CELTIC NATION USA GOALS

Celtic Nation USA supports the efforts of groups and individuals consistent with our 3 specific goals in the following areas:

CELTIC LANGUAGE - Without a language, a culture and its spirituality are dead. With this important realization,  Celtic Nation USA believes the most important goal should be the preservation of extant Celtic languages.  We also support the efforts of organizations, groups and individuals to scholarly preserve and reconstruct Celtic languages.  Celtic Nation USA lends its financial support to organizations like An Comunn Gàidhealach America.  Our site offers links to Celtic language websites, organizations, web groups, recommended books, tools, and individual teachers, while also encouraging the learning and fluent use of one or more of the 6 extant Celtic languages.

CELTIC CULTURE - Without a living culture to define a worldview, language and spirituality have little meaning beyond definitions of words. Whether one is influenced by a desire to study early Celtic traditions, language and culture, or that which exists today, one must due so with respect to the cultures themselves.  Another Celtic Nation USA goal is to support the existing Celtic cultures.  To aid in this journey, Celtic Nation USA lends its financial support to organizations like the Celtic League, and the Celtic Studies Association of North America, while also providing helpful resources through its own web presence.  We support the efforts to accurately learn more about the traditions, languages, and spirituality of extant Celtic cultures as well. More specifically, we are also supportive of sound efforts to revive a love and respect for all of this among those of us in the States currently disconnected from this culture who find ourselves longing to become closer to what has been lost by us.

CELTIC SPIRITUALITY - It is impossible to approach a spirituality of a minority culture authentically by ignoring its language and the culture itself. Many modern spiritual movements today  who identify themselves as Celtic Pagans are attracted to honoring the Gods and Goddesses associated with Celtic traditions.  and try to do so from outside Celtic cultures. However, because most of these groups, as well as their members, are born outside Celtic cultures and non-fluent with its languages, the core assumptions of such groups too often become problematic when the worldview associated with Celtic cultures and their languages is ignored or marginalized, often becoming alien to the very thing they claim to represent.  Spirituality in early Celtic cultures was not something that was separate from daily life.  It was something bound up in daily tasks and routines, so much to the point that there is no known separate word for "religion" in Old Celtic.  Even today, in some areas of living Celtic cultures, this fact is still evident.  So the third Celtic Nation USA goal is supporting Celtic spirituality, both Christian and pre-Christian. We do this by speaking out against common misinformation, by helping people put aside their assumptions and projections of non-Celtic cultures on real Celtic cultural spiritual values, and by hosting cultural and language resources to help assist developing a Celtic worldview.

* "Celtic Nation USA" is not responsible for web content of off-site links. Listing of links is for a public service only and does not  infer reciprocal endorsements by either "Celtic Nation USA" or the linked sites in question. 

Last Updated: 08/14/08