Mythologies

[Mithrea]

As a reconstructionist, how do you deal with conflicting mythologies? I can think of several mythology sets that contain conflicting information about deities and practices. How do you sort that out?

[Mòrag Elasaid Ní Dhòmhnaill]

Well, I start with confining them to area. For example I work within a Scots Gaelic framework, so while I enjoy those myths from the various Celtic tribes, unless they are either same myths or obvious influences. I also try to seperate them out by timeframes. I focus on the myths from around the time of the beginning of the Dal Riadan kingdom. So the myths that fit that time are the ones I work with. It's a lot of work, but it helps clear up a lot of the confusion.

[Mithrea]

So when you are reconstructing you are trying to reconstruct the religion of not just a specific place but also a moment in time? How do you decide how long that moment is?

[KellyP]

So when you are reconstructing you are trying to reconstruct the religion of not just a specific place but also a moment in time? How do you decide how long that moment is?
These are becoming key questions in my own studies. Like many, I started off with the notion of religions focused on broad cultural definitions such as "Roman mythology", "Germanic deities", etc. However, as I have learned more and leave some of the popular writings for the more academic I am discovering that there are diverse wrinkles in what seemed such a smooth fabric of beliefs. Where once I stated I was studying pre-Christian religions among the Indo-European cultures, I moved to investigating the pre-Christian Germanic beliefs, and now I am focusing on evidence of Celtic religions 1000 BC - 50 AD. Even that is not a well-defined set as each tribe and region had its own set of tutelary or patron deities.

Ronald Hutton, in the last pages of The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, provides a summary that I feel captures the struggle many of us experience:

...part of our uncertainty derives from our discovery of a tremendous diversity of ritual practice and architecture, over both space and time, which may reflect an equal diversity of belief and which almost defies generalization (pp340-341).

[raven grimassi]

As a reconstructionist, how do you deal with conflicting mythologies? I can think of several mythology sets that contain conflicting information about deities and practices. How do you sort that out?

This is a timely post as I am currently working on a book about how to construct a tradition.

In my last book (Witchcraft: A Mystery Tradition) I tackled Celtic traditions, which was an interesting journey for me. What I found useful in the reconstruction was to look at the commonalities. These I felt were most reflective of the foundational beliefs from which the mythologies and legends themselves arose. I looked at the oldest forms that I could find in order to get a feel for the rootedness. I also found that comparing myths and legends from other cultures that influenced Celtic regions was also helpful. Here again it was the commonality that I looked for as a rooted source.