Hi Nigel

If Christ means 'the anointed', could it have referred to what the bowl may have been used for and have nothing to do with JC (the bible one, that is)?

It's surprising just how long this belief lasted. In 1891, Canon J. C. Atkinson of Danby (North Yorks.) published his 'Forty Years in a Moorland Parish'. He told of an old woman, Dinah, who once called him to her house to 'lay' spirits that were bothering her. When he explained that he didn't profess to 'lay' spirits, she replied :

"Aye, but if I'd sent for a priest of t'auld choch he wad a' deean it. They were a vast mair powerful conjurers than you choch-priests."

The idea of priests being magicians was still around 150 years ago!

Whooooooa! a new-age magician - Kenwyne Jones just scored!!!!!

reminds me of the book:

Religion and the decline of magic

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Religion-Decline-Magic-Sixteenth-Seventeenth-Century/dp/0140137440

St. Patrick performed many Druid-esque miracles to prove that the Druids were no different to him (well, he did them better, of course, and proved they were inferior.)

If you read into the local communities that live and have lived around the High Peak area of the Peak District there is alot of evidence to suggest that this was and still is very much the case.

Dr. David Clarke of the Centre for National Cultural Heritage at Sheffield Hallam University writes about this in his book Supernatural Peak District

Christianity is just an appendage of old forms, old thoughts, old feelings that were twisted and desacralized in order to accomodate for this ersatz middle eastern so called religion.

Beltane and Samhain definately predate the celts, they were the feast of the Nine Maidens and Three Fates etc... all over Europe and were calcualted astrologically on conjunctions of the Moon, Venus, Pleiades and sunset and sunrise. Samhain, in particular, was the time of year when the dead are judged for their lives and the living judged for the coming year by the Weird Sisters, and as such the veil between the worlds is thin and all sorts of things happen. Beltane was the opposite, where nothing you did would be judged and you could go a bit mad.

There's some doubt as to whether these were just the four main ones which had law court sessions attached to them too, and the other festivals weren't mentioned by early christian chroniclers as being vulgar pagan folk festivals.

I like Ellis-Davidson, got a few titles mostly relating to northern tradtions though. MacNeill, Máire: The Festival of Lughnasa (Oxford University Press) 1962. Republished 2008. ISBN 0-906426-10-3. It's the book all the other books used to quote, but was very rare to find a copy. It's 900 pages, but I heard the new print might be in two books and somewhat abbreviated.

seeing those 2 words together makes me feel sick , i read it as good bad, christianity tried to destroy paganism and utterly failed ,there was always only going to be 1 winner and it was never going to be their invisible desert sky god...

Bladup, you are bewailing the fact of persecution, whilst making comments with the emotions and bad language attached that will make another group feel persecuted. That makes you a hypocrite. It doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong in such cases, or who deserves what, so don't go there. Zero tolerance is the usual practice for dealing with any kind of persecution. That doesn't mean anyone will make you stop, or rise to the bait of an argument, it just means you will cease to exist for most people, becoming invisible. You already are to some, have you noticed? If you do manage to engage anyone weak minded enough not to treat you as invisible, the thread will be closed, making it appear the topic is not one we can deal with like grown ups. The first step on any spiritual path is a moral and social code, if you don't have one, don't pretend to be spiritual. Please try to put your views across in a less antagonistic fashion. Thanks.

That's my "going the extra mile" before I give up speech. I pretty much lost my thread of thought on what I was talking about now anyway.

I should have mentioned, William Sharp wrote about St Bridget under the name Fiona MacLeod.

St Bridget of the Isles

http://www.archive.org/stream/spiritualtales00macl/spiritualtales00macl_djvu.txt

Also, he mentions Iona, telling a tale from local folklore, about how Colum the Saint on Iona, and Arden a Druid of the Picts are talking theology, and wondering if the one's god is also the other's. Colum makes a good point Arden has to agree with, and likewise Arden makes a good point Colum has to concede. Finally they both agree, though for different reasons, and Colum says:

Therefore are we at one, O Ardan,
though we sail to the Isle of Truth
from the West and the East.
Let there be peace between us

Ard means Hieght or Highest or Exalted, Drewboy. Arden is the familiar of that name, like Thomas becomes Tommy when you familiarise it. It was probably used to show his exalted status amongst the druids rather than being his actual name. Or druids choose thier own names as they go through life to reflect their circumstances and feelings, and are renamed after certain initiatory experiences by their mentors. So you can have a birth name, a given name that might change at any time, and several chosen names. Ard is common in names as well as high places, anyhow.

This site has put all the Carmina Gadelic items relating to Bridget on one list if you want to look those up. http://www.ordbrighideach.org/home/modules.php?name=Encyclopedia&op=list_content&eid=1 The Carmina Gadelic itself is an interesting collection of pagan/christian merged beliefs and lore, the whole book is on sacred texts.com.

Tiompan, I recollect now about the pleiades... you were asking me my source of information. Now we have computer models they are doing more work on pleiadian alignments as the sky would have looked at different periods in prehistory, and coming up with good results. There's been some work done at Calanais for instance, and a google search on pleides stone alignements calanais or callanish will show up a few. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1977JHA.....8..113C was the article I was reading about it, but forget the exact page. I'm sure the researcher that had done a lot of computer simulations of the ancient night sky was called Hawkes or Hawkins though.

I havent read this book, but the contents have pleiades connections in several chapters on a few other megalithic sites:
http://www.starsstonesscholars.com/tableofcontents.htm

I remember reading about those hazels which were being farmed on that island. The islanders left suddenly, but they burned down all 2000 hazel trees when they left, maybe rather than leave them behind for others that were causing them to move, maybe for other reasons. Lot of evidence of neolithic slash and burn methods on the mainland in Scotland too, huh. Happened long before the bible doctrine of man being in domination over all creation, and it being for mankind's use. Sometimes people in christian countries have a mistaken and somewhat parochial belief in its prevalence all over the world, though. Look at China. Or India.

The thing I always notice is how modern customs still revolve around the same themes as before. Samhain was a Festival of the Ancestors, and we have Remembrence Day on the closest Sunday at this time. Mothers Day (in the UK) is closest Sunday to the Spring Equinox with its connections to fertility and conception. Father's Day is closest Sunday to Midsummer and the Festival of the All Father, and all the manly connections that has which are still celebrated at Highland Games; with races, competitions and sports (tossing the caber, pallic or what?). First harvest festivals and last harvest festivals are all the same, and the Child of Light at Winter Solstice is the same in most religions.

tjj - I dunno why there isn't much about this stuff on the internet yet, the All-Father is mentioned enough, and all the individual customs are all there. It survives in folk customs now, but rarely appears in paganism. Perhaps its because modern paganism appeals to women and men drawn to female earth religions usually. Women have lost interest in warrior side of things, and need to have chosen early in life to be able to follow that path anyway, so for them, it's died out. The men are often the kind that would have joined the hippie culture back in the day; eco-friendly, anti-war and anti-establishment types. The men are also drawn to the Druid side of things too, and the warrior class was seperate from the Druid class. Then there's the pagan men that just like the odds, women outnumbering men in paganism, and are there for extremely "earthy" reasons like trying to get laid at Beltane. So not many men interested in the warrior side of things in paganism to join all the dots. (I have the feeling if pagan women went around asking "how can I honour the warrior in you" at midsummer - it might attract more men to the warrior side of things). I grew up a pagan too, so it might be my viewpoint, seeing the competitions with that outlook and making the connections. Then again, a lot of stuff I've studied doesn't appear on the internet.

paulus - I've been put down sarcastically in pagan circles for asking why older stuff from the british mystery traditions isn't preserved, usually by didgerdoo playing, native sweat-lodge building, multi-culture robbing rejects from the aforementioned hippie era who would rather have something "cool" than something "difficult". Then again, you have to worry about cost and being sued these days. You can hand them this stuff on a plate and they would still rather go with the fakery. Brigadooning paddywhackers..... ::mutters darkly:: LOL