GLOSSARY
Each month, in my membership, I share an overview of a goddess, god, mythic being, or archetypal energy from Celtic mythology. This has formed into a rich compendium of mythic ancestors. I share excerpts from this below as a starting point for anyone looking to connect with your mystical lineage.
Collage inspired by ‘Star of Heaven’ by Edward Robert Hughes
ÁINE
Key words: Brightness, Sun Goddess, Queen of the Fairies, Lough Gur, Brat Uaine.
Áine (“Awn-yah”) is a Goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann whose name means brightness, lustre, glow, radiance, splendour, brilliance, wit, and glory in Old Irish. Likely an old sun goddess herself, Áine is said to have a sister, Grian, the Irish word for ‘sun’, which explains her intense association with the summer months. The sun is a feminine noun in the Irish language, yet the sun as a feminine or masculine deity is fluid in our tradition. The god Lugh potentially descends from a sun god archetype as a divinity associated with light.
Áine’s main residence is Knockainey, an anglicisation of Cnoc Áine, which means ‘Áine's Hill’, where she is known as ‘Queen of the Fairies’. The horseshoe lake of Lough Gur in Co. Limerick is sometimes called the womb of Áine. According to local lore, every seven years, its waters recede revealing a supernatural tree clothed in a mystical green cloak (brat uaine). Beneath the tree lives its guardian, an old woman who busily knits, spinning her yarn as she watches on guard. Mythologically, women often knit and weave the fate or destiny of humanity, like the three Moirae or Fates of Greek and Roman mythology, or the Norns of Norse mythology, who, like our old Áine may do, spin their threads of fate at the foot of the world tree.
Airmid
Key words: Divine Herbalist, Well of Sláine, Rebirth, Magical Mantle, Alchemical Cycle.
Airmid (“Ar-ih-mid”) is the daughter of Dian Cécht, the healer god of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Her name may mean ‘a measure of grain’. She, her father, and her two brothers, Míach and Ochtriuil are responsible for healing the wounded during bloody conflict. No healing could happen without incantation. Airmid and her healing clan, chant mystical charms while plunging the bodies of mortally wounded warriors into a well called Sláine, which means ‘wholesomeness’, ‘health’, or ‘salvation’ in Old Irish. Gaelic is an oral culture, the word when expressed through the poetics of soul was magic manifest for our ancestors, and so, washed in this magical brew of healing words and waters, the warriors reemerge gushing with life..
Following the death of her brother, Míach, by the jealous rage of her father, Airmid grieves holy tears over his body causing 365 herbs to emerge from his corpse. She then spreads her mantle collecting and organising these sacred herbs. Afterwards, her father comes and mixes them up so no one can know their healing properties. But this knowledge is already embodied in Airmid’s cloak as an extension of her being, which makes her the only one in Ireland who knows the true secrets of our native plants.
Collage with art from Stephen Reid’s ‘Queen Maeve and the Druid’
AMERGIN
Key words: File (Poet-Seer), Lebor Gabála Érenn, Song of Amergin, Animism, Nine Waves.
Amergin (“Am-ar-ghin”) with variations of his name like Amhairghin, means ‘the wonderfully conceived’, a reflection of his poetic talents. The 11th-century manuscript, Lebor Gabála Érenn, ‘The Book of the Taking of Ireland’, tells us that Ireland was inhabited by six races. The first five were supernatural, with the last group, known as the Milesians (or later as the Gaels), being mortals from whom we are said to descend. And so, our human ancestors were not led by an invading warrior or king, but by the poet-seer Amergin—an artist, essentially.
As with all well-told tales, Amergin occupies a space between myth and reality, he both did and didn’t exist. Irish mythology and history love to blend like a splash of yellow and brown to make the gold of mythic imagination. It has served us well as Ireland is famous for its storytellers. Amergin is credited with composing the first poem that ever fell from a human tongue in Ireland, long before the time of Yeats, Joyce or the great seanchaí, Peig Sayers.
BÓINN
Key words: River Boyne, Brú na Bóinne, Newgrange, Well of Segais, Imbas.
Bóinn (sometimes spelled Boand or Boann) derives from the Irish word bó meaning ‘cow’ and proto-Celtic vinda or finn in Old Irish meaning ‘white’ or ‘fair’.
This image is ancient. The white cow is a symbol of the Great Mother. She travels across time, space and cultures. She is archetypal, a primordial image of the Goddess. From the ancient Egyptians who worshipped Hathor, the cosmic cow whose divine milk nourished the pharaohs, to the ancient Irish, and their worship of their own white cow, Bóinn, whose milky waters nourished our ancestors with divine wisdom.
Known in English as the River Boyne, Bóinn runs through the UNESCO World Heritage complex Brú na Bóinne, the triplicity of 5,000-year-old temples: Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. Brú is usually translated into English as ‘mansion’, but it also means ‘womb’ or ‘belly’ in Old Irish. Bóinne, then, means ‘of Bóinn’. Perhaps ‘Womb of the White Cow’ (i.e. Bóinn's womb) was too far a stretch for the early translators, as they referred to these megaliths as the ‘mansion on the Boyne’.
brigid
Key words: Exalted One, Keen, Bean Chaointe, Psychopomp, Otherworld.
Brigid is born a goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, ‘Tribe of the Goddess Danu’. Her father is the Dagda, the Fer Benn, the ‘peaked’ or ‘horned’ man. He is said to be the ‘Father of All’ and is a nourishing provider god with his cauldron of plenty that never runs dry.
Brigid marries Bres who becomes the High King of the Gods of Ireland. Due to Bres’s scabbiness, which is a taboo in Irish mythology and to this day in Irish culture, war breaks out in which their son, Rúadán is killed. In response, Brigid is said to be the first woman to keen in Ireland, ‘Then for the first time weeping and shrieking were heard in Ireland.’
Keen is an anglicisation of Caoin, the Gaelic verb to cry or lament. From Brigid’s time onwards, this is a role held by the Bean Chaointe, the ‘Keening Woman’, an integral part of the community and central to the Irish wake to help the soul pass over. When Brigid keens for Rúadán, it’s said that she, ‘invented a whistle for signalling at night.’ This is one of my favourite expressions in Irish mythology, I find it profoundly beautiful. This sacred sound is a guiding signal to the soul of the person who has passed, who is being keened for, to help them travel from this world, westwards into the night of the eternal Otherworld.
BRIGID
THE SEQUEL
Key words: Triple Goddess & Saint, Church of the Oak, Fire Temple, Magic, Holy Wells.
Brigid is a goddess of poetry or what I would see as poiesis, which is the origin of the word poetry, meaning to ‘create’, ‘make’, and ‘bring forth’ the creative pulse that is alive within us, our soul’s gift, or what our ancestors called, our dán. Brigid is also a goddess of smithcraft, the art of transforming the ore of the earth into wonders, jewels and tools through her alchemy—and a goddess of leechcraft, the art of healing, as a midwife, Brigid is an ally to new life.
Sources tell us that Brigid, in her saintly form, had a fire temple at her sacred sanctuary in Kildare (in the east of Ireland). The Irish for Kildare, Cill Dara, means ‘Church of the Oak’. According to St. Brigid’s biographer, Cogitosus, Brigid (who was born in 451CE) persuaded the hermit St. Conleth to join what would become her dual monastery for women and men under an ancient oak tree. This became a flourishing centre in Ireland for learning, creativity and the arts. Interestingly, in Irish, draíocht means magic, derived from draoi meaning druid, from Proto-Celtic dru-wid, meaning ‘oak-knower’, so the symbolism of the oak serves as a mystical entwining between the old Pagan and new Christian worlds.
Cailleach
Key words: Veiled One, Hag, Witch, Creatrix, Old Woman of Beare.
Cailleach translates as ‘Veiled One’ in Old Irish. Her name also means divine hag, crone, widow, nun, and most commonly, ‘witch’ in modern Irish. She is as old as time. She is our creator deity, our ancestor deity, our weather deity. She is our Great Mother; our Seanmháthair Naofa, our ‘Sacred Grandmother’. She was once a Sovereignty Goddess, a fierce protectress of these lands and a mother to ‘peoples and races’, a mother to their descendants, a mother to us.
It is said that the Cailleach created the Gaelic lands of Ireland/Éire, the Isle of Man/Ellan Vannin and Scotland/Alba. She often comes to life with a veiled one-eye and ghostly blue skin, holding a bow-legged gait as she leaps across mountains, shaping the land by dropping rocks from her apron and hammering great valleys into form.
There are many sites in Ireland that bear her name. Most well-known is the Cailleach Beara, the ‘Hag of Beara’ who roams the Beara peninsula in Co. Cork and Kerry. Also, the Cailleach’s Mountain at Loughcrew in Co. Meath. Its summit is home to Cairn T, the womb-temple of the Cailleach, which is softly penetrated into illumination on the spring and autumn equinoxes.
Danu
Key words: Mother of Gods, Mist, Destiny, Divine Nourisher, Paps of Anu.
Danu, in essence, is a mother goddess. Ireland’s supernatural race, the Tuatha Dé Danann, bear their mother’s name, in the translation, ‘Tribe of the Goddess Danann’ or ‘Tribe of the Goddess Danu’. The Tuatha Dé are a race of magicians, how they express is through the arts and magic, deeply embedded in and co-created with the wisdom of the natural world around them.
Oftentimes, the root of ‘Danu’ is equated to dán in Old Irish. Dán is our inner-poetry, our creative gift(s), our soul’s calling, destiny or fate. Danu and dán are not directly related as Danu more likely comes from a Proto-Indo-European root for ‘river’ or ‘flowing water’. However, she is the mother of a tribe who embody the energy of the dán because these were peoples of destiny. It was Danu’s destiny to guide her tribe from the ‘northern isles’ to Irish shores, not by her person, but by her energy, enshrouding them in a féth fíada, a magical veil or mist.
Ériu, Banba
& Fódhla
Key words: Triple Goddess, Sovereignty, Uisneach, Nature, Ireland.
Ériu (“Air-roo”), Banba (“Ban-va”) and Fódhla (“Foe-lah”) are a triple goddess of sovereignty. Core to Irish mythology is the deep association of the feminine principle with the land. She is the personification of the land itself. In early Irish society, the basic territorial unit or where you lived with your community, was called a tuath, meaning ‘tribe’, or mini-kingdom. In order for a tuath to bloom, their king would symbolically marry the Sovereignty Goddess—the land—in a ritual called the banais ríghe. This enacted a sacred contract between people and nature, masculine and feminine expressions.
Today, we sometimes see the association of the feminine with nature as problematic because it has become gender-specific, excluding women and marginalised groups from the decision-making sphere of culture coded as masculine and, specifically, ‘male’. Early Ireland was no utopia for women but it was goddess-centric. The Sovereignty Goddess like Ériu, Banba and Fódhla, as this embodiment of the feminine was powerful and could influence the culture. She was respected, feared, life-giving, life-taking.
FLIDHAIS
Key words: Soft Hair, Deer Goddess, Magical Cow, Wild, Otherworld.
Flidhais (“Flee-ish”), born of the Otherworld, emerged from beyond the veil to wed her love, Ailill the Fair-haired, king of the Gamhanraidh tribe who ruled the lands west of the River Shannon (which itself is the river goddess, Sinann).
With Flidhais came her magical cow, Maol, meaning ‘Hornless’. The divine cow was (and still is) worshipped in many ancient cultures; it is the benefactor of riches, a wet-nurse to the millions. Maol herself is wildly abundant, overflowing with milk that could sustain three hundred warriors together with their wives and children in one milking.
Flidhais is also deeply wedded to the woodlands. She is said to be the mother of wild does, and a mistress of stags, who rides a chariot drawn by deer. The early medieval text, Dindshenchas, the ‘Lore of Places’, tells us that Flidhais is mother to Fand, the shapeshifting fairy queen who was married to Manannán Mac Lir, God of the Sea. Flidhais has other daughters too, including Bé Téite, which means ‘wanton’ or ‘luxurious woman’, and Bé Chuille, who is said to be the druidess of the god, Lugh, and can turn trees, stones and the sods of the earth into an army of warriors.
gobnait
Key words: Nine White Deer, Saint of Bees, Holy Forge, Town of the Beloved, Gobnait’s Measure.
We have not been passed down a full hagiographical ‘life’ of Gobnait, but lore tells us that she was visited by an angel who urged her to search for the site where nine white deer grazed, for it was here that she would find her ‘place of resurrection’—the place where she would fulfil her dán, her creative destiny. Gobnait found these otherworldly white deer in Ballyvourney or Baile Bhuirne in Irish, ‘Town of the Beloved’ in Co. Cork where she is still worshipped today.
One of her rituals, Tomhas Ghobnatan, ‘Gobnait’s Measure’ is enacted here each year. A 13th-century oaken effigy of Gobnait is brought out for pilgrims to ‘measure’ with ribbons that become infused with Gobnait’s power and can be used in the household for healing all year round. Similar to the Brat Bhríde or ‘Brigid’s Cloak’ tradition.
On Gobnait’s land in Ballyvourney, archaeologists also discovered evidence of forges, which supports her mythic associations with smithcraft and ironworkers. In Irish mythology, the divine smith of the gods, the Tuatha Dé Danann, is Goibhniu. Both he and Gobnait have the same root in their names, gob, which likely means ‘smith’ in Proto-Celtic.
GREAT
MOTHER
Key words: Goddess Civilization, ‘Venus’ Figurines, Cosmos, Cycles of Life, Tomb Womb.
Through the work of pioneers like Lithuanian archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas, increasing evidence shows that the earliest human cultures worshipped their godhead as the Great Mother. She was the unifying force of all life. She was nature and the cosmos. This is not to be conflated with ‘power over’ i.e. feminine over masculine, because we see later in the mother and her marriage to her consort how the divine union of both was necessary for humanity to flourish. This is especially true in ancient Ireland where the marriage of the Sovereignty Goddess to the King in sacred union ensured the prosperity of the tribe (tuath).
In her book, The Living Goddess, Gimbutas stresses that to understand our ancestors in Old Europe, including Ireland and the wider Celtic Isles, and why they built mind-blowing megaliths (‘large stones’) like Newgrange in Ireland, Stonehenge in England, or Gavrinis in France, we need to explore the Neolithic view of death and transition.
These monuments, and particularly the passage tomb complexes, indicate how the womb of the Goddess gave birth to all life and also took it back in death through this same cosmic womb. The tomb is the womb. You were birthed from the Goddess and when you died, you returned to her to be reborn. We see this in the archaeological landscape, not only in the structure of passage tombs but also in the symbols they are decorated with.
Lugh as a child surrounded by his spears of illumination or sun rays by Maud Gonne
LUGH
Key words: Light, Lámhfhada, Spear of Assal, Samildánach, Tara.
Lugh (“Loo”) is thought to come from the proto-Celtic ‘bind by oath’ or ‘light’. It is also a cognate of the Latin lux, meaning ‘light’. He finds kinship of name in gods like Lugus, who was worshipped by the Continental Celts, and Lleu Llaw Gyffes in Welsh mythology, whose name means ‘light’ or ‘shine’.
Lugh also has a prominent epithet, Lámhfhada, meaning ‘of the long hand’ or ‘arm’. A potential explanation for this is that he is the sacred keeper of the Gae Assail (‘Spear of Assal’), which comes from one of the mystical islands, Goirias (or sometimes Findias), which are described as being north of Ireland and where the Tuatha Dé Danann learnt all of their magic before arriving on this island. The spear is a lightning weapon like Mjölnir, Thor’s enchanted hammer in Norse mythology. Similarly, it always returns to Lugh’s hand after it has completed its mission—usually death—as it never misses its target.
Manannán
Mac Lir
Key words: God of the Sea, Magician, Hermetic, Emain Ablach, Silver Branch.
Manannán Mac Lir is a god of salty waters, the son of the obscure sea god, Lir. The Isle of Man is said to be named after him or in the reverse, he is named after the island, ‘A renowned trader who dwelt in the Isle of Man. The best pilot in the West of Europe.’ He is often compared to the Welsh, Manawydan fab Llŷr who appears in the Mabinogi. Besides his name, Manawydan holds no deep association with the sea but he does with magic, an art his Gaelic peer is a master of.
Manannán is a shapeshifter and the guardian of several occult items. These include the Sguaba Tuinne, the ‘Wave Sweeper’, a boat that is navigated by the thoughts of its pilot; a wondrous cloak that can take on the iridescent colours of the sea; and the Fragarach, the ‘Answerer’, a truth-activating sword. He is keeper of the cranebag, which holds the treasures of the Tuatha Dé including ogham ciphers, the earliest form of written Gaelic.
MEDB
Key words: She Who Intoxicates, Banais Ríghe, Red-sided, Grail Cup, Goddess & Warrior Queen.
Medb (“May-v”) means ‘she who intoxicates’, from her name’s association with honey mead, the world’s oldest alcoholic drink. In Celtic lore, mead wasn’t just a beverage, but a magical elixir imbued with supernatural properties that symbolised the plentifulness of the Otherworld.
One of the most important goddesses of sovereignty (who we know little about) is Medb Lethderg who presided over Tara, the royal capital of the high kings of Ireland and before mortals, the Tuatha Dé Danann, the deities themselves. She is likely the older archetypal image from whom Queen Medb of Connacht descends. Old Medb holds the mysterious epithet, lethderg meaning, ‘red-sided’. Perhaps a symbol of the passion, the sexual power, the life-giving blood force, we see in Queen Medb.
According to legend, she had nine successive husbands. As an immortal deity, Medb outlived her consorts, taking a new king as husband upon the death of the previous one. The number nine is noteworthy here as thrice the sacred triple, emphasising Medb’s mystical nature.
MORRIGAN
Key words: Triple Goddess, Crow Goddess, Washer at the Ford, Seer, Prophecy.
The “Mor-ree-ghan” or Morrigan in English is thought to mean ‘Great Queen’ or ‘Phantom Queen’ in Old Irish. The opening sound is the most important—mór means great, but without the fada (the accent above the o), it changes the interpretation of the meaning to include ‘phantom’ or ‘nightmare’. The most commonly accepted interpretation is, Great Queen.
She is the daughter of an obscure Goddess, Ernmas, who is called ‘Mother of Divinities’, along with her sisters Macha and Badb, and their sometimes sister, Nemain. This makes her a Triple Goddess. Macha means ‘plain of land’ or ‘field’. Badb means ‘scald crow’ or ‘hooded crow’, ‘deadly, ill-fated, venomous’. Nemain means ‘battle-fury, panic, frenzy’; she is often understood as another aspect of Badb.
Ernmas is also the mother of the triple goddess, Ériu, Banba and Fódhla. This triad represents the richest expression of sovereignty; Ériu is from whom Ireland, Éire, gets our name, and Banba and Fódhla are poetic names for this land. One of the meanings of Ériu is ‘Land of Abundance’. So, the Morrigan, who so often brings necessary descent, destruction and death, also has sisters who represent light, fertility and abundance. Perhaps in earlier times, Ériu, Banba, Fódhla, the Morrigan, Macha and Badb were all one goddess.
óengus
Key words: God of Love, Young Son, Newgrange, Aisling, Swan.
Óengus (or Aengus) was born from the union of two powerful deities: the goddess Bóinn and the god, Dagda. Bóinn was married to Elcmar (also known as Nechtan in some accounts) when she took the Dagda as a lover falling pregnant with Óengus as a result of their union. To conceal this from Elcmar, the Dagda used his magic to make the sun stand still for nine months so that Óengus was conceived, gestated, and born in a single day. This miraculous birth of the god of love created the illusion of time stopping, as love so often does. Óengus became eternally known as the Mac Óg, meaning the ‘Young Son’, a title earned because his birth defied the passing of time.
Óengus often comes to the aid of imperilled lovers. In The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne, the god protects his foster son Diarmuid and the story’s protagonist, Gráinne, from the pursuit of the jealous and ageing Fionn MacCumhaill and his band of warriors. At one stage in the tale, he uses his cloak of invisibility to conceal Gráinne; in another, he provides counsel to keep them safe from being hunted by Fionn.
SELKIE
Key words: Mermaid, Sealskin, Brat, Cochaillín Draíochta, Shapeshifter.
The word selkie describes ‘seal folk’, otherworldly beings that can shapeshift from seal to human. There are many varieties of the selkie tale, in Ireland, the tradition includes stories of the Maighdean Mara, the ‘Sea Maiden’, and the Murúch, the ‘Sea Singer’ anglicised as a merrow—essentially an Irish mermaid or merman. In our Selkie Full Moon Fairytale Céilí, I shared the image above of what I called the ‘Triple Goddess of the Sea’; the selkie, maighdean mara and murúch, and the symbols associated with each. As I’ve spoken about before, the cloak in Celtic mythology is an extension of the energy field of its wearer; it is the same here for the sea maiden’s cloak, fishtail, sealskin or red-feathered hood. As an arbitrary measure for a selkie, let’s say the human and seal form represent 30% and 70% respectively of their lifeforce, split between this world and the Otherworld, the world of soul. Both are essential to their nature and to their survival.
Perhaps you and I are made of the same stuff, 30% human ego, 70% otherworldly soul. Yet, what percentage do we choose to live into?