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Pagan Christianity?
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Branwen
824 posts

Re: Pagan Christianity?
Oct 04, 2009, 14:43
dodge one wrote:
Somewhere in my storage, i've a collected works of Irish FolK-lore from first hand accounts spoken to William Butler YEATS himself. Just crammed packed with such tales.


I'm intensly jealous... LOL. I heard that Yeats and Lady Charlotte in particular did a lot of "sanctifying" of the folklore. Doesnt a letter from Lady Charlotte say she removed the vulgar and pagan aspects as being of no interest to civilised people even if the great unwashed still loved to hear that stuff?

The proper etymology of Druid is Annointed One... the Oak stuff is mostly the early revivalists getting bogged down in the fact of oak reverence of the Druids. Peter Berresford Ellis makes a strong case for this, and earlier names for druid before linguistic drift back him up, which 17th century druid clubs didn't account for.

I thought Catholicism was pagan christianity. 400 saints instead of 400 gods and goddess... all the festivals and rituals they took over... Those letters from Pope Gregory telling everyone to sanctify pagan practices to the use of God. I don't know much about christianity apart from some of the basics though, so feel free to correct me. I see it as a good thing, that they converted without wiping out an earlier culture myself.

St Bridget and her types took over the pagan cult of the nine maidens, giving a patriarchal religion a safe outlet for reverence for the female.

St Patrick... not so sure. I think it was a spin campaign, replacing magic with miracles. Like when they say he banned the snakes from Ireland, he was banishing the evil worship of Crom the red serpent, and the more benign worship of the white serpent Nethy in a metaphor of banning snakes. Might also refer to the banning of the "serpents of wisdom" as druids supposedly called themselves.

As for magus, the word was used for anyone doing magic, from druids to saints, wasn't it?
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Re: Pagan Christianity? (FourWinds)		 Replies:
Re: Pagan Christianity? (dodge one)
Re: Pagan Christianity? (hotaire)
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