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Proposal:
Build a Neo-Celtic movement in the United States.
Objectives:
– Education about the historical traditions of the Celtic peoples
– Creation of an actionable Neo-Celtic culture
– Offer an alternative to predominate existing mythologies such as Materialism, Progressivism, Capitalism, and Nationalism
– Abolish the socio-economic class that is whiteness
– Unite with indigenous culture oriented groups and other colonized minorities against the state and Capitalism
Who were the Celts?
The Celtic peoples were a linguistic-cultural group in Europe around 2800BCE. The history of the Celts is a subject of controversy in part because the Celts weren’t too keen on keeping a lot of written records but also due to subjugation from various imperial powers, namely the Roman Empire. Few scholars can agree on what metric to use to decide who was and wasn’t Celtic. The most common defining factor is use of Celtic languages. From here Celts are generally subdivided into one of two groupings either P-Celtic vs Q-Celtic or insular vs continental Celts.
I will expound on this in later articles but for the sake of simplicity I will mostly be using the insular vs continental dichotomy.
The insular Celtic regions are composed of modern day Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Mann, and Britain. The continental Celtic regions are much harder to define by modern day countries. The continental Celts lived all the way from modern day Spain to Ukraine to regions of Anitolia.
The term Keltoi (Κελτοί) was originally used by the Greeks to describe the Celtic people. We are unsure of what this term meant. Explanations range from “to hide”, “the tall ones”, or simply “the foreigners”. When the Romans first came upon the Celts in Northern Italy they called them the Gauls.
Note: That while we have begun to get a better understanding of the Celts as a whole, some the particulars of Celtic history are in a constant state of flux. New theories about the origin of languages and pieces of Celtic culture are always emerging.
The important takeaway from an introduction to the Celts is to understand they are a linguistic-cultural group. The commonalities among the Celts included language, art, music, and spirituality. Historically, we believed they were a genetic grouping and/or conquers of the lands considered Celtic. These theories have been discredited by modern research. It now appears that it wasn’t the people that swept through Europe, it was a culture.
“When the child fell asleep, the shadow bent over its ear and whispered a bedtime story:
Child, beneath this golden roof, you, of all people, know what it means to be homeless. It is the tragedy of some in this world to be uprooted, of others, to be rootless. This is the story of the rootless ones. Your bones already know the story, though your mind does not yet understand it. One day, in the waking world, this story will come back to you.”
– The Witches Child (2011)
Detribalization:
The Celts are a detribalized people. What this means is there was an intentional and concerted effort to destroy the Celtic people and their culture. This began with the Roman invasions of Celtic territory. When the Romans took lands from the Celts they banned local traditions and resettled Roman citizens in these areas in an attempt to culturally assimilate the Celts. Those who did not assimilate were killed or enslaved. For example, the Romans invaded the Isle of Mona to intentionally destablize the Druidic tradition. When the Romans arrived on the Island they murdered many Druids some of which were burned to death.
After the Romans left Britannia the islands were raided and settled by three different groups the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The most successful of these groups was the Angles.
Problems:
Given how successful the efforts of detribalization were reassembling the Celtic culture in it’s original state is impossible. There are certain questions about the ancient Celts that will likely never be answered. However, this isn’t necessary for the purposes of creating a Neo-Celtic movement. It may even perhaps be desirable, so we can avoid romanticizing the past.
This project will aim to piece together what we do know and create an actionable culture out of that.
Whiteness and Indigenous Struggles:
It may strike some as odd to “abolish the socio-economic class that is whiteness”. Most reading this essay will likely be under the impression that whiteness is and always has been defined by people of pale skin. This is at best ahistorical and at worst an intentional lie. Many people that would be considered white in the modern world were not in the early United States. The Irish, Italians, Slavs, and Jews were not considered white when they first arrived here.
Not being white does not equate to being black. The struggles that African Americans faced in the United States and still face to this day were not the same as the Irish. The Irish were not chattel slaves in the United States. However, they were not afforded the same privilege that WASPs living in the United States were afforded.
This is important to understand in the context of Celtic history. As the Celtic identity was destroyed we had no substantial traditions, culture, or community to align ourselves with. As many in the last Celtic holdout countries (ie Ireland and Scotland) were forced to leave their homes due to the brutality of imperial occupation they, over time, aligned themselves with privileged classes and adopted whiteness as their new identity. In doing so, they sided with the oppressors of classes they had historically been aligned with. The very same oppressors that slaughtered their ancestors and made them slaves in their own homeland.
Fundamental to the construction of modern whiteness is cutting pale skinned people off from the revolutionary and indigenous struggles of their people. It is not a coincidence that the last two Celtic holdout regions are still under imperial control to this day.
Through the adoption of our shared indigenous cultures, we hope to create common ground with indigenous struggles and finally through the abandonment of whiteness undo this pivotal betrayal.
Why?
The religious myth is one of man’s greatest and most significant achievements, giving him the security and inner strength not to be crushed by the monstrousness of the universe.
Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation
For far too long, pale skinned peoples have not had indigenous traditions to fall back on leaving us chained to the antihuman materialist myths of Scientific Materialism, Capitalism, Nationalism, Progressivism, Industrialism, etc.
This has created a culture of consumerism, despair, exploitation, and unrelenting ecological destruction. In the place of our indigenous myths we now relate to community mostly in terms of national mythologies. This makes predominantly white countries especially susceptible to Fascist ideologies as those who seek to seize power need only invoke these myths to hypnotize the collective masses.
We once had thriving communities taking freely from the abundant offerings of the Earth. Now we must step on the faces of our once fellow humans in order to stake out a claim that, at best, facilitates only basic survival.
We once had a spirituality that was an expression of the self, not separate from, but as one with nature. Now our spirituality is one of domination. Domination of our fellow human and domination of nature. Our one true collective god is scarcity.
We once had societies that venerated a culture that unified many different peoples in many different lands. Now we are forced to engage in the arts only in so far that it can be commodified to further our continued existence. Now that very culture is infested by death cults that seek to divide and destroy all that was held sacred.
The fruit of the privilege that modern white people consume is poison and has rotted us to the core.
It is time for the revival of a tradition that rejoices in the joy and wonder of a living Earth.
We must remember who we were before we were white.
Further reading: Keltoi Rising
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