To the Honour of Arianrhod [1] —First Lady of the Stars
May
the reading of these Passages
Manifest good fortune
[2]
On the Eve of the Fire Festival
Samhain
When TheVeil
Thins Between The Worlds
1. Ladies A-Waiting: A Telling
Even
The White Lady Albina
[3]
The Black Morrighan Badbh
[4]
The Red Sun Queen Sulis
[5]
Wait upon the White Sow, Awen
[6] ,
Keridwen
[7] , Cailleach [8] , Cauldron-Creatrix
Bright
Brigit [9] , Bona Dea
[10]
Speaks The Wily Word, Wisdom.
Ogma
[11] , her son, Sunface, wakes
Bran
[12] , Blessed, Cauldron-Keeper,
Holds the silver branch, his
magic head in hand
In
Myrddyn’s [13] ’s magic land
live
Alder, Ash and Wisest Oak,
Elder guardians at the Gate
Magog’s
[14] glory, Matter Mother,
Who, as Rhiannon
[15] married Manawyddan [16]
In
King Avallach’s Orchard [17]
Golden apples bend the bough
Whilst the sweet Salmon
[18] swallows
Hazelnuts in azure streams,
Arthur, healed, holds Morgann
la Fay in awe.
Up
from Nemhain’s [19] circling
nets,
Arianrhod’s
[20] starry heights,
In her bold PenDragon craft,
Danu
[21] , Don [22] , Mother
Divine,
Birthed us, her children, earthly
star-born-seeds.
This
tale, a true tree telling,
Cut from boughs, Coelbrens
[23] of Desire,
Gogyrvens for Gwyddoniad
[24] ,
Ancient Bards of Tree Knowledge,
Lead us from the darkness to
the light of truth.
[1] “Beauty famed beyond summer’s dawn,” Dawn Goddess, Mother of Light (J.A. MacCulloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts, p. 110); Welsh Mistress of the OtherWorld tower of initiation, Caer Sidhi (see John & Caitlin Matthews The Aquarian Guide to British and Irish Mythology). Daughter of Don/Danaan/Danu (Anu/Ana). Associated with Arian (thus Aryan) and her “Greek resonance” (ibid) Ariadne—“the high fruitful mother who turns the (silver) wheel”. An ‘Indo-European’ sky sun star time goddess demoted to moon and then sister of magician Gwydion who tricks her into giving birth to sun-hero Llew.
[2] Traditional Celtic blessing , invoking participatory goodwill between author and reader.
[3] Albina/Alphito (British): primal mother. ‘Albion’ is Britain’s oldest acknowledged name and that of the legendary giant. “Some, however, derive it instead from a princess Albina. They say she sailed to this country [Britain], which then had no human inhabitants, at the head of a band of women—perhaps as many as fifty—who had been banished for killing their husbands. They were all sisters, on the paternal side at least....In their new home they mated with demons, and the giants were the result of these couplings....” Geoffrey Ashe Mythology of the British Isles. Methuen, London, 1990, p. 13.
[4] Badbh (Irish): one of the Triple Death and warrior goddesses, the Morrigans, who may appear as a red-haired, red-cloaked woman, or a crow. See Caitlin Matthews The Celtic Tradition (Element Books: Longmead, Shaftesbury, Dorset, 1989) p. 32, 77. Not to be (totally) confused with Banba, one of Eire’s (Ireland’s) Triple Goddesses.
[5] Sul or Sulis (Celtic Roman): Sun Mother once honoured in Bath, England, supplanted by Apollo and subsumed by the Roman Goddess Minerva. McCrickard claims the name comes from the same root as “Saule”, the Baltic Sun Mother Goddess sun, f.), along with Germanic Sol, Slavic Solntse and all other Indo-European names for Sun, including related Irish Gaelic suil (eye, the Sun, i.e. the eye of the heavens. Eclipse of the Sun: An investigation into Sun and Moon myths (Gothic Image, Glastonbury, England, 1990), p. 99. McCrickard considers her “an Indo-European sun-deity belonging to one of the most archaic Indo-European cultures, the pagan religion of which survived later than any other in Europe, and which is known by scholars to be authentic and scarcely Christianized. No other European Sun-deity has such a marvelous and rich corpus of extant lore..” (p. 83) I am rather attached to McCrickard’s defense/offense of the Sun-Goddess ; I typed the entire handwritten MS into my Macintosh computer to facilitate its publication, a labour of love.
[6] Awen (Welsh): poetic gift, the Muse: Christopher Davies Y Geiriadur Newydd: The New Welsh Dictionary Swansea, 1953.
[7] Keridwen or Ceridwen (Pan Celtic): many have described her but I like Kathy Jones’ take :“the great White Underworld Sow into whose Cauldron souls must return for regeneration and inspiration. She is a Shape Shifter and the British Underworld Initiatrix.” Kathy compares her to the Sumerian Underworld goddess Erishkigal, the Teutonic Freya, the Syr or Sow, and the Greek Demeter, known also as Phorcis the Sow, The Sacred Totem Animal of the Pregnant Death Mother. A double of the Grain Mother Ker or Ceres. The mother/teacher of Taliesin, the great Celtic Bard. See Kathy Jones Spinning the Wheel of Ana: A Spiritual Quest To Find the British Primal Ancestors (Ariadne Publications, Glastonbury, England, Samhain 1994), p. 181-182.
[8] Cailleach (Irish/Scots): blue-faced crone of winter; old mountain mother of the god of youth, Mabon or Angus mac Og; watches over the dead.
[9] Brigit/Brighid/Bride (O=Irish/British): patroness of poets, smiths and healers; ousts the winter months (Caileach’s term), honoured at Imbolc, February 1st fire festival, lambing time, first auguring of spring.
[10] Bona Dea: (Roman) ‘the Good Goddess,’ patroness of women’s rites; her cult was administrated by the Vestal Virgins and attended solely by women. See Caitlin Matthews The Elements of the Goddess (Element Books, Longmead, Shaftesbury, Dorset, 1989), p. 14.
[11] Ogma/Ogmios(Gallic/Irish): Chief god;/leader of the Tuatha de Danaan (ancient Irish tribe) son of Brigit or Elatha; battles the Fomoire , the ancient people of Ireland; ‘he whose visage is like the sun’; linked to ‘Bel/Baal’; ’he who leads the dead’=Psychopompos; linked to the power of the speaking sword; reputed founder of the ogham alphabet, used only for inscriptions by druids.
[12] Bran the Blessed (Welsh): giant owner of a cauldron of rebirth given the Irish king who marries Branwen, his sister, in return for insults; battles Irish, dies but his magic head continues to speak; a Welsh Cronos, god of time; a kind of Green Man.
[13] Myrddyn, a Welsh rendering of Merlin, arch-magician of Britain in Arthurian romances, based partially on a sixth-century Welsh poet by that name.
[14] Magog/Magg, Meg, Matrona, Maha-Devi: mother, wife of Gog; standing stone; like Scots Cailleach. Gog & Magog: two legendary British giants; descendents of Albina’s? Named in the Bible (Ezekiel 38:2, Revelation 20:7-8)with an air of “evil mystery.”! Giant effigies set up in the fifteenth century in the London Guildhall; destroyed by bombing. Two very beloved old Glastonbury trees.
[15] Rhiannon (Welsh, fm Rigantona, Great Queen): white horse-queen-goddess; like Celtic Epona; daughter of UnderWorld god, pursued by Pwyll, who loses her to Gwawl who is outwitted with her help; their son, Pryderi (anxiety) kidnapped by OtherWorld forces, plunges her into penance ordered by Pwyll; like Modron, a suffering mother of youth goddess.
[16] Manawyddan (Welsh): like the Irish Manannan mac Lir (Lyr), sea-deity, landless after Bran’s death; master magician craftsman who marries Rhiannon after Pwyll dies.
[17] Avallach (British): King of the OtherWorldly kingdom of Avalon, an Orchard of Golden Apples of eternal life; father of Modron/Rhiannon.
[18] The Salmon is commonly identified with wisdom in Celtic tales, especially when it swallows hazelnuts.
[19] Or Nemainn (Irish): an aspect of the Morrighan; death goddess who nets the dead.
[20] Arianrhod (Welsh): the Aurora Borealis is called Caer Arianrhod in Welsh., the tower or castle of Arianrhod, Mistress of the OtherWorld Tower of Initiation, Caer Sidi; daughter of Don; sister of Gwydion; mother of Dylan and Llew. See later in this First Passage.
[21] Danu, Anu, Ana (Irish/British): primal ancestress, Mother of the Tuatha de Danaan so fully dealt with by Kathy Jones in Spinning the Wheel of Ana.
[22] Don (Welsh): antique head (thus ‘pen’=head -dragon) mother of Welsh pantheon in the Mabinogian; like Danu, a Celtic Magna Mater.
[23] Primal omen-sticks used as letters or words by the archaic Celtic bards.