[geeks] Goodbye, I guess

[Hicheal Morton]

"Then you have things like Saint Bridget.  She was once a fire-queen of the
celts.  19 priestesses protected her shrine for like 2000 years, and now for
the last 1000 or so, 19 nuns have protected her shrine."


Well actually, there was a Druid goddess named Bridget.
And there were a lot of little Irish girls named Bridget.
One of these little girls became Saint Bridget.

(The same is true of other Saints.  Druid deities were not canonized but
people who were named after the Druid deities were canonized.  Celtic
society is highly symbolic and the naming of children was highly symbolic.
When Christianity flourished, this highly symbolic nature of Celtic society
was incorporated into the Celtic Church--after all it was Celtic and not
Roman Christianity [though it was catholic, that is orthodox and
evangelical].)

The practice of the Celtic Christians/Church was to build
churches/monasteries on the older Druid sites.  This is found in the Celtic
Christian literature.  One must remember the real-estate rule of "location,
location, location."  That the Celts would build a church or monastery
partly based on the placement of Druid locations makes sense: the Celts were
already aware of these Druid places; they were aware that the places were of
spiritual significance; they were be used to going to these places; and some
whould have located their homes, villages, businesses close to these
places.  There were other reasons, of course, we shouldn't overlook the
ovious.

Also, the Celts stretched from Asia-minor to Spain.  From Ireland to the
Danube.

hike







On 9/3/07, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 1 Sep 2007 15:40:18 +0100
> Mike Meredith <very at zonky.org> wrote:
>
>
> > In fact the RCC does include some local elements in services (and the
> > canon of saints) ... European catholics might be somewhat bewildered at
> > some South American services.
>
> Then you have things like Saint Bridget.  She was once a fire-queen of the
> celts.  19 priestesses protected her shrine for like 2000 years, and now
> for
> the last 1000 or so, 19 nuns have protected her shrine.
>
> It was a simple matter of converting a local minor diety into a
> saint.  The
> church did that all over the place.
>
> I think Saint Brittany was once a forest goddess.
>
> A lot of religions are at least partially syncretic, even if that wasn't
> originally the intention, and even if parts of it frown up on it.
>
> Of course, in America, you have Southern Baptists protecting these odd
> little oval rings all over Virginia and North Carolina.
>
> I'm not totally familiar with the ritual, but it involves overpowered
> horseless carriages and lot's of beer and chicken.
>
> It's mostly harmless, except for the occasional human sacrifice, though
> that's been toned down a lot in later years.
>
>
>
>
> --
> shannon / Asus A8N5X - Opteron 170 at 2.5GHz | But you know, a little Sun
> Ultra 1
> -------'  2GB RAM - nVidia 7900GS         | is doing all the hard work...
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