Sprite25Hello again, finally our side of the earth begins to tilt back towards the sun
The trouble is that there is no oral tradition in Common Brittonic, there are no ancient texts of any length, and what we know is based on scraps of vocabulary and reconstructions using the living traditions of the languages that descend from Common Brittonic. In any case, I don’t think there’s going to be any attempt to wipe out the knowledge we have, in fact, quite recently I believe the University of Aberystwyth announced its intentions to compile, from what we know and can presumably reconstruct, the first complete dictionary of the ancient Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland.
oh, I am a little familiar with the history, and lack of it. I should be more clearer in what I meant when I said that, I don’t think there’s any concentrated effort to erase celtic culture from history currently… but the error I see is in my ancestors refusing to commit anything to writing, and then being totally subjugated and having generations of who-knows-what lost to time. My correction is that I’m an amateur archivist; did you know that only 38% of the internet from 2013 still exists today? I have 5TB of YouTube data alone, just YouTube! And I barely scratched the surface. That’s partly why I ended up in this forum because after I started taking up ecology courses two years ago in addition to collecting knowledge and playing music, friends have been telling me that I’m like a druid. Whether I truly am a druid or not remains to be seen. I am keen on gathering the history to the finest points I can, but I am not a reconstructionist, though I will gladly lend my notes to anyone who is…
The point I’m trying to make is that we don’t need, somehow, to try and artificially recreate the Bronze/Iron Age, we have plenty of strands in the living traditions of these isles with which to weave our Druidism
and I gather from this, BDO is also not very recon leaning? I think of myself as a “rebootist”, living in what I believe to be one of the most deracinated part of Britain, which is spiritually depressing, but I have the perfect clean slate to begin with. I decided to start from total scratch, not reading any sacred literature for several years, from pure intuition and animism to where I have arrived now in life. I figured that at some point everyone, from the druids to the magi and their progenitors had to start from nothing. I don’t think any tradition can be authentically reconstructed personally, and if one is without any, then you can only make new ones and pass them down. Like you say, “living” tradition. I don’t know if I am in the iron age or the space age, but I’m here now.
No, I’m afraid that’s not what I meant. What I meant to say was that Breton, with its rich tradition and literature and historical relevance to Celtic studies, especially mediaeval and Arthurian studies, often seems to be overlooked in predominantly English-language literature. It’s not, perhaps, so easily accessible merely because the translations from Breton are often, understandably, in French and not English. Nevertheless, seek and ye shall find, there’s a lot there that can add new and fresh perspectives or insights.
Interesting! I will put “don’t sleep on Breton” into my mental and written notes :)