Honourable companions,

Early Celtic spirituality was socially expressed. The notion of a completely private, perfectly inner spirituality as we understand it today would have been an alien concept to most ancient European people. Certainly, each member of an ancient Celtic tribe was able to get in touch with divine forces on their own, at minimum through making offerings or by declaring oaths before the gods (usually Œin the name of the gods of my peopleš). But all of the important ceremonies would have been conducted by either the heads of households or by community functionaries like Druids or kings. I think it well, therefore, to continue to regard Celtic spirituality as best practised in group settings. And this indeed accords well with how the Celtic revival today has taken shape. The enormous popularity of the Celtic revival in the last ten years has included the creation of Celtic "reconstructionist" or "traditionalist" groups and organisations. The tribal structure of ancient Celtic social life has appealed to those who believe that contemporary urban life is too anonymous and impersonal. Many have found that bringing together certain select friends, mutually (but usually not legally) adopting one another as a "chosen family", supplies the need for friendship and community not found elsewhere. For this reason, a healthy tribe or grove today should be about the same size as an average extended family. It should not grow larger than about a dozen people, for our innate emotional resources can form intimate family bonds with only a limited number of people at any given time.

We have a great deal of information about the nature and structure of ancient Celtic society. We know, for instance, that all Indo-European societies had a three-fold caste division, with local variations of course, comprising a learned or intellectual caste, a warrior caste, and a worker caste. This was not an egalitarian arrangement. For not only were the three castes arranged in a hierarchy (learned caste on top, warriors in the middle, workers on the bottom), but there were also out-caste labourers like itinerants and slaves who did not count as full members of the tribe for whom they worked. Everyone had an Œhonour priceš, which increased in value as one was higher up in the social hierarchy. If someone was murdered, for instance, the honour-price of the victim would have to be paid to the victimšs family‹in effect making it a more serious crime to murder someone with higher rank. Today we might regard this whole system as rather unjust.

Your community will need a community identity. This may or may not entail a name or a symbol to identify yourselves, although most groups establish their identity that way. Ever since the 1974 film The Wicker Man, a white flag with a shining and happily-smiling yellow sun has been the almost universal emblem of Pagan community and culture. This should not be surprising, since the worship of the sun is one of the mainstays of Paganism around the world, certainly including Celtic mysticism. At a theatrical re-enactment on the Hill of Tara, at Summer Solstice in the year 2003, one of the ceremonial characters was a seven year old boy carrying a white sun-banner. (See a photograph here: http://irishdruids.org/tara-festival.html ). A banner or a flag has obvious connections with the principle of sovereignty, for every nation-state uses flags to identify themselves, and some nations require their citizens to recite oaths of allegiance to their flag on regular occasions. To fly a flag over onešs ceremony bearing the standards and symbols of onešs tribe or onešs religion, therefore, is to make a public announcement of what or whom one owes allegiance to. Having said that, however, being committed to a religion is not a form of treason to your country. One is your spirituality, and the other is your nationality. In ancient Celtic society this would not have been an issue, for religious ceremony was firmly a part of the societyšs political life. Your tribe may wish to design for itself an emblem, a symbol, or a flag to represent your tribešs spiritual path and your shared commitment to each other. One may also wish to designate someone to be the bearer and protector of that banner, either for particular occasions or for fixed terms of time.

Other ways to gather the tribe include music and sound. The music from horns, bells, gongs, drums, and the like, cannot be missed the way a flag can if someone is looking the other way. For sound invades our consciousness with an unignorable quality unlike any other kind of stimulus. In fact the Celts used horns for many purposes, having particular sounds and flourishes for marching, war, and calling together a council. A third popular way which I have experienced is a procession. While one or more celebrants prepare the space where the ceremony will take place, others involved prepare themselves at a hidden location. When they are ready, and messengers have communicated to both groups that everyone is ready, the hidden group emerges and makes its way to the site of the ceremony. The parade follows a path that makes them visible to everyone at one place or another, and which also traces a symbolically appropriate direction: approaching the circle from the east, for example, or spiralling clockwise into it.

While dealing with spiritual practice in groups, I must discuss, however briefly, the issue of leadership. In general, most Pagans today cultivate a healthy disrespect for authority. People tend to insist that their groups should function as a democracy, from simple-majority to unanimous consensus. Likewise there is great resistance to investing the symbols of power and authority on one person to the exclusion of others. On the face of it there is nothing wrong with this. The trend seems to come mainly from the people who have backgrounds in eco-activism, anarchy, hippy culture, and anti-globalisation. It would be wrong to turn such people away. But we know that ancient Celtic culture was not a liberal democracy. The more that the movement severs ties with the past, the less justification it has for calling itself a revival of an ancient tradition. Moreover, any group of people who bring themselves together to form a community will almost inevitably face the problems and the realities of leadership. Even in declared egalitarian and democratic groups, there will still be one or more people held in higher esteem than others. In fact in practice there really is no such thing as a perfectly egalitarian group, since there will always be some who take more initiative than others, who have more experience than others, and who is consulted for advice more often than others. My old clann was a multi-generational group, with members ranging from middle-aged adults to small children. Although no one in particular was "in charge", the older adults were the natural teachers due to their greater knowledge and experience, and it usually fell to them to organise our gatherings and ceremonies.

I believe that the most important decisions, such as inviting new members into the tribe, should be made democratically. But in other respects, the coherence and the stability of the group in large measure rests upon the decision-making and initiative of the leaders. It is up to each group to decide for themselves how the leaders will be chosen, what their responsibilities and powers are, and how long they will serve in that capacity. Here are a few pieces of advice which I would like to impart.

The leaders you choose should in some measure be the people that the group regards as most deserving of the position. The man or woman selected should be the one who possesses the most knowledge, experience, and other qualities which everyone can generally agree are necessary for leadership. For instance, tradition held that the kings had to be free from physical blemishes as well as blemishes of character.

The amount of power granted to these leaders should be relevant for the responsibilities they will bear. In ancient Celtic society, everyone would have been able to contact the gods through private spell-craft, and making offerings into lakes, votive pits, and fires. The highly specialised or socially important ceremonies would have been in the hands of professionals like Druids. A good leader isnšt so authoritative that the other members of the group rely upon them for everything. Not only would this wear the leaders out, but it would also give the others no opportunity to acquire experience of their own. Everyone should feel that they are able to take initiative of their own and will be respected if they do, receiving both praise and critical commentary. The leaders may also wish to assign tasks from time to time, to those who they think would benefit from them. Such tasks might be to design and lead a ceremony, to research something, to find or to manufacture a ritual object for herself or the group. I remind the reader that such assigned tasks should be relevant to the personšs spiritual path. If your tribešs leader has been granted the power to write and to lead your ceremonies, then he cannot use that power to tell you how to handle your personal finances!

A newly-formed tribe may want to spend a season or two simply getting to know each other, finding everyonešs strengths and interests, and organically discovering who takes initiative and who tends to be the one that others turn to for information and advice. At some stage, then, you may want to formally name your leaders and prepare a ceremony of recognition for them. Such ceremonies have traditionally involved presenting the candidates with tests or challenges such as chariot-races. In my clann, we had an annual selection of a "May King and Queen", every year at Bealtaine. Our King and Queen were purely ceremonial figures, responsible for magically promoting general fertility for of the clann. One year the ceremony was performed as follows.

Selecting the King and Queen. Assemble the tribe at the gathering place and create the sacred space. The Queen of the previous year summons her King and requests from him the crown. This given, it is placed in the centre of the circle.

The men are then sent out of the circle to forage for a stang. They are told that whoever brings back the longest stang will have won the first round of the selection process.

When the men return, each bearing his stang, they are lined up together. Each is then required to recite to the women the great, glorious and heroic deeds which they accomplished in the time since the previous yearšs selection of the king. He who brought back the longest stang speaks first. The women listen, and whenever the speaker says something that impresses them, they tie a ribbon on to his stang.

When all the men have spoken, the ribbons are counted. He whose stang has the most ribbons becomes the new King for the forthcoming year. 

But his last task is to choose his Queen. He must choose one of the women who, in his Sight, best embodies the Goddess of Sovereignty. He must express his love and dedication to her, and if she finds his expression acceptable, she offers him a drink from the chalice and places upon his head the crown.

You can guess what a fun and ribald event this was. Matthew pulled a massive fallen log into the circle. Frosty, suspecting that the length of the stick may be a ruse, had a finger-length twig hidden in his shirt pocket, just in case. We had to make a rule: the stang can not be so large that it could not be carried off the ground nor fit into the door of a house. Then the newly-selected King had to romance one of the women and try to make her fall in love with him. If he couldnšt do this, he couldnšt be King either. (And this is why the men usually chose women with whom they already had a steady relationship.) If he failed, it would fall to the man with the next highest number of ribbons on his stang to court the lady of his choice. Thus the King is chosen by the women, and the Queen by the men, although the women have an edge on the balance of power. There are several reasons for this. One is that in Celtic tradition, the deity of sovereignty is female. The historian Alfred P. Smyth  noted a custom for selecting the king which obtained in Leinster (the east province of Ireland) and speculated that it may also have existed in the Scottish kingdom of Dal Riada. In this custom, a man becomes king by marrying the daughter of the previous queen. In this arrangement, sovereignty is passed along lines of mother to daughter. A man wields the political power but receives his right to do so from a woman. This custom may have been based upon the conception of sovereignty as a female principle. But note that this is not the same as saying that ancient Celtic society was matriarchal. For in all but certain famous exceptional examples, political power was in fact wielded by men.

One final note. The members of your tribe should have more in common with one another than their practice of the same religion. The very term tribe designates close and intimate family connectivity, not the contrived and institutional connectivity of a corporation or a church. In addition to participating in ceremonies together, you should also share things like meals, vacations, child-raising responsibilities, movie-nights or pub-nights, and so on. If there are musically talented members, perhaps they could jam together, and help others in the group to learn music as well. If some of the members are athletic, perhaps they could learn the indigenous Celtic games such as hurling, and look for other tribes to play with. A regular meeting should span an entire weekend instead of a single evening. On the Friday night, for example, everyone arrives after the work-day is done and meets each other again, catching up with the news since the last meeting if they have not been in touch during that time. The Saturday afternoon can be spent preparing a meal together, to be eaten after the ceremony. On the Sunday, in the morning or early afternoon before it is time for everyone to go home, hold teaching-workshops for the younger or newer members, or go for a walk in a local park, forest, cemetery, or public garden. The more you have in common with each other, the more you will grow together as a real family.

Cathbad

December 2003