Friday, January 6, 2017

Combining Roman/Greek Deities with Gaulish Deities isn't New Age

I want to get this out of the way before someone gets on here and acts as though what I practice is just like what the New Age Wiccans do. First of all when you blend deities that, historically, were blended then it's not like how the New Age crowd does things. We're talking about things that happened within the context of Gaulish Polytheism. Yes, it did destroy a unique culture but the Romans sure didn't care about that.

It also allows us to understand why this happened and better understanding this helps us out. Especially if you're drawing from this period. Another thing that I want to point out, in context of the title Combining Roman/Greek deities, we're talking about the Roman's bringing a Hellenized form of Roman religion (they admired the Greeks and wanted to be like them) and combined them with Gaulish deities. The Romans brought incense burning, dedicatory objects (objects dedicated to a deity due to something that the god did for them), animal sacrifice (they did away with human sacrifice), and the Roman way of dress.

Even if you're practicing a blend of Gaulish and Roman Polytheism it's still within the context of the past and it's verified by the written and archeology records. It's not New Age, it's not cherry-picking, it's not being eclectic, and it's not something that wasn't done. I think that's what the New Age community needs to understand about these practices and understand why they were done.

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