{"id":750,"date":"2006-10-28T19:09:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-28T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=750"},"modified":"2006-10-28T19:09:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-28T19:09:00","slug":"whos-a-celt-now-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=750","title":{"rendered":"Who’s a Celt now? – 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 1<\/a>, Part 2<\/a>, Part 3<\/a><\/p>\n

There is no gene for “Celtic,” and, as we have seen (if you followed the links), “Celtic culture” is largely an invention of the late 18th and 19th centuries–created by the English and\/or of Welsh, Irish, and other tradition-inventors who went to London to make the culture scene.<\/p>\n

Those might include James Macpherson<\/a>, creator of the allegedly ancient Scottish “Ossian” poems in the 1760s, and Edward “Iolo Morganwg<\/a>” Williams, creator of allegedly ancient Welsh literature and key figure in the Druidic revial. (See also “fakelore”<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Williams’ “Druidic” planes of existence–Annwn, Abred, Ceugant,and Gwynfyd–made it into Robert Cochrane’s Witchcraft tradition, oddly enough.<\/p>\n

Then you have the translators and “improvers” of ancient literature, such as Lady Charlotte Guest<\/a>, who produced the version of the Mabinogion<\/a> that most people know. Evangeline Walton’s<\/a> novelized version was on my first coven’s reading list, and it was treated like holy scripture.<\/p>\n

In 1890s Ireland, the Anglo-Irish poet William Yeats<\/a> and his unrequited love, Maude Gonne<\/a>, stoked themselves on translated Iron Age epic poems<\/a> and even tried creating a magickal order based on “Celtic” themes as against the more Kabbalistic Golden Dawn<\/a>, of which Yeats was a member.<\/p>\n

By the 1920s, the Irish writer James Joyce would refer to the whole anti-modern and backward-looking “Celtic Twilight” literary renaissance as the “cultic twalette.” Maude Gonne, of course, “took it to the streets” in the build-up to the 1916 Easter Rising<\/a> and never went back to “Celtic” ceremonial magic.<\/p>\n

Tags: Celts<\/a>, Celtic spirituality<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 There is no gene for “Celtic,” and, as we have seen (if you followed the links), “Celtic culture” is largely an invention of the late 18th and 19th centuries–created by the English and\/or of Welsh, Irish, and other tradition-inventors who went to London to make the culture scene. Those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-c6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":846,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=846","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":0},"title":"Martin Brennan at Anubis Caves","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Boulder, Colorado, resident Martin Brennan is known for writing visionary books about ancient megalithic monuments, such as The Boyne Valley Vision.A new video clip shows him discussing the mysterious carvings that appear to be synched to the equinoctial sunset shadows at \"Anubis Caves,\" a site in the Oklahoma Panhandle. You\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":752,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=752","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":1},"title":"Who’s a Celt now? – 6","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4, Part 5Everything that we thought we knew about Celtic culture is probably wrong.But there is still language, right? If \"Celtic\" is not a genetic code, and it's not a spirituality, at least there are Celtic languages: Gaulish, Cornish, British-leading-to-Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4019,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4019","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":2},"title":"The ‘Fifth Branch’ of the Mabinogion & Some Plagiarizing Pagans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In 2008, an English academic who works with ancient and modern Celtic languages created \"a piece of Iolosim,\" in other words, a pseudo-ancient tale in the spirit of the Welsh literary forger and Druid revivalist Iolo Morganwg. Written in Middle Welsh and \"translated\" into English, it purports to be a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":741,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=741","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":3},"title":"Who’s a Celt now? – 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The word \"Celt\" first appears in English in 1706, but it referred then usually to the people of ancient Gaul (modern France), says the OED. There are some earlier uses of \"Celtic,\" again referring to the Gauls, from the late 17th century.\"Celts\" begame fashionable as Noble Savages after Scotland, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1179,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1179","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":4},"title":"Druidry and Made-up History","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is the YouTube trailer for a new documentary on British Druidry. Yes, that is Ronald Hutton at the beginning (long hair, glasses). (If the YouTube link does not work, try this one.)And here is the video clip dissected with a sharp knife by a different British Pagan academic.It's true:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druids\"","block_context":{"text":"Druids","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druids"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0300144857","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":755,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=755","url_meta":{"origin":750,"position":5},"title":"Who’s a Celt now? – 7","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A quirky translation of witches' chantsPart 1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4, Part 5, Part 6Stephen Oppenheimer, the anthropologist who combines DNA, archaeological, and linguistic evidence to argue against any \"glorious Celtic heritage\" in England, further argues that Celtic languages were not widespread there before the Roman invasion.His work reminded\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}