Paganism

Pagan, not ‘Polytheist’.

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A pagan wants to talk about religion.

A ‘polytheist’ wants to talk about politics.

A pagan greets friends.

A ‘polytheist’ hunts for allies.

A pagan looks in the land for their gods.

A ‘polytheist’ looks to people for their gods…

… Isn’t that just the way of a ‘monotheist’?

“… Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation …” Edward Sapir: The Status Of Linguistics As A Science; Language Vol. 5, No. 4 (Pub: Linguistic Society of America, Dec. 1929), pp. 207-214

Diving at Epiphany

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Bulgarian men 'diving for the cross' at Epiphany. Photo: Stoyan Nenov/Reuters

Bulgarian men ‘diving for the cross’ at Epiphany. Photo: Stoyan Nenov/Reuters

In Orthodox christianity, the ancient tradition of the Sanctification of the Waters at the festival of Epiphany (5th and 6th of January) is marked throughout the world by the popular custom of ‘diving for the cross’. The festival itself celebrates not just the ‘Theophany’ of Jesus to the gentiles but in particular among Orthodox Christians, his adult baptism by John the Baptist/the holy spirit (depending on which gospel tradition you go by).

Cross-diving usually follows the Epiphany mass and involves the priest casting a crucifix into a body of water, this being the cue for a crowd of eager young men to dive in, competing to retrieve it. It obviously echoes the baptismal theme of the Christian myth, but is there more to this tradition that predates Christianity?

As previously mentioned, there are many features which Christianity has borrowed from paganism for the festivities spanning from the winter solstice to Epiphany: the festivals of Saturnalia and the Dionysia being key donor traditions. Dionysia is the closest model for Epiphany, being the annual festival of the epiphany or theophany of Dionysus to the people. In western christianity, it is also remembered in the seemingly Dionysian celebration of the ‘Miracle at Cana’ at which Jesus supposedly turns water into wine. Diving into water, however is not a particular tradition of the Dionysia.

The Nativity of Aion:

We must look into the early 1st millennium Hellenistic world, and to Alexandria in Egypt to get more of a clue as to the origins of baptism at Epiphany. Christianity evolved in the Levant and Egypt among a seething sea of syncretistic pagan ideas, which under the influence of reductionist neoplatonic philosophy began to be intellectualised, combined and refined. At multi-ethnic Alexandria in the 1st-4th centuries CE, one of the chief gods worshipped among the Hellenised Egyptians was ‘Aion’ or ‘Aeon’ – seemingly a syncretistic youthful version of Kronos, compounded with Osiris, Dionysus and Apollo, and whose nativity festival was held on the 6th of January. The Alexandrian mythos claimed he was born to the virgin goddess Kore (also known as Persephone) on the night of 5th/6th of January. In gnosticism, Aion became the name or title of the series of historically repeating godhoods, one of whom was believed to be Jesus by some gnostics. The idea of the chain of prophets leading to the Messiah was of course originally a Judaic idea, and seems to be the root of the gnostic Aions. Aion, however, was originally a pagan idea:

Aion holding the 'wheel of the year' on a Roman mosaic.

Aion holding the ‘wheel of the year’ on a Roman mosaic.

Epiphanius of Salamis (c.315–403CE) wrote in his book Panarion:

“… Christ was born on the sixth day of January after thirteen days of the winter solstice and of the increase of the light and day. This day the Greeks, I mean the Idolaters, celebrate on the twenty-fifth day of December, a feast called Saturnalia among the Romans, Kronia among the Egyptians, and Kikellia among the Alexandrians. For on the twenty-fifth day of December the division takes place which is the solstice, and the day begins to lengthen its light, receiving an increase, and there are thirteen days of it up to the sixth day of January, until the day of the birth of Christ (a thirtieth of an hour being added to each day), as the wise Ephraim among the Syrians bore witness by this inspired passage in his commentaries, where he says: ‘ The advent of our Lord Jesus Christ was thus appointed: His birth according to the flesh, then his perfect incarnation among men, which is called Epiphany, at a distance of thirteen days from the increase of the light; for it needs must have been that this should be a figure of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and of His twelve disciples, who made up the number of the thirteen days of the increase of the light.’

How many other things in the past and present support and bear witness to this proposition, I mean the Resurrection birth of Christ!  Indeed, the leaders of the idol-cults, filled with wiles to deceive the idol-worshippers who believe in them, in many places keep highest festival on this same night of Epiphany, so that they whose hopes are in error may not seek the truth.  For instance, at Alexandria, in the Koreion as it is called – an immense temple – that is to say, the Precinct of the Virgin; after they have kept all-night vigil with songs and music, chanting to their idol, when the vigil is over, at cockcrow, they descend with lights into an underground crypt, and carry up a wooden image lying naked on a litter, with the seal of a cross made in gold on its forehead, and on either hand two other similar seals, and on both knees two others, all five seals being similarly made in gold. And they carry round the image itself, circumambulating seven times the innermost temple, to the accompaniment of pipes, tabors and hymns, and with merry-making they carry it down again underground. And if they are asked the meaning of this mystery, they answer and say: ‘To-day at this hour the Maiden, that is, the Virgin, gave birth to the Aeon.’

In the city of Petra also – the metropolis of Arabia which is called Edom in the Scriptures – the same is done, and they sing the praises of the Virgin in the Arab tongue, calling her in Arabic Chaamou, that is, Maiden, and the Virgin, and him who is born from her Dusares, that is, Alone-begotten of the Lord.  This also takes place in the city of Elousa on the same night just as at Petra and at Alexandria … “

Unfortunately Epiphanius was none the wiser as to what happened in the crypt of the Koreion, and it is for us to speculate that it may have involved some form of immersion in water. This ancient Alexandrian celebration of nativity and epiphany on the 5th/6th January survives still in the most ancient Christian denomination – the Armenian Church. The prime divinity among the pre-Christian Armenians was the Persian goddess Anahit (Anahita) who was analogous to the Hellenistic ‘Kore’ and therefore to Isis. She was also linked to Ishtar, Aphrodite and Artemis. Anahita was a mountain goddess representing waters – a theme of some importance in the pagan world.

The drowned god who came back to life:

Bas relief image from Philae showing Isis resurrecting and embracing Osiris. Note the historic damage caused by Islamic iconoclasts.

Bas relief image from Philae showing Isis resurrecting and embracing Osiris. Note the historic damage caused by Islamic iconoclasts.

The myth of Isis and Osiris is at the core of ancient Egyptian mythology, and became influential throughout the Roman Empire from the 1stC BCE, when Isis became one of the favourite goddesses of what I call the ‘syncretic era’. The myth of the death by drowning and the resurrection of her brother and lover Osiris is intimately tied up with water. The reborn Osiris – like Phrygian Cybele’s consort, Attis – was summoned from death by the goddess and the new era (Horus) conceived by an act of mystical intercourse. The descent of the statue of Kore into the basement of the temple at the Hellenistic ?gnostic nativity festival of Aion was obviously designed to reflect the Egyptian myth, and also its Eleusinian and Dionysian counterparts. Indeed, examination of this myth demonstrates that it was a theme with vast and far-reaching provenance in ancient paganism.

So … the mysteries of Epiphany are tied up in the many older pagan legends of a dying and reborn god. There is much more that I could say about this topic which involves the Celts of Atlantic Europe, but I will save this for another post for now, except to quote from Florus’ Epitome of Roman History which suggest that the cross-diving tradition may have an older provenance in Bulgaria…

”  … After the Macedonians (heaven save the mark) the Thracians, former tributaries of the Macedonians, rebelled and, not content with making incursions merely into the neighbouring provinces of Thessaly and Dalmatia, penetrated as far as the Adriatic; checked by the boundary which it formed, since nature apparently stayed their advance, they hurled their weapons against the very waters. Throughout the period of their advance they left no cruelty untried, as they vented their fury on their prisoners; they sacrificed to the gods with human blood; they drank out of human skulls; by every kind of insult inflicted by burning and fumigation they made death more foul; they even forced infants from their mothers’ wombs by torture. The cruellest of all the Thracians were the Scordisci, and to their strength was added cunning as well; their haunts among the woods and mountains harmonized well with their fierce temper… ” Lucius Annaeus Florus – The Epitome of Roman History (Trans. E.S. Forster)

Aubrey Beardsley's beautiful depiction of Bedevere casting Excalibur into the hands of 'Dame Du Lac'. The Arthurian legends were a late survival of an important pagan mythic tradition among the Celts. Many of their legends extend into the heady days of the Belgic warbands, of whom the Thracian Scordisci were direct ancestors.

Aubrey Beardsley’s evocative bookplate depiction of Bedevere casting Excalibur into the hands of the ‘Dame Du Lac’. The Arthurian legends were a late survival of an important pagan mythic tradition among the Celts. Many of their legends extend into the heady days of the Belgic warbands, of whom the Thracian Scordisci were direct ancestors.

 

 

 

 

The Celtic Mysteries?

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So-called ‘mystery religions’ were at the core of paganism in ancient Europe. Many ‘gods’ were used to illustrate the fundamental ideas of commonly-shared philosophies, ideals and empirical observations of nature and existence among ancient Europeans. Their ‘mysteries’ were a method of communicating the dynamic interplay of such forces through the participation of suppliants in story, ritual, drama and ceremony, often through means of ‘initiation’, usually followed by ongoing participation. This communicated higher knowledge and understanding in an intimate personal manner which could not ordinarily be achieved simply by listening to or reading stories. As many of these mystery religions existed within the Hellenic and Roman polities of Europe, North Africa and the Near East we know at least a little about them from archaeology, art and literature which has survived from the Iron Age, Classical and Late Classical eras (8thC BCE to 5thC CE). Because the exact nature of the mysteries was secretive, we are often left guessing about exact details of ritual and ideology. However, we have even less information about the indigenous mystery religions among the Atlantic Europeans or ‘Celts’ whose independent cultural direction was largely crushed or assimilated by the Roman Republic and Empire between the 2ndC BCE and 2ndC CE.

To be an ‘initiate’ in these old European mysteries usually involved submitting oneself to its priests or guardians at a site sacred to the cult. Once there, one would subsume one’s mundane identity into that of an initiate and participate in a number of dramatic performances designed to illustrate the principles of the cult in an atmosphere of mystery, awe and (eventually) revelatory ecstasy. The initiations would be designed to impress a set of ideas onto the initiate which would have a profound influence upon their worldview, while leaving them with questions only partly answered by the immediate experience in order to encourage further participation in the cult, or encourage dialectic philosophical exegesis of the epiphany the initiate had experienced. At the height of their popularity, initiates would come from nearly every walk of life, from slaves up to Emperors and Kings. The great Augustus himself – inheritor of Julius Caesar’s posthumously-declared empire took a particular interest in the mysteries of Eleusis which, as we shall see in the light of Caesar’s commentaries on Celtic religion, is somwhat interesting.

The mysteries were generally secretive, so apart from external observations and some archaeological paraphernalia and written ephemera, we actually have a very limited idea of what they involved or exactly what they were trying to communicate. We don’t know exactly what happened at the convocations of the various mystery cults at the various stages in their existence, but we do now that they had an influential effect upon the societies they operated in.

Literary evidence for ‘Celtic Mysteries’?

After Julius Caesar had completed the task of conquering Gaul, it is apparent that he was keen to portray it an as attempt to civilise a barbarian nation in the grips of a powerful, savage and mysterious religious cult, led by a sect of hierophants called Druids who he had suppressed. He further claimed Gauls said they were descended from a cthonic deity he called ‘Dis Pater’, and that they worshipped ‘Mercury’ (the conductor of departed souls, prime divine Daimôn and god of trade) above their other gods, who he again equated ‘interpretatio romanum’ (See: De Bello Gallico, Book 6). Although he professed no indication of a mystery religion, he certainly alluded to the secretive nature of what was taught by the Druids, who committed none of their teachings to writing, in consequence of which their training was a dedicated and laborious process lasting many years. Nevertheless, he indicates that this instruction was common to the youth of Gaulish society, which may imply an aspect of their religion as a mystery cult with a high degree of social organisation:

“… The Druids do not go to war, nor pay tribute together with the rest; they have an exemption from military service and a dispensation in all matters. Induced by such great advantages, many embrace this profession of their own accord, and are sent to it by their parents and relations. They are said there to learn by heart a great number of verses; accordingly some remain in the course of training twenty years. Nor do they regard it lawful to commit these to writing, though in almost all other matters, in their public and private transactions, they use Greek characters. That practice they seem to me to have adopted for two reasons; because they neither desire their doctrines to be divulged among the mass of the people, nor those who learn, to devote themselves the less to the efforts of memory, relying on writing; since it generally occurs to most men, that, in their dependence on writing, they relax their diligence in learning thoroughly, and their employment of the memory. They wish to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another, and they think that men by this tenet are in a great degree excited to valor, the fear of death being disregarded. They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many things respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods…” (Book 6, Ch. 14; Trans. W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn)

It is hard to determine from Caesar’s account if Druidism was indeed a ‘mystery cult’ in the Greek or Roman sense, or a highly advanced system of education and cultural indoctrination. Caesar talks of ‘the Gauls’ as a unified whole, and many of them certainly unified to fight him in the 1stC BCE. However, Celtic culture seems to have been historically riven and even driven by intertribal warfare so we must be cautious about his opinions. What does strike me as relevant to the Mediterranean mystery cults is the pre-eminence he accords to cthonic and psychopompic deities and the idea of reincarnation. This suggests Gaulish/Celtic religion shared similarities with the Greek mysteries, and could conceivably have shared common origin with them.

Greek and Roman attitudes to Barbarian culture and The Mysteries:

The first Roman Emperor, Augustus (ruled 27BCE-CE14), is notable for his eventual establishment of an internally stable Roman home province which would remain stable for almost 200 years. He took the reigns from his murdered adoptive ‘uncle’ Julius Caesar, who had expanded the Republic’s territories and cultural influence from Celtic Gaul to Egypt. Subsequent years would see consolidation of Roman influence over Germania west of the Rhine, the Balkan regions of Pannonia and Moesia, as well as Macedonia and Thrace. This, to the Romans, constituted a matter of great pride as they had conquered the greater continental portion of western Europe whose people were known to the Greeks and Romans as ‘barbarians’: a people at once considered to be backward, unsophisticated, frighteningly violent, and yet still mysterious.

Augustus (Octavian) is notable as being the first Roman leader recorded to have had himself initiated into the Mysteries of Eleusis, whose cult centre was situated near Athens, and was considered the beating heart of Greek religious culture. He was also notable for his attempts to form alliances with British Belgic Celtic leaders, including Tasciovanus of the Catuvellauni and his son and succesor, Cunobelinos (Kymbelinus). Tasciovanus was on such good terms with the Roman Emperor that he sent his sons to be fostered and educated in Rome. Consequently the coins these British monarchs minted show some interesting Romanised features which suggest they themselves were initiates of Eleusis: specifically where they repeatedly display the icon of Demeter and the Mysteries – the ear of wheat or barley:

Coin of Cunobellinus of the Catuvellauni/Trinovantes 1stC AD

Coin of Cunobellinus of the Catuvellauni/Trinovantes 1stC AD

Stater of Tasciovanus demonstrating Eleusinian symbolism -influenced by Augustus?

Stater of Tasciovanus demonstrating Eleusinian symbolism – influenced by Augustus?

Of course, the interest of these Belgic leaders in the Greek mysteries would have been a strong statement of alliance with the worldview of Augustus and his successors. For Augustus himself, it is entirely possible that his own devotion to the Eleusinian Mysteries was designed to better understand the religious worldview of the ‘barbarians’, which the Greeks appeared to have had civilised, and who he was continuing to conquer or gain as allies for his new Empire. The implication might be that the new Emperor felt he could find common religious origin with his newly conquered peoples and allies. The Greeks certainly believed the mysteries to have originated among the barbarians, but to have been civilised in Attica.

Of course, the exposure of Celtic peoples to a cult which dealt with the mysteries of death was far greater than that experienced within the Roman culture. Caesar blamed the apparent fearlessness of Gaulish warriors on a firm belief in reincarnation, indoctrinated into them by the Druids (supposedly originating in Britain), and his successors would spend a good deal of time, money and human lives in eradicating this movement. The origins of it are to be found hundreds of years further back in time, perhaps when the great Celtic warbands formed and stamped their mark on Europe and the Near East from the start of the ‘La Téne’ period. This was the ‘Belgic’ cult which venerated the solar god Belenos as receiver of the dead and lord of the Otherworld. He was equivalent to Apollo, whose most significant shrine at Delphi was famously assaulted (and possibly thoroughly pillaged) by a Gaulish army in 279BCE.

Belenos was the god who promoted growth and decay – the sun who grows vegetation and at the same time hastens putrefaction of the dead. His domain included the lands of the daytime as well as the lands beyond the setting sun – the realm of the Celtic dead. Like the ancient Mars-Quirinus he was a god of war and chthonic fertility. Like Apollo he was a conqueror of serpentine decay and giver of oracles. Like his later development as Wodan/Odin, he was a god of battle-fury and madness – a shaper of madness into purposeful action, which is in fact the political aim of warfare. The mysteries of Belenos were never attested, but the evidence that they existed is reasonably compelling from the opinions of Caesar and the god’s replacement by Apollo in the post-Romanised era at Romanised cult-sites among the Gauls, Britons, Iberians and Germans and in the Balkans.

The imagery of this religion could be found inscribed on the coins and monuments of the Celts, although the latter ocurred after the advent of syncretism post-Romanisation. It is evident on the designs and decorations on personal ornaments and weaponry, and on spectacular artefacts such as the Gundestrup cauldron.

4th July = Julian Midsummer!

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Hey there, my friends in the US: Happy 4th July!

Did you know that that this celebration corresponds with the 'Julian calendar' celebration of the Summer Solstice? The Julian calendar (named after Julius Caesar) is 12 days 'behind' the current 'Gregorian' calendar, and is still used for dating by some of the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches…

The summer solstice was traditionally associated with the 'midsummer bonfire' festivities common across Europe until the 20thC, and would have been celebrated by American settlers on old midsummer day (Julian midsummer) before the 4th of July (signing of the Declaration of Independence) became transplanted onto it for the purpose of a national celebration. The Gregorian calendar was instituted in the Protestant world quite late after its adoption by Pope Gregory of the Roman Catholic church in 1582. Britain adopted it in its Imperial provinces in 1752 – including the US, Ireland and Scotland. There was a degree of controversy about this as ordinary people felt that their customary observations of days for popular nature festivities (with particularly pagan roots) were being interfered with by the state and the church who were seen as having no right to interfere with the 'natural order'. The disparity between the Julian and Gregorian calendars has been growing since it was instituted, from 10 days to the current 13 – this explains why similar 'national day' Solstice celebrations fall on different days, for instance – the Isle of Man's Tynwald celebration:

'Tynwald Day' is typically held on the 5th, 6th or 7th of July (depending on how the weekwnd falls). Again, this is a 'Julian' Solstice celebration! The people of this little nation still gather annually around a hill and hear their laws proclaimed by the Island's 'Deemsters' – traditional Gaelic Brehon judges, almost certainly part of a tradition in continuity with Druidism and Norse heathenism (which was related). Attendees traditionally wear a sprig of the plant Artemisia Vulgaris, and watch the Deemsters walk along a processional causeway to ascend a low hill from which the laws are proclaimed. The causeway is strewn with green rushes – said to originally to have been the tax payable at this annual event to the islander's pagan god, Manannan – still believed in by ordinary Manx people as 'their' god – even though the celebration has had a Christian church service tacked onto it!

Good to see that America still celebrates the old pagan celebrations!

 

European paleo-religion: Mater Larum, Holda and Huldra

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Ancient Italic religion before christianity is often associated with the hierarchical and immanent-polytheist Olympian model of gods introduced with the economic, cultural and military expansion of the Greek states during the first half of the 1st millenium BCE. This followed closely with the increasing focus of power and settlement upon towns and cities, and a new emphasis upon commoditisation which would reach its zenith with the growth of Rome and its famous Republic, and fall apart after 400 years of Empire. However, the religion of ancient Rome had its roots in a more simplified, animistic and rural spirit and ancestor-based religion common to much larger swathes of Europe extending far into the north and back into the 2nd millenium BCE and beyond…

The traces of this more ancient animistic faith are seen clearly in the form of the disincarnate spirits known as Lares, Manes and Lemures (otherwise Lases, Genii, Daimones, Nymphs, Naiades, etc) whose immanence permeated all households, roads, boundaries, buildings, natural springs, lakes, trees and groves, rocks and bushes in the minds of everyday people. With the growth of powerful city-states, these spirits underwent various phases of promotion, demotion, conflation, renaming and reinvention and added to the already bloating pantheon of divine and semi-divine legendary personages and deified humans that would eventually mark the ultimate collapse of paganism in the face of the stripped, portable and reductionist literal religious philosophies flowing back from the Hellenised Near East. However, the belief in immanent spirits and ancestral gods seemingly refused to die even though the major gods fell away, leaving Europe with rich parallel traditions of animism in the form of folklore about fairies, elves, ghosts, mysterious wild females and man-beasts which persisted alongside monotheism until modern times.

In the literate and artistically creative milieu of the Italic peninsula of the archaic and classical periods, we are lucky to have literary, epigraphic and depictional evidence relating to these animistic beliefs, and in particular to the disincarnate spirits known as Lares or Lases who were at the core of the ancient domestic religion, based in the independent, subsistence tribal cultures of the past. These, like the more modern European ‘fairies’, developed various synonyms and identities based upon their status in relation to individual families, tribes, ethnic groups, places and shifts in power and cultural influence. As regional versions of them amalgamated some became demoted in status, while others grew in stature, this process becoming anchored in the power of the Roman Republic. This produced, from a number of anciently more important divinities, an Olympian hierarchy (important to expression of state power) with a subservient ‘rustic’ pantheon of lesser spirits.

A Lare was what we might call a genius locus – a spirit with a specific haunt. In the ancient world, a spirit was an incorporeal living creature made of what the Greeks called aither or aether, which could be known only by the mind. Gods were deemed the same, and therefore gods and spirits were a philosophical system for describing the mechanisms by which the corporeal elements were excited into life and motion. In Mediterranean immanent polytheism, it was therefore possible for all phenomena to have a god or spirit attached to them. In Roman culture, the Larvae and Lemures were restless and dangerous forms of Lares, whereas Lares themselves were usually spirits in a state of helpful and benevolent equilibrium with mankind. They were ancestral spirits of humans, also known as Dii Penates or Manes, who maintained a presence among the haunts of the living: a form of collective memory, representing the skill and knowledge of ancestors, passed down among the living. Households had shrines to them, and these must have evolved into tribal group-expressions as Lares also had communal shrines encountered in rural and urban districts, at crossroads and along highways. They also had formal worship as part of the greater state-religion, of which more shortly. Festivities associated with these immanent ancestral spirits included the famous Saturnalia and associated Compitalia, the Liminalia, Feralia, Ambarvalia and Lemuria, as well as other rustic celebrations such as the Robigalia. These aspects of the tutelary and protective ancestral genius locus seem to underpin some of the agrarian Etruscan legends I have commented on in other posts. This aspect of italic paleo-religion may have been preserved in Roman culture in the form of the ancient priestly collegia known as the Fratre Arvales (Arval Bretheren) as well as the Augurs and Haruspices. The Arvals held solemn annual rites designed to sanctify agricultural production, ensuring the feeding of city dwellers and thus ultimately the wealth and power of state. This was a chthonic cult appealing to the earthly forces, among whom the dead traditionally resided: a connection to the ancient paleo-religion with its emphasis on death and regeneration. This was such an important tradition that during the period of the Roman Empire, the Emperor himself was always one of the 12 Arval priests, the others being selected patricians who held their office for life. As these priests were not trained specialists like the Augurs, their temple preserved inscriptions of aides-memoires of some of their ritual chants, from which we know the following (Old Latin) ‘Carmen Arvale’ :

Enos Lases iuuate, enos Lases iuuate, enos Lases iuuate

neue lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleores
neue lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleores
neue lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleores
satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber
satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber
satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber
Semunis alternei advocapit conctos
Semunis alternei advocapit conctos
Semunis alternei advocapit conctos
enos Marmor iuuato
enos Marmor iuuato
enos Marmor iuuato
triumpe! triumpe! triumpe! triumpe! triumpe!

This invocation of the Lares (using the archaic form ‘Lases’), Mars/Marmor and the ‘Semunis’ (fertility spirits?) in an important ritual to sanctify agricultural production (90%+ of provincial Roman citizens were agronomists) shines a fascinating light upon older Roman religion. You might ask, for instance: ‘Why Mars? Surely he was a war god?’… Well, for the Romans, Mars was as much a protector and stabiliser during the Republican and early Imperial eras, as he was a symbol for aggressive conquest (during the expansionist era of the Empire). Militarised Romans tended to associate the virile masculine element with warfare rather than that traditionally associated with aspects of nature and animal husbandry during the springtime (Mars’ month is known to us as ‘March’). For the Celts, this symbolism of the fertile war-god was illustrated in the form of the rutting stag or bull with adorned horns, such as is illustrated by the god ‘Cernunnos’ on the French ‘Pillar des Nautes’ and the medieval Irish accounts of the ‘Tain Bo Culainge’ with its ‘rutting’ warriors in their riverside showdowns etc.

The Arvals’ main cult of devotion was to the goddess called Dia or Dea Dia – apparently a female version of the masculine god-principle Dio (Zeus, Jupiter = Dio Pater), otherwise identified with Juno, and also known as Mater Larum – ‘Mother of the Lares’. Juno was, of course, Mars’ mother in Roman myth, so it is no wonder that the Arvals invoked him along with the Lares. This would make Juno (as ‘Mater Larum’) akin to the later Gaelic conception of the ‘Fairy Queen’, as the hypostasis corresponds so closely with later Celtic conceptions of fairies. However, this similarity with later folklore from the historically ‘non-Romanised’ north European world does not stop with the Irish and British Atlantic fringe, but that of the Scandinavians and Germans too:

The evidence for this link comes through a tale told by a single surviving Roman source – the great poet and mythographer, Ovid (1stC BCE/CE), who told a tale about the Mater Larum in his account of Roman festivals known as Fasti. He uses her synonym Lara, claiming her to have been a Naiad (water/spring/river) nymph conducted by Mercury to the gates of the underworld for the sin of betraying Zeus’ love secrets to Juno (of whom she appears to be a ‘hypostasis’). Jupiter apparently orders her tongue cut out as punishment, but Mercury falls in love with her and has intercourse en route to the chthonic realm, where she gives birth to twins (of unspecified gender) – the first Lares. Consequent to her punishment, she became known as Muta or Dea Tacita – the ‘silent goddess’ of the dead. The ‘silence’ is that of the grave – that great keeper of secrets – and her children are hidden in the secret recesses and crevices of liminal places: hearths, crossroads, storerooms (Penates) and so forth.

This account by Ovid of ‘silent’ Lara and her concealed children is curiously similar to the legends which persisted in the (unromanised) German and Scandinavian worlds of a female character known by various names: Holda, Hulder/Huldra, Holle, Hylde. She was the mother of the elves who (in Icelandic and Norwegian Christian tradition) hid her children from God, ashamed by their earthy dirty appearance… The following Christianised account is taken from ‘Icelandic Legends’ by Jón Arnason, (translated by George E. J. Powell and Eiríkur Magnusson) Pub: London, R. Bentley, 1864, pp.19-22:

‘The Genesis of the Hid-Folk’: Once upon a time, God Almighty came to visit Adam and Eve. They received him with joy, and showed him every- thing they had in the house. They also brought their children to him, to show him, and these He found promising and full of hope. Then He asked Eve whether she had no other children than these whom she now showed him. She said ” None.” But it so happened that she had not finished washing them all, and, being ashamed to let God see them dirty, had hidden the unwashed ones. This God knew well, and said therefore to her, ” What man hides from God, God will hide from man.” These unwashed children became forthwith invisible, and took up their abode in mounds, and hills, and rocks. From these are the elves descended, but we men from those of Eve’s children whom she had openly and frankly shown to God. And it is only by the will and desire of the elves themselves that men can ever see them.

The English word ‘Hidden’ translates directly to Hylde/Huld etc in the Germanic tongues. It is immediately apparent that the folklore is immediately comparable to Ovid’s Roman account. It is possible that the ‘Romanised’ Germanic tribes may have introduced this myth into the streams of Scandinavian folklore over the subsequent centuries, but it would be hard to justify, given the obvious religious independence of these regions at the advent of the Christian Roman Empire. What is more likely is that the ancestral cult of the ancient Europeans was widespread and influenced the Italic peoples before the Etruscan and Roman cultures developed and flourished. It is possible that the two important ‘prophetic’ and ‘revelatory’ Etruscan ancestor-divinities, Vegoia and Tages, were the ‘children’ of Lara: Etruscan ‘Mars’ was called ‘Laran’ 😉

The ‘sacred twins’ conceived in a grove between a god and lesser divinity are a continuous theme of Greco-Roman religion: The mythological founders of Rome – Romulus and Remus were supposedly begat by Mars upon Rhea Silvia (said to be a sexually-errant Vestal virgin, but whose name evokes a Dryadic Titaness). Rhea Silvia cast the boys adrift on the Tiber but they were rescued and suckled by a she-wolf (the wolf was Mars’ animal), before being fostered by a woman with the name Acca Larentia, otherwise known as Dea Dia! Castor and Pollux/Polydeukes likewise had a similar furtive beginning when their mother Leda was accosted by a god (Zeus) disguised as a swan, and they seem to be connected – along with Romulus and Remus – to the origin-tale of the ancestral Lares as mentioned by Ovid. This suggests an amalgam of various versions of an older myth with aspects also seen in Irish and Scandinavian mythology. Another example would be the hiding by Gaia (Earth) of young Zeus from his devouring father, Cronus, on Rhea’s sacred Cretan mountain: Mount Ida – perhaps one of the older root-myths of the others…

Another aspect of the ‘Mater Larum’ that needs to be addressed in the form of the fascinating goddess known to the Greeks as Hestia, and to the Italics/Latins as Vesta: She was the virgin sovereign goddess of the domestic hearth, and therefore a candidate to be associated with the ancient domestic cult of the Lares. We know this because Cicero tells us the following (De Natura Deorum 2. 27 (trans. Rackham) – 1stC BCE) :

“…The name Vesta comes from the Greeks, for she is the goddess whom they call Hestia. Her power extends over altars and hearths, and therefore all prayers and all sacrifices end with this goddess, because she is the guardian of the innermost things. Closely related to this function are the Penates or household gods…”

Her cult was associated (as was that of the virgin Bridget at Kildare in Ireland in the 12thC) with the celebration of a hearth with an ‘eternal flame‘. This links quite closely to the Gaelic ideas of fairies/ancestors and the hearth in places like the Isle of Man which persisted down to the 19th/20thC CE. The ‘Getae’ (the Celtic Dacians, ancestors of the Romanians) conquered by Trajan in the 2ndC CE were said by Diodorus Siculus (1stC BCE) to worship ‘Hestia’. Ovid describes Vesta as the third sister of a triad including Juno (Hera) and Ceres (Demeter), implying that she actually represents the fire-cored Earth itself, hence her round domed temple in Rome which suggested the form of the globe of the planet. This copied the form of the Prytaneum at Athens, and was reflected in the design of the Pantheon. He further states that there were no statues of her at her temple – she being represented solely by the eternal flame kept burning there, tended by her famous virgin priestesses. Of interest to Gaelic folklore, is that Hestia or Vesta’s fire was re-kindled with a ritual of friction (an evocation of sexual intercourse) between two pieces of wood, similar to that apparently used for the May/Beltain bonfires (see elsewhere on the blog)… Herein lies a mystery about the ‘virginity’ of Vesta: Far from being a ‘chaste’ force, she is actually a representation of the full sexual potential of the feminine – the flames being a worldly allegory of unconquerable lust and fertile intent. The tales of ‘rape’ and ‘indiscretion’ concerning the genesis of the three sets of ‘divine twins’ at the core of popular Greco-Roman (and Irish, Welsh, Breton and Scaninavian) religious myths are simply an expression of the inevitable transgression of this ‘pure’ state of lust which characterises inevitable natural forces. Vesta or Hestia was therefore also the original ‘Mater Larum’, and actually one of the most fundamental and important goddess-aspects!

Pythagoras, Empedocles and Plato – spiritual philosophy

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Medieval accounts of the Cosmos such as that given by the character Taliesin in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Life of Merlin’ are based upon much older pagan philosophies:

“…I shall tell thee a twofold tale. At one time it grew to be one only out of many; at another, it divided up to be many instead of one. There is a double becoming of perishable things and a double passing away. The coming together of all things brings one generation into being and destroys it; the other grows up and is scattered as things become divided. And these things never cease continually changing places, at one time all uniting in one through Love, at another each borne in different directions by the repulsion of Strife. Thus, as far as it is their nature to grow into one out of many, and to become many once more, when the one is parted asunder, so far they come into being and their life abides not. But, inasmuch as they never cease changing their places continually, so far they are ever immovable as they go round the circle of existence…” Empedocles of Acragas/Agrigentum (Sicily) – 5thC BCE (From: ‘Fragments’ of the Strasbourg Papyrus)

Empedocles was one of the ‘Pre-Socratic’ (Pre-Hellenic) philosophers of the ancient Greek world – a group of individuals including Pythagoras of Samos (attributed to the 6thC BCE, but possibly even legendary) about whom we know little except of what was reported much later. In the case of Empedocles, we are lucky as some of his contemporary writings survive. Empedocles is credited with developing the cosmogenic theory of the Four Elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water) which her referred to as ‘roots’ of matter, and which was to dominate the worldview of the ancient European, North African and Middle-Eastern peoples right through to the 17th century. Whether or not he was the true originator remains to be seen, but he became an icon of this to the Greeks. His surviving fragmentary works were – like those of Homer and Hesiod – written in a poetic verse, suggesting a possible connection to an oral transmission tradition. He was as much concerned with spiritualism and religion as what we moderns would think of as ‘philosophy’ – to the ancients there was no difference. As a Sicilian Greek, he would have had access to and interest in the ‘Celtic’ peoples and their philosopher-priests. His belief in transmigration of the soul was supposedly shared by/derived from Pythagoras and was common to the Orphic/Eleusinian mysteries, as well as by the Atlantic Europeans. The Greeks would never admit that they derived anything or shared a common heritage with the ‘Barbarian’ world, of course!

The Cosmogony attributed to Empedocles was used by Plato of Athens some 100 years later during the era of the Hellenic expansion. His famous dialogue ‘Timaeus’ discussed the structure of reality and history of creation, framed within Plato’s theories of geometry and number, itself derived from ideas of Pythagoras. Here he discusses the relationship between the elements (stoichaea):

“…Now that which is created is of necessity corporeal, and also visible and tangible. And nothing is visible where there is no fire, or tangible which has no solidity, and nothing is solid without earth. Wherefore also God in the beginning of creation made the body of the universe to consist of fire and earth. But two things cannot be rightly put together without a third; there must be some bond of union between them. And the fairest bond is that which makes the most complete fusion of itself and the things which it combines; and proportion is best adapted to effect such a union. For whenever in any three numbers, whether cube or square, there is a mean, which is to the last term what the first term is to it; and again, when the mean is to the first term as the last term is to the mean-then the mean becoming first and last, and the first and last both becoming means, they will all of them of necessity come to be the same, and having become the same with one another will be all one. If the universal frame had been created a surface only and having no depth, a single mean would have sufficed to bind together itself and the other terms; but now, as the world must be solid, and solid bodies are always compacted not by one mean but by two, God placed water and air in the mean between fire and earth, and made them to have the same proportion so far as was possible (as fire is to air so is air to water, and as air is to water so is water to earth); and thus he bound and put together a visible and tangible heaven. And for these reasons, and out of such elements which are in number four, the body of the world was created, and it was harmonised by proportion, and therefore has the spirit of friendship; and having been reconciled to itself, it was indissoluble by the hand of any other than the framer…” Plato – Dialogue of Timaeus (4thC BCE, Athens)

You will note that Plato talks of the ‘creator’ or ‘God’ as a single force (you’d need to check the Greek original, though!) – surprisingly like the idea of God to the Judaeo-Christian-Islamist faith it would seem. This might seem strange, until one realises that to Plato and the philosophers of this age this was a natural part of polytheism – the plural ‘gods’ were a description of the important functions and continuum of time and space between the philosophical absolute ‘Monad’ and the dissolution of chaos. This was quantum physics for the mind! To worship the Monad was as senseless as worshipping pure chaos.

In the following passage from Timaeus, he explains how the stars and souls are one, expressing a great deal of the same theory as Empedocles, no doubt one of his formative sources. He tells how – as well as the universe being a huge soul ‘framework’ in itself, the souls of beings (gods and mortals) were made by combining them with aspects of the elements:

“…and once more into the cup in which he (ed: the Creator) had previously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains of the elements, and mingled them in much the same manner; they were not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and third degree. And having made it he divided the whole mixture into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star; and having there placed them as in a chariot, he showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the laws of destiny, according to which their first birth would be one and the same for all,-no one should suffer a disadvantage at his hands; they were to be sown in the instruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, the superior race would here after be called man. Now, when they should be implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing some part of their bodily substance, then in the first place it would be necessary that they should all have in them one and the same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible impressions; in the second place, they must have love, in which pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and anger, and the feelings which are akin or opposite to them; if they conquered these they would live righteously, and if they were conquered by them, unrighteously. He who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if, when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he would continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in the evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of the same and the like within him, and overcame by the help of reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions, made up of fire and air and water and earth, and returned to the form of his first and better state. Having given all these laws to his creatures, that he might be guiltless of future evil in any of them, the creator sowed some of them in the earth, and some in the moon, and some in the other instruments of time; and when he had sown them he committed to the younger gods the fashioning of their mortal bodies, and desired them to furnish what was still lacking to the human soul, and having made all the suitable additions, to rule over them, and to pilot the mortal animal in the best and wisest manner which they could, and avert from him all but self-inflicted evils…”

    Although seeming mysogynistic to modern readers, Plato’s opinions about unworthy souls being reincarnated first in the body of a woman, and next in that of a ?beast have to be judged, firstly by the standards of his culture and age, and secondarily by considering the otherworld inversion principle I have made previous references to in terms of ancient spirit beliefs. For instance, the ancient Gaelic belief in hereditary healing and protective charms always had contrasexual inheritance as its core mode of transmission. Plato’s audience at his seminars were privileged Athenian males.

   In spite of his apparent misogyny, he was steadfastly devoted to the principles of Sensation (resulting, he believed, from the conflict between matter and spirit and the soul) and Love as the highest faculties motivating humanity. These, to him and his devotees of future generations, were represented in the Goddesses Athena (Strife) and Aphrodite (Love).

The views of Pythagoras, Empedocles and Plato were to have a profound influence upon religious philosophy in the Hellenic and Roman empires, inspiring new generations of philosophers who flourished from the 3rdC BCE to the 4thC CE. The philosophical origins of christianity may in fact be based upon them – albeit with a one-sided doctrine of ‘Love thy Neighbour’ and the denial of the sensationalist aspect…. 

 

‘The Elucidation’

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The following is appended as a (?13thC) prologue to a copy Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, le Conte du Graal in the French medieval manuscript known as  Mons 331/206 (olim 4568). Taken from Mary Jones’ fantastic website – translated by Sebastian Evans:

…. Now listen to me, all ye my friends, and ye shall hear me set forth the story that shall be right sweet to hearken unto, for therein shall be the seven Wardens that hold governance throughout the whole world, and all the good stories that any hath told according as the writing shall set forthwith;  what manner folk the seven Wardens should be, and how they took unto them chief, and whom they took, for never aforetime have ye heard tell the story truly set forth, and how great nose there was and great outcry, and how for what cause was destroyed the rich country of Logres (AP: the Brythonic lands) whereof was much talk in days of yore.

The kingdom turned to loss, the land was dead and desert in suchwise as that it was scarce worth a couple of hazelnuts.  For they lost the voices of the wells and the damsels that were therein.  For no less thing was the service they rendered than this, that scarce any wandered by the way, whether it were at eventide or morning, but that as for drink and victual he would go so far out of his way as to find one of the wells, and then nought could he ask for of fair victual such as pleased him but in content he should have it all so long as her hand asked in reason.  For straightaway, I wise, forth of the well issued a damsel – none fairer need he ask – bearing in her hand a cup of gold with baked meats, pastries, and bread, while another damsel bore a white napkin and a dish of gold or silver wherein was the mess which he had come for the mess had asked for.  Right for welcome found he at the well, and if so it were that his mess did not please him, diverse other ways they brought him all with one accord served fair and joyously all wayfarers by the roads that come to the wells for victual…

The narrator of the introduction or ‘elucidation’ then comments upon the loss of the pagan religion from Logres (Britain) and the goes on to lament how the ‘women of the wells’ were deposed. It is a fitting introduction to the archetypal Grail romance, and seemingly evokes the spirit of the Seven Streams of Poetry said in Irish mythology to issue from the Otherworld wells (of Connla and Segais, for example). Here the term used is the ‘Seven Wardens’, the mysteries of which are supposed to be revealed within the narrative of ‘Percival’, with its tales of the Fisher King (Manannan), magical cups, and maidens who occupy magical pools of water…

All text © 2014 The Atlantic Religion, except where stated.

Saint Piran (Perran)

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Cornwall's Flag of Piran

Cornwall’s Flag of Piran

Cornwall’s patron saint, Perran or Piran, was said to have come from or studied in Ireland – a contemporary and possible student of Finnian of Clonard. His name may derive from a Brythonic interpretation of the Gaelic name ‘Ciarán’ and he is therefore identified in some medieval hagiographies with both Ciaran of Saighir and (by later scholars) with Ciaran of Clonmacnoise, possibly on account of the geographical sphere of influence of Ireland’s great ‘Celtic Rite’ Abbey of Clonmacnoise. Both of these Ciaráns were said to have studied under Finnian. He is supposed to have lived and died in the 6th century, and to have created his first establishment at the place which bears his name: Perranzabuloe.

Names: The ‘p’ and ‘k’ sounds are interchangeable in the orthophony of the ancient Celtic or Atlantic world. ‘Per’ and ‘Ker’, for instance. As the national saint of Cornwall (Kerniw or Kernow) it is even faintly possible that the name ‘Peran’ or ‘Keran’ and its variants relate somehow to this land, the name being set to suit the geography. There are a number of placenames relating to Peran/Piran/Keran etc apart from Perranzabuloe: Nearby Perranporth is one, but less obviously Polperro (known as ‘Portpira’ in the 13th century) on Cornwall’s south coast is another worth considering, especially as it does not appear to be linked in any way to Piran historically although sharing a similar name. This might suggest a pagan origin with its Christian cover story based on the north coast. Other ‘Piran’ names include Perranaworthal and Perranuthnoe, at which there were churches dedicated to the saint. Of interest is the manner in which the ‘t’ of ‘Patrick’ (ie – the saint) has been aspirated and dissolved in various regional pronunciations, giving the name variants ‘Perrick’ (Cornwall), Pherick (Isle of Man, which also has a place called Perwick) and these have hints of the name ‘Perran’ or ‘Piran’. A St Padarn (or Patran, 6thC) and a St Petroc (6thC) also claim names of a similar root. All of these are strongly linked to Brittany, Cornwall and Wales during the early medieval period. The similitude of these Christian ‘superhero’ names may actually point towards the pagan figure or idea that they were attempting to overlay…

Legendary Sources:

Hagiographies: Life of St Piran (14thC) – This surviving hagiography of ‘Piran’ is actually a copy of the Life of Ciaran of Saighir with details of his life in Cornwall appended. For this reason, the two are believed by many to be the same. Another work by 17thC Cornish Catholic Nicholas Roscarrock gave accounts of Piran and his fellow local saints, some of whose legends he took from known folklore of the day. These have been published by the Devon and Cornwall Record Society, Ed. Nicholas Orme.

Tin: St Piran (also the patron saint of tin miners) is supposed by a popular anachronistic legend to have discovered tin-smelting, a process which was going on in Cornwall long before christianity. Cornwall’s ‘Perran’s Cross’ flag insignia is said to represent the white metal flowing off Piran’s black (tin ore) hearthstone… Variant names associated with Piran by the tinners included ‘Picrous’ and a character called ‘Chewidden’, said to have discovered white tine along with Perran, Piran or Picrous. Another legend associates Piran with yet another stone:

Arrival from Ireland: Another popular legend says the saint was thrown off a cliff by pagans in Ireland. To ensure his demise they were said to have tied a millstone around his neck, but by divine grace etc this stone floated and Piran, thus saved by God, floated across to Cornwall and landed at the beach near Perranzabuloe/Perranporth where he established his ministry. There are similar curious hagiographic and folklore stories involving Cornish (eg – Petroc who supposedly floated from Ireland to Padstow on his stone altar) and Irish saints (eg – Declan of Ardmore, among others) and floating rocks… In the Isle of Man, there is a story about the Cailleach (Caillagh y Groamagh) that portrays her as an Irish witch thrown into the sea who washes up on a Manx beach at Imbolc/St Brighid’s day. Similarly, the Manx patron saint ‘Maughold’ was said to have been cast adrift from Ireland as a pagan and was Christianised upon landing in Mann… The ‘Irish Nennius’ also tells of a wonder in the Isle of Man – a rock which, although thrown into the sea, returns inland by itself. Such legends seem linked to a probable pagan theme of holy stones and the seashore. Columba’s legendary hagiography also has him making a stone float upon water.

Textualising the Atlantean Bardic World

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Written annals surviving from the middle ages and early modern periods tend to employ the arrival of St Patrick as an historical ‘event horizon’ for the establishment of a Christian civitas of history and law in Ireland. Given that literacy followed hand-in-glove with christianity and that – until a very late period – the literate were generally the Christian elite, it follows that our interpretation of the cultural and historical veracity of such sources must be cautious at best.

One example comes from the Annals of Ulster, which commence with two important events: the coming of Patrick during the reign of Emperor Theodosius in 433, followed (after a few entries dealing with O’Neill primacy) by a statement against the year 438 : “The Senchas Már was written”. These events stamp the conversion of Irish religion and law into a form with written primacy – an ‘event’ important to the annalists, as it marks the transition of power from pre-Roman learned memorisers (the Druids, Brehons and Bards) to the Romanised literary system of power and precedent, controlled by the church. This was the selfsame church who had positioned itself at the side of the new model of kingship and land-dominance it had created, replacing the tribal systems of Iron Age Europe which had latterly been destabilised by mass-migration under the Roman Imperium.
Although monkish annals like to fix events on a historical timeline as fait accompli, it is wrong to take them at face value: Ireland probably did not wholly christianise with the coming of Patrick, and it is likely that christianity (perhaps in a form deemed too heretical to admit to) was present there long before Patrick, and that paganism survived for a fairly long time after him. Likewise, the statement in the Annals of Ulster about the codification of Breast Law (the memorised legal traditions of the traditional Brehon judges) into the Senchas Már text has little evidence to suggest a fundamental change occurred in Irish and Gaelic legal culture: We know for a fact that when the Isle of Man (which was culturally and linguistically closest to Ulster) ceded to the rule of the English Stanley potentates in 1405, its laws were still memorised ‘Breast Laws’ kept by oral tradition, in spite of the presence of a significant contingent of clergy and a number of Abbeys from an early period. The commissioning and writing of annals has been shown to serve a purpose of establishing a ‘historical’ argument for the primacy of the secular and religious sponsors of the work. Through the processes of continuous editing and re-copying Annals might evolve a stable and progressive timeline leading to the present, and such a work could be used to settle political disputes in favour of the sponsors – the church in particular.

Of the literature produced in Ireland by Christian scribes, Annals are perhaps the driest and most functional. Other popular forms of literature (other than copies of the gospels and the bible) produced in Ireland’s monasteries included hagiographies (stories of saints’ lives) and the transcriptions of various forms of oral culture knowledge, including laws and secular or pagan stories, which – typical to the artistic/poetic mode typifying oral culture – functioned as a synthesis of history, entertainment and education. Knowledge of the treasure trove of tradition of a pre-literate oral-culture society allowed the literate Christians to challenge the power structure of paganism and effectively replace it with their own model. In Ireland, which was probably ethnically and territorially more conservative (having not partaken to any large degree of the Pax Romana before the collapse of the western empire) this was a necessary method of Christianisation – almost unique in Europe until the pagan Scandinavians became introduced to the same principals. Elsewhere, migration was the cultural upsetter allowing Christianisation to proceed replacing as it did.

The vast majority of ‘Bardic’ knowledge pertaining to pagan religion would have been displaced and indelibly altered when it was transformed into its literary Christian context. The processes for achieving this were convoluted and evolved over a period of time, presumably between the 5th and 10th centuries. Simply banning paganism was impossible, as it pervaded every aspect of the peoples’ worldview and lives, and provided all of the signposts and models to explain the universe. Christianity and Judaism held no models explaining the movement of stars, the meaning of tides and seasons, the reasons why certain plants were useful; they held no history of the Atlantic peoples – simply those of dusty desert tyrants and the ancestors of other races in far-off lands.

The essential doctrines of christianity that would be impressed upon the pagans were that their gods and spirits were in fact devils, opposed to a single ‘true’ god from the middle east whose existence these devils had formerly kept people in ignorance. What is more, this god had created a son here on earth (but a long way from Ireland) who had been put to death in payment for the evil deeds and ignorance of humanity. By accepting this imported ‘truth’ it was supposed that adherents would find favour with this one God and earn a place in an eternal afterlife. This must have been so alien to the Irish that they must have laughed out loud in disbelief when confronted by the early continental and Mediterranean proselytes. Unlike in Britannia and Europe, the collapse of the pagan Roman empire was no argument in favour of christianity to the Irish, as they had not integrated the Roman belief system into their culture and had a perfectly functional religious model of their own.

When christianity did start to make inroads into the lives of pagans was when it started targeting and in fact creating an emerging new model of kingship that was propagated throughout post-Roman Europe. The religion ignored the people and their innate philosophies and targeted their leaders and lawmakers, beginning a drawn-out process of trickle-down acceptance backed up by the threat of power. By necessity, this subtle process would pursue a policy of replacement: like-for-like. It would also gradually subvert and alter the conception and memories of the true nature of paganism, using the following techniques:

1. Creating in stories a ‘pantheon’ of pagan gods similar to the Roman and Greek model, thus allowing the rhetorical methods of continental christianity to be applied. These ‘gods’ were given a history and context that implied they were euhemerised people from history falsely worshipped as a result of encouragement by demons.

2. Combining pagan stories elaborating the reality and functions of the deities into those of local saints. Pagan creation stories for landscape features, plants, animals and features of nature had their attributions transferred to saints.

3. Creating pseudo-historical accounts of the past history of Ireland that gave a middle-eastern or oriental provenance to the Irish.

4. Replacing the empirical human doctrine of ancestral spirits and reincarnation of souls with fairy-beliefs, producing an extra-doctrinal category of spirits ambivalent in their nature between Christianity’s angels and demons.

The model worked so well in Ireland, that Irish clerics and their ideas became vital to the christianising efforts of the rulers of the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks, as well as of the Scandinavians from the 9th century onwards.

So … the Irish mythological cycles, the Welsh ‘Mabinogion’, the Scandinavian ‘Edda’ legends and the other famous mythologies of the ancient north Europeans are products of a concerted campaign of cultural subversion by Christians seeking to obfuscate the true nature of paganism as it once existed in these regions. This process was started by the pagan Romans who sought to replace the worldview of those they conquered with one sympathetic to theirs.

Orion, the Milky Way and the Winter Goddess

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I have already mentioned in passing that the identity of the ancient Atlantic pagan Goddess is tied up in the identity of the seasons: Born at Imbolc, sexually mature (flowering) at Beltain, pregnant (developing fruit and seeds) at midsummer, birthed (harvested) by Samhain, and old and withered between Samhain and Imbolc – she followed the seasons as well as the 9-month cycle of human gestation. The development of her mythos was a perfect analogy of the vegetation and seasonal cycle upon which Atlantic Europeans depended to survive.

This mythos required a rationalisation of the autumn die-back following harvest and this was developed in the British and Irish archipelago into the characterisation of the Cailleach Beara/Bheur/Berry of Irish, Scottish and Manx mythology. There is good evidence that this characterisation once had a much wider reach, but Christianisation and demonization appear to have somewhat altered the folklore of the matter and substituted tales of an explicitly pagan origin with demonic or ‘saintly’ themes.

This ‘Cailleach’ (named possibly from the traditional ‘veil’ of old age – a metaphor for the winter landscape) was attributed with a number of active and historic functions in certain remaining legends about her. Of the active functions, she was a guardian of herds and flocks of nature, guardian of stores of food*, she flew through the air stirring up the winter weather, and she had a stave or stick with which she beat back the vegetation in autumn and winter. Her historic functions were the formation of the physical landscape and the genesis/invention of things.

In the notes to his 1804 book ‘The Grampians Desolate: A Poem’ (Pub. J.Moir, Edinburgh), Alexander Campbell describes on pages 262-263 the classes of Highland dances and gives the following example of a solitary ‘character’ dance:

A dance performed by one person, is, strictly considered, a sort of character, of consequence, in some measure dramatic. If a female, the character assumed is a’ Cailleach, or old wife; and the person who dances is dressed in a very grotesque stile, having a huge bunch of keys hanging by her apron-string, and a staff to support her, for she affects to be very stiff, and lame of one leg. When the tune strikes up, she appears hardly able to hobble on the floor ; by degrees, however, she gets on a bit, and as she begins to warm, she feels new animation, and capers away at a great rate, striking her pockets, and making her keys rattle; then affecting great importance as keeper of the good things of the store-room, ambry (AP ed: a storage recess for important items), and dairy. Meanwhile some of the company present join the person who plays the tune, and sing words suitable to the character the dancer assumes—generally some nonsense of a comic cast with which the matron, or Cailleach seems wonderfully delighted. The names of the tunes and words that I have heard played and sung to this dance, are: A’ Sean Rong mhor, Cailleach an Durdan, Cailleach a’ Stopan-falaimh, and several others that I do not at present recollect.

Campbell’s description of the Cailleach character dance is quite striking, and is one of the sole sources still existing that explicitly describes her as a protector of store-rooms. More importantly, he is describing in this dramatic image of the Cailleach a representation of the asterism of Orion: one of the most important to occupy the winter skies of Atlantic Europe, and usually portrayed as a belted warrior with a sword or staff raised aloft, and items dangling from his ‘belt’. Orion is significant in that it sits on the banks of the great Milky Way, associated with the star Sirius (known as the ‘Dog Star’) and the constellations and asterisms of Canis Minor, Taurus, Auriga and the Pleiades. Those becoming familiar with Cailleach myths will recognise certain features in these stars and constellations that have echoes of Cailleach legends, and for a good reason! Those familiar with Norse mythology might know that Orion was named after Freyja and the item on her ‘belt’ was known as ‘Freyja’s Distaff’. The Pleiades are portrayed as a little flock of birds. The Cailleach is associated with Bulls (the Tain), flocks and in Irish tales with a dog, sometimes a beetle and other specific creatures.

Orion - the winter Cailleach...

Orion – the winter Cailleach…

In his 200 year old description of the ‘Cailleach’ dance, Campbell makes it clear that the character has a stave, a bunch of keys, and is lame on one side. It is clear that ‘she’ (the character is danced by a man) has the attributes typical of the ancient Cailleach or ‘witch’ archetype of myth and legend, and what is more the dance emphasises her transition from old and lame back to sprightly and young – a metaphor for regeneration that is strongly seasonal.

tbc