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End of Life Symbol - Irish hospital (lemmy.world)

submitted 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by aeronmelon@lemmy.world to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world

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This is posted in the waiting room of an Irish hospital. Interesting glimpse into their culture.

The full text of the poster

This symbol has been developed by the Hospice Friendly Hospitals Programme to respectfully identify the End of Life.

This symbol is inspired by ancient Irish history; it is not associated with any one religion or denomination.

The white spiral represents the interconnected cycle of life, birth, life and death.

The white outer circle represents continuity, infinity and completion.

Purple has been chosen as the background colour as it is associated with nobility, solemnity and spirituality.

In this hospital the symbol may be displayed on a ward to add respect and solemnity during end of life or following the death of one of our patients.

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[-] dragnucs@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

Why do they need a symbol for that? Can't they just don't put any symbol? What does a symbol add?

[-] buffalobuffalo 3 points 3 hours ago

oh cool it's a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskelion

[-] angrystego@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

Could just use F

[-] lian_drake@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

A triskel... odd choice

[-] Uranhjort@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Kinky. Someone should probably have googled who else have adopted a triskelion as their symbol.

[-] illi@piefed.social 102 points 19 hours ago

not associated with any one religion

Celtic pagans beg to differ I imagine

[-] velma 39 points 19 hours ago

Yeah I was a bit surprised at that line since I had always understood it to be a Celtic pagan symbol.

Can’t upset the Christians I guess -_-

[-] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 19 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

It’s possible they meant their symbol and its use isn’t tied to any single belief. The symbol’s original meaning might be why they went out of the way to say so.

[-] velma 11 points 18 hours ago

This symbol has been in religious use for a long ass time.

They're just rebranding it.

[-] Skua@kbin.earth 7 points 12 hours ago

It has been in general use across loads of areas of Europe - not just Celtic ones, even accounting for how widespread Celtic cultures used to be - and also since thousands of years before Celtic cultures emerged as a distinguishable group. I don't think it'd be reasonable for any one group to claim ownership of it at this point

[-] SarahValentine 28 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Ah yes, "pagan", that famously singular religion.

[-] illi@piefed.social 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Paganism is incredibly diverse, I will give you that. "Pagan" is more of an umbrella term for many different beliefs with some common elements.

But christianity for example is also an umbrella term - you have catholicism (whis then has the many different orders and stuff under it), evanjelical christianity (with its many denominations) and orthodox church (which may or may not have different groups under it, I don't really know). And even two different people within one denomination of the larger group of christianity may hold a slightly different set of beliefs.

Paganism is just a larger umbrella. I also went with Celtic paganism as it narrows it down a little more, that's why I went for that rather than simply saying "paganism".

Now I get what the hospital tried to go for. But saying it is not tied to a religion is I think a little unfortunate.

[-] velma 30 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Celtic Paganism does in fact refer to a particular pagan religion and set of beliefs/roots of those beliefs.

[-] SarahValentine 7 points 18 hours ago

What's the religion called then? It's like a Christian being asked what their religion is and answering "monotheism".

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 9 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

You can't be serious. Have you never heard of a "pantheon" before?

Also, horribly ironic, since Christianity is actually a family of individual religions. Have you seriously never heard of Roman Catholicism, Methodism, Southern Baptist, Greek Othrodox, etc. ?

Also, various pagan gods often have a central group of worshipers usually referred to as "cults". Examples would be the Cult of Odin or Cult of Athena. Members of cults primarily worship their chosen deity most people in a given culture wouldn't be as selective and worship gods when appropriate, like asking Thor for a good harvest.

Granted, this doesn't exactly apply to Celtic Paganism, but I'd be surprised if a practice common to the Greeks/Romans, Norse, Egyptians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, etc. didn't also apply

[-] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 13 hours ago

It’s more like a Christian being asked what their religion is, and answering “Southern Baptist/First United Methodist/Lutheran/etc”. Every religion has denominations, and Celtic Pagan is an ancient denomination of paganism.

[-] velma 17 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

It depends on the coven/group. Celtic pagans call themselves that or sometimes Celtic Wiccans or just pagans.

It's the pagan beliefs that are rooted in Irish and Welsh history specifically. Then you have different pagan beliefs that are rooted in Norse theology or Greek mythology.

My mom raised me as Wiccan. There's about as many denominations as there are in the Christian religion.

Edit: Sometimes they'll even call themselves Druids or follow Druidism.

[-] icanbrewmushrooms@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Ancient Irish and Welsh 'pagans' worshiped entirely different pantheons from each other. 'Celtic' paganism is a pretty meaningless term.

Also, everything we know about the druids was written down by Julius Caesar, and - given that he wrote it as a justification for annihilating them - there is absolutely no reason to believe he was even attempting to tell the truth.

[-] velma 1 points 2 hours ago

I’m talking about neo-paganism and modern religions.

[-] SarahValentine 7 points 17 hours ago

Thank you for the informative response. It seems that in this context, "pagan" is less of a religion name and more of a category of otherwise unrelated religions characterized by a mystical connection to nature.

[-] velma 6 points 17 hours ago

No problem! I think you're missing that we are saying "Celtic Paganism" and not just pagan.

[-] SarahValentine 5 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

No I'm not missing that, I'm arguing that it's the equivalent to saying "American Monotheism" when you mean "Christian". It strikes me as strange that there's no, like, actual Celtic word for their belief system/way of life that we could use instead of [Region][Category]

[-] igmelonh@feddit.online 9 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Many if not most religions historically didn't have a word for their particular belief system; the scholarly name for Germanic paganism is "Germanic paganism" because pre-Christian Germans didn't have a name for their shared beliefs. Sometimes you may see neologisms or names for neopagan movements applied to the now-dead religion — I've seen Germanic neopaganism (aka "Heathenry")'s less commonly-used "Asatru" used for the original religion in a game. Same with others like "Kemetism", which refers to the neopagan movement and not the ancient Egyptian religion.

Not a historical scholar but, to my understanding, for a lot of folks "what's your religion" would have been a nonsensical question because that's just how the world works and you wouldn't think of it as being a belief system separate from physically evident reality. Folks are free to correct me on that.

[-] illi@piefed.social 1 points 11 hours ago

saying "American Monotheism" when you mean "Christian"

Not really - that's more like saying "European polytheism" when you mean paganism.

Though I do believe there are non-European traditions that might call themseves pagan. But then again, christianity is also not confined to America.

[-] velma 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

"Celtic Paganism" would be more akin to "Catholicism". It's a sect or branch of Paganism.

Like how Catholicism is a branch of Christianity

[-] SarahValentine 3 points 17 hours ago

To be fair, Catholicism is a famously singular religion.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 6 points 14 hours ago

Not really. You have Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox...

[-] velma 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Only if you ignore the Saints lol. Which funnily enough are usually based on deities from other religions.

There are many religions that are polytheistic, not just paganism.

[-] teft@piefed.social 19 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Ran by air benders?

I thought water benders were more likely to be healers.

[-] velma 37 points 20 hours ago

The Celtic Triskele! My mom had a bunch of these in her jewelry and house decorations. We always honored it as a symbol for the maiden, mother, and crone.

If you visit Boyne Valley, one of the cultural highlights in ‘Ireland’s Ancient East’, you're likely to find the Celtic Triskele symbol at the entrance of the 5,000-year-old Newgrange Passage Tomb. It dates back to the Neolithic era, and boasts true beauty in a serene location. However, that's not the only place it can be found.

Markings and artifacts have been located in various ancient sites, which also show us that the Celtic Triskele became popular with the Celtic culture from 500 B.C. onwards. These artifacts can be discovered in Ireland, as well as Europe, and across America.

The Celtic Triskele was a symbol that had various meanings for the early Pagans. One of them was linked to the sun, triadic Gods, and the three domains of land, sea, and sky. As we mentioned above, the Triple Spiral was also believed to represent the cycles of life, as well as the Triple Goddess -the maiden, mother, and wise woman.

[-] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 7 points 14 hours ago

I got to see that in person! Newgrange is fascinating.

I know folks here are arguing about Celtic pagan culture but the spirals actually come from neolithic peoples from 5,000 years ago that we know very little about. They predate the Celts and the Picts and even the pyramid builders of ancient Egypt. We don't know their language, religion, or much of anything except that they were pretty good engineers, moved enormous stones tens or hundreds of kilometers, and had a thing for spiral motifs!

[-] Dr_Nik@lemmy.world 12 points 18 hours ago

The hospitals I have been in recently in the US use a purple butterfly for the same purpose...it's really sad to see when walking around.

[-] dragnucs@lemmy.ml 8 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I came here to say it looks like the trisquel gnu Linux logo https://trisquel.info/. But found out from your comments it is the Celtic trisquel symbol. Confidence? I think not.