#cr faq

[juniper-divination-and-witchery]

Celtic Reconstructionism: What It Is, How It Differs from Wicca, and Where to Start

If you've spent any time in Celtic pagan spaces, you've probably noticed that "Celtic" covers a lot of ground. Wicca with Irish or Welsh deities, to any number of organizations that claim the title Druid or Neo-Druid. It can be hard to tell what pre-Christian Celtic people actually practiced when so many of these groups claim ancient heritage without presenting much to back it up. Celtic Reconstructionism emerged in the early 1990s to disentangle truth from fiction, using historical scholarship, archaeology, medieval literature, and living folklore rather than modern invention to build its practice.

This is the first article in a series on Celtic Reconstructionism. Later articles cover the theology, the calendar, the primary sources, and how CR intersects with folk practices. This article will cover the foundation: what CR is, how it differs from Wicca and neo-paganism broadly, and where to start if you want to practice.

What Celtic Reconstructionism Actually Is

Celtic Reconstructionism (CR) is a polytheistic, animistic religious movement. It was formally named in 1992, emerging from a network of practitioners in the 1980s who were frustrated with what "Celtic" paganism actually looked like in practice: standard Wiccan ritual structure with Irish deity names dropped in.

The foundational text is the CR FAQ (formally titled Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism: An Introduction) authored collectively by Kathryn Price NicDhàna, Erynn Rowan Laurie, C. Lee Vermeers, and Kym Lambert ní Dhoireann. Published online around 2006 it defines CR as "an effort to reconstruct, within a modern Celtic cultural context, the aspects of ancient Celtic religions that were lost or subsumed by Christianity." The full text is free at paganachd.com, and a print edition is on Bookshop.org.

CR covers multiple Celtic cultures: Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Gaulish. This series focuses on Irish and Gaelic CR.

The Core Methodology

CR is as much a methodology as it is a religion. The practice works outward from primary sources. Medieval Irish manuscripts, Brehon law, mythology, the academic scholarship that interprets those sources, and living folklore (the Dúchas archive, folk customs gathered from living communities) fills in texture and continuity. Personal spiritual experience is accepted, but it gets labeled as such and can't override established lore.

The informal CR motto is "Show me." Claims require evidence and reasoned argument. Which is intentionally higher bar than you'll find in most contemporary pagan traditions.

CR is not purely academic, though. The CR FAQ is explicit that "both scholarship and experiential, ecstatic spirituality are necessary on the CR path." Practices like imbas (poetic inspiration) and aisling (vision or prophetic dream) exist alongside the research, not in opposition to it.

How CR Differs from Wicca and Neo-Paganism

Theology. CR is genuinely polytheistic. The gods are distinct, historically attested individuals with specific mythological histories. The Lord-and-Lady framework common in Wicca (often traced to Dion Fortune's principle that "all Goddesses are one Goddess") is not a part of Celtic traditions.

The Maiden/Mother/Crone framework, frequently applied to Celtic goddesses, is also not Celtic. It originated in Robert Graves's 1948 book The White Goddess and was created by him, it is not a historically accurate way to categorize deities (unless they are quite modern). Celtic goddesses are categorized by function, not age or reproductive status. Some are triple (Brigid and The Morrígan being the most common examples), but they are not young-mature-old progressions.

Cosmology. Where Wicca uses the four classical elements and four cardinal directions from Western ceremonial magic, CR works with a three-part cosmology: Land, Sea, and Sky. In Irish, talam (land), muir (sea), nem (sky). Erynn Rowan Laurie, one of CR's founding voices, describes the triple spiral as the symbol of this structure: "Oaths were sworn by land, sea and sky. All things lived within the circle." (A Circle of Stones, 2012)

Ritual structure. CR doesn't cast circles or use ritual knives to direct spirits. The CR FAQ explains why: these practices "come from late 19th century Ceremonial Magic," and "cold iron is offensive to the Aos Sí" in Celtic lore. Prayer, offering, and hospitality are the primary modes of engaging with the divine. Daily devotional practice, maintaining altars, making offerings, morning and evening prayers, takes precedence over periodic elaborate ritual.

Calendar. CR observes four Gaelic seasonal festivals: Samhain, Imbolc, Bealtaine, and Lughnasadh. The eight-spoked Wheel of the Year, which adds the solstices and equinoxes as named sabbats, is a Wiccan development. The names Ostara, Litha, and Mabon were coined by Wiccan author Aidan Kelly in 1974 and have no Celtic basis.

Ethics. CR doesn't follow the Wiccan Rede. Ethical principles come from Celtic sources: the Triads of Ireland, the Instructions of Cormac Mac Airt, the Gaulish ideal that "the people should worship the Gods, do no evil, and exercise courage." Honor price (lóg n-enech), truth-telling, and hospitality form the ethical core.

Five Misconceptions Worth Clearing Up

"You need Celtic ancestry." No. To quote the CR FAQ once again: "There is no ethnic or cultural requirement for anyone to practice CR — we do not believe that 'blood' has any bearing in spirituality." CR is explicitly anti-racist. Cultural engagement (learning the language, history, and traditions) matters much more than DNA.

"There was one unified Celtic religion." Over 200 Celtic deity names survive in the historical record, most tied to specific tribes or places, most appearing in only one region's sources. The Dagda is Irish. Epona is Gaulish. Cernunnos appears in Roman-era sculpture with no surviving mythological text explaining who he is. What looks like a unified tradition is a cluster of related but distinct cultures spread across a large geographic range and several centuries. CR takes that specificity seriously, which is part of why it resists treating "Celtic" as a monolithic identity.

"CR is just Celtic Wicca." Wicca is a mid-twentieth century religion developed by Gerald Gardner, with a duotheistic framework, a ritual calendar built around polarity, and ceremonial magic infrastructure. CR draws from pre-Christian Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Gaulish sources and is explicitly polytheistic. The two traditions make different claims about different things.

"If you can't read Old Irish/Welsh, you can't really do CR." Primary sources matter, but you don't need to be a medievalist to engage with them. Good English translations of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Táin Bó Cúailnge, and the Mabinogion exist and are accessible. Just do your due diligence to make sure you have good translations.

"CR people are hostile gatekeepers." Well... this reputation exists for a reason, but the actual position in the community is this: incorrect information gets challenged, ignorance gets welcomed. There's a difference. Practitioners will expect you to do your own research. Arrive with questions rather than expecting to receive doctrine, and you'll probably be fine.

Am I a Celtic Reconstructionist?

I engage seriously with CR scholarship. It's foundational for how I approach Irish folk magic practice. But I don't practice CR as a religion.

Erynn Rowan Laurie, in the preface to A Circle of Stones, says:

We cannot go back in time to ask the ancient Celts how they practiced their religions, meditated, or traveled into the Otherworlds. Their religious traditions did not survive intact into this century, much as we might desire to learn their secrets. Because of this, what is presented here can only be a partial reconstruction and an extrapolation based on best guesses and existing source material.

CR is a serious methodology for working with what's left. What you do with it, strict reconstruction, folk-informed practice, or somewhere in between, is your call. This series is here to give you enough grounding to figure out where you land.

Where to Start

The CR FAQ The foundational document of the movement, and the best single introduction to what CR actually is and isn't. The full text is free at paganachd.com.

Celtic Gods and Heroes — Marie-Louise Sjoestedt A French linguist writing about Celtic mythology without forcing it into a Classical framework. The CR FAQ recommends it as a first read because it shows you how Celtic deities function. Under 150 pages.

A Circle of Stones — Erynn Rowan Laurie The first book written to introduce CR practice. Laurie notes in the preface that she'd present some material differently now, so read it knowing it reflects where the movement was in 1995. The practical material on altars, offerings, and the three-realms cosmology holds up.

[wistfulwatcher]

Can you explain what is Critical Role? I feel like I don't get it yet.

I hear you. So, Critical Role is basically just watching a group of friends (who are all voice actors) playing Dungeons and Dragons together. This sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but I really don’t think you’ll ever “get it” if you haven’t played a tabletop RPG, until you just watch the show. I tried to read SO MUCH about the series to figure out what the hell it was actually like prior to watching (as I had never played anything like D&D), and it just does not make sense until you start watching.

That being said, my best attempt at a description is: a group of friends writing a story together in real time, utilizing improvisational acting to do so. You have the Dungeon Master (DM) who is like your “lead” writer, coming up with the setting, the main plot points, and the secondary, non-player characters (NPCs). Then you have your player characters (PCs) who are each handling only a single, main character. The DM describes the setting and an event, and the players act out how their characters react to it. 

If a PC tries to accomplish something (e.g., get information, fight someone, search for something, etc.) they roll dice to see if they’re successful, introducing a bit of luck/fate into the story - after all, you don’t want your characters to be able to accomplish every single thing they want, or there’s less conflict. (Players also have bonuses they can add to the number they roll on the die - this is more in-the-weeds, but essentially they get these bonuses based on what their character is trained in; for example, a character who is a fighter will get to add bonuses when they try to attack something.)

The current run of Critical Role (114 episodes, likely to end at 115) is all the same story (called a campaign). Each week they pick up the story, and continue telling it from where they left off the previous week. Like any story, the characters have a goal they are trying to accomplish over the course of story arc (for example, the first mission they are trying to accomplish at the beginning of the show is to find/rescue an NPC’s friend who has gone missing). Also like any (good) story, the characters have individual goals and fears and opinions that help or hinder the progress on that mission.

This is where an aspect of live theatre comes in; while the players all know the goal of the story, their characters have their own motivations which do not always align. So they are playing the character as the character would respond, and sometimes making a (glorious) mess of things. 

If this sounds interesting to you, I seriously recommend that you just try watching the first ~30 minutes of the first episode on youtube. It should help you understand how it works, and get a feel for what I mean by the collaborative storytelling/improvisational theatre combination. If you’ve never played an RPG before, the game mechanics will likely not make sense to you at first - it took me at least 30 episodes to start to actually understand how the game itself is really played, I swear - and that’s OK. (If it does make sense to you right away, all the better!) My advice is to not think of it like you’re watching a game; think of it like you’re watching any other TV show, just with a veryyyyyy unique format. 

I think I mostly said the same stuff I did in this post, but if this doesn’t answer your question check that out to see if maybe I explained it better in the past, lol. And by all means, please feel free to ask me questions if you still have them! This is kind of a general question (which is totally fine!), so I apologize if I’m not getting to the heart of it. 

(Can you tell I really, really wanna sell you on this show? It is, without question, the best combination of world-building, narrative, character development, and relationship development that I’ve ever gotten out of a story in any medium. Everything is so incredibly realistic and believable, and just pure FUN to watch. Nothing makes me more purely happy than watching these people that love and respect each other SO DAMN MUCH just have a ball and let us share that with them.) 

ETA: If you want to try watching D&D in a more digestible format first, I recommend HarmonQuest on VRV! The episodes are only 20 minutes, and half-animated, so if you are a visual person (like me) it might help for you to get the feel of what to picture during a game. They’re also geared toward beginners, I think - they have a guest star each week and they often are new to tabletop RPGs - and instead of having each player roll their own dice they have simplified that mechanic so only the DM rolls dice. It’s definitely geared more toward storytelling than gameplay, so it’s a good introduction :)

[wistfulwatcher]

i've been puzzled by Critical Role for such a long time like i know it's a bunch of people playing D&D but how does it WORK??? and how can you binge it?? i checked an episode at random and it wAS 4 HOURS LONG HOW ???

Oh man, I honestly had these same exact questions/concerns before I started watching. It literally took me 8 months to finally decide to give the show a try and I just cannot express how glad I am I did. It seems so massive and overwhelming, but I’m gonna legit answer these questions and only hijack your ask to gush about the show a little to tempt you in. 

how does it WORK???I knew veryyyy little about the mechanics of D&D going in. I’d never played any tabletop RPG (though I’d been interested in trying one for a long time), and pretty much my understanding was the really general ‘it’s whatever you can imagine/you do whatever you want to do and you roll dice to see if you’re successful’ etc., and the Community episodes where they play D&D. I was not quite sure how this was going to logistically be something you watch long term (as a non-participant) nor if I was going to be interested in/connect with characters that I can’t really see—I’m a pretty visual person. The idea of D&D made sense to me logically before I watched Critical Role, but I didn’t really get it until I started watching. So, tbh the best way to understand how it works is to give it a shot. (If you’re like me you won’t understand everything immediately—you pick it up as you go, and what you don’t understand of the mechanics really doesn’t matter because you can still understand the story they’re telling.)

Logistically speaking, everyone is visible on screen at the same time: 7-8 players on one half of the screen, and the Dungeon Master (DM), Matt, on the other side. Matt basically describes where the characters are (physically and narratively), and presents them with a catalyst (e.g., a character asking them for help, a villain attacking, etc.) that starts the action and the players decide how to respond. Really, the three core aspects in my opinion are 1) collaborative storytelling, 2) improvisational theatre, and 3) logic puzzles.

and how can you binge it?? Oh man. I mean this literally: I was watching/listening to Critical Role every single chance I got. I devoured it. Minimum of three episodes a day, and forcing myself to go to sleep and leave it. There are a lot of reasons I could binge it:

The storytelling. It’s so damn good. One of the most narratively rewarding stories I’ve watched or read in years. The world-building is fantastic and has no loose ends (while feeling MASSIVE and open and real). The plot is interesting, well-planned, and character-driven; everything feels meaningful in one way or another. The NPCs Matt introduces are all rich and compelling and unique. And—something I value immensely in story that I rarely get—there are consequences. Honest-to-god consequences for everything, and it always feels appropriate for the action, and well-timed (things don’t always bite you immediately! But also sometimes they do!). 

The players. They make such ridiculous, amazing choices that keep the story unpredictable but realistic. All of them have stellar comedic timing, but can also make me cry at the drop of a hat. They care so deeply about the characters and invest everything into the game/their interactions, and it just feels rewarding to invest my time in them and their world. Not a single issue connecting to the characters—they sell them 100%, but they do feel separate from the actors in a good way. 

Found family. The chemistry of this group is amazing—it’s a group of real life best friends and it feels like it, constantly—and it comes through in both the players’ relationships and the characters’. It’s just fun, and warm, and comforting to see people (real and fictional) who care as much about each other as these guys do. It’s just a good time. I see my friends in them, and I see friends I would like to have. 

You can have it on in the background. Logistically speaking, this is how you can binge it. While it can be something you sit and watch—trust me—it’s also essentially a filmed podcast, so you have have it in the background, or listen to it without video like I did while I was doing my dumb data entry job. (Bless my boss for letting me listen to stuff.) And, as much as the completist in me hates to say this, it’s likely you’ll tune out occasionally; the long fights can become number-crunching heavy/repetitive, and they do have some circuitous conversations when they’re planning what to do. 

You’ll wanna go into the tag. If you don’t care about spoilers this won’t mean as much to you, but I was dying to dip into tumblr to find fanart and headcanons and gifs and stuff, but I didn’t want to spoil myself. So there was that kind of urgent push for me to catch up AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!!! so I could go looking. Plus, because there is a new episode every single week, there’s none of that pesky urge to put off watching something until a hiatus, you know?

i checked an episode at random and it wAS 4 HOURS LONG HOW ???And sometimes more than that! They do SO MUCH STUFF each week (plot and character development and fighting and relationship progression and they don’t rush ANYTHING), they have to make so many decisions, and they just burn through those 3+ hours. (And they usually end up stepping in it somehow and having to make a detour to clean up their own mess, lbr.) Honestly, these episodes look fucking long, and they are, really. But the time stamps are a bit off at a quick glance; about the first half of the series has inflated run times—fans started sending in gifts they would open at the end, they did Q&As, they had subscriber milestone awards, etc.—so some of that is skip-able. It’s fun, but definitely stuff you can go back and watch once you’re caught up and out of content. There are also a few one-shot episodes here and there that you can also skip until you catch up. (Definitely worth watching though, later!)

So, it is a little less than it looks like. But truthfully, it just goes by really fast. You get sucked in. The action goes fast. You’re dying to see what happens next. The biggest issue I had with this series was starting it, so honestly for anyone interested in this series I recommend just watching the first episode. Don’t worry about reading up on what happened before they started streaming the show, don’t worry about knowing who the characters are, or what it’s going to look like. It won’t make full sense until you just dive in. (That being said, if you want a reference theargentumlupine’s primer is fantastic and was very comforting to have going in.) It seems unthinkable when you’re looking at 2384975987295 hours of canon, but as early as episode ~40 I started worrying about being out of episodes ❤

[wistfulwatcher]

Interested in starting Critical Role, but overwhelmed with how/where to start?

I know I’ve been blogging about this show non-stop since I started watching it, and if you know nothing about the series it can seem really strange and confusing to see on your dash. 

But, if you’ve been intrigued by anything about the show, and kind of want to check it out, now is the perfect time! There is a new campaign starting Thursday, January 11th. You can watch the show free on the Geek and Sundry Twitch channel during it’s livestream, starting at 7pm PT. Or, if that’s super late for you, you can find it on the Geek and Sundry website on the following Monday (15th), also for free. (You can also subscribe to their Twitch channel for $5 to watch any of their previous livestreams on demand at any time.)

If you know nothing about Dungeons and Dragons or tabletop RPGs in general, that’s totally OK! As I mentioned above, they are starting a new campaign, meaning all of the players will be new characters, and the story they will be telling will be entirely new. This campaign will be set in the same world as the first campaign (the world of Exandria), but it will be set on another continent, and it will be several decades after the first story. This means that you can start this campaign without knowing anything about Critical Role. It’s a totally fresh start, but the actors will be the same. 

If you’re kind of interested in checking it out but have any questions/concerns, feel free to message me! You can also check out these previous asks I had (x, x) about the series, which talk a bit about what you can expect, especially if you have no experience with tabletop games (like me). I hope you give the show a shot if you’re at all interested; it’s been such a source of pure joy for me since I started ❤