Tag Archives: neopaganism

On Arutz Sheva and pre-Christian religion in the blogosphere

Uncategorized, , ,

 In Firefox, underneath the "Religion" folder, I have the Arutz Sheva/Israel National News live bookmark.

Why do I read it, even though I don’t like that they used to link prominently to JONAH, a Jewish version of NARTH, and that the writing and lexical style of non-editorial news items on the site is closer to your average conservative "blog(osphere)" (with ample amounts of xenophobia)?

Because, first of all, I want to get the raw opinion of religious Israelis on how they perceive both the outside world and their own country, which is often not the same as such opinion which comes from even conservative American Jews, and definitely not the same as conservative pro-Israel Christian Americans. Of course they view their government through exceptionally-critical lenses (even the current Netanyahu coalition cabinet), but they also extol the land in which they live and the orthodox religion which they practice as the best for their people and the land (or at least they don’t extol their religion as being the one true faith of the entire world), probably with far more celebratory output than what they may give their government. It seems that, in the ongoing, slowgoing "reconquest" in the West Bank (that is, to say, that they’re trying to reconquer a cultural homeland through settlement and open religious observance), the writers and editors are seeking for a non- or pre-expulsion Judaism which is anti-cosmopolitan, increasingly rustic and proximatively ignorant of the world outside; such attempts to seek and live a pre-Christian life and community are interesting spectacles to watch.

Second of all, through reading Arutz Sheva alongside newsposts aggregated by HinduCurrents and pagan blogs such as The Wild Hunt and Pagan + Politics, I want to get a glimpse of how the practitioners of non-proselytizing, non-racial, sometimes land-centric religions (Eclectic Neopaganism, Hinduism, Judaism, Humanism, etc.) view their religions and relate to their respective governments and neighboring worships. 

Celtic Reconstructionism and Pan-Celticism

Uncategorized, , , ,

 For all this talk about returning to Celtic roots by both Celtic Reconstructionist Pagans and Pan-Celticist cultural nationalists, I’m surprised that there has been no serious effort to make Celtic Reconstructionism a part of Pan-Celtic cultural identity or to even establish and concentrate Celtic Reconstructionism in the Celtic nations. 

I imagine Celtic Reconstructionism as being useful in the revival of the Celtic languages from within a religious-national context. However, this would be an initially-subsidiary role played by Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism, similar to how it took a long time for Israeli Judaism (the religion) to catch up with Zionism (the cultural and ethnic nationalism) in terms of enforcing and promoting the Hebrew language as a language of both national and religious identity in Israel, resulting in the comparatively-late blooming of Religious Zionist kibbutz long after the Labor Zionist kibbutz movements had come, played their role and eventually declined in productivity and attraction.

Combining CR with Pan-Celticism would also help in defining a Celtic-centric worldview through terminologies which can only be found within the Celtic languages.