wildbeewitch:

irelandseyeonmyths:

wildbeewitch:

This is a REALLY good question.

The problem for a lot of re-constructionist people in the Irish tradition is that there is nearly no evidence of the worship of deities at all.

There are a some figures who are called deities but the stories don’t include a lot of what anyone could call worship or religious practice. Any theories rely heavily on sources from continental Europe.

Then there are as you say, members of the Tuatha de Danann who don’t appear to be viewed as gods just simply powerful people or literary devices. Then there are the heroes.

Tomás Ó Cathasaigh (1978) ‘Between God and Man: The Hero of Irish Tradition’ is an interesting article on this dichotomy that’s on JSTOR.

From my point of view the heroes should not be viewed as deities. But in terms of practice there’s no evidence to back up one view over the other. Our worship of Irish deities is a mostly modern construction and it’s okay to accept that. You do the best you can.

For example, lots of Irish Catholic folklore is used to reconstruct pagan traditions. I do this. I found my faith worked well around naturalistic saints and holy wells and rag trees.

Choosing which deities from the lore speak to you is personal.

Just be cautious before labeling something a tradition.

Id go a diff way myself. I think the first bit of telling the difference is like a game of guess who. Get into history and use it to eliminate the fakes. The history of mythology, the history of anthropology and the history of modern paganism. It lets you see myths as they are minus the romance, lets you learn how to and how not to interpret myths and which things are a cultural product n which things are just modern pagan tropes.

For example its almost taboo for a modern pagan to say characters in myths arent deities. But greeks criticised Homers Illiad because of that. Knowing that historical pagans said it makes it obvious that its true. Put all the backgroundless random characters face down.

Then knowing the theories behind interpreting myths is huge. Interpretation and critical thinking are skills that a pagan needs to learn and its important to know why lots of those theories are invalid.

I mentioned Muller before… take him as a typical influential early athropologist. guy rolled into India in the decades after it was colonised and declared himself the authority on the place. He lied about translating the vedas hed actually paid a guy there to do it for him and then made these pronouncements from on high about aryanism and solar myths. Godwins law applies where his aryanism is concerned but Lugh is called a sun god cos of that guy. Put all the gods only gods cos of their bs face down.

Knowing the history of modern paganism is huge too. It all has a shared origin and knowing the difference between a pagan trope being legitimised by culture and a genuine piece of culture. Put all the holly and oak kings, green men, triple formed goddesses, reclaimed goddesses etc face down

After all that whittling away the bs you put your skills to work. Look at characters that share indigenous motifs and wonder what they mean. Does the symbolism in the language help. For example Manannan shares motifs with Donn, Ladra Derg etc what types of cult figures are they based on? What does the sea mean, what does derg/red mean etc. Then what type of cult figure might manannan have been based on.

If theres no motifs etc youre lost but theres 1000 years of lit in Ireland. Excluding modern folk trads and the motifs continue even where the characters are different so… its doable.

This is all true but it’s not really the whole picture. Because even if you can “verify” (for lack of a better term) mythological characters, the difference between powerful being/person and god is a vague one across those 1000 years of Irish literature. And then where does worship come in? Is having no worship at all possibly the most “authentic”?

Like Danu is totally invented, I’ll admit and making Morrigan a triple aspect goddess is a stretch (or at least a simplification) BUT the difference between only worshiping characters like Morrigan, Donn or Manannan over Tuatha de Dannan like Aengus or Miach is more *wobbly hands gesture*

Also some things become tropes because they speak to common human experiences/thought (not to get too Jungian). One of the reasons Robert Graves was able to take his White Goddess ahistoric trainwreck as far as he could is that there was something there – not the huge leaps and bad data that he used to “prove” his point, but some bits of commonality that made sense to people.

And the Lugh sun god thing was given a lot of steam because of the whole Lughnasa etymology argument in defense of the people who rolled with it, most of whom have never heard of Muller (which I do admit is its own problem).

I just want to be able to differentiate between history and faith.