[a few comments and a NYT cite following]
>Reply-To: "CELTIC-L - The Celtic Culture List." <CELTIC-L@listserv.hea.ie> >Sender: "CELTIC-L - The Celtic Culture List." >From: David Walter Fortin
>In-Reply-To: <19970126.235006.7270.1.DeColores.Studio@juno.com>
>Let's see if I can clear this up a bit. I'm sure if we bothered Ray >enough, he could give us a more thorough accounting. Otherwise, here goes:
> [snipped some excellent summary]
>The Celts in Spain were an important part of Hannibal's army during the 2nd Punic War (3rd C, BC), and it was the Celtic sword which the Romans later adopted for the legions. However, there were other peoples living in the Iberian Penninsula prior to the Celts getting there, such as the Lusitanians and the Basques. Matter o' fact, Basque is not even an Indo-European language.
>Valete! Dave
>On Sun, 26 Jan 1997, Maria A. Ladd wrote:
>> I know this is an old message but I just got to it. Would the Basques be considered differently? I was under the impression that they were Celtic, but I'm hazy as to their relationship with the other Celtic groups.
>> Maria, May You Walk in Beauty
>> >> On Sat, 18 Jan 1997 17:13:38 +0000 Raimund Karl >> <a8700035@UNET.UNIVIE.AC.AT> writes:
>> >> Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 01:11:02 -0500 >> >> From: "Lisa E. Harris" <nitebird@BWAY.NET>>> >> In the web site, the different waves of immigrants to Galicia are discussed, including where they came from, where they landed and >> >where they eventually settled.
[snipped about English emigration]
>> >Now, I have to put my usual statement in here... [snipped Ray's comment but recalling his other post about how the Basques don't consider themselves Celtic...]
--One matter worth mentioning regarding Hannibal's use of Celts as part of his many-cultured army-in-exile is the commentaries about the difficulties with savage "hill peoples" they encountered. The area of southern Spain traditionally "Basque country" became known as "no man's land," literally too forbidding to enter because of the severity of attacks thus generated...
I've thought little of the matter until I read about discoveries by Dr. Swisher of the Berkeley (Cal.) Geochronology Center as reported in "The New York Times," 12/13/96:A1, about early human relatives living at the same time as the older Neanderthals "who lived in Europe and western Asia for some 300,000 years [and] appear to have made their last stand 30,000 years ago in southern Spain." The other finding of note "certain to be controversial" is "the idea that modern humans emerged gradually out of Homo erectus in many parts of the world."
Now, as one forced to bear "witness" to the insanity of hate-mongering "cultural warfare" going on in the "spheres of influence" of the U.S.A., I'll add a non-partisan, non-agenda-of-any-sorts, observation that everybody in the various "camps" makes the "ape-people" accusation against the "other" as "enemy." When thinking how the Neanderthals (not the more traditionally ape-like Cro Magnam) were very large, "beserker" types more like, say, a "wooly mammoth," I was picturing being beset by these isolated "hill people" and finally seeing why the Romans thought Hannibal mad to choose his routes as he did--the man perhaps over-rating the power of negotiating with "some folks"...
A more modern update; rumor tells that the Basque separatists have managed to piss off even the "military types" of Sinn Fein, who, like a few kind-hearted, extremely nobly-spirited Celts of whom I've heard, have been *dumbfounded* to see how truly Ungrateful "some volks" can be..."
abhaya,
rig feinnid
--"O you, wise druids/ ask of Arthur/ who is older than me, in the chants!/ Someone has come/ to think of the flood/ and Christ crucified/ and the judgement to come..."
*The Three Seats of Taliesin*, trans. Jean Markale, "The Celts," p. 243
--"Such an injury [insult] would vex a very saint."
Will Shakespeare, *The Taming of the Shrew*, III, ii, 28
--Seamus Heaney, in "The Redress of Poetry" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995) quotes Wallace Stevens on the *nobility* of poetry being "a violence within that protects us from a violence without,"("The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words"), as if defending against a heckler of the *rhu-barbarians* as Tony Harrison called those demanding art be a "mistress" to politics...
--"Mise E/ire / Uaigni/ me/ na/ an Cailleach Be/arra"
a noble Fenian of olde, Patrick Pearse
[new comments following...]
>From: Jim Clancy
>> But I am still at a loss to get an overall picture of the colonization of
Ireland. For what's it's worth, the mythology speaks of the Fomor, the Tuatha
De Danaan, who were supposedly in Ireland at the same time of the Firbolgs, and
then finally the arriving Gaels.
>> If the Gaels were a Celtic tribe or group, and the Celts in general began
arriving in Ireland about 300 B.C., when might the Gaels (Sons of Miled?) have
arrived there?
>>
>> Thanks for any clarification, where possible.
>The simple answer to your question is that we just don't know who
>occupied Ireland before the Celts. All we know for certain is that
>it was occupied from the late Neolithic period and Celtic artifacts
>began to appear about 300 BC.
>There are some *theories* that the earliest inhabitants migrated
>northwards from Africa or Spain along the Atlantic seaboard. These
>are supported by the fact that the earliest evidence of habitation in
>Ireland is on the west coast.
>The Fomorans, Fir Bolg, TdD and the rest are *all* mythological,
>although the TdD, being named after Dana, could give them a certain
>credibility and indicate that they were the first Celts to arrive in Ireland.
>Many scholars are of the opinion the the Sons of Miled was a fabrication of
the bards to provide a suitable lineage for certain Irish nobility.
>Hoping this adds to the confusion...>Shae
Found this item from the *gterma* treasure trove:
--"*Parthalon* is by our most ancient authorities recorded to have come into
Erinn about three hundred years after the Deluge. [Some bards date said matter
as 5,000 years ago] He is said to have come from *Migdonia*, or Middle Greece,
with a small company; but among these we are told that there were three Druids,
whose names are given: *Fios, Eolus, and Fochmore* (Intelligence, Knowledge,
and Inquiry)...
The next colony, led by *Nemid* and his sons, is said to have come from
*Scythia* [now the stretch from Macedonia to the Ukraine, area, too, of the old
Celtic trading outpost and kingdom *Galaetia*,whose path stretched from the
coasts of Spain and Brittainy to the silk roads of China and India] about three
hundred and thirty years after the coming of *Parthelon*. *Nemid's* sons were:
*Starn, Iarbonel 'the Prophet,' Fergus 'the Half-Red,' and Aininn*. And this
colony soon, according to our oldest records, came in contact with the power of
hostile Druidism, to which they opposed their own *Nemid*, it appears, had not
remained long in peace in the country, before he was disturbed by the
incursions of the sea rovers, who are known in our old writings under the name
of the *Fomorians*...
*Beothach*, [son of 'the Prophet'], we are told, with his clan went to
the northern parts of Europe [centered in Poland], where they made themselves
perfect in all the arts of Divination, Druidism, and Philosophy, and returned,
after some generations, to Erinn, under the name *Tuatha De Danaan*. *Simeon
Breac* with his clan wandered southward into Greece, and in many generations
after returned to Erinn under the name of the *Firbolgs*...
We now come to the Milesian colony. According to our ancient tradition,
these people, who were also Japhetians [the supposed earliest settlers of
Ireland], passed in their migrations back from Scythia into Greece, out of
which they had previously come; then into Egypt, then into Spain; and so, from
Spain into Erinn, which they reached about two hundred years after the conquest
of the *Tuatha De Danaan*, that is, in the year of the world 3,500 or above,
1,500 years before Christ, according to the chronology of the Annals of the
Four Masters [known, too, as the Book of the Four Seasons, our Druidic
"teachers"...].
In the entire course of migrations of this people, the Druids hold a
conspicuous place. Among the most remarkable was *Caicher*, who is said to
have foretold to them, on their way to Spain, that Erinn was their ultimate
destination."
Mr. O'Curry notes, too, that "the European Druidical system
was but the offspring of Eastern augury," a matter that, given the nature of
Eygpt being the farthest "known reaches" that had been discovered at that time
of the ancient Indo-European cultural "birthplace" of Vedic India, is most
presciently remarkable.
With said type of cultural analysis in mind, one has to be careful of
making overly broad statements about "African," as that continent's history and
peoples tend to be vastly different from one another, in the same way as
"white" is ludicrously imprecise.
Perhaps one of the best examples of how different is the historical figure
of Hannibal of Carthage. Despite the"cultural revisionism" en vogue "these
days," Hannibal's "actual facts" are that he was partly noble aristocratic
Roman and partly noble Semitic Phoenician (of Palestine/Israel/Judea of David
and Solomon). What makes his tale singular in the eyes of History is his use of
"many cultured" warrior forces assembled, say, as a Fenian or Arthurian
"private police force" of "all for one, one for all."
One can now see "the secret of Hannibal" in terms of his success not as a
pirate or "buccaneer of olde," as these wannabe "Robin Hoods" mish-take him,
but a man "thrown back upon himself and his wits-in-exile" learning, ala, say,
a Michael Collins, and the "art of survival." Hannibal was so good at blending
in to his environment, like a "stealth ninja," say, or "ronin:masterless
samurai" looking *just like everybody else* in Roman and Greek ports and towns
that he always eluded capture just when the rent-a-cops of Rome thought "we got
'em this time!"
Though "revisionist" histories, stumbling over their collective selves in
the rush to be "politically correct," note that the Roman historian'sdescriptions and attempts at state-propaganda calumination-by-association of
Hannibal as "not a typical African" in his refusal to degrade female captives
as "war booty" is an "early example of racism," the more *realistic* view can
be seen, say, in the writings of another noble aristocratic Roman-in-exile, St.
Augustine of Hippo, who chose to return to the Mediterranean shores of North
Africa rather than remain in the somewhat "stuffy' atmosphere of Roman
privilege, writing such masterpieces as "The City of God Against the Barbarians
at the Gates," as the warring tribes from the inside of Africa, who remained
xenophobic about contact with the Vedic Indians, Semitic traders, Greeks and
Romans, etc.,who arrived from time to time, struck the missionary Augustine as
"hopelessly ignorant" with the rituals he observed, albeit as an outsider, of
"rubbing one's face in the dirt" to "absolve" the pharmakos-stain of the tribal
member "human sacrificed" just prior, the precursor to the Santeria religion
popular now in America and Haiti. In other words, the Greek-founded colonies
of Carthage and Alexandria became "cultural crossroads" for a number of
people(s) wishing to escape the stifling nature of "one's own," and as in the
postulation of the Irish Alexandria, ("Roman Fort"), a place of "civilization"
in the true meaning of respecting another's "right to be let alone" as one
exchanged gifts and learning to envision "self as other."
With regards to the Semitic traders, as the histories note, they were
never interested in "colonizing," as said matter would tie up valuable
resources in creating forts, military defences, people to command the outpost
and outlying area, etc. By trading and not engaging in the "usury" tossed at
these wise ancient peoples they became a welcome presence everywhere they went,
which, according to the "America B.C." theories (not being an archeologist I do
not know about the validity of the alleged "evidence"), included the eastern
coasts of America, and, given the trading routes the Celts established along
the coasts of Spain, Brittainy and the western shores of Ireland, and, too, the
pattern of "non-exploitation" of the local inhabitants of an area gives
plausibility to that book's claim that "Algonquin" language and ancient Gaelic
are remarkably close, with Indo-Vedic roots in Sanscrit as well. One might
*confere* this "non-interference" policy, remarkably like, say, that noble
Greek Alexander the Invincible, with how the Puritans played "disease-warfare"
with tuberculosis and smallpox-riddled blankets as "trinkets" to be
schmirkingly "offered" to the "non-scientific" natives, and how the Spanish
privateer mercenaries "in service to the Queen" razed and destroyed like the
Conquistadors did in Latin and South America...
In the interests of "political correctness," nonetheless a bit baffled,
I've avoided the following observation about the "wildly successful"
committee-speak book "It Takes a Village," as the alleged "author," Hillary
Rodham Clinton, half-truth identifies the origin of that phrase as "African."
Once again, without wishing to *deny* the common underlying "world mythos," as
Joseph Campbell, say, has identified in such astoundingly researched tomes as
"The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology," I'm a bit surprised that the so-called
"Native American experts" on the list have failed to see that mine own Lakota
elders find that phrase a most reverent part of our tribe's history. Growing
up in upstate New York and seeing the communal nature of the "Longhouses" of
the Six Nations of Hiawatha, Algonquins, one finds that phrase and notes, too,
other remarkable coincidences of architecture, hunting, scouting, military
tactics, etc., with yet another "clan raising a child" responsible culture, our
Celts...
Date: 23 Nov 1996 20:20:22 -0000
From: Rudra Mac Cuhmaill ;forasnai@hotmail.com
To: CELTIC-L@LISTSERV.HEA.IE
Cc:
Subject: Re: Celticness [+ mystery religions ]
Sender: CELTIC-L - The Celtic Culture List. ;CELTIC-L@listserv.hea.ie
[new addition with posting, 10/2/97,10:30 AM, that rudra/tom s futuristic script, Some
Enormous Fiction, has been openly cannibalized by Luc Bresson s Fifth Element
through good ole Widdle Linda Reston/Merle/Pamela Highet/Ole Money-Bags Herself ,
Jane Fonda and the French neo-Nazi collaborationists and something billing *it*-self as
the Lesbian Klan/CIA ?!? Go figure or Go Fish, if you dig what I mean...; the same
group trashed rudra/tom s other film script oft referenced in *his* postings, Green River,
about toxic wastes being dumped down abandoned coal mines in Pittston, Pennsylvania--
for which rudra, i.e., Thomas Francis Noonan, Soc. Sec. # 062-48-4940, received a grant
in 1980-1981 from the Fund for Investigative Journalism for an article for Mother
Jones magazine, his editor Adam Hochschild--the gutted, most boring and wasted result
out in the box offices as Steven Seagal s Fire Down Below. ]
--To answer your assumption, Colleen, yes, early Christianity, in the practice
of the Gnostics, were classified as a mystery cult. I'm currently at work
on a screenplay making loose use of the period in a futuristic setting, called
Some Enormous Fiction, the phrase deriving from a newly-powerful Roman
Catholic Bishop, Iraneus, who, unlike his more enlightened forebearer,
Clement of Alexandria, saw fit to exterminate these Gnostics as a pernicious
disease having its roots in Judea, the source of everything foul and despicable...Every
day they invent some new enormous fiction. These Gnostics, having been told to disperse
by the Christ shortly before his demise, took to living in the Roman Catacombs,or, as
History recorded the journeys of some of the disciples, fleeing to what is now Poland, and
a Celtic center of the time (Mary the Magdelene, depicted in Russian Christian Icons as
the Black Madonna, i.e.,a black Irish type of [technically Caucasian, fair-skinned and
featured] Semite, dusty and wearied as well by the exposures of the road, holding a son to
her breast rumored to be that of the Christ's), Mary the Mother reportedly winding up
along the Rhine in what is now Germany, along with--are you ready?--Pantera, the Roman
Centurian-turned-diplomat rumored to be the natural father of the Christ; and, for now,
last but not least, Doubting Thomas, responsible for the Gnostic and very Zen-like
Book of Thomas (as both Mary's are responsible for the Gnostic Book of Mary ), the
disciple Simon Judeaus Thomas, called the Christ's spiritual twin, supposedly making his
way back to the Essene Therapeut base and colony in Alexandria with Philo, who,
delayed along the way to Judea, nonetheless managed to find out what in the world
happened to the Christ? , and then journeying down the Nile before crossing over into
[Saudia Arabia], retracing the footsteps of Moses, finally making his way into India.
As a Gnostic text along the lines of The Essene Handbook of the Earthly
Mother and the Heavenly Father exists, the sheer poetry within reputedly the
work of the Christ, teaching one how to purify and seek ye the Truth through
proper devotion to the feminine principle, as embodying Nature, as the masculine
principle, as shaping and ordering, why, in the politically correct deconstructuralism
of these clever Founding Church Fathers seeking empire, not liberty, all such teachings
became heretical and any joyous, natural sensuality as recorded in these wondrous
works, became, ala the Manichiesm cult of the body is the source of evil, the seductions
of the devil. Some priests, fond of young boys, as the Catholic Church is plagued
with *these days*, would seduce their alter boys, a custom made p.c. by the Caesar's,
then, in bouts of guilt and How could I DO such a thing? flip-flops, perform ritual
castration on not only themselves but too the helpless young men (the rationalization
handed down over time being that, without testosterone, the seed of the devil, why, their
voices would remain high and pure for singing in the choir at mass. The revisionism
applied as well to the life story of the Christ, and the apparition seen by Mary the
Magdelene, most Druidic and shape-shifting (or in my pendent Tibetan Buddhist
tradition, Garuda or psychic presence appearing physical ), yet, in the block-headed ir-
rationality fettering us now (and since), spin-doctored into my way or the highway [to
hell] type of cult-control in full bloom among the American Jihad religious
fundamentalists here...
RUDRA
laboremus, Rudra Mac Chumaill,
--Our Day Will Come...in the meantime, as Gustave Flaubert said of la plat a la mode,
let us not become poisoned by the filth of modern life
--When born into a *munus sine missione*, a *vir fortis*, one *gladiatorio animo*,
has only to *recto tibi invictoque moriendum est*. (Seneca, *Epistulae* 7.4)
-- Wealth that is acquired by proper means in a manner
>>
>> Paul_Carr@BBS.MacNexus.Org
Dear Shea,
Eugene O'Curry, from *Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish*,
(Dublin, 1873).
The Mystery of Religion
Namgyal Monastery ,Dharamsala, India
That harms none will yield both virtue and happiness.
Gurudeva's Vedas, Trikural Verse 754