Celtic/Wiccan/Pagan. Someone tell me what they are and how they differ please.?

Question

And please don't use a large mass of words no one's ever heard of. I like to think I have a pretty good vocabulary but I don't think I have the tolerance for Neoschmahoffagin Necropothelancing Geriatropically-Schpoofled Hamaniblah

no well i knew a wiccan and he said they believed in a god and a goddess NOT a worshipper of satan or of a certain god like jesus or anything i guess. but dont just assume they worship any satanic figure. they do not, i just want a further explanation of what thye do believe and practice, an overview of each please

well i kind of want to know all that. in simple terms, what they believe and practice, and a comparison between the three. thank you for being at least a little helpful kim marie when everyone else was being narrow-minded

i am in a way looking into these, i find them intriguing as far as i've heard of them and am currently i suppose 'agnostic'. i'm pretty open to anything right now.

well thank you, the (hopefully first) three, this is at least progress. so, anyone got anything else? i'm still curious

Answer 1

Whoa you're getting some rotten answers. Some pretty good ones, too though- listen to the people who mention language families.

Anyway to elaborate the terms Celtic wiccan and Celtic pagan on top of what others have said:

A Celtic wiccan would be someone who practices wicca with Celtic influence. Their images of god and goddess are likely to be taken from Celtic mythology. Or they may be taken from what the person THINKS is Celtic mythology, which is more common. (drat you, Margaret Murray!) They'll celebrate all eight of the neopagan holidays and probably celebrate the full moon, while they're at it. They'll probably also do magick in a Wiccan flavor, casting circles and using four elements. Wiccans by their very nature are inclined towards eclecticism, since the religion itself is derived of so many sources. The addition of the word "Celtic" simply denotes a particularly strong area of influence for that particular person.

Someone who identifies as a Celtic Pagan is more likely to be polytheistic and draw from the myths of the Celtic countries themselves, eschewing wicca and anything wicca- incfluenced. They may drop the germanic holidays and celebrate only four- the holidays we can verify the Celts actually celebrated. (those would be the hard to pronounce ones.) They probably won't spell magic with a k, and are more likely to deal with the THREE elements of land, sea, and sky. (The four elements are Greek in origin.)

Hope I could help, as well.

Answer 2

The Celts were a classification of people based not on race but rather language. They were the Indo-Europeans that settled in northern Europe. When most people think of the Celts they think of Ireland and Scotland. However the hub of the Celtic people was in Gaul which we know today as France. Their was no unified religion of the Celts. They were tribal by nature with each group of tribes or clans having their own practices and their own gods. These may or may not have been shared by any of the other tribes.

Wicca is an initiatory mystery tradition from the New Forest area of Great Britain. It is not Celtic. Most of what is passed as Wicca today is a form of Neo-Paganism loosely based on Wicca. Wicca does not allow for self initiation and you don't get to pick and choose which gods you invoke in a Wicca rite.
http://www.newwiccanchurch.net/
http://www.wargoddess.net/essay/btw.php
http://www.tradwicca.org
http://bruncreate.www8.50megs.com/wicca/wiwicca.html
http://www.geocities.com/wyrmweb/main.htm

Pagan is a larger term that today is generally used as a catch all for any belief or practice that is not Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. True Paganism is polytheistic. Neo-Paganism is a mixing of concepts such as pantheism, panentheism, etc. with traditional Paganism. It gained a great deal of momentum in Victorian England where it became very popular with the artists and intelligentsia of the time. Most of the Paganism practiced in the U.S. today is Neo-Paganism.

Answer 3

You have some very good explanations already, but my 2bits of a simple explanation is this..

Celtic - is a heritage title, for example I am of Celtic descent, I have ancestors from the celtic regions of Europe.

Wiccan - A follower/practioner of Wicca, which is a Form of Witchcraft which has been more popularized in by Gardener and Alexander

Pagan - a person who is not Christian or Jewish. Lately there has been talk to modify this definition to include not Muslim as well since it is rapidly moving up the religious ranks. Also I've found like myself, pagan is an all-over description of some witchs that follow many paths.

I hope this helps, even just a little, I'm one of those odd ducks that uses the classification of Celtic Pagan :) Feel free to drop me a note anytime about it :)

Answer 4

There all pretty much the same, actually. They all believe in gods and goddesses, magic spells, have 8 holidays, etc. Most ceremonies take place in a circle drawn on the floor or ground. There are candles, incense, and altar, a chalice, etc.

Wicca was started by Gerald Gardner in New Forrest England around 1950. Later some people made there own versions of Wicca. Most Wiccans are solitary and don't worship as part of a group. Neopagans are essentially the same thing, but they don't like the Wiccan label.

Gardner was a nudist & masochist and basically created Wicca as a sex cult. Followers nowadays like to forget that part, and instead fantasize they have magical powers (they don't).

Adian Kelly wrote a book on the history of Wicca called "Crafting The Art of Magic" in the 1980's. Wiccans had a fit when it was published, and pressured Llewyllyn to take it out of print. It was supposed to be the first in a series of books. I think Adian Kelly probably summed it up best when he said this about the Gardnerian "Book of Shadows", the closest thing Wicca has to a sacred book:

" [M]any of the Book of Shadows rituals did not exist in 1954 (when Witchcraft Today was published) but instead were still being written. [T]he major sources from which the rituals had been constructed included: (a) Mather's edition of the Greater Key of Solomon; (b) Aleister Crowley's Magic in Theory and Practice; (c) Leland's Aradia (d) some Masonic rituals akin to those described by Duncan and those of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (aside from those transmitted by Crowley; and (e) Margaret Murray's The Witch Cult in Western Europe. There were also bits and pieces from other works by Leland, Jane E. Harrison, Gilbert Murray, James Frazier, and other great classicists from the 19th century. That accounted for EVERYTHING in the rituals! There was nothing left that differed in any important way from what you can find in those sources- - but that is NOT at all what Gardner had claimed!"

It's a religion where anything can be added in, where the followers mistakenly think they have magic powers, and it's not older than rock and roll, even though it's called the "Old Religion". Authors like Gavin and Yvonne Frost, Silver Raven Wolf, Raymond Buckland, Scott Cunningham crank out books about how to get love, money, and above all else "protection". The Frost's Magic Power of White Witchcraft says "Witchcraft Can Make You Rich in a Ghetto" according to the title of chapter 11. However, the Frosts themselves aren't rich. Coincidentally, they claim to have taken a "vow of poverty" according to one of their webpages, to explain why they apparently can't make their spells work either.

When I visited England (the birthplace of Wicca) in May, I found it was practiced mostly by juvenile deliquents, much the same way Satanism is here in the U.S. No one seems to take it seriously over there. An very knowldgeable historian I talked to in Kent, when asked about Wicca, told me I should try a pub!

Eventually Ronald Huitton wrote his own history of Wicca, called "Triumph of the Moon". Hutton is a history professor at Oxford, so he is not easliy dismissed. Even though some Wiccans have realized their history is a sham, they still want to cling to the "witch" fantasy by calling it a "reconstructionist movement". But you can't reconstruct something which never existed in the first place. Even so, these types still seem to think to their religion being thousands of years old.

Answer 5

"Celtic" is a word coined by linguists to describe a group of Indo-European languages. It's from the Greek _Keltoi_ (later borrowed into Latin as _Celtae_), which apparently came from a native Celtic word, although what that actually was and what it meant is still a matter of debate. These are the languages that are spoken in what is now Ireland, Britain, Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, and the Isle of Manx, although they were once spoken through much of Europe. The word Celtic has slowly come to also describe the cultures of these peoples.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Celtic

A person calling themselves Celtic can have many different meanings. It could be a person who speaks a Celtic language, a person who lives in one of those areas, one who has ancestors from those areas, one who practices a religion based on the religion of the peoples in those areas, or one who uses the word because it just "sounds cool" (Yes, people actually do this and it angers those who are living in these countries).

I follow one of many Celtic paths. This describes it better than I can:
http://paganachd.com/faq/index.html
This is a nutshell of some of my personal beliefs/practices:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ak8c3a9_iDDamWzjaE65NObsy6IX?qid=20060826151430AAZSSKd

A Wiccan is one who follows the particular neo-pagan religion of Wicca. A Wiccan may or may not worship Celtic deities. Very little of Wicca was borrowed from the Celtic cultures. For a couple of good articles on this:
http://www.clannada.org/wicca.php
http://wicca.timerift.net/not_celtic.shtml
For a good article on the history of Wicca:
http://www.geraldgardner.com/History_of_Wicca_Revised.pdf

In our modern context, those who use the word Pagan to describe themselves usually mean that either they believe in more than one deity or that they do not believe in Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. A Wiccan is one type of neo-pagan. Since Celtic refers to a language and culture, a person who is Celtic may be any religion.
Hope this helped without boring you too much.

Answer 6

Celtic is not a religion, it denotes a particular section of people of which Irish and Scottish could be said to be a part of, much in the way some speak Gaelic. There are people who take a Celtic view of wicca, incorporating celtic Gods and Goddesses in their practices.

Wiccan describes people who follow Wicca, and Earth based religion stemming from Paganism, and mostly created by Gerald Gardner.

Paganism is the 'tree' of which Wicca, Witchcraft and Druidism came from. It is a nature and earth based religion, which reveres all things alive, and often is polytheistic - meaning we have more than one God or Goddess.

Answer 7

Unfortunately, something here is lost in the translation. Please clarify if (1) are you looking for a definition of each culture in simple terms? or (2) an explanation of the magik beliefs? or (3) a comparison between them each belief of magik or culture? Here in lies your problem. Blessed Be.

*** Devil worship and Satanism are far different categories than listed above *****

Answer 8

They're all NOT the same

Celtic: group of people now known as Irish today
Wiccan: group of Earth worshippers that at times borders witchcraft
Pagan: They don't believe in God

You could be all three

ps Da Last Pagan King of Ireland probably was ordered Kill by King James ..... you know as The Bible KJ version

Answer 9

"Celtics" they are the one who assumes the function of story telling and memorizing long and heroic poems. while "Pagan" they are people or tribe that un Baptised and they praised in nature they don't believe in Gods....i forgot about Wiccans hehehe :p

Answer 10

There is no real difference they are all worshiping the devil, the prince of evil. You do not want to be involved with people who are in any of the groups.