Group Owner ~ Ghillie Dhu
Group Admin-
Elspeth
The Celtic Umbrella covers many branches, from Druids, Indo-European links, Reconstructionist Celts, Celtic Wicca and lots of colourful theories about connections to other Pantheons. There are some interesting discussions to be had.
In this group we can look into them, discuss what we know, question what we don't, and maybe put forward a few theories if we wish to.
Besides, Celtic Magic is a beautiful, mysterious Path, that's for sure :-)
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Location: In West Wood.
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Latest Activity: Jan 31
Started by Ghillie Dhu Jan 31. 0 Replies 0 Likes
Cesair was the leader of the earliest inhabitants of Ireland, the people who settled in Ireland before even the time of the Biblical flood.Her exploits are recorded in the ancient manuscript 'Lebor…Continue
Started by Ghillie Dhu Jan 28. 0 Replies 0 Likes
Scáthach (Irish: [ˈsˠkaːhəx]) or Sgàthach (…Continue
Started by Ghillie Dhu. Last reply by Dusty Brighton Jan 20, 2022. 1 Reply 1 Like
The Celtic – Vedic Connection14 Comments16 Min ReadThe Celtic people…Continue
Started by Ghillie Dhu. Last reply by Mystic Wolf May 27, 2021. 1 Reply 1 Like
The Significance of the Sacred Seal of Solomon and its Symbols…Continue
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elspeth...yes a seperate section would be good....if u could do one id be grateful thnx
Beautiful!
Another missing part seems to be a story about possession. Does Morgan want to possess Arthur; in that her greatest power is to take him away from his judgement, to make him sleep?
The roles of women at the time depicted in the Arthurian Cycle have become less universal. When men and women defended their land together as they did earlier, strong survival bonds probably existed between men and women. By the time of courtly Arthur, tales only of men who went to war, sometimes for years, so those strong bonds formed in war existed only among men. Women are more likely seen as someone to protect, and admire for innocence and youth. Arthurian times are idealistic and inward, but they are more Patriarchal.
The Bean Nighe, the Washers at the Ford, along with the saying about getting the washing done first, sounds as if there might have been a rhetoric to push young women into menial tasks although I am pretty sure that Joyce’s intent is that they are the makers of history, the stitchers of the dream of life, although they do it cursing and gossiping and they clean the mind and set the soul loose.
These things jump out at me, and yet if they are tied together too closely the story wilts. But one thing is clear. Rationality and moral consciousness (love of justice) count in Druidry and so does the Animistic perspective. The Great Goddess is still powerful, as well as the Way of the Light.
Morgan should not be seen as an evil goddess, she is also birth, the midwife, the healer, and sometimes the moon. If you take the meaning of the head of the dragon, then Arthur is the white light of the dragon power; his intuition for justice and druid wisdom makes him able to give the dragon a head. I like this interpretation. Malory gives Morgan a bad reputation, but I am more willing to believe the first intuition, that she is Arthur’s sister. Modern women writers sense this I think and are eager to put her in balance. The belief in her as villain seems to me to be close to masculine fear of powerful women. To be too heroic is to cross the boundaries of what is natural: birth, helplessness, lack of power, vulnerability and death (I parallel this to Juliana Kristava’s work on horror, in which she points out that the intellect seems to be there, not so much for its owner, but to protect the body).
There are some good hidden questions here:
Why are there apples in the land of Avalon, which is after all, up in the Summer stars? Snow white is put to sleep by an apple, could it be then, an equation of apple and sleep. Or is this the place that holds the principle of apples; the rebirth of plants and self-sewn grains - this seems like a missing part of the puzzle. Apples with their pentagon- star-in -a -circle mystery; the love and life cycle. Apples are equated with earth.
Some tales say Arthur was taken to Avalon by Morrigan, and that as a transporter she is neither good nor evil; others that she is a particular corrupt spirit. Arthurian tales are more particular in their characters, than earlier more mythical sagas. I think the guardian-ship of the land by a pure human leader with no moral faults is the theme of Arthur. Natural but non-moral spirits attack him, but they also help him, and it is he (and the knight’s code) that gives them a man of perfect judgment to restore the land. So I am willing to think that Morrigan might have many aspects in these stories which are like her old Queen Role. Yet she no longer controls justice in these stories, even if Morgan the betrayer, Morgan the sister and The Lady of the Lake are one.
Morrigan and her sisters are shape shifters, transporters through the cauldrons that take one from life to death (crows, stomachs, human intestines, going under the ground, madness, degenerative change.) and from death to life (the midwife, the corn goddess, the earth, the moon-change). One should not see her as simply a daemon. Better to think of first female goddess, stronger than battle, and more hidden. She can fly; she can change her shape from old to young; she is kindly and well trained in medicine. She is Arthur’s sister, perhaps his soul sister, perhaps his double (as a doppelganger is a double).
According to the New Arthurian Dictionary her reputation gets better in poetry, worse in prose as the tradition goes on. In Vulgate cycle she envies Guinevere, and tries to undo her. In the prose Tristran, she gives Arthur’s court a drinking horn, which no one unfaithful can drink from. She becomes a mortal who has to hide her age. Perhaps the reason for this parallels the movement of the story from a dominant female perspective to a dominant male perspective. Guinevere threatens her anam cara relationship with Arthur, by being the realization of his desires, but not the same as himself, which makes Arthur dominant. This dominance is I think reflected in the term pendragon, which might mean the head dragon or it might mean the dragon’s head. Remember that Druidry is the white light, having more to do with that than the hidden. And that the hidden tends to be less cerebral, less connected
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