As 2015 dawns upon us, it dawned upon me to start utilizing this blog which I've had waiting for almost six years now. I had originally planned to record my experience going to college and how that interacted with my Gaelic Polytheist way of life, but college tends to throw you through a loop and mess up any plans you had for life before you started school. So here I am, years later, with the sudden urge to put this blog to use, for myself and for any future readers that may find my posts of value.
A little introduction for those of you who don't know me, my name is Brandon, some of you may know me through An Chuallacht Ghaol Naofa where I serve as hospitaller for the organization under the alias Breandán Mac Suibhne (Sweeney being my family name on my mother's side). I was raised in an Irish American family in Minnesota and my first exposure to religion outside of Catholicism and Buddhism (my father's family hailing from Vietnam) was when I was 8 years of age with my mother's exploration of neo-pagan religions and witchcraft, which set me on the path leading to now. While my mother left much of that behind (she now adheres to her own duotheistic idea of Christianity), I began reading various mythologies from different cultures at a young age and studied various neo-pagan religions until I began researching Celtic religions at the age of 14. I studied neo-Druidic religions and philosophy until my discovery of Celtic Reconstructionism in a book on witchcraft. I then began studying arduously and then joined Gaol Naofa in 2009 at the age of 17 after meeting the founder, Tomás Flannabhra, on forums like Mystic Wicks and BeliefNet. I went to school at the University of Minnesota Duluth for three years where I met my partner, Luke, of 5 years now and then I dropped out, due to various reasons, my dissatisfaction with the Anthropology program and inability to juggle full time work with full time school among them. Nowadays Luke and I spend much of our time growing our own vegetables and raising chickens on the south side of Lake Mille Lacs, though we decided this year to spend our first Winter away from Minnesota to work at the Winter Park Ski Resort here in Colorado.
I haven't really even attempted to develop much of a focus for this blog, though much of it will consist of my own musings and projects. I imagine when we return back home I'll begin posting more and more about our life in the woods as we make our way through the web of knowledge that makes up homesteading alongside my religious and cultural activities, which I'm sure will cross over into many of our projects in one way or another. I'm also quite passionate about language, culture, and travelling, so I imagine I'll have quite a range of subjects if I can just push myself to keep up with it! No promises, but we all start somewhere.
