Religion vs Reenactment vs Reconstructionism

I was recently at a large pagan festival where I made a morning march toward coffee, with the flag of the four Irish provinces hoisted over my shoulder.

A person near my destination saw me and was moved to tell me a story about how reenactors tried to integrate into the festival environment, wanting to incorporate renaissancey things and 'battles' into the pagan festival.

The person telling me the story gestured to my kilt and attire saying they didn't mind my garb but that reenactment attitudes were unwelcome.

I agreed, deciding not to tell the story of how I've rejected the invitation to play "druid" at Sherwood Forest Faire year after year. A rejection I gave for the same reasons. Instead I said, "It's about devotional polytheism over reenacting monarchies for me."

"That's interesting considering there is a crown on that flag," someone else scowled.

The Flags of Munster, Ulster, Leinster, and Connaught.

Rather than point out that I am a sovereign individual whose clothing is not up to anyone for minding, and aside from the remarks I garnered, I just laughed bringing my mind to all the flags and crowns or tiaras people were wearing or using on property, the armor vendor and the blacksmith vendors of the past. I brought my mind to the various forms of reclamation of culture which we have outside of reenactment. I immediately walked 10 feet and bought $80 worth of fur hides to add to my attire in lieu of the comments.

The Furr Purchase

This interaction illustrates a few problems and misconceptions in paganism that I wanted to discuss, namely others' perception of us pagans as reenactors, even by other pagans.

There are a handful of scenarios I can think of that could cause this interaction. Furthest from my mind to closest, It could be because the speakers are lazy insecure pagans, neopagans insecure about cultural polytheisms, insecurities about monarchies, insecurities about changing the festival culture one way or another.

Firstly, while reenactment might be fun or educational, it isn't a pursuit of spiritual truth and wisdom. The Druids being the observational scientists of their day, were truth seekers. The battles they cast spells in and oversaw, were the result of real conflicts and emotions rather than being about the romanticism of the past, they weren't fun. I doubt anyone needs this distinction but you never know. Romanticism isn't the context that real-gnosis-yielding spirituality operates in, raw reality and the actual battles is and were.

Hair, Makeup and Photography by Amanda Godwin

The way we think of the events that folks reenact isn't the way they were felt about by the people who observed them. And so in paganism, if we want to do what the ancients did and put our mind where their minds were, we must focus on our visceral and painful world around us, and not that of a past golden age. This is precisely why I had a flag that was representing the living celtic cultures. This representation of an oppressed people that we use for inspiration, is important to the avoidance of misappropriation and thus erasure and dilution of their culture.

For this reason, I greet and toast people in the language of the living Irish culture, saying Dia dhuit. it is essential for me to do things for the right reasons. The Irish community is often assaulted by the pagan community's offenses. Take Edain McCoy's Ancient Irish Potato goddess for instance. Potatoes are from the Americas and weren't present among ancient celts. This is but one of many such intellectual dishonesties committed against Irish culture. The Irish are tired and weary of quack druids and witches who expose the culture to erasure and misinformation.

I also get that the pagan community is weary and tired of certain folks practicing a romanticised spiritually, but I feel the middle ground is going to be uncomfortable for both sides. A little of what seems reenactment will seep in to pagandom, and the non-pagan living celtic culture gets a little weird when we pagans ask about the stories they grew up with as kids.

Warrior Braids

At this crossroads between reenactment and religion, we have Reconstructionism. Celtic Reconstructionism doesn't wish to resurrect the Iron Age, on the contrary, it tries to reconstruct Iron age religion for the purpose of fast forwarding it through a time simulator to arrive at a modern day polytheist religion. You can see this here on the Celtic Reconstructionist FAQ:

"Why would anyone want to try to bring back the Iron Age? We don’t. We’re all very fond of indoor plumbing, central heating, modern medicines, eyeglasses and computers. It’s the spiritual and philosophical ideals of Iron Age Celtic society that we’re interested in, not recreating it down to the last parasite and drafty roundhouse. Even those who get asked this the most, the homesteader-types, are more than happy to explore modern sustainable technology rather than going back to how our ancestors farmed. There’s a lot we can learn from Iron Age society, but what CR tries to do is understand what Celtic religions would look like now if they’d been uninterrupted since then, not to take society back to that point in history."

With any religion connected with the land, nature, honor, and virtue, you're going to have folks developing place based polytheism that involves a little farming, a little fighting competitions, a little black smithing, and potentially a little animal sacrifice or meat sacrifice post slaughter. This is a liminal space where folks wear cultural clothing, wave cultural flags, build idols to cultural gods, and perform workshops on cultural forms of devotional practice and magic.

What we reconstructionist leaders avoid is anachronism and lack of effort in devotion, intellectual dishonesty, hierarchies of revelators from which spiritual information comes, among many other things.

Not to confuse things a bit, but practicing Theodish people do operate within modern Jarldoms with limited power that operate on the same levels that other religious communities with their own laws operate. I doubt a person quick to tell me the story earlier mentioned, all based on a kilt and a flag, would be able to tell the difference between reenactment and Theodism. And so in this way, pagans practicing a culturally deep spirituality are often marginalised or at minimum disregarded and pegged as 'playgans'. On top of this problem, there are overly romanticized notions of barbarian paganisms that sometimes express themselves as drunken chest beating. But you'll know a gothi or drui more by drunken poetic rants and shouts, "All hail the gods of this place!", before you'll associated them with drunken spear-shielding.

To conclude my thoughts, I feel that folks should parse out whatever they are judging further before deeming it one thing or another. I feel that in a pagan environment where it is not ok to comment on someone's lack of clothing, it is also not acceptable to go around pointing out that the people with furry tales hanging on utilikilts drinking out of bull horns are reenactors. Questioning if it is part of someones spirituality, because for some folks, dressing like the ancestors and pouring out libations is exactly spiritual, is dangerous business when applied to the applier. I personally feel that warriors wrestling in a sand pit is a fitting performance offering to the gods.