"What exactly is Celtic Wicca?" is one of the questions we hear most often, at circle and on the forums. It's a fair question. The word Wicca gets used for a lot of different things, and the word Celtic gets used for even more. So here is how we understand it at the Church of The Eternal Circle: what we believe, how we practice and where the Celtic part comes in.
Where Wicca comes from
Wicca is a modern religion with old roots. It came into public view in England in the 1950s through Gerald Gardner and the people who worked with him, above all Doreen Valiente, whose poetry and liturgy (including the Charge of the Goddess) still shape circles all over the world. From England it crossed to the United States in the 1960s and has since grown into many traditions and lineages.
Wicca draws on older sources: European folk magic, ceremonial magic, the folklore collected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a deep love of the land. It's worth being honest, though, that Wicca as a religion took shape in the twentieth century. That doesn't make it any less real. A religion is alive because people practice it, not because of how old it claims to be.
What makes it Celtic?
Celtic Wicca is Wicca practiced with a Celtic heart. Our rituals follow the familiar Wiccan pattern, but the deities we honor, the stories we tell and the names we give the seasons come from the Celtic-speaking lands, particularly Wales and Ireland.
That means getting to know the medieval Welsh tales gathered in the Mabinogion, with Rhiannon, Arianrhod, Bran and Branwen. It means the story of Cerridwen, her cauldron of inspiration and the boy Gwion Bach who became the great poet Taliesin. It means Irish lore of the Tuatha Dé Danann: Brigid, the Dagda, Lugh. And it means taking part in folk customs like the Welsh Mari Lwyd, the horse-skull figure who goes wassailing from door to door in the dark of the year. At our circles we wake the Mari as winter comes on and put her back to sleep as spring returns.
We should also be clear about what Celtic Wicca isn't. It isn't a reconstruction of the religion of the ancient Druids. The ancient Celts left very little in writing about their own beliefs, and most of what we have was written down by Roman observers or, centuries later, by Christian monks. So we treat the old stories as a living well to draw from rather than a rulebook, and we try not to claim more for them than the evidence allows.
The Goddess and the God
Like most Wiccan traditions, we honor the Goddess and the God as the mother and father of our work. The Goddess is seen in the moon and the earth, and in her three faces of Maiden, Mother and Crone. The God is seen in the sun, the wild places and the grain: born at midwinter, in his full strength at midsummer, cut down with the harvest and born again.
Our tradition works with a Celtic pantheon rather than a mix of gods from everywhere. As our High Priestess wrote in Speaking the Language of the Craft of the Wise, gods are not interchangeable parts. You build a relationship with a family of deities over time, much as you would with people, and that relationship sits at the center of the practice. Prayer is asking and meditation is listening, and both take patience.
The elements and the circle
Wiccan ritual takes place inside a cast circle, a sacred space between the worlds that is made fresh each time. The circle is laid out by the four directions and their elements. In most Wiccan traditions, ours included, air belongs to the east, fire to the south, water to the west and earth to the north, with spirit at the center holding them together.
At circle we call on the guardians of the watchtowers of each direction to witness and guard the rite, and at the end we thank them and bid them farewell. The candles at the quarters are lights for those watchtowers, not the elements themselves. For many beginners the elements are the easiest place to start. You carry all four with you: the earth of your bones, the water of your blood, the air of your breath and the fire that keeps you warm and moving.
When the circle is asperged we chant together: "As above, so below. As within, so without. As the universe, so the soul." It's a good summary of the whole idea. What we do in circle is meant to ripple outward into the rest of our lives.
Ethics: harm none
Wicca has no commandments, but it does have the Wiccan Rede: "An it harm none, do what ye will." The word "an" is old English for "if", and it changes the meaning completely. The Rede isn't permission to do anything you like as long as you think nobody will get hurt. It asks you to weigh the consequences of what you do, for others and for yourself, before you act. That is a heavier responsibility than any list of rules.
Many Wiccans also hold to the Threefold Law, the belief that whatever you send out returns to you three times over. Whether you take it literally or as a reminder that actions have consequences, it points in the same direction. In daily life our ethics look fairly ordinary: be honest, keep your word, respect other people's paths and privacy, and never work magick on another person without their consent.
Trees, Ogham and the Celtic year
Trees hold a special place in Celtic Wicca. Ogham is an early medieval Irish alphabet, cut as strokes and notches along the edges of standing stones from around the fifth century, and medieval Irish scholars linked many of its letters with trees: birch, rowan, alder, willow, ash, hawthorn, oak, holly, hazel and more. Many witches today use the Ogham for meditation and divination, and some of the most thoughtful posts on our forums have been about it.
You'll notice that many of our full and new moon circles carry tree names too, like an Elder full moon in December or a Hazel new moon in late summer. These follow the tree-month calendar that many Celtic-minded witches use. That calendar comes from the poet Robert Graves and his book The White Goddess, published in 1948, rather than from ancient sources. It's a beautiful way to get to know the trees through the year. It just isn't ancient, and it doesn't need to be.
The same is true of the Welsh names we use for the festivals. Calan Mai, Gŵyl Awst and Calan Gaeaf are genuine old Welsh calendar days. The four Alban names for the solstices and equinoxes, such as Alban Arthan and Alban Eilir, came to modern pagans through the Welsh literary revival of the late eighteenth century and the Druid groups that followed. Both are part of the living tradition we have inherited.
How we practice at the CEC
For more than twenty years we have held teaching circles for the Sabbats and many Esbats in New Paltz. Every circle has the same bones. We smudge and bless everyone coming in, call the directions, cast the circle, call the God and Goddess and share the chalice and blade. Then comes the magick of the evening, which might be a teaching, a craft or a celebration, followed by cakes and ale, thanks and the opening of the circle. Because the shape stays the same, newcomers soon learn the calls and can give their full attention to what is happening.
We are a church as well as a circle. Our Priesthood grows from within the congregation through years of dedication and hard work, and we take that responsibility seriously. If you would like to know what a first visit looks like, our page on our Wiccan fellowship in New Paltz explains who is welcome and how to join us.
Where a beginner can start
If all of this calls to you, there's no need to do everything at once. A few things that have helped others:
- Go outside. Spend a few minutes outdoors every day and notice the trees around you, where the sun rises and what the moon is doing. The Wheel of the Year makes far more sense once you've watched it turn.
- Keep a notebook. Write down what you notice, what you read and what you dream. In time it becomes your first Book of Shadows.
- Read carefully. Start with writers who handed the Craft down faithfully, such as Doreen Valiente, Janet and Stewart Farrar and Kate West. Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner is a gentle place to begin. For the lore, read a good translation of the Mabinogion alongside a collection of Irish myths.
- Find people. Wicca is a mystery path, and some of it can only be learned by standing in circle with experienced practitioners.
Our Welcome Mat thread New to Celtic Wicca - where do I begin? has more good advice from members, and you're welcome to add your own questions there. And if you'd like to see Celtic Wicca in practice, the Our Circles page explains how to join one of our circles.
Blessed be.