So this was mentioned on an intro thread but I looked into it a bit more and think it could do with a thread here.
The Celtic Tantra site is run by
Marta and Robert Emmitt. Marta claims to have Native American roots, though she doesn't give any more detail. They go into some background of how they came to Tantra (I don't know enough about that to comment, sorry) and mention the fact that their teachings are also inspired by a "Medicine Woman" who runs events at the place they hold their own at (link below).
The whole "Celtic" Tantra mixed with dubious claims of Native ancestry and medicine wheels (etc) is bad enough, but they're full on charging for pay to pray as well. They promote events based around a
"Celtic Year" that's nothing more than the generic Neopagan Wheel of the Year, but they describe the calendar as being "like a native American medicine wheel." There's a reference to explain this at the bottom of the page:
"A "Medicine Wheel" is the way that a number of American tribes organize knowledge through the use of sophisticated circular patterns of analogy, in which each category of knowledge being arranged is assigned its point on the wheel of directions. See, for example, Leo Rutherford, The View through the Medicine Wheel: Shamanic Maps of How the Universe Works, O Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84694-108-5. Rutherford gained much of his understanding from the teachings of the Deer Tribe. On the printed page, the convention is often to orient such wheels the way we do maps, with North at the top of the page, but of course this is only a convention."
Which doesn't sound too convincing itself.
For their next event the Celtic Tantra people are charging up to
£250 per head so this doesn't come cheap. These events are held at place called
Hazel Hill Wood, which styles itself as a "conservation retreat" and sells all kind of appropriative ceremonies (including ones run by their "Medicine Woman" friend, Agatha Manouche. Her next event is called "Ways of Women, Ways of Sisterhood, Medicine Women"). There are
events held elsewhere too, up in Cumbra (the Lake Districts) and down in Devon where Marta and Robert are based.
There isn't a whole lot of detail about what they get up to but I think given the dodgy-sounding claims it's worth looking into a bit more. None of what they're saying as far as their "Celtic Year" is reliable so I doubt anything else is.
