whiskey tango foxtrot, over?

[arethinn]

Idly browsing through the traditions pages on Witchvox, I came across The Mi'nerwen Tradition. All I have to say is "you have got to be kidding me." It's fine to have a mythic history for one's tradition, but come on:

"Like many other Pagan traditions that have survived the Dark Ages, the Mi'nerwen Tradition chose to hide from those who would destroy it, and pass their knowledge down as an oral tradition."

"The concept of regular holidays is not native to the Mi'nerwen Tradition. Mi'nerwens usually found plenty of reasons to celebrate. However as our lives got more busy and fast paced, the need for some evenly spaced holidays built into the calendar showed more merit, and about 1500 years ago the Order adopted the Celtic Holidays that are now used by so many Wiccan Traditions; but with a Mi'nerwen twist." (emphasis mine)

Comments

[skatche.livejournal.com]

You'll have to fill in for those who are less well-versed in Celtic history: why is the latter incorrect?

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Unless I'm mistaken, even if you do buy that said Order's been around that long somehow, the Celts date back around 900 years. Not 1500.

IIRC.

[arethinn]

Because they're not "the Celtic holidays", for starters. Yule is not Celtic. The Equinoxes are not Celtic. The others have history of some celebration at various points in history in lands we now call Celtic nations, but to my knowledge, not as a cycle the way we think of them today. Having all eight as a set like this is extremely modern; "the wheel of the year" simply did not exist "1500 years ago" the way it does in modern Paganism.

[arethinn]

What we now call Celtic tribes are genuinely ancient. Greeks and Romans knew and fought with them, which means at least a few hundred years BC. Today's Celts are the Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Manx (Isle of Man), Breton (Brittany, in France). The problem isn't claiming that Celts were around 1500 years ago, because they were, but claiming that the modern Pagan holidays are both "Celtic" (which they aren't) and that they were the set we know today 1500+ years ago (which they weren't).

As for the order itself somehow existing prior to 500 AD and being hidden through the centuries and re-emerging today... no. Just no. Again, mythic history, ok, but literally, forget it.

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

So, let me get this straight: not only were they completely uncreative, and hence just stole the same old 8-holiday Wheel of the Year that every Llewellyn trad uses, but they claim to have had this wheel before all the other Johnny-come-lately traditions (that they stole it from)?

I've gotta give 'em points for chutzpah.

[tiggrrl.livejournal.com]

You know, I kind of feel like I should print out all of the text from their webpages and take it out to the garden. With that much Bullshit, it ought to make lovely fertilizer!

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

And how interesting it must have been to have a life that got "more busy and fast paced" around the year 500.

Dying from the snark, here.

[ihlathi.livejournal.com]

Yet another Wiccan group making itself and the others look stupid ... hopefully no one actually reads that stuff except other Wiccans.

holy narcotic overindulgence, batman!

[defiler-wyrm.livejournal.com]