- The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was merge to Celtic neopaganism. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:35, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Celtic reconstructionism
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Besides the massive COI issues involved in the creation of this article, the sources simply don't support Celtic reconstructionism paganism as a real thing attested to by secondary sources. Self-claimed druids and pagans' self-published works don't count, and stuff that could potentially be secondary doesn't seem to directly refer to Celtic reconstructionist paganism as a thing; beyond that, the sources used are sometimes done in blatant contradiction to what they say. For instance: the passage Language study and preservation, and participation in other cultural activities such as Celtic music, dance and martial arts forms, are seen as a core part of the tradition.[6][19] Participation in the living Celtic cultures[20][21] – the cultures that exist in the "areas in which Celtic languages are actually spoken and in which Celtic traditions have been most faithfully handed down to the present day"[22] – is a vital part of their cultural work and spiritual practice. references Gaelic Nova Scotia: An Economic, Cultural, and Social Impact Study, but the quote supplied argues the exact opposite of the text—that the druid groups have little connection to actual Celtic traditions, language, or culture. I suppose you can argue that the article is saying that's just druids, not Celtic reconstructionism, but the problem is then that once again the rest is referenced to the same bad source. There's nothing that can be salvaged from this article; if it's a notable thing it has to be built ground-up on reliable secondary sources. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 16:16, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Keep. There are plenty of independent sources andI've already removed the use of the self-published Lulu.com book as a source. Skyerise ( talk) 16:19, 12 September 2023 (UTC)- You mind pointing out which independent sources significantly cover this topic?
Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs
talk 17:07, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Sure, here's two books from Princeton and Cambridge UPs that discuss the topic.
Skyerise (
talk) 17:15, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Williams, M. (2018). Ireland's Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth. Princeton University Press.
- David J. Collins. The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West: From Antiquity to the Present. (2018). Cambridge University Press.
- I don't have full text access to Collins 2018, but it along with Williams appear to be glancing mentions not SIGCOV. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 18:32, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Sure, here's two books from Princeton and Cambridge UPs that discuss the topic.
Skyerise (
talk) 17:15, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- You mind pointing out which independent sources significantly cover this topic?
Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs
talk 17:07, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Paganism-related deletion discussions. Shellwood ( talk) 16:43, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales. 17:14, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Delete As as far as I can tell it's all based on
WP:PRIMARY - Celtic Reconstructionists writing about their religion. I don't think the SELFPUB has all been removed, but I can't see that there is any genuine "third party" RS in there. I note the above comment that there are a couple of "proper" sources on this - may be they do address this topic but they are not cited in the article. One of the 2 main authors of this article is
inteviewed here. In the interview she says
I am one of the people to blame for the Celtic Reconstructionist Pagan (CR) tradition and community...In addition to being involved in CR since the proto-CR period in the '80s, I am a co-author of our tradition's two defining documents
. The article has been constructed by her and her friends to promote their views. Maybe it's a legitimate topic - at best it's a candidate for WP:TNT. DeCausa ( talk) 18:05, 12 September 2023 (UTC)- @
DeCausa: For what it's worth, I removed two paragraphs based mostly or entirely on NicDhana's and others articles in the pagan zine
Harvest. One para promoted NicDhana as the originator of the term and the other made she and her Harvest buddies the definitive view. Ima gonna quit for now cause I hate wasting more effort if its justa gonna be deleted. But I think it's a real thing and notable enough to keep, and entirely possible to remove further primary sources and add material from better sources.
Skyerise (
talk) 18:44, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- To be honest, this is not a topic I have much/any prior knowledge...and I'm trying to avoid being too prejudiced by some of the dreadful editing and behaviour I've seen having spent quite a lot of time going though the edit history of that article and its talk pages. But looking at google results I'm only turning up cranky website forums and a very small number of books written by the group's (the very small group's) advocates. David Fuchs says the 2 "proper" sources you referenced don't have SIGCOV. I'm not sure where else to go with this.
DeCausa (
talk) 19:10, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Well, you may be right. It's quite possible no source would even have mentioned it had there not been this Wikipedia article, so it may be a case of
WP:CIRCULAR.
Skyerise (
talk) 19:16, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Of course no source would've ever mentioned it if not for the article, but that's also true of Genie (feral child) and Tarrare, which are both incontrovertibly notable and both have ~100% of their 21st-century coverage because of Wikipedia. It's a gravity well. The corollary is that it's possible an article that didn't have enough sources, then existed for fifteen years, could've acquired sources for it. (I'm not sure I'd say that happened here given what Ireland's Immortals cites, but I'd be shocked if it's never happened, even if you don't count the "became notable from an AfD"-type cases.) Vaticidal prophet 19:59, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Well, you may be right. It's quite possible no source would even have mentioned it had there not been this Wikipedia article, so it may be a case of
WP:CIRCULAR.
Skyerise (
talk) 19:16, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- To be honest, this is not a topic I have much/any prior knowledge...and I'm trying to avoid being too prejudiced by some of the dreadful editing and behaviour I've seen having spent quite a lot of time going though the edit history of that article and its talk pages. But looking at google results I'm only turning up cranky website forums and a very small number of books written by the group's (the very small group's) advocates. David Fuchs says the 2 "proper" sources you referenced don't have SIGCOV. I'm not sure where else to go with this.
DeCausa (
talk) 19:10, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- @
DeCausa: For what it's worth, I removed two paragraphs based mostly or entirely on NicDhana's and others articles in the pagan zine
Harvest. One para promoted NicDhana as the originator of the term and the other made she and her Harvest buddies the definitive view. Ima gonna quit for now cause I hate wasting more effort if its justa gonna be deleted. But I think it's a real thing and notable enough to keep, and entirely possible to remove further primary sources and add material from better sources.
Skyerise (
talk) 18:44, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- I land around weak keep, but it's tricky and might be better covered as not-a-standalone-article. I'd not give the Cambridge History as a fantastic source -- it's a bit of a passing mention -- but Ireland's Immortals is legit just-barely-sigcov, and cites The Apple Branch: A Path to Celtic Ritual as definitive, which, eh, I don't know if everyone would say that :) but does make it 'good enough for Wikipedia', even if I imagine some Reconstructionists might quibble with the idea it's any sort of definitive take on their practice, and it's certainly a highly in-depth source on something it calls Celtic Reconstructionism. Maybe that's enough. The irony of it all is, as well as those two I also own the book this whole debate is about, and put serious thought a while back to doing work on this article as part of a general "huh, what if I GTed the Celtic paganism suite" playing-around-with-ideas, but after things on a certain other article got weird I decided that might not be the wisest of ideas at this junction. Vaticidal prophet 18:07, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Delete - as per David Fuchs, Collins (2018) and Williams (2018) only have passing mentions and are not significant coverage. Williams is the longer, in fact, with Collins merely mentioning Celtic Reconstructionism in a single sentence in a larger paragraph on page 653 that is generally about Reconstructionism. Incidentally we have Polytheistic reconstructionism and Collins might be a source for that, but even then, it is just a paragraph. In any case, whatever could be said about this from reliable secondary sources (and there is not much), this is not it. This article needs WP:TNT per DeCausa. I would suggest that the very little that could be written from suitable sources would be better focussed on a general article. Sirfurboy🏄 ( talk) 22:31, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Merge to Polytheistic reconstructionism - I've struck my keep !vote above and suggest that whatever can be salvaged be merged to the article Sirfurboy brought up.Skyerise ( talk) 22:34, 12 September 2023 (UTC)- Keep I believe there are reliable sources for this and do not believe that thorough attempts to find them will fail. I think that a lot of existing material will need to be verified or removed - but my understanding of the deletion policy is that is preferable to removing a valid topic. I do not believe that
Polytheistic reconstructionism is a good merge target, as there are no other specific types of reconstructionism currently included as part of that article.
Druidry (modern) might be a potential merge target due to overlaps - but I think that would involve conflating related-but-not-the-same things.
Darker Dreams (
talk) 22:51, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- comment:
Modern_paganism#Reconstructionist is basically a series of links to similar pages. Also, for clarity, while I do not think the article should be deleted I do support reducing it to a stub or whatever level is supported by the existing, valid citations.
Darker Dreams (
talk) 23:17, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
I believe there are reliable sources for this and do not believe that thorough attempts to find them will fail.
We don't require that sources be in the article to establish notability, but we do require evidence that they exist, and not just a belief that they will be found if someone looks. The time for looking is now. My searches came up short. Sirfurboy🏄 ( talk) 07:45, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- comment: Merging with
Celtic neopaganism per
user:Ffranc would be far superior to deletion, and the best of the currently proposed potential merge targets.
Darker Dreams (
talk) 11:42, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- note: WP:STUBIFY vs WP:TNT. Darker Dreams ( talk) 20:00, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- comment:
Modern_paganism#Reconstructionist is basically a series of links to similar pages. Also, for clarity, while I do not think the article should be deleted I do support reducing it to a stub or whatever level is supported by the existing, valid citations.
Darker Dreams (
talk) 23:17, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
- Keep* Fascinating. Last I saw the article, it had substantial
WP:RS and
WP:V sources and citations. I wonder what happened to them and when they were stripped out? Cheers,
Mark Ironie (
talk) 01:31, 13 September 2023 (UTC)— Note to closing admin:
Mark Ironie (
talk •
contribs) appears to have a
close connection with the subject of the article being discussed.
- Can you identify what these "substantial WP:RS" are? As far as I can see, the main source to come out is the so-called "CR FAQ" which was cited 15 times. It was WP:SELFPUB - both on the net and via "River House Publishing". DeCausa ( talk) 06:37, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- Certainly. I think
this version, directly before
User:Skyerise essentially gutted the article. Cheers,
Mark Ironie (
talk) 20:05, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- I don't think that anyone would be surprised that that is your opinion. However, you have said that "substantial WP:RS" have been stripped out and haven't answered the question of what those were. The main change of significance I can see results from the removal of 15 citations to a WP:SELFPUB source. DeCausa ( talk) 20:28, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- Certainly. I think
this version, directly before
User:Skyerise essentially gutted the article. Cheers,
Mark Ironie (
talk) 20:05, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - The article is written well enough (in terms of language) and at least doesn't seem especially promotional, even if it was written by someone with a conflict of interest. Completely deleting it and starting over sounds extreme given it appears participants here have only looked at the article's current sources and haven't yet had the chance to look to see if other sources exist and whether they affirm enough of what the article says to warrant the effort of reviewing/replacing the sources. Some participants have expressed an interest in reviewing or improving the article, so at the very least it's surely worth trying to look for some new sources before considering deletion. Without at least checking for other sources, I don't think it's reasonable to say that absolutely none of this article is worth keeping in any form (whether it's kept and pruned, or merged elsewhere). It may well be the case that secondary sources exist and say much of the same. However, if an effort is made and still no decent sources can be found then this becomes a case of
failing the general notability guideline and the appropriate action is clearer. –
Scyrme (
talk) 01:40, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- Looking briefly myself, I found: Lewis, James R. (2009). "Celts, druids and the invention of tradition". In Pizza, Murphy; Lewis, James (eds.). Handbook of Contemporary Paganism. Leiden: Brill. pp. 479–496. doi: 10.1163/ej.9789004163737.i-650.135. ISBN 978-90-474-4235-6.
- It takes a very critical view of the topic and is more than just a passing mention. However, it appears to take a much broader and more inclusive view of what "Celtic reconstructionism" means than is presented in this article. Like this article, it refers to neo-druids, Isaac Bonewits, and Ár nDraíocht Féin but otherwise there's not much overlap, though it does appear to imply a distinction between reconstructionism and neo-druidry: "
Advocates of Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism tend to embrace the same kind of paradoxical attitude we noted among contemporary neo-Druids.
" - While searching, most of what I saw that did appear to discuss "Celtic reconstructionism" in the same way this article does also appeared to be involved in some way, being authored by insiders/participants/practitioners such as Kathryn NicDhàna, Morgan Daimler, and Aedh Rua.
- The exception to that is Ireland's Immortals, but looking at it myself, the content about reconstructionism in it seems scant consisting of a summary paragraph. Notably, it includes this footnote:
Published material on the subject of Celtic Reconstructionism is limited, as most discussion tends to be online; but see A. Kondratiev, The Apple Branch: A Path to Celtic Ritual (San Francisco, CA, 1998).
Alexei Kondratiev is evidently himself a neopagan. - I encourage others to look for themselves. –
Scyrme (
talk) 03:30, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- I appriciate the review and summary. I am confused why an author being Neopagan is considered relevant.
Darker Dreams (
talk) 04:12, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- It may be relevant if he is writing as a participant/practitioner rather than as an observer. –
Scyrme (
talk) 04:25, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
-
WP:PRIMARY seems like it would allow it if he were a participant/practitioner purely as a record of facts, but not for analysis. If we're looking for observer consideration we'd need to read it. Without being able to do that how it's published (known vanity/slush publishing vs "respectable" or even academic) and treated by other sources is probably a better sign than author religion. I just feel really sketchy about making hay out of authors' religions, whatever they are.
Darker Dreams (
talk) 05:34, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- Why is
WP:PRIMARY relevant? I thought the concern was about independent secondary sources. It seemed like a detail that might be relevant for anyone who does what I suggested: to go look for such sources. Practitioners are unlikely to be a helpful lead. Probably better to look somewhere else. If you don't agree, then you can look into The Apple Branch if you want. –
Scyrme (
talk) 06:22, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- Scyrme, thanks very much for this look at the sources. I had a look at what Lewis (2009) says, and you describe it well as a very critical look at the topic, but I am not sure if it is more than a passing mention of this page topic, because this page is about a particular approach to celtic paganism, but Lewis is talking about all approaches. All Druidism is reconstructed (although some of the adherents of some forms will debate that). So when Lewis is talking about the reconstruction he is not necessarily focussing on a thing called CR as a particular approach, but as what all of these are doing. However, despite that doubt, I think we could perhaps assume that the discussion on page 487 is specifically about a primary topic of Celtic reconstructionism, but if that is one source addressing the notability, it suggests the article that we have here is not the article that is supported by the sources. That source, as you point out, is very critical, both on the reconstruction (with its assumptions and borrowings), and also on the appropriation of the term "Celtic". That should be what the article is about. Sirfurboy🏄 ( talk) 08:14, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- Why is
WP:PRIMARY relevant? I thought the concern was about independent secondary sources. It seemed like a detail that might be relevant for anyone who does what I suggested: to go look for such sources. Practitioners are unlikely to be a helpful lead. Probably better to look somewhere else. If you don't agree, then you can look into The Apple Branch if you want. –
Scyrme (
talk) 06:22, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
-
WP:PRIMARY seems like it would allow it if he were a participant/practitioner purely as a record of facts, but not for analysis. If we're looking for observer consideration we'd need to read it. Without being able to do that how it's published (known vanity/slush publishing vs "respectable" or even academic) and treated by other sources is probably a better sign than author religion. I just feel really sketchy about making hay out of authors' religions, whatever they are.
Darker Dreams (
talk) 05:34, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- It may be relevant if he is writing as a participant/practitioner rather than as an observer. –
Scyrme (
talk) 04:25, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- I appriciate the review and summary. I am confused why an author being Neopagan is considered relevant.
Darker Dreams (
talk) 04:12, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- Merge with Celtic neopaganism, where the term is covered, with the risk of getting endless discussions about that article's title. I oppose merging it with polytheistic reconstructionism, which is a mess of an article and doesn't reflect the reliable sources on the subject. The main source about polytheistic reconstructionism is five pages by Michael Strmiska in the book Modern Paganism in World Cultures, where it is described as a continuum together with eclectic paganism, not as something that really exists on its own, in pure form. The other sources that exist are mainly papers about individual neopagan organisations, where the authors summarise Strmiska's description of the continuum and then go on to explain why it's not really a useful terminology when discussing the groups in question. The term can exist within the rhetoric of certain groups, but the actually existing neopagan practises are neither reconstructionist nor eclectic in the way those words are used here. Ffranc ( talk) 09:08, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
KeepSources now present in the article are sufficient to establish that the topic has been discussed in scholarly sources, albeit largely in contrast to eclectic paganism.. I saw no mention of other than the US, so I added a mention in an article by Jenny Blain. More of the increasing body of academic work on neo-paganism, including pagan theology, could usefully be brought to bear to update what Bonewits published in 2006. Yngvadottir ( talk) 10:29, 13 September 2023 (UTC) Changed to Merge (redirect with rewriting of section at target) to Celtic neopaganism; see below. Yngvadottir ( talk) 12:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)- Delete per TNT with no prejudice to its recreation by users in good standing and with a solid reputation for sourcing. SN54129 12:29, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
- Strong Delete per TNT - after reading about attempts to find SIGCOV, I may be wrong about the subject's notability. In any case, completely removing the COI sources would pretty much leave nothing but Bonewitz, and he's not really an uninvolved source. Skyerise ( talk) 16:34, 13 September 2023 (UTC) Updated to strong. Skyerise ( talk) 20:46, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
- Delete per WP:TNT given the massive WP:COI issues. If independent SIGCOV can be found, let other editors build it. starship .paint ( RUN) 03:02, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- Comment: while I appreciate the work Yngvadottir has done on the article, I've also been following discussions elsewhere and am sympathetic to the concerns about safety arising due to the identification of old and new usernames. Yet since that connection is easily discernible (since the accounts were simply renamed) from their activity on this article, and this article is most likely the reason any external threats arose in the first place, I think it is best to protect those editors by deleting the article and starting over, rather than leaving that edit history for any external parties to peruse, providing them with all the information necessary to determine the current usernames of those parties. Skyerise ( talk) 14:03, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- Comment. I've now given the article a couple of stiff edits, adding several new sources and broadening the focus based on what I found. Discussion has been happening on the talk page, most recently over whether to include the CR FAQ (i'd readded it). I'm tempted to ping those who advocated TNT above, but have decided not to. I disagree with Skyerise's above suggestion: IMO we'd be cutting off our noses to spite our faces if we deleted this article for any reason other than that we decide there should not be an article on this topic; and that's why I just spent a lot of time rewriting it, hoping to clearly demonstrate notability. Any new article would be some sort of re-creation; unless someone else wants to
WP:HEY it in a different manner from my recasting, and I followed the sources I found. Revision-deletion of editors' names in the history and on the talk page and its history would be radical but would achieve the same concealment. (And I hereby give permission for redaction of my previous sentence for further concealment.)
Yngvadottir (
talk) 09:25, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
- @
Yngvadottir: thank you for all your work on the article. It's significantly better written than before, more encyclopedic and interesting to the general reader and better sourced, with the COI issue now removed. I'm on the verge of switching to Keep. However, I'm still hovering on notability. The previous concern was that the original creators were writing about their own (what appeared to be) insignificantly small group, using their own and their friends' publications as sources bolstered by
WP:SYNTHing in mainstream sources discussing neo-paganism and Celtic religion generally. It would help if you could identify which references are the good quality SIGCOV sources now in the article. I started to look for them in the Practices section but accessing them wasn't straight forward. I did look at the current cite 11 (Bittarello) and that seems to be talking about neo-pagans generally. Cite 12 (McColman) is an e-edition so I had trouble finding the cited page - but couldn't see a specific reference to "Celtic reconstructionists" in its vicinity. Cite 13 (Davey) appears to talk about "some pagans embrace the idea of a pan-European Celtic culture". At that point, I thought it might be quicker to just ask you the question!
DeCausa (
talk) 11:03, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
- Like DeCausa, I would like to thank you for your efforts here, and if the article can be shown to be notable,
WP:HEY could apply just as much as
WP:TNT is a valid argument here. But I also remain sceptical about the notability of the subject for a page. It may be down to sourcing, but we need to look at the sources. A good example of the issue is the clause in the opening sentence:
emphasizing historical accuracy over eclecticism
by which we assert, in wiki-voice, that CR emphasises historical accuracy and, by extension, other forms do not. It is in the lead, so I looked for support in the main, and found:
Sourced to:During the 1980s, some of these reacted against the eclecticism and the focus on the "spirit" of the ancient religions in favor of "reconstructing what can be known from the extant historical record".
- Gallagher, Eugene V.; Ashcraft, W. Michael (2006). Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood. p. 178. ISBN 0-275-98713-2.
- Only that title is a five volume set. The ISBN number resolves to volume 5, which makes sense as that volume is on American traditions. Yet page 178 is talking about Scientology. I checked volume 1 in case it was referring to that - being as no volume number is given - but there page 178 is about Aum Shinrikyo. So then I searched all volumes for the quote, and then, based on the fact that the OCR on open library can sometimes be iffy, I just searched on the word "extant". I did not find that quotation, nor any mention of CR as a thing.
- Now, what can we make of that? It seems to me that the primary claim that CR is a thing, distinct enough from other druidism and neo-pagan groups to merit a page in its own right remains very much the principle point in doubt here. If CR distinguishes itself at all, it is in this approach. But although it is clear that its adherents believe that they are doing things differently, what we don't have, at this time, is any evidence that anyone else thinks that. To be notable, sources must be independent, and for good reason. Can you bring any sources to bear that we can look at to establish this notability? Thanks once again for your efforts.
Sirfurboy🏄 (
talk) 12:14, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
- The quotation is actually in vol.iii, Metaphysical, New Age, and Neopagan Movements, from the chapter “Wicca, Witchcraft, and Modern Paganism” by Douglas E. Cowan, pp.176–199. Providing more of it for context: “An introductory essay such as this cannot hope to do justice to the vast panoply of emergent religious belief and practice that constitutes modern Paganism: […] New Druids and Celtic Reconstructionists—the former interested in revitalizing the spirit of what they believe was the religious practice of pre-Roman Britain, the latter only in reconstructing what can be known from the extant historical record; […]” where ND & CR are listed together as one of six broad types. While it does support the latter part of the sentence, it says nothing about the time period (for any of the listed groups) and does not imply that CR developed as a reaction to either ND specifically or eclecticism in general.—
Odysseus
147
9 21:49, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks,
Odysseus1479, that saved me a lot of frustration since it turns out the Internet Archive won't let me see that book. I'm going to run through the more academic sources in the article here in response to
DeCausa's query, but the Practices section isn't the best place to look, since it has to be largely sourced from practitioner accounts (which is the main reason I have just reverted
JoelleJay's removal of both Green Triangle interviews; let us recognize that a subset of a kind of paganism is by definition a "fringey" topic!) In any case, this AfD will decide on whether it's worth going into that level of detail at all. There's been a little confusion arising out of the way the article was originally written and expanded, by members of one group. In rewriting the article I've sought to demonstrate that Celtic reconstructionism is not solely a US thing, let alone just a single group. (Although the CR FAQ was written collaboratively by many people on LiveJournal, and participants there may not have been aware of others out of their orbit, just as some Celtic reconstructionists have said they only realized that's what they had been doing when they ran across references to the FAQ.) That said, other than Bonewits, the more scholarly sources are scattered and shallow. None of them except Bonewits can be said to focus on describing Celtic reconstructionism. Two (Galtsin and Vencálek) are cited just for its existence in Russia and the Czech Republic, respectively. Two have a different focus but characterize Celtic reconstructionism and locate it within neopaganism in the US: McCoy with respect to how it coalesced online as a movement, but the article is about music, Harris, Panzica, Trotter within a nice overview of types of paganism, but the article is about counseling pagans; and the cited fact, its being the third largest strand of reconstructionism in the US, I now see is cited to McColman, Carl. The complete idiot’s guide to Paganism. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002—so it may be out of date or unreliable. (Voices From the Pagan Census, 2003, does not appear to have asked about reconstructionism.) The academic discussion about reconstructionist paganism is overwhelmingly about Asatru/heathenism. Partly because of the concern about ethnocentrism / white power. This is particularly true of the conference volume
Paganism and Its Discontents: Enduring Problems of Racialized Identity; the Strmiska citation is to the keynote address there, where he defines reconstructionist paganism as ethnic: "The first, more open-ended form of Paganism has been variously labeled by me and others as eclectic or universalist, and the second, more consciously restricted form as reconstructionist and ethnic." (p. 8); he goes on to take reconstructionists to task as "probably much more strict about religious orthodoxy and orthopraxy than their medieval or ancient forebears ever were" (p. 18) and ends by advocating admixture of practices / concepts from other cultures to alleviate the risk of racism. The contrast between reconstructionism and eclecticism is one of two focuses in academic mentions of Celtic reconstructionism. Jenny Blain, whose focus is heathenry, provides the best cites on the nature of reconstructionism and on the fact that practitioners vary in strictness: the second Blain citation, from that book: "Today's practitioners point out that they are attempting to reach what they consider the centrally important points of religion ... and work with this to create something that 'works' within today's environment. The extents to which they base practice on 'evidence' (from literature or archaeology) vary considerably." The first Blain citation (Modern Paganism in World Cultures): "Basically, reconstructionists work from the principle that documents or artifacts from the past hold clues [to] practices and worldviews and relationships [that] can be used or adopted meaningfully within today's world. Reconstruction of this sort is different from reenactment ..." Both citations of Blain, who is British, also attest to Celtic reconstructionism in the UK—second Blain citation, following paragraph: "The reconstructionist groups I've engaged with are mostly Heathen, with some input from Celtic and Roman reconstructionists."; 1st Blain citation, also following paragraph: "In Britain, such reconstructionists include, in addition to Heathens, people following various Celtic or British, Roman and Greek, Eastern European, or other paths for which evidence can be found, including some Druids." But both of her articles are about heathenry. (There's also a good definition of reconstructionism in Blain's article in Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, pp. 413–14; I was able to download the book off one of those copyright-defying sites.) The other focus of academic mentions of Celtic reconstructionism is the romanticization / cultural appropriation issues arising from "elective affinity" (a phrase used in several of the sources). Here the focus is on the Celtic rather than the reconstructionism; for example Bowman, and also Lewis, in the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism but Lewis' article, as
Scyrme notes above, is really talking about Celtic paganism as a whole. The passage reads: "Thus, in addition to adopting ideas and practices from contemporary indigenous groups, attempts to reconstruct ancient Celtic spirituality also sometimes draw on materials from other ancient Pagan religions. [para break] A more serious issue with contemporary Celtic reconstructionism is that making Celtic identity a matter of 'elective affinity' is ethically problematic because of the existence of contemporary Celtic peoples." Either something was omitted here in the editing process or the author equates "reconstructing Celtic spirituality" with "Celtic reconstructionism". The quotation that follows is from an essay by Ann-Marie Gallagher, "Weaving a Tangled Web? Pagan Ethics and Issues of History, 'Race' and Ethnicity in Pagan Identity", p. 580 in the same book, where the section header is "What does this Fine Disregard for Cultural and Historical Specificity Signify?" So there is not much depth here, and the general tendency is to cite it in contrast to other things. Also, since non-reconstructionist Celtic-focused forms of paganism are vastly more prevalent, and Celtic reconstructionism does not appear to have produced many scholars of its own (unlike heathenry, exacerbating the imbalance in essay collections), I'm having second thoughts as to keeping the article versus redirecting it to a better written and referenced section within
Celtic neopaganism. The gutting of OWNSOURCE sources that has continued while I was working on this has tipped me over; we shouldn't have an article on a religious denomination that removes sources about what adherents believe and do simply and solely because they're hosted on their own websites. So I'm changing my bolded position above and will let others use my work or not based on the consensus reached here.
Yngvadottir (
talk) 12:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- Just to respond to the ping -- the main reason I removed Green Triangle was because it's an SPS by non-experts. Going through various archived versions of the site, I couldn't find any mention of editorial policy (let alone by people with any relevant qualifications). Practitioner accounts should really be limited to those which are published in RS, otherwise we are emphasizing facets that may not be accurate or relevant to the system (and with such a long, open-ended, personal interview I think it would be very difficult to identify salient points without engaging in OR). JoelleJay ( talk) 17:33, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks,
Odysseus1479, that saved me a lot of frustration since it turns out the Internet Archive won't let me see that book. I'm going to run through the more academic sources in the article here in response to
DeCausa's query, but the Practices section isn't the best place to look, since it has to be largely sourced from practitioner accounts (which is the main reason I have just reverted
JoelleJay's removal of both Green Triangle interviews; let us recognize that a subset of a kind of paganism is by definition a "fringey" topic!) In any case, this AfD will decide on whether it's worth going into that level of detail at all. There's been a little confusion arising out of the way the article was originally written and expanded, by members of one group. In rewriting the article I've sought to demonstrate that Celtic reconstructionism is not solely a US thing, let alone just a single group. (Although the CR FAQ was written collaboratively by many people on LiveJournal, and participants there may not have been aware of others out of their orbit, just as some Celtic reconstructionists have said they only realized that's what they had been doing when they ran across references to the FAQ.) That said, other than Bonewits, the more scholarly sources are scattered and shallow. None of them except Bonewits can be said to focus on describing Celtic reconstructionism. Two (Galtsin and Vencálek) are cited just for its existence in Russia and the Czech Republic, respectively. Two have a different focus but characterize Celtic reconstructionism and locate it within neopaganism in the US: McCoy with respect to how it coalesced online as a movement, but the article is about music, Harris, Panzica, Trotter within a nice overview of types of paganism, but the article is about counseling pagans; and the cited fact, its being the third largest strand of reconstructionism in the US, I now see is cited to McColman, Carl. The complete idiot’s guide to Paganism. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002—so it may be out of date or unreliable. (Voices From the Pagan Census, 2003, does not appear to have asked about reconstructionism.) The academic discussion about reconstructionist paganism is overwhelmingly about Asatru/heathenism. Partly because of the concern about ethnocentrism / white power. This is particularly true of the conference volume
Paganism and Its Discontents: Enduring Problems of Racialized Identity; the Strmiska citation is to the keynote address there, where he defines reconstructionist paganism as ethnic: "The first, more open-ended form of Paganism has been variously labeled by me and others as eclectic or universalist, and the second, more consciously restricted form as reconstructionist and ethnic." (p. 8); he goes on to take reconstructionists to task as "probably much more strict about religious orthodoxy and orthopraxy than their medieval or ancient forebears ever were" (p. 18) and ends by advocating admixture of practices / concepts from other cultures to alleviate the risk of racism. The contrast between reconstructionism and eclecticism is one of two focuses in academic mentions of Celtic reconstructionism. Jenny Blain, whose focus is heathenry, provides the best cites on the nature of reconstructionism and on the fact that practitioners vary in strictness: the second Blain citation, from that book: "Today's practitioners point out that they are attempting to reach what they consider the centrally important points of religion ... and work with this to create something that 'works' within today's environment. The extents to which they base practice on 'evidence' (from literature or archaeology) vary considerably." The first Blain citation (Modern Paganism in World Cultures): "Basically, reconstructionists work from the principle that documents or artifacts from the past hold clues [to] practices and worldviews and relationships [that] can be used or adopted meaningfully within today's world. Reconstruction of this sort is different from reenactment ..." Both citations of Blain, who is British, also attest to Celtic reconstructionism in the UK—second Blain citation, following paragraph: "The reconstructionist groups I've engaged with are mostly Heathen, with some input from Celtic and Roman reconstructionists."; 1st Blain citation, also following paragraph: "In Britain, such reconstructionists include, in addition to Heathens, people following various Celtic or British, Roman and Greek, Eastern European, or other paths for which evidence can be found, including some Druids." But both of her articles are about heathenry. (There's also a good definition of reconstructionism in Blain's article in Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, pp. 413–14; I was able to download the book off one of those copyright-defying sites.) The other focus of academic mentions of Celtic reconstructionism is the romanticization / cultural appropriation issues arising from "elective affinity" (a phrase used in several of the sources). Here the focus is on the Celtic rather than the reconstructionism; for example Bowman, and also Lewis, in the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism but Lewis' article, as
Scyrme notes above, is really talking about Celtic paganism as a whole. The passage reads: "Thus, in addition to adopting ideas and practices from contemporary indigenous groups, attempts to reconstruct ancient Celtic spirituality also sometimes draw on materials from other ancient Pagan religions. [para break] A more serious issue with contemporary Celtic reconstructionism is that making Celtic identity a matter of 'elective affinity' is ethically problematic because of the existence of contemporary Celtic peoples." Either something was omitted here in the editing process or the author equates "reconstructing Celtic spirituality" with "Celtic reconstructionism". The quotation that follows is from an essay by Ann-Marie Gallagher, "Weaving a Tangled Web? Pagan Ethics and Issues of History, 'Race' and Ethnicity in Pagan Identity", p. 580 in the same book, where the section header is "What does this Fine Disregard for Cultural and Historical Specificity Signify?" So there is not much depth here, and the general tendency is to cite it in contrast to other things. Also, since non-reconstructionist Celtic-focused forms of paganism are vastly more prevalent, and Celtic reconstructionism does not appear to have produced many scholars of its own (unlike heathenry, exacerbating the imbalance in essay collections), I'm having second thoughts as to keeping the article versus redirecting it to a better written and referenced section within
Celtic neopaganism. The gutting of OWNSOURCE sources that has continued while I was working on this has tipped me over; we shouldn't have an article on a religious denomination that removes sources about what adherents believe and do simply and solely because they're hosted on their own websites. So I'm changing my bolded position above and will let others use my work or not based on the consensus reached here.
Yngvadottir (
talk) 12:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- The quotation is actually in vol.iii, Metaphysical, New Age, and Neopagan Movements, from the chapter “Wicca, Witchcraft, and Modern Paganism” by Douglas E. Cowan, pp.176–199. Providing more of it for context: “An introductory essay such as this cannot hope to do justice to the vast panoply of emergent religious belief and practice that constitutes modern Paganism: […] New Druids and Celtic Reconstructionists—the former interested in revitalizing the spirit of what they believe was the religious practice of pre-Roman Britain, the latter only in reconstructing what can be known from the extant historical record; […]” where ND & CR are listed together as one of six broad types. While it does support the latter part of the sentence, it says nothing about the time period (for any of the listed groups) and does not imply that CR developed as a reaction to either ND specifically or eclecticism in general.—
Odysseus
147
9 21:49, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
- Like DeCausa, I would like to thank you for your efforts here, and if the article can be shown to be notable,
WP:HEY could apply just as much as
WP:TNT is a valid argument here. But I also remain sceptical about the notability of the subject for a page. It may be down to sourcing, but we need to look at the sources. A good example of the issue is the clause in the opening sentence:
- @
Yngvadottir: thank you for all your work on the article. It's significantly better written than before, more encyclopedic and interesting to the general reader and better sourced, with the COI issue now removed. I'm on the verge of switching to Keep. However, I'm still hovering on notability. The previous concern was that the original creators were writing about their own (what appeared to be) insignificantly small group, using their own and their friends' publications as sources bolstered by
WP:SYNTHing in mainstream sources discussing neo-paganism and Celtic religion generally. It would help if you could identify which references are the good quality SIGCOV sources now in the article. I started to look for them in the Practices section but accessing them wasn't straight forward. I did look at the current cite 11 (Bittarello) and that seems to be talking about neo-pagans generally. Cite 12 (McColman) is an e-edition so I had trouble finding the cited page - but couldn't see a specific reference to "Celtic reconstructionists" in its vicinity. Cite 13 (Davey) appears to talk about "some pagans embrace the idea of a pan-European Celtic culture". At that point, I thought it might be quicker to just ask you the question!
DeCausa (
talk) 11:03, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
- Redirect to Celtic neopaganism, merging the best of Yngvadottir's findings. But it does appear that Celtic neopaganism is the "real" topic here, with this title being something of a fork article. SnowFire ( talk) 00:07, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
- Merge - into Celtic neopaganism, there is enough useful material here that merging the content rather than simply redirecting is a more positive outcome and a valid alternative to deletion. Thanks to those who cleaned up primary sources and/or COI content. Netherzone ( talk) 19:30, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.