The notion of conflicting information, or when personal gnosis conflicts with scholarship, has been in my consciousness lately. There is an intriguing discussion on The Pagan Perspective blog that considers the dissonance between practitioner and scholar. It’s a topic worth considering because in neo-pagan traditions we are, for the most part, flying by the seat of our pants. What happens if X-man God of the Spring, who you thought was a deity worshiped by the ancient Hippo cult, turns out to be nothing more than a misspelling of the wine merchant’s name?
This isn’t a worry for me for a few reasons. 1) I don’t worship deity. I’m an animist. 2)Since I approach my spirituality from an animistic world view, I form relationships and new information is an ever present factor in ALL relationships.
Now, let me share a juicy tidbit I discovered this week! I adore Irish myth and folklore. Drink the stuff up, when I get a change. Last weekend I was in Dublin for a birthday party, which afforded me an opportunity to visit Hodges Figgis. I always want more than I can afford there but luckily came away with two gems: a legal handbook on the Brehon Laws and Tales of the Elders of Ireland. The latter is more commonly known as The Colloquy of the Ancients and contains the most important texts on the Fenian Cycle (the stories of the Fianna).
Many people have heard of Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool). I think some consider him a god, or at least high enough in stature to be worked with in an elevated capacity. The scholarship presented in this new volume sheds a different light on old Fionn. Seems his name was mistakenly ascribed to a poet in Leinster when the people there needed a bit of propaganda. There might have been a leader of the Fianna named Fionn but he would have been one of many leaders of the numerous bands of landless freemen that roamed the liminal lands between family groups or “tribes” (I”m not going to use any obscure Irish words). These young nobles, who had not come into their own inheritance yet, could be called on by the man assigned by the tribal king to exact the vengeance of a blood feud or by the king’s champion who settled disputes by single combat but they were fraternally loyal to the leader of their small band.
This island was broken up into (for ease, let’s say) hundreds of these small “tribes” which meant there might be hundreds of Fianna bands. No way was Fionn mac Cumhaill the fraternal leader of all those!
So, what does a modern neo-pagan who might have worshiped old Fionn as a mighty warrior god of the Tuatha De Danann do when they read scholarship that basically says, “sorry guys, but Fionn was just a dude used for propaganda. His story was faked.” Do they cry, turn away from paganism, or fall back on “unsubstantiated personal gnosis”? I hope they do none of these and instead engage the plasticity of their lovely brains and expand.
Since we are making stuff up anyway, to a certain extent, they could go on working with Fionn as a deity or god form. Should be cool, as long as they differentiate this Fionn from the one of ancient Irish Mythology. Sort of like, if a neo-pagan meets Kali and has a bit of UPG (unsubstantiated personal gnosis) that she was …. a nymph guardian of Barton Springs in Austin. Should be cool for them to continue calling this being Kali, as long as they clearly differentiate between the actively worshiped Hindu entity of the same name.
Of course, I’m prejudice as far as the ancient Irish… because I tend to favor the notion that the entire island consisted of animist ancestor worshipers who honored their ancestors and the beings who occupied their unique topography – full stop.
Tell me…what are your own thoughts? What is the relationship between academic and practitioner?
Confessions of a Hedge Witch 
http://paganconference.pashamusic.com/
You mean like this? I was one of the featured authors this year and gave a paper last year as welass a few years ago. Most of us are both. 🙂
Congratulations! I imagine that was an exiting opportunity. Well done!
I don’t know that “most” are both, as the paper by Tully focuses on the dissonance between practitioner and academic. There seems to be a concerted move on the part of some, as indicated by The Pagan Perceptive blog, to condense new scholarship and offer it to practitioners in an understandable format. My question is how receptive non-academic practitioners will be and how scholars can help the non-academic practitioner better appreciate their work.
I meant most of us at this conference. It’s interesting at Saturday night’s ritual with so many different traditions. I think as more people come out of the broom closet we’ll get more respect. We also have places like Cherry Hill Seminary that are helping
Ah, I see. I am definitely a fan of scholarship and a growing body of … our “own” academic literature. A dear friend of mine is head of one of the departments at Cherry Hill, and I would like to see institutions like that thrive. My own thoughts about the conflict between practitioner and scholar is that it mirrors the general sentiment within the US of academia, in general. In that regard I suspect scholars have fallen down on the job of educating the public as to their role and usefulness. There has been an overt politicizing of academic, which results in a low-level distrust on the part of the public. Maybe it’s part of the “dumbing down” of America.
I didn’t care too much for the article you mentioned on the pagan perspective, nor the article by Caroline Tully which spurred it. Both leave the onus of the problem on practitioners, and cast many of us as, well, ignorant and gullible.
Just as much of the onus rests with the scholars as it does with practitioners.
In the example you supply, although you haven’t given enough information about the when of this poet named Fion, just because there was such an occurance doesn’t prove anything really, except there was a poet who took the name for proaganda reasons. Second, there’s a lot of Fions as you mention, and I am sure there’d be a few Fions presently walking the emerald isle today.
That type of prounouncement, that simply one instance of a name used for propaganda purposes invalidates that there was no such person who led a band,is part of this so called dissonance problem.
There were at least three Welsh poets who wrote under the name of “Myrddin”, at different times. Which of these invalidates the other?
Third, one must also bear in mind that Fion might just be an epithet, or title, and so any leader of such a band might be referred to as ‘Fion’. As far as the tales go, these may be a collection of stories referring, as you say ‘many such bands’ and if collectively they are called “fianna”, why wouldn’t their leaders be collectively referred to as Fion?
heh, ever see the Princess Bride? and the ‘dread pirate roberts’?
Also consider the post you made yesterday on the mountain of woman. Are we speaking of the same Fion? or are we speaking about another personality which was given that appellation?
One has to also consider the naming conventions of any culture when studying the tales. I’m sure you are aware that childhood names don’t always stick. I can think of three of the most well known instances, two from the Welsh and one from the Irish. Gwion-Talissien, Gwyri- Pryderi from the Welsh and Setana- Cuchullain from the Irish.
Hi Henry! :waves:
I didn’t get the feeling from either article that the onus rested with practitioners, but rather read it as pointing out to academics (because it is an academic paper, after all) that there is a current break-down in communication from both groups and that the new Pagan Studies Scholar *might* be in a position to help bridge the language gap.
My sharing of, frankly, just a tidbit of information presented in the work I”m reading wasn’t intended to be a proof for the argument made in Tully’s article. Rather, it was on my mind because *I* was uncovering new information about the larger than life character of Fionn while pondering the fascinating topic of practitioner/scholar conflict.
Yes, the legend I mentioned about Fionn associated with Sliabh na mBan would be the same Fionn everyone clumps together as “The Fionn”. Perhaps I will dig further into this mystery, if it calls to me. It’s currently enough to be utterly delighted at discovering the nugget of scholarship regarding the political and socio-economic system that was the fianna, and the conflict within Irish society (as well as on the continental) at the time of these writings which propelled the fion into the public arena in the way they were. It gives me a firmer foundation for understanding the complex system, the on-the-ground-real-life-issues, that inform the tales, as they have come down.
It also calls into question, in my own mind, how pagans view sacred texts. We, by and large, have a reaction against “the” sacred texts and the notion of divine inspiration, yet there are those within the wider pagan community that hold fast to texts (in Irish mythology) such as the Book of Invasions, the Book of Leinster, the Book of the Dun Cow, etc etc as though they presented infallible information. Of course, there are also a GREAT many pagans who practice an “Irish Spirituality” who don’t even know the names of those MS.
The idea you mention of the “dread pirate roberts” is GREAT! I could absolutely imagine someone (an MS compiler or writer) taking the name and running with it for political purposes! The tension between old beliefs and newer Christian ones in the extant MS is palpable. It helps ME to find research that blends the sociocultural context of the day with in-depth scholarship on the text itself. I prefer to draw my own conclusions.
OH – I forgot to mention, as I did to elfkat, that I do think a large burden rests on scholars *because* I see the conflict between practitioner and scholar as mirroring the general sentiment within the US of academia, in general. In that regard I suspect scholars have fallen down on the job of educating the public as to their role and usefulness in the face of the blatant politicizing that has gone on.
I’ll have to disagree with the Tully article is even an academic paper. It’s an opinion piece which happened to be accepted by what is called an academic peer reviewed journal.
The title of the piece pretty much expresses that the feeling is as I characterised it:
“Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions.”
It’s full of generalizations which do lay the problem largely at the feet of pagan practitioners.
It’s not something that has recently developed either. It’s something that has been going on between “strict” academia and practtioners of Occult ( for lack of a better term) arts and sciences. One only has to read the intro to Grave’s White Goddess to see the same. Drawing “conclusions for which authorities are not always quoted” .
Don’t get me wrong, I fault both sides of the argument. It is tantamount to ‘lawyering’, where facts and evidence aren’t use to get at some sort of ‘truth” but used to create a perception of ‘truth”, as it were.
I chose your example as a proof. because it is just those same kind of conclusions which are being made and pretty much expected to be received as ‘truth’.
I’ve worked in the field of Historic Preservation, which has high expectation of academic rigour. Preparing a nomination for the National Historic Register requires indepth research. Not only must I investigate the supporting evidence for significance, but also all evidence which might disqualify. I don’t see this approach happening in much of ‘contemporary pagan studies’. One cannot just “cherry pick” the supporting evidence.
Back to the question of Fionn…
The questions I would ask is ‘ were the tales of the Fenian cycle extant prior to the above mentioned poet of Leinster?
One of the problems is the span of the textual evidence, especially when dealing with oral traditions. It’s likely that this poet committed some of the tales to writing or composed original verse based on the extant oral tales.
what I know of the cycle is that it contains a large amount of tales and poems which were committed to writing over a span of a few hundred years.
I can’t say I see the worth of adopting the name for propaganda purposes if the name wasn’t already widely known
The Princess Bride cast, 20 years later
Those are all VERY good points, Henry. Have you attempted to involve yourself with the wider conversation (I’ve been woefuly out of touch with anything since moving here)? I think your voice would add depth. You certainly have much to offer and I for one look forward to the day when we have actual practitioner scholarship that approaches the subject sympathetically and with rigor.
Just a comment but I know very few pagans, even reconstructionists who even think anything like a “sacred text” exists for anything Celtic/Gaelic. They’ve been through to many retellings and changes.
I wish I could say I didn’t know any. I don’t engage with many (or possibly any), but I have encountered them. Whether these practitioners would have had the same understanding of “sacred text”, I don’t know. It was also 8 years ago, so perhaps pagan views in the backwaters of Texas have changed. I tend to steer clear of contentious discussions if I sense someone holds strong “beliefs”.
there was no reply link.
Thanks.
I followed the original discussions re: Hutton v. Whitmore but haven’t engaged, mainly due to the alienating attitude for not having letters behind my name but more importantly I really have no vested interest in anything having to do with modern or contemporary paganism or craft. Over the past 40 some years it’s become decidedly hostile for folks like me, and moreso in the last 5 years or so. I posted a few places on the Tully thing mainly because it kinda pissed me off. For the most part I’m pretty much done and will continue to hone my craft in silence.