A Pagan’s Comments on Saint Patrick’s Day

English Catholic missionary known as Saint Patrick

In spite of my Irish ancestry, I’ve never paid much attention to Saint Patrick’s Day (March 17), except as a day to stay off the roads if possible. But today, I ran across some interesting comments about the true origins of Saint Patrick’s Day, thanks to Claire Mulkieran, who describes herself as a systems security designer and a pagan descended from a long line of witches.

Given that cultural perspective, Mulkieran has an interesting contrarian take on “Saint” Patrick, a fifth-century English Catholic missionary to Ireland, regarded as the patron saint of Ireland. Mulkieran makes some fascinating claims about Patrick. It would be interesting to look into them further, although I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they are historically accurate. In her 17 March 2009 blog post, “Pagans and Saint Patrick’s Day: The Real Meaning of the Holiday,” Mulkieran writes:

If most people know anything about Saint Patrick, it’s that his one claim to fame is that he drove the snakes from Ireland. What most people don’t realize is that the snake is a Pagan symbol, and that the snakes referred to in the Saint Patrick mythos are not meant in the literal sense, but refer to Pagans; i.e., Saint Patrick drove the Pagans (specifically, the Celts) out of Ireland (although it could be said, and has been argued, that much has been done in Saint Patrick’s name, but that the man himself was relatively unimportant). So what is celebrated on Saint Patrick’s Day with drinking and much cavorting is, ironically, the spread of Christianity throughout Ireland and the subjugation and conversion of the Celts.

She also makes a connection between Saint Patrick’s Day and Easter, writing:

It wasn’t arbitrary that the day honoring Saint Patrick was placed on the 17th of March. The festival was designed to coincide, and, it was hoped, to replace the Pagan holiday known as Ostara; the second spring festival which occurs each year, which celebrates the rebirth of nature, the balance of the universe when the day and night are equal in length, and which takes place at the Spring Equinox (March 22nd this year [2009]). In other words, Saint Patrick’s Day is yet another Christian replacement for a much older, ancient Pagan holiday; although generally speaking Ostara was most prominently replaced by the Christian celebration of Easter (the eggs and the bunny come from Ostara traditions, and the name “Easter” comes from the Pagan goddess Eostre).

I’ve already written about the connection between Easter and older pagan practices in my entry “Is Easter named after the pagan goddess Eostre?” Mulkieran also credits Patrick with using the shamrock to teach people about the triune god worshipped in christendom’s religions.

ARK — 9 March 2013

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Reflection on Pascal’s Wager

I was reflecting on Pascal’s Wager about God, which as  I understand it goes something like this:

If you believe in God and it turns out that there really is a God, you win because when you die you get an eternal reward.

If you don’t believe in God and it turns out there really is a God, you lose because when you die you get an eternal punishment.

If you believe in God and it turns out there really is no God, you lose, but the worse that happens is you waste time when you are alive and when you die you are just dead forever.

There’s a lot to say about this whole chain of reasoning, but my basic thought is that it would be foolish to think simply believing in God is enough to get the eternal reward in any case. Accepting Pascal’s reasoning in a simplistic way could lead you to just throw in your lot with the first religion that comes your way — you could end up wasting your time while you are alive and then be dead forever anyway. It’s certainly worth investigating whether there really is a God and then making a diligent search and a reason-based investigation to find out who that God is and what he expects of us — that information is available.

ARK — 22 April 2011

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