Welcome! 

We are a group of individuals in the greater Philadelphia area dedicated to building a community of households of Celtic Polytheists in the Delaware Valley based upon the principles of Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism.  We sincerely welcome you here and we invite you to have a look around.

What we are about:

* Honoring the Pre-Christian Deities of those individuals who spoke a Celtic language, our ancestors and the spirits of the land.  We are animists and polytheists.  We acknowledge that a combination of animism and hard polytheism was the predominant religious expression amoung speakers of various Indo-European languages in Europe before the coming of Christianity.  We believe that spirits inhabit the rocks, trees and streams that surround us.  We also believe that all Deities are separate and distinct and are not archetypes nor an aspect of some greater monotheistic or duotheistic Deity as many other neo-pagans do.
  
* Maintaining a family hearth culture - meaning that the heart of our practice rests in our own individual household practices which we develop with our own family and around our own hearths.   It includes all members of a household (children, adults and adopted kin) who wish to participate.

* Developing a “Celtic Cosmology” and understanding of the physical and spiritual realms as “Land”, “Sea” and “Sky”.

*Acknowledging that both scholarship and seership is important in developing a spiritual path.   We strive to reconstruct practices demonstrated and expressed in mythological texts, archaeological and historical evidence and folklore.  However, to supplement these practices we also maintain the importance of personal revelation which cannot be verified by known sources, but which also does not contradict them.

* Observing the calendar of traditional Celtic celebrations including Samhain, Imbolc, Beltaine and Lunasa.

* Following a code of personal and group virtues which includes piety, honor and hospitality.

What we are not about:

* Wiccan or Neo-Druidic ceremonial practices which are based more upon Western Ceremonial Magic and Freemasonry rather than on the traditional practices of those individuals who spoke a Celtic language and lived in Europe before the coming of Christianity.  As such, we do not rely on neo-pagan writers such as Cunningham, Conway or Silver Ravenwolf to guide our spiritual pursuits.  Instead, we look to writings by scholars such as Miranda Green, Nora Chadwick and H.R. Ellis Davidson and combine that knowledge with the application of Reconstructionist Pagan principles to develop our own traditions.

* “Pan-Indo-European” practices such as those developed by Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF).  

* Eclecticism or the mixing of pantheons (for example honoring Zeus, Thor or Ganesha in the same ceremony as Brighid or Lugh).  We respect all cultures and believe that each deity should be honored in a culturally appropriate way by individuals who understand the culture and the intricacies of its deities and mythology.   While we acknowledge that some individual households may choose to honor non-Celtic deities, we do not do so as a group.

* An idea that we are the successors of ancient Celts.  We do not believe that we are the authentic and true heirs of a pre-Christian Celtic tradition.   We acknowledge that the only surviving native and "unfounded" Indo-European religious system is Hinduism. We simply strive to develop practices which may have reflected, to the best of our knowledge, the beliefs and practices of the pre-Christian individuals who happened to speak a Celtic language.