Historical Fact vs. Personal Gnosis

When I first came to Wicca, my gods were, in retrospect, little more than shadows. I can't even recall when I found names for them, only that it involved a lot of seeking and no small amount of frustration to get there. Even afterward, the gaining of knowledge was slow-going. My affinity is with the Celtic pantheon, although I hesitate to even use that term due to historical ambiguity: the gods of the Celts did not function within a single cohesive mythological system, just as the Celts themselves were not a single culture or society.

In earlier days I occasionally wrote about my gods. As my relationship with them became more complex, however, I felt less and less comfortable discussing them in public. Part of it involved the notion of personal gnosis. Teaching of spiritually revealed information to the general public is sort of like trying to teach people that chocolate is the best flavor of ice cream. There was also an issue with my personal experiences extending beyond academic information for these deities.

Academic information for Celtic deities is extremely problematic. The myths that have survived are often fragmentary, and none of them were written down by people who believed in them but rather by Christian monks preserving their cultural history. On top of which, many publications of these myths come from creatively translated and embellished Victorian works.

I'm a historian. I really like having a trustable chain of evidence. If my heart had drawn me to Greek or Roman gods this would have been far easier for me, but it didn't. Instead, I was drawn into a relationship with gods whose records are so convoluted that I am not even confident enough to recommend a particular book on Celtic mythology to others.

How then do I separate myself from those who "make it up as they go"? For one, I do not find my view of these gods to be outright conflict with their surviving mythology, such as it is. It's simply more detailed. Second, I can admit to myself that while my gods seem happy with the names I have ascribed to them, they may not be their "real names" (if gods even have such a concept, which I tend to think they do not). This gives me yet another reason, however, to not name them publicly in order to avoid confusion. I don't want anyone to come away with the idea that the Celts viewed these gods as I view them, when evidence does not support that fact. And I don't want anyone to feel they should question their own personal gnosis based on my personal gnosis.

Finally, what I absolutely will not do is become a prophet for these gods. There are certain Wiccans who have taken it upon themselves to preach "the truth" about their version of Celtic deities, versions that bear little resemblance to surviving mythology. I'm not going to question the truth of these individuals' personal experiences with such deities, but when they publicly proclaim personal gnosis as truth, they are setting themselves up as prophets. And when they insist others ignore the evidence available and testify that their version is the truthful Celtic version (sometimes accompanied by cherry picked nuggets of out-of-context information), they are taking on aspects of a dangerous cult leader.

Never ignore the evidence. Truth is the summation of all knowledge, not just the convenient pieces of it. That is not to say you should smash every piece of information you find into one gigantic and incoherent blob of theory, but you should examine every piece, weigh the value of the source, and acknowledge exactly why you weigh some pieces more heavily than others. Historical fact should not be treated as personal gnosis, and personal gnosis should never, ever be confused with historical fact.