New Essay – “Breath of Life: The Triple Flame of Brigid”

Gaol Naofa is proud to present our latest article which discusses our stance on the practice of flametending and Brigid’s threefold-flame. It’s been a bit of a challenge to write about this, as some of our reasons for our traditions are more private and not something we want to post on the Internet. However, as there are many people out there arguing against tradition, and we heard they were going to be publishing, we made the choice to discuss this. We have only used liturgy that is in the public domain, not the private or women-only liturgy we use.

In our FAQ we mention the struggle around whether to participate in a project with questionable material, and whether it’s worth it to be in that company to provide an alternative voice. We had to face that issue with this piece. We wrote it in summer 2012 for an anthology, and the editors accepted it for publication and sent us the contracts.

Then we did some research into the backgrounds of one of the editors… and found she was involved in some pretty offensive cultural appropriation, namely, stealing songs and stories from Native Americans and misrepresenting them; some pretty serious misappropriation has been going on due to her writings. So we realised we could not be associated with that, and elected to publish one version on our website, with a more thoroughly footnoted and expanded version to come later.

One of the reasons there aren’t as many footnotes in this piece is that the editors of the anthology didn’t want footnotes. We will fix that in the future. Though we are kind of dreading what will appear in a book edited by appropriators and exploiters, we are grateful that the project inspired us to write this piece. So, silver lining and all :)

To read the essay, please visit here.

January 18, 2013

Gaol Naofa Relaunches and Celebrates Five Years

Fáilte!

While it may seem we’ve been quiet for a while, much has been happening behind the scenes as we’ve celebrated five years as an organisation. Our council has been very busy, creating new content for this site, as well as for private use by the members of Gaol Naofa. All of the site documents have been updated and restructured. While much of this site will still be familiar to our long-term readers, there is a lot of new material here.

Notably, we have substantially revised and expanded The Gaol Naofa FAQ into an 89 page pdf document that addresses many of the common questions about Gaelic Polytheism and, specifically, our Gaelic Polytheist Lifeway (Ár nDóigh Bheatha Ildiach is Gaelach / Ar Dòigh-Beatha Ioma-Dhiadhach Ghàidhealach) as practiced by the core members of Gaol Naofa.

New articles include “Rowan and Red Thread: Magic and Witchcraft in Gaelic Cultures” (pdf) — an in-depth look at practices and terminology in both historical and contemporary Gaelic cultures, as well as an upcoming piece on the Triple Flame of Brigid.

Adding to our series of practical, how-to articles, we have slightly revised the Offerings article, and written a companion piece on Prayer (pdf). The prayer article includes some new translations of liturgy, as well as practical instructions on building a Gaelic Polytheist practice.

Members will note that there is a new, members-only, Gealach Ur Rite, which has been completely rewritten to include traditional liturgy, ritual, and an accompanying article on the moon in Gaelic cultures. This will be available to renewing members in the new year.

We plan on opening up our membership process for new members after the activity of the Winter Holidays subsides a bit. In the meantime, you can get to know members of our community on our public Facebook group, where all who are interested in Gaelic Polytheism are welcome to come and chat with us, whether or not they are members of Gaol Naofa.

More coming soon!

December 11, 2012

Website Updates: New Content

We have three new articles up (two of which are tweaked versions of articles from the old site and one is a brand new article by our Leas-Uachtarán, Annie). They are:

Daily Rites – a short, but pithy, piece discussing the daily rituals found within Gaelic Polytheism.

A Gift for a Gift: Offerings – a straight-forward essay giving some background information on the history, types, and handling of offerings, plus it touches on the argument for taking omens.

A Beginner’s Guide to Old Irish Pronunciation – a wonderfully user-friendly introduction to Old Irish, which includes basics and a pronunciation guide of names, words and phrases.

We have also added some new music (Dúlaman, Gabhaim Molta Bride, Bothag na h-Airidh and Tha Bainn’ Aig Na Caoraich Uile) to the library but not all have phonetics or translations yet, if anyone can lend a hand there we’d very much welcome the help. And last but not least, we have a new header on the site showcasing Annie’s lovely photograph from Argyll.

March 24, 2011