visited many sites of historical importance. One of the most fascinating sites was St. BrigitÕs Cathedral and tower in Kildare, Co. Kildare, Ireland,. At Kildare, there is a relatively recent Cathedral (built in 1230)[19], a 12th century round Tower, and a Fire Temple. Also located nearby is St. BrigitÕs Well. The Fire Temple is the site of an order of women dedicated to the goddess Brighde[20] where there was an eternal flame tended only by women (even into the Christian Era, men were not allowed to set foot in the Temple) until it destroyed by CromwellÕs troops in the 17th century. Kildare is the center of the Cult of St. Brigit, and the Well is still a pilgrimage site that is visited by the faithful every February 2nd.[21]
The foundation of the fire temple still remains in the church grounds, and the street the Cathedral grounds is located on is called Fire Temple Lane. These facts, in addition to the goddess and the saint having many of the same attributes, being patrons of the same things (art, metalwork and poetry, some healing), the association of both with the oak tree, and the center of worship for both being in literally in the same place made me extremely interested in knowing more about St. Brigit and her worship in Ireland. My Division III comes out of this interest in the nature of her worship and its place in the Catholic Church.
Medieval Studies/French Language/Creative Writing:
Much of the sources and information for my Division II came from the medieval world, since often the most recently anyone had copied texts was during the ÒDark AgesÓ when scholarship was at an all-time low, and the only writing that was being preserved was in Celtic monasteries across Europe. I thought it important to have a more holistic understanding of the Medieval world, as a way to wrap-up and summarize what I had learned of the era prior to the Renaissance.[22] My many years of French classes, including those at Hampshire, have been useful both traveling in France, and in reading certain texts that are only available in French. My background in creative writing has helped my overall writing abilities and has provided me with an outlet for pulling together many of my studies in a way other than academic writing.
Third World Expectation:
My first year at Hampshire, originally as a part of my archaeology and anthropology courses I took ÒHealth In America Before ColumbusÓ, and ÒNative American Health, 1492-1994,Ó ÒPeoples of the AmericasÓ and ÒThe Pueblo Indians.Ó All of these classes dealt with the Native American subcultures, their role in mainstream American society and the rights and tribulations of being an indigenous second-class group. With the Pueblo Indians class I visited a few reservations and pueblos in New Mexico, and investigated in depth the role of the white man as a tourist in Native American society. I also learned about the effects of the white man on the health and physical stature of the Native Americans before and after contact in the two American Indian Health classes I took with Deb Martin. From all that I studied and learned from these classes and in the ÒPeoples of the AmericasÓ class, Native America really is a third world culture, one that needs to be better understood, in order to revise its status and recapture some of the independence and freedom the Native American peoples once had.
Finalities and Future:
I now feel prepared to begin the Division III process, with better understandings not only of the material and field of ancient and medieval religions, but also of myself, how I work and what I still need to learn. My Division III will be on the roles and meanings of the Cult of St. Brigit in Medieval and Modern Ireland with Jutta Sperling and Sue Darlington. Over the course of my Division II, I learned many valuable lessons, about my needs and wants in the academic world; I will now take those lessons and apply them to the next stage of my life: a Division III with firm deadlines, clear objectives and elaborate outlines, with time to play without guilt, and time to work without distraction. It will, of course, be a challenge... but by now, I think IÕm ready for anything.
1. Caitlin and John Matthews. The Western Way. (London: Penguin Group, 1994); Tanya Luhrmann, Persuasions of the WitchÕs Craft. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989)
2. By "Greek culture" I am referring to the Hellenistic and pre-Hellenistic city-state structure of the peninsula now known as Greece. By ÒRoman cultureÓ I mean the post-Hellenistic Imperial period of Roman history, from the second century BCE through the fall of the Western Empire in 476 CE.
3. The Celtic Saints. UCC Spring Ô96
4. Ancient Israel, AC Fall Ô95
5. Catholic Catechesis and Doctrine. The official instruction of Catholic Youth who do not attend parochial schools. Usually classes are held one day a week from kindergarten through High School. Preparation for all sacraments taken in this period is done in CCD, both instruction on the correct performance and on the theological aspects of the rites.
6. The Monastery was founded by an American Red Cross worker, and is focused around the maintenance of the gardens, named for one of the very sexual Songs of Solomon, and the several hundred acre working farm and forest. They are a "Green" organization, making full usage of composting and recycling in addition to growing almost all of their own food. They raise sheep and cows for wool and the market, but are vegetarian in keeping with the Rule of St. Benedict.
7. Ancient Israel
8. By "Greco-Roman" I mean the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods, from roughly the 5th century BCE through the 2nd century CE.
9. Paganism in the Roman World, SC Fall Ô95
10. The Celtic Saints, Folklore, Celtic Religion and Mythology. UCC Spring Ô96.
11. University College Cork.
12. Gerald Gardner, Witchcraft Today.; paper: "Return to the Old Ways:" Folklore 253, UCC Spring Ô96.
13. I lived with Bev and Del and their group of family and friends in Co. Cork, Ireland for 3 weeks in May of 1996, and again for a total of 3 weeks in June and July of 1997. They publish an on-line newsletter that can be found on their website at http://www.synergy.ie/bevandel/
14. Scott Cunningham, Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1996)
15.Cunningham, 63.
16. Cunningham, 60 and New Saint Joseph ChildrenÕs Missal (NY: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1977), 9. Cunningham describes the following as among the basic elements of the rituals: altar holding an incense censer, candles, knife, cup, symbol of the god/goddess pentacle (Òa flat piece of brass, gold, silver, wood, wax or clay inscribed with certain symbolsÓ p.33), bell, wand, bowls of water & salt, and book of rites, The Catholic church uses an altar, crucifix, chalice, paten (also a flat disk of brass, silver or gold, occasionally wood or ceramic) the host, missal or Sacramentary, candles, incense, and a bell.
17. A sub-group of Irish society similar to yet distinct from the group formerly known as Tinkers, the Travelers live in caravans or horse-drawn wagons and generally do not own land. Since the 1960Õs there has been an increasing number of British ÒNew Age TravelersÓ attracted to Ireland by the traveling lifestyle and the better welfare system. Most Travelers are "on the dole," or public assistance, and distinguish themselves from "knackers" who are the more traditional Tinkers that originally went on the road during the Great Famine in the late 1840Õs.
18. Samhain, Winter Solstice, Imbolc, Spring Equinox, Bealtaine, Summer Solstice (Midsummer), Lughnasa, Autumnal Equinox.
19. The site has held a Christian church dedicated to St. Brigit since ca. 480.
20. The Irish spelling of Brigid.
21. The Feast of St. Brigid. Also Imbolc, sacred to the goddess Brighde. (Celtic Saints, UCC Spring 96)
22. The Renaissance marked the end of the Middle Ages.
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