I recently discovered Celtic Recreationist Paganism. It apparently has been going on for some time but since I am quite happy with my religious practice I rarely go looking for trouble out side my own community. Nevertheless, trouble is what I found. It appears that the Celtic Reconstructionist Pagans have quite a problem with Wiccans. This is partly because they know less about Wiccan theology then I do about the Classical Celts, but mostly because of a profound difference in worldviews.
They have chosen a name that accurately describes them. Their highest priority is historical accuracy. They are fundamentalist and reactionaries. (I don't mean that in a bad way but rather in a precise way. They are fundamentalist in that their goal is to achieve ethnic purity by adhering to traditional and classical standards. They advocate a return to the fundamentals of Celtic culture as determined by their study of historical and archeological evidence. (Luckily they don't want everyone to do it just people calling themselves Celts.) They are reactionaries in that they wish to return to an idealized version of the past.
I have no problem with their goals or choices. "It's a free country." "Different strokes for different folk." " It takes all kinds". And all that. They can do whatever they want as long as they don't get in my face with it.
However, like a lot of fundamentalist they don't feel the same way about us as we feel about them. Their particular problem is that they don't like Wiccans calling themselves Celtic. Most of the Celtic Reconstructionist's sites I visited particularly excluded Wicca.
Now I have never been one to go overboard on the Celtic fad. If I have ever called Wicca a Celtic religion, it has just been as an attempt to recognize the clearly Celtic elements of our practice. I don't recall the Wiccan community in general making that broad a claim to Celtic Culture. We usually call ourselves the recreation of the pre-Christian religions of "Europe" not "the Celts". There are some Wiccan groups and individuals that do claim to be practicing "Celtic Wicca". I feel that the very fact that they feel the need to specify "Celtic" indicates that most Wiccans don't consider themselves especially Celtic.
There are three main problems with the Celtic Reconstructionist position on Wicca
1) Groups calling themselves Celtic Wiccan are probably making more of an effort to be true to Celtic traditions then general Wiccan practice so arguments based on general Wiccan practice don't apply.
I am not a Celtic Wiccan so I have no idea what Celtic Wiccans do. Nevertheless, I would assume that have some basis for calling themselves Celtic that the rest of us Wiccans don't. One of the arguments that the Celtic Reconstructionists use is that Wiccans mix gods from different pantheons. I would think that Celtic Wiccans at the vary least would restrict themselves to Celtic Deities.
2) They have a very limited idea of what the Celts believed. The only evidence they have are archeological digs and myths. Both are subject to severe interpretation. If all we knew about Hindu beliefs were the myths and practices we might reach the same conclusions about their theology as these Reconstructionists reach about the Celts. However, the Hindus also have the Upanisads, volumes and volumes of contradictory discussions of theology. A living religion contains many views and ideologies. It is insulting, as well as unlikely, to assume that the philosophy of the Ancient Celts was as impoverished as the Reconstructionists make it. The Celts had a lot in common with the ancient Hindus.
3) The Celtic Reconstructionists don't know what Wiccans believe. In general, there is no reason they should; no one is obliged to go around learning everyone else's religion. Unless they want to make claims about it. In my reviews of these two anti-Wiccan articles, I have attempted to correct all the misconception I found about Wiccan theology. The two most irritating are the misunderstanding of the dualism in Wiccan theology and the assertion that the Wiccan idea of gods as manifestations of other gods is an invention of C. Jung.
My dictionary defines dualism as the reduction of everything to two irreducible opposites. That is not what happens in Wicca. The dualism in Wicca arises out of a unity. We call it a polarity because each side reflects and contain the other. We compare it to a magnet. A magnet has two poles but north and south can only be distinguished by caparison to another magnet (usually the earth). Moreover, when you cut a magnet in two you do not get one north magnet and one south magnet but two complete magnets. Yes we do generally say the Moon is a Goddess and the Sun is a God but that is just symbolic. The moon is also a ball of rock and the Sun is a ball of burning gas. Whether any object could be deemed masculine of feminine depends on the correspondence one is using at the time. It is not a question of that the "really" are but what the people discussing them agree that they are. Therefore, these Reconstructionists are wrong that there is no room for hermaphrodites or neuters in our theology. Our theology emphasizes balance and harmony, a union, and an oneness between all opposing forces. That wholeness is hermaphroditic in nature and so is represented in the world as such.
In many religions that have one supposedly neutral god such as Christianity, Hinduism, and Ba'hia. The God ends up being male. Probably because the priests and scholars were male and could not conceive of divinity as being different from themselves. On the other hand, it is possible that it is a problem of language and they really believe their god is neuter but had only masculine pronouns to work with. In any case, one of the reasons that Wiccans are so stubborn on the male/female duality issue is that we refuse to allow one to be superior to the other. So we have enthroned them together side by side to made a point. Divinity is both male and female either or neither but not one over the other.
The other issue is our tendency to treat deities in ways that others see as inconsistent with their essential individual personalities. This come up in two ways 1) our tendency to mix and match pantheons 2) our theology of considering all gods of different names and traditions to be manifestations of the same essential divinity. Both these practices have historical president. We didn't just make them up ourselves. Moreover, they weren't made up recently.
On the first point, as any student of religious history knows it was always common practice when tribes intermingled for gods to intermingle and intermarry as well. Whether the gods where picked up by travelers and brought home or enforced by conquering warlords it is undeniable that gods constantly migrated from place to place and people to people. We now live in a global community affected by global events we can barely comprehend. To argue at this time that it is inappropriate for gods from different cultures to mix under the same roof flies in the face of historical inevitability. You can complain about it all you want but we didn't invent it and it is going to happen with or without us. We are not even the first wave of this global trend.
On the second point, for some reason, these Reconstructionists think Jung invented the idea of archetypes. As any Jungian analyst could tell you the archetypes Wiccans talk about are not Jung's. (Although I will still recommend that any pagan going into therapy is better off with a Jungian.) Jung meant something very specific when he said Archetypes, it had to do with the "collective unconscious". Not everyone buys the idea of the collective unconscious and it isn't necessary to the Wiccan understanding of archetypes.
The Wiccan practice of categorizing gods by their similarities to already familiar gods can be documented back to the Romans, the Greeks and the Celts. It is an authentic paleo-pagan habit if nothing else. However, even more important is that the theology behind it is documented in the Hindu Upanishads (eight and seventh centuries b.c.e.). Of course, our theology is not exactly the same as theirs but even they have differences of opinion from author to author. It is not as simple as saying "Well, he's a sun god, put him over in that corner with the rest of them". It is question of "What is the basic nature of the universe?" We, like the Vedic scholars, are concerned with the ultimate nature of the universe not petty issues of ethnic purity and cultural change. If that God is the sun and this Goddess is the sun then what, in fact, is the Sun? Is the sun, in fact, a manifestation of something else entirely? By refusing to close our minds to any manifestation of the divine we hope (by inspection and reflection) to gain a better understanding of The Divine.
Wicca is a revival not a reconstruction. We draw wisdom and inspiration from the past but we refuse to be limited by the past. Our highest priority is spiritual growth and closeness to The Divine. We praise truth when we find it but we are never afraid to reject those parts that strike us false. We think it only sensible to throw out the bath water and keep the baby.
Wiccans are generally Liberals and Radicals. (Not all of us, though, because Wicca is not based on ideological purity.). Liberal in the sense of free and generous. We don't restrict the intellectual or spiritual freedom of our members (they are even free to be conservatives). Radical in the sense of striving for an idealized future rather than a return to an idealized past.