While it may seem we’ve been quiet for a while, much has been happening behind the scenes as we’ve celebrated five years as an organisation. Our council has been very busy, creating new content for this site, as well as for private use by the members of Gaol Naofa. All of the site documents have been updated and restructured. While much of this site will still be familiar to our long-term readers, there is a lot of new material here.If you happen to hang out on our Gaelic Polytheism group on Facebook, you'll already have seen the announcement, but otherwise: Gaol Naofa Uachtarán Treasa, Kathryn and I have been busy Doing Stuff over the past year or so in particular, updating and expanding the website and figuring out a few things. There's more in the works, but we're at the point where the first lot of Stuff is ready to be unleashed. You can read the proper announcement at the Gaol Naofa link above, or on our new page over on Facebook, but here's an overview of what's we've put out so far:
The Gaol Naofa FAQ
The link above will take you to the main page, click on the link for the pdf file (we had to put it in a pdf because it clocks in at a good 90 pages long). The FAQ has been substantially expanded and outlines the nitty gritty of our organisation and our vision for it, and it also goes into some of our beliefs and outlooks on certain areas. In that sense it might be of interest to Gaelic Polytheists in general, but I hope it's clear that the contents of the FAQ (as with everything else we've done) speaks to our own points of view as an organisation and no one else's. Even though some other groups might overlap with us in places, that doesn't mean one size fits all.
Then there's:
Rowan and Red Thread: Magic and Witchcraft in Gaelic Cultures
Again a pdf (I think it's fair to say that the length of this one is pretty much my fault), clocking in at a more modest, but still meaty, 57 pages... We cover the general gist of the article in some of the questions in the FAQ, so this offers a bit more of our thoughts on this, with plenty of references and historical goodness. It's a huge area, though, and this is really only scratching the surface, for sure.
And then we have:
Prayer in Gaelic Polytheism
Another pdf but a bit shorter than the two above. The title is fairly self-explanatory, so we go into how we approach prayer and how we make our prayers, and the kinds of sources we look to and how we deal with the problems those sources present. Some examples of prayer are given, with a suggested reading list at the end as well.
As you'll see on the articles page, the Offerings article has been slightly overhauled recently, and there is an article from Treasa and Kathryn yet to come (soon!). Elsewhere on the site you'll find that the reading list has been expanded, and the "About" pages have been overhauled too, and to celebrate five years of the organisation, Treasa has given the website a bit over a makeover with new headers and icon thingies...
A big thanks, once again, to everyone who helped us out and supported us during the first, second and however many final drafts we got to!