Ancients and Nature Worship

[Blackbird]

This doesn't have to be specific to the Celts/Druids, but as I am one this originated from that. This can truly apply to all ancient societies and the neo-pagan misconception of "nature worship."

This is why I love Alexei Kondratiev:

"Nature" was never "venerated" in any of the ancient religions: it was
taken for granted as the source and backdrop of all living activity,
and it was recognised that it was not always benign.
Alexei

From a discussion on the IMBAS yahoo group.

To that I will add one of my blogs from a few years ago...

"The ancient Druids would have no need to protect the land as they would have no idea the land needed said protection. It was there, lived upon, and utilized for the good of the people. They wouldn’t have had any knowledge of pollution, over population and deforestation. As people today I do believe we need to take some ecological responsibility, but I don’t believe that it is specific to Druids, it is specific to everyone.

So the point is, being a nature lover/worshipper doesn’t make one a Druid so it really shouldn’t be the 1 tenet of any Druid group. In the spiritual - working with deity, the ancestors, and being a spiritual advisor should be some of the main tenets and in the non spiritual - history, mythology, language, the arts, politics, law and education should be the other tenets.

Nature worship is great, but it is not specific to Druidism."

I hope this will drive a peaceful and thought provoking discussion.

[Blackbird]

To clarify a misunderstanding -

Alexei's comment was his own (and did not share any environmental implication) and my use of my statement was to address the Neo-Druid argument that one must be "attached to nature" in someway to be a Druid (i.e. gardener, environmental activist, honor/meditate within nature, etc) or you can be seen as lesser and the "ancients venerated the land" argument always seems to be the justification for such arguments, when the fact is the land was not "venerated." It was utilized for the good of the people and respected because it was such...but the people were still first an foremost. The ancients would have no idea that the land needed veneration in the same sense as is argued by modern Druids. The land was a given and treated with respect as to appease the Gods that ran and gave the sustenance through it.

The land is no less a given today. We live upon it and take from it for the good of the people. Unfortunately we (as our ancestors started) have over utilized it causing environmental issues. The use of the land in balance between all life and acknowledging that balance with its use is not "veneration." It is/was simply a given as part of everyday life.

[Gorm Sionnach]

I've been following the discussion on IMBAS, and will post what amounts to my participation in said discussion (at this time my message has not been forwarded).

This discussion has raised some interesting aspects in regards to how we define "nature worship/ veneration", especially in an iron age context among the Celts. Much of the works regarding the aspects of "nature worship" among the Celts, posit that nature was venerated in some form, usually gleaned from picking out the bits of symbolism/ imagery from the predominantly insular sources, particularly the tendency of invoking or swearing by specific natural features (either in specific [a particular river] or in general [rivers]). This particular aspect, that is the way in which geographic features (as well as planetary bodies, stars, sun, moon, etc.) are spoken of and sworn by is evident of an understood relationship between the environment and humans. I think this is where speaking about animism in the Celtic context could be useful, because this is animism in a nut shell; that geographic features have particular attributes and meanings attached to them, and these are then appealed to by the invokers. Does "nature worship" mix with animism? Is nature worship just another name for animism in this context? How would one deliniate between the two? How does this relate to modern methods of nature worship?

Gorm.

[Gorm Sionnach]

As to your particular point, I do believe you are on to something. I believe that overt conservationism/ nature for natures sake is something which is predominantly a modern philosophy, and this notion is being projected back onto previous cultures and societies. There would not have been a coherent need for environmentalism in the Iron Age, because the environment was considered both hostile and beneficent, if above and beyond the ability of such peoples to actively shape and impact it the way that mechanized societies can. True much of Europe was being deforested and changing into agrarian land, but this ought to further imply that conservation of the natural world was not a paramount concern.

How this relates to my implication of animism, or others of nature worship/ veneration I am unsure, since I'm trying to figure out if there is a difference between animism and nature worship in a Celtic context. nature worship seems to me a rather broad concept, encompassing any and all cultures at one point or another. I'm starting to see it as yet another example of the legacy of Victorian "square pegging" of pre-Christian cultures into a particular developmental model.

[Moonsmith]

This is something I will have to look into. I personally don't have enough perspective from the Celtic side to give a coherent perception either way. My focus has been primarily that of indigenous peoples from the Americas and some of the Pacific Islands.

But from the Indigenous American perspective, Nature has been primarily respected first and in some cases highly venerated, especially in terms of certain place, plant and animal circumstances. Such influences didn't happen 'just because' someone thought or expressed it as a 'good idea', but rather from life and death experiences and situations which taught various groups such veneration and respect.

I can't of course speak to all the indigenous peoples of America, only the ones I have been exposed to and received insight from.

But I have heard stories which are old from various Storytellers and Wise People who have spoken of hard times when the People failed to listen appropriately and suffered as a consequence. Not because they were bad, but because they overused their resources and sustenance became hard to find.

There were very ironclad reasons why the Native perspectives were the way they were when Europeans came to North America.

[Blackbird]

As Gorm has placed a post he wrote in the group I will as well and will, hopefully tomorrow, address Gorm's most recent as well as Moonsmiths. For now I spent a while working on a very long response as the Imbas convo has taken a not so happy drastic turn so I will cut out the 2 paragraphs that were relevant to deal with some of the issues in regards to the debate of "nature veneration."

Veneration

I guess the point of contention is semantics - how one views the term venerate. Perhaps if we take it to the simpliest term or synonym of “respect” then yes, the Celts (as did most ancient societies) respected nature, however – I will say in the modern belief of Neo-Druidry nature is placed on some pedestal and the worship of it takes center stage when the fact is – as with all ancient societies – the Celts lived on the land and took from the land to sustain themselves. The land was indeed secondary to the people (as was evident by such legends as Lughnnassadh came to be because Lugh wanted to honor his step mother Tailtu after her death from over-exertion while cutting down a grove of trees to make room to cultivate – Lebor Gabala Erenn - or heavy clay removal from river beds for the pottery factories of central Gaul - http://www.columbia.edu/cu/history/resource-library/Wall_thesis.pdf). As I pointed out in an earlier post that land was a “given” in which all ancients societies lived on and utilized. As it was a given it was not placed on some higher status as seems to be the misconception today.

I am sure others will point out such examples as the “land” choosing the King in Ireland or as some have pointed out the strong connection to water, rivers and wells. Now the question I raise is – were those nature elements honored because they were part of the land or were they honored because they were examples of the sustenance given to them by the gods? Now if the latter is the case – what is being venerated? The nature element or the gods?

[Coyote]

Semantics? There are no semantics in nature, these are our crosses to bare. Out there things are simple, survive or be someones shit. As for nature worship? Way to many have lived in the city for so long that they feel that appreciating the 'green world' a Druid makes. I was 5, and by then I knew the Ozark mountains better than 99.9% of the adults I knew...

Now, as far as all other ancient Pagan thoughts might go, I of course wont go so far as to speak factually on their thoughts, but stop for a second, and think...In those days the environment wasn't a huge issue...The problem we have however is that all the lil new agers want it to be history even if they have to lie to MAKE it so.... Then those of the established education call them on such. Which in the end makes us all look like a bunch of retards...

Seeing a goddess or god in a stream, or horse, isn't the same as nature veneration, however, such things seem to be what people need today, so I wont be bad mouthing either philosophy any time soon.

Well, till they try to tell me its Celtic history ;)

The pud. (I know Ive been gone a while...still dealing I guess, Ill be along directly)

[Coyote]

I am sure others will point out such examples as the “land” choosing the King in Ireland or as some have pointed out the strong connection to water, rivers and wells. Now the question I raise is – were those nature elements honored because they were part of the land or were they honored because they were examples of the sustenance given to them by the gods? Now if the latter is the case – what is being venerated? The nature element or the gods?

Now BB, your just being silly, because I KNOW you know this. The Celts loved anything 'in between', a door way, dush n dawn, Samhain, anything. Streams were life giving I should imagine, and who gives life but a god? They were one in the same...when you honored the stream, you honored the god/dess. Thus the gods as implied by the 'death' of our gods, are one in the same as the land, the hollow, the empty tree, or steady stream, to venerate on is to do so with the other.

NOW...That said, archeology shows us, in the form of wall paintings, that the gods have always taken the form of food sources, the things we need to make the growling of our stomachs to stop, well, today things are different, run to the store...Why hunt? You can even buy water....So why does one need nature at all?

[Moonsmith]

Coyote said:

.Why hunt? You can even buy water....So why does one need nature at all?

Ooh, ooh, a new can of worms...(lol)

Well, here I go taking a tangent again....But why does one need nature at all? Ha-ha.... Well -- Most simply put, people do better with exposure to nature, both physically and mentally. Slice your religion any way you like...I tend to think this is a constant that humankind will always hopefully need...

As far as the ancients, as all they had to work with was Nature, I think there was a learned respect first, along with the Human lazy streak which allows us to be less than stellar in our treatment of the natural world, which I also think (as I mentioned earlier) such uses or (dare I say it) mis-uses and abuses may have landed certain groups in dire straits which may have created a need for a veneration of Nature, or more probably - at least initially, aspects of it.

To me personally, whether the first Source is from a God or from Nature is a bit of a Chicken and Egg situation as I tend to believe that primitive peoples were more sophisticated than we give them credit for, if not particularly articulate in the ways we have come to expect of our modern selves.

That great movie "Man From The Earth", I thought was an excellent mental exercise expressing some of this.

As Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman, "We'll always have Paris..." I am not certain we will ever understand the ancients ways of veneration and honoring simply because we are no longer them.

We are ourselves and must therefore look to ourselves and our future while trying to derive value and meaning from the what we understand from the past. Therein, I think lies the ultimate challenge for any CR devotee. Finding that balance and becoming resolved in themselves as to how far they can truly integrate and know what was real and what was not. Which can bring one to the subjects of illusion and delusion and thus, politics.....

[Blackbird]

The point of contention in regards to semantics was not about nature, but the understanding and use of the term venerate or veneration as that was the statement of the original quote from Alexei.

Coyote said:

Semantics? There are no semantics in nature, these are our crosses to bare. Out there things are simple, survive or be someones shit. As for nature worship?

[Blackbird]

Yes, I know this - lol - but the point was to start a discussion and I will tell you, on the Imbas group that simple belief (honoring the land is honoring the gods and not just honoring the land for land's sake) has struck a serious nerve...and now has turned into a "who has a better degree than whom" debate which is, of course, pulling the focus from the original point of the entire discussion (and we all know I hate that!) :)

Coyote said:

I am sure others will point out such examples as the “land” choosing the King in Ireland or as some have pointed out the strong connection to water, rivers and wells. Now the question I raise is – were those nature elements honored because they were part of the land or were they honored because they were examples of the sustenance given to them by the gods? Now if the latter is the case – what is being venerated? The nature element or the gods?

Now BB, your just being silly, because I KNOW you know this. The Celts loved anything 'in between', a door way, dush n dawn, Samhain, anything. Streams were life giving I should imagine, and who gives life but a god? They were one in the same...when you honored the stream, you honored the god/dess. Thus the gods as implied by the 'death' of our gods, are one in the same as the land, the hollow, the empty tree, or steady stream, to venerate on is to do so with the other.

NOW...That said, archeology shows us, in the form of wall paintings, that the gods have always taken the form of food sources, the things we need to make the growling of our stomachs to stop, well, today things are different, run to the store...Why hunt? You can even buy water....So why does one need nature at all?

[Blackbird]

I think this is also an argument over semantics (well, could lead to one anyway). Does one see the gods as spirits? If yes, then obviously they could mix. If not, then no...

I tend to see things in "nature" as I would see a pie my mother made. I respect it (whether or not I like it :) because it came from her hand and was made from her effort (and I thank her for making it for my sustenance), however I do not believe that her "spirit" (outside of speaking figuratively) is in the pie. I feel that the gods essence and the sustenance they give are evident within "nature" however, I do not see them as "spirits" within those natural features.

Gorm Sionnach said:

Does "nature worship" mix with animism? Is nature worship just another name for animism in this context? How would one deliniate between the two? How does this relate to modern methods of nature worship?
Gorm.

[Moonsmith]

In terms of 'Veneration' vs 'Nature Worship' and/or 'Animism', I see this as something which can easily get muddied up in terms of modern thought.

In NA terms, I see there was respect and veneration as there is and has been a traditional way of working with natural resources. A 'Veneration' if you will of giving back. Often seen as leaving gifts and offerings for a particular place, or for a particular plant, animal (after hunting it in some cases), even something as simple as picking up a stone or a feather. These very physical actions I think were to to honor, show respect as well as support the continuation of whatever was being venerated.

Now, the question for me becomes, Did the Celts do this type of thing? It seems to me like they did (and again this may have been limited to certain tribal groups or for specific purposes only). As I said I don't know for sure, so I ask.

Which also brings to mind the aspects of ritual in Veneration. In NA, as a tribal person, a hunter would undergo many rituals to help him/her in their quest to be a successful hunter. The ritual Bath or Sweat, the creation and selection of charms, the blessing of the wisdom keepers, the ritual painting of the body, the dance and the vigil, and the offerings to the creature after a successful hunt. As well as the ritual feast after the hunt. Are these acts of Veneration? For Who? Do these learned folks in Yahoo look at this? I'm a new member of the group so I will have to go foraging soon...

Blackbird said:

I think this is also an argument over semantics (well, could lead to one anyway). Does one see the gods as spirits? If yes, then obviously they could mix. If not, then no...
I tend to see things in "nature" as I would see a pie my mother made. I respect it (whether or not I like it :) because it came from her hand and was made from her effort (and I thank her for making it for my sustenance), however I do not believe that her "spirit" (outside of speaking figuratively) is in the pie. I feel that the gods essence and the sustenance they give are evident within "nature" however, I do not see them as "spirits" within those natural features.
Gorm Sionnach said:

Does "nature worship" mix with animism? Is nature worship just another name for animism in this context? How would one deliniate between the two? How does this relate to modern methods of nature worship?
Gorm.