mika wrote:
>> Documents in Ireland go back only to the 5th century CE.
>
> Alright, those historical documents would fall into the category of
> 'verifiable'. So there may be evidence that the philosophy currently
> practiced evolved from something that dates back to about 1500 years
> ago.
That's not the only source. I have a copy of the Maitreyasamiti Texts
in Tocharian A, also from the 5th century, written on paper, but in
this case, its a conversation between the Living Buddha and the Gautamid
Queen of Kucha. Most of it relates to the appropriate way for her to
perform traditional Aryan rituals.
EW Barber, The Mummies of Urumchi, an archeofabrics expert, shows us
samples of Tocharian cloth. Woven from sheep with European DNA. In
Twill, plaid, and even classic Tartan. This is but one of a myriad of
cultural ties to prehistoric Celtic culture.
>> The oral tradition goes back thousands of years before that.
>
> That oral tradition, on the other hand, falls into the category of
> "unverifiable".
Not egzactly. There are a number of Tocharian characteristics shared
with Western Celts that must date from the time they went East when
other Celts went West 6000 years ago. Along with the fabric arts we see
the similarity in bronze belt buckles, jewelry, and pottery.
> It may be a wonderful tradition, the practices may be valuable and
> worthwhile and personally sacred and all that good stuff, but
> "ancient" and based on "thousands of years" of oral tradition, that
> can't be confirmed, and is so highly unlikely that to claim it to be
> fact is just so much fantasy and self-delusion. *Even if it were
> true*, it is not verifiable, so if you are truly interested in
> experiencing the world as it really is rather than as you wish it
> would be, why engage in that sort of speculation to begin with? What
> difference does it make if what you call "Druidry" was passed down for
> thousands of years through oral tradition, or if it was created in the
> 1960's? Those aren't rhetorical questions. If you can't answer them,
> then you are unwilling to examine the nature of your own beliefs.
>
> The worth and usefulness of any philosophy and set of practices is not
> dependent on its lineage, it is dependent on how it applies to one's
> life personally, right now. I'm not merely picking on you or on
> modern Druids, I say the same thing to Wiccans, kabbalists, and anyone
> else who claims what they do is based on an ancient oral tradition.
> The question of whether it is or isn't an ancient tradition is
> irrelevant. The relevant question is why does it matter, and if it
> doesn't matter, why perpetuate unverifiable claims based on
> speculation (and wishful thinking)? Why? If you drop the 'ancient
> oral tradition' claim, does the philosophy lose its value? If so,
> what actually has value, the philosophy and practices themselves, or
> the personal (ego) satisfaction of doing something "ancient"?
The Aryans who went East, into the cattle business on the Steppes with
the world's first domestic horses took most of their culture with. We
see Tocharian is a centum language like all the other West Europeans,
not satem, like Sanskrit.
Moreover, the dry deserts of Central Asia preserved tons of texts that
were trucked out by British, French, and German expeditions 100 years
ago, which have mostly been ignored in European museum cellars because
of the wars and isolationist policy of Communism. But now, there is an
ongoing effort by the British and Chinese to put 100,000 jpgs of these
texts online. I've read the French have already published a collection
of "magic spells and herbal recipes" gleaned from these ancient texts.
This is the real McCoy, not some Druid or Wiccan fantasy. There's been a
lot found in the Kara Kum and Taklamakhan deserts. I read of a mailbag
found the Kara kum, with letters written on paper; posted in 331 AD. The
Silk Road has been in business a damn long time, and bandits just threw
the documents away in the sand when they hit a caravan. A lot of it is
still there waiting for sand dunes to move on over to expose them again.
As for philosophy, when the Chinese emperor Tang Tiazong sent Xuan Zang
to retrieve original Buddhist texts in the 7th century, Zang started out
his search thru documents in Kucha, spending 6 months there having
copies made and sent back. In the 1st millenium, and even before, Kucha
had been receiving books as part of Silk Road Trade, and engaged in the
business of making translations from among 20 different languages of
Buddhist, Taoist, Vedic, Confucian, Tibetan, Zoroastrian, Manichean, and
other spiritual traditions. And because of the cold dry desert there, a
lot of it has survived.
Right out of "Indiana Jones", in 1974, when Taoist monks were cleaning
out a Buddhist temple, they found a false wall and 30,000 scrolls. I do
not blame you for being skeptical of the fluff bunny crap sold at book
stores, but there are, in fact, original sources to look at.
Down at the bottom of
http://daybrown.org/artifax/artifax.html there are
jpgs of Silk Road merchants from the 5th century at Kucha. Even tho they
are dressed in Chinese silks, you see they are white guys.
