Welcome to Gaia! ::

Something that has been bothering me recently...

Within my tradition (Gaulish Recon) there is a tendency to lump together deities from all over France and the surrounding area (including Britain) into a melting pot of gods and goddesses to suit a worshiper's needs. Historically, deities in Gaul were somewhat restricted to specific tribes, and while there are some general similarities and a definite cultural exchange between neighboring tribes, it still seems weird to me to worship, say... Nodens, a deity attested in Britain, alongside Grannos and Sirona, who are deities focused in eastern Germany and western Gaul. Similarly, within one tribal territory you'll find Grannos paired with the goddess Damona, in another Sirona and Grannos, in another Damona and Borvo, and in another Borvo and Sirona. These are tribal variations that, while similar, deal with different deities. This gets even weirder when you realize that goddesses like Sequana and Bibracta were concerned with individual places in Gaul (the Seine and a city near Autun, respectively) and shouldn't really have jurisdiction over anywhere outside their sphere of influence.

I've been trying to narrow my focus to a specific tribal federation, but even that is weird because I am an American and live nowhere near the areas where that tribe lived historically. Gaulish religion is very much tied to a sense of place in a way that other reconstructionist paths (Hellenism, Heathenry, Religio Romana, etc.) don't really have to deal with as much. For those of you who do encounter this close tie between tribe, place, and deity, but do not live in the area your gods were traditionally worshiped in, how do you reconcile this difference? This is not so much a problem for eclectics, but for people like me it does become problematic.

Oh, if it was...

I've always wanted to live in the Ardennes. sweatdrop

I wish. smile Given my choice of career path, I will probably end up living in Europe at some point to study or do extended amounts of fieldwork, but until that day I can only be patient.

It's not as much of a problem in practice, actually. There are deities which are almost certainly pan-tribal and deities who can easily be worshiped anywhere in the world. However, I frequently see other people worshiping gods or goddesses that don't make sense outside their original context. For example, if I go to the Aquae Sequani in the future, I will probably leave an offering for Secuana at her sacred spring, but I can't really worship her in a way that does not include her sacred place. This could also be because of the tribal gods I feel drawn to... She is a goddess associated with the Sequani tribe who take their name from her, so if I were drawn to the gods of the Sequani I could probably honor her as a mother type ancestor goddess despite being nowhere near her sacred spring.

Many Gallic tribes were still somewhat semi-nomadic (as with the Helvetii) even in the 1st Century BCE, so it's been displayed in history that you can take your tribal gods with you. Other gods, like Grannos and Sirona, mentioned before, are sort of spread throughout a general geographic area because historically that is where cultural exchange was taking place, but they are honored at many different sacred places, not just a single one. I've had a lot of good experiences honoring Sirona before, so I know that she isn't put off by my geographic location. But there are some deities that just won't answer when I call, and usually it's because their gods and my gods don't get along thanks to being too culturally separated or being too tied to a specific place.

I'm sort of thinking out loud (er... in type) here, so sorry if this is a little rambly or info-dumps. I'm wondering if this pops up anywhere else in other modern pagan paths. The Gaulish tribes had hundreds of deities, so it doesn't surprise me that I find not all are applicable to my situation.

Yes, it definitely is. Luckily, now my research can sort of guide the deities I focus on, as I've gotten a better understanding of the geography and spread of religious inscriptions throughout different tribal areas recently, and I can isolate where the gods I have good relationships with have clusters of worship.

The Loa went through a lot of changes. Being taken across an ocean as slaves changed us- and it effected our spirituality. I guess effecting our spirituality likewise effected our gods. sweatdrop

Oh man, it's like you're not fully aware of the horrors out there. Do I destroy your charming innocence?

There's crap out there. This crap implies heavily that there's one single Celtic pantheon worshipped universally in the Celtic world. Also that there's one single Celtic culture, that celebrated eight seasonal festivals.

I mean, if you were previously unaware of this sort of thing, you should probably prepare yourself now.

It's not that it's wishful thinking. It's that people are substituting McCoy and Conway and a million other "Celtic Wicca"-esque books for actual research. I mean to their credit, actual research with actual books of value are harder to track down. But yeah... not wishful thinking. Really poor source material.

As long as you keep in mind that I'm not a scholar and I'm just repeating things I have heard from Mambos and a couple Hounguns who have a better education than I do. sweatdrop

Some of them have talked about how a lot of the different Loa were specific to certain tribes in Africa- but it only took a generation if that for waring tribes to ally together when you're fighting just to survive- and so a lot of the Loa got blended together- kind of like how they then got blended with Catholic Saints.

So Loa of specific places where a specific tribe lived got blended with other Loa- and then they got grouped together into families and nations- which don't always line up.

This is really hard to explain. sweatdrop
Ok- so picture it as the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans being stuck someplace far away and having to work together. Venus, Aphrodite, Isis and Diana become a "family", but they're still different in many ways, right? Well, their family is split into different nations- maybe Venus and Aphrodite and Isis are in one, and Diana is in another. People can even tell stories about Aphrodite and Diana fighting with each other. (For anyone who has been paying attention to some of the chats about my Roomie- the analogy is based on Ezurlie sweatdrop )

I don't think I did a very good job of explaining it- but I hope it helps a little.