DeDanaan

by Aine MacDermot

These are good times for some perceptual changes in human systems of belief and thought, and the general human frame of mind. We can start by recognizing the beautiful open-minded holistic feminine goddesses whose existence in pre-Indo-European cultures precedes that of the patriarchal “old men” - the old white bearded masculine gods.

It is wrong to say that this is just a woman’s culture, that there was just a Goddess and there were no Gods. There is a balance between the sexes throughout, in religion and in life. In all mythologies, for instance in Europe, Germanic or Celtic or Baltic, you will find the Earth Mother or Earth Goddess and her male companion or counterpart next to her.

However, more than ninety percent of the Neolithic figurines found in Bulgaria are female. Of the two hundred fifty figurines from Marija Gimbutas’ excavation at Sitagroi, northern Greece, “not one can be clearly identified as male.” Interestingly, before cemeteries came into use, c. 5000 BC, adult male burials are conspicuously rare in settlements in southeast Europe during the Early Neolithic period (7th-6th millennia BC), though women and girls have been found buried in the floors of their homes. Houses, therefore, functioned as abodes for the living as well as for the ancestors.

This is not feminist bias seeping into non-scientific neopagan goddess-centered archaelogy; this is the evidence we have at hand.
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Some great news today…

Ireland’s ancient Hill of Tara, once the seat of the high kings, was today named one of the world’s 100 most endangered heritage sites.

The New York-based World Monument Fund placed Tara on its crisis list after campaigns and court battles failed to reroute a controversial motorway away from it.

Since 1965, the body has saved 420 irreplaceable sites around the world, including the ancient Buddhist temple of Preah Khan at Angkor, Cambodia, built in 1191.

Read the rest here.

by Nicholas Wade
International Herald Tribune
Published: March 5, 2007

Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from Northern Europe and drove the Celts to the western and northern fringes.

But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans.

The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticist’s point of view, seems likely to please no one. The genetic evidence is still under development, and because only very rough dates can be derived from it, it is hard to weave evidence from DNA, archaeology, history and linguistics into a coherent picture of British and Irish origins.

That has not stopped the attempt.

More here.

Played by Mark Harmer on Celtic harp.

He says:

Turlough O’Carolan was an Irish harpist who lived in the mid-1600s and wrote pieces for the people he met and stayed with - playing music in exchange for hospitality. Tradition has it that the harp was played last thing at night, before people went to bed.

The building I’m playing it in was a bakery built around 1790, serving the local houses. The bread oven is in the stone wall behind me, and the building has a new floor and triple-glazing on the windows. It’s a great mixture of old and new and a great place to play this music.

Appropriately, I recorded this piece very late one night, and just went with the first take so the playing has the odd rough bits. I like to think that’s authentic - apparently Carolan never played the same way twice. Bet he never had as much trouble as I did finding DivX codecs, either!

Only the melodies survive, so I’ve done this arrangement myself and I’m playing it here on a Pilgrim gut-strung harp. The arrangement and video is my copyright. You are welcome to learn and play the arrangement if you like it - but please credit me if you play it in public.

Turlough O’Carolan [Toirdhealbhach O’Cearbhallain] (1670 - March 25, 1738) was a blind, itinerant Irish harper and composer whose great fame is due to his gifts for composition and verse. He is considered by many to be Ireland’s national composer and the last of the Irish bards. However, harpers in the old Irish tradition were still living as late as 1792, as one, Dennis Hempson, showed up at the Belfast Harp Festival, and O’Carolan’s own compositions already showed influence from the style of continental classical music.

O’Carolan was born near Nobber, County Meath, and moved with his family to Ballyfarnan, County Roscommon, at the age of fourteen, where his father took a job with the MacDermot Roe family. Mrs. MacDermot gave him an education, and he showed talent in poetry. Blinded by smallpox at eighteen, O’Carolan was taught the harp for three years. Then, being given a horse and a guide, he set out to travel Ireland and compose songs for patrons. For almost fifty years, O’Carolan journeyed from one end of the country to the other, composing and performing his tunes.

O’Carolan is buried in the village of Keadue, County Roscommon, where the annual O’Carolan Harp Festival and Summer School commemorates his life and work.

From the original Riverdance show, 1995, this clip features, for the first time, Michael playing the flute. The tunes include a verse of ‘The Coolin’, which he would develop into FOF’s ‘Whispering Wind’ a few years later. Bodhran player, Tommy Hayes.

This was not included in the VHS version that was sold in the US.

Michael Flatley

Daire Nolan and Gillian Norris.

via BreakingNews.ie
30/12/2006 - 21:53:48

Irish language courses are more popular than ever with a record number of people attending the Gaeltacht this year.

Over 25,000 people studied in the Gaeltacht in 2006, the most there has ever been.

A thousand of those attending Irish language courses were adult learners, while the rest were young students going to summer colleges.

Gaeltacht Minister Eamon O Cuiv was very happy with the news.

“Certainly Irish is alive and kicking,” he said.

“A number of things have happened to strengthen the language in recent times: TG4, the Language Act and the recent statement by the Government in relation to the language are all major boosters.”

by Erynn Rowan Laurie
Copyright © 1997 Erynn Rowan Laurie
All Rights Reserved

May be reposted as long as the above attribution and copyright notice are retained.
 
 
 
One of the primary functions of sacrifice is the renewal of the cosmos. In Norse myth, we have, if I recall correctly, the giant Ymir who is killed and whose body creates the cosmos. This is paralleled in Hindu cosmology, where the sacrifice by the Brahmans reenacts the death of a divine, cosmic being whose body creates the cosmos. Although we do not have a Celtic creation myth preserved in the corpus of written and oral materials, I think it would be reasonable to think that their myth might follow this pattern as well.

If creation requires death and dismemberment to occur, then it would follow that only the sacrifice of something living will do to fulfill a cosmological sacrifice. This is not to say that monetary and other sacrifices cannot be made under other circumstances. They obviously were, and from what other folks here have said, this method is still being used, although it is in the context of a gift to the Gods rather than of cosmic renewal. Mauss would say that this sort of sacrificial gift creates a mutual relationship between the Gods and the human community that requires a reciprocal gift from the Gods of continued food, shelter, and other necessary survival substances. But as I’ve said, these gift exchanges do not renew the cosmos in a theological sense. They serve instead to renew community bonds. An important task to be sure, but not the point of cosmological sacrifice.

Some anthropologists and historians have speculated that the sacrifice of animals followed a period of the sacrifice of humans as the vehicle of cosmic renewal. We do know that the Celts sacrificed prisoners of war and occasionally other humans in some rituals, so they had not left that phase of sacrifice behind them entirely. I think that in this case, what we may be looking at are gifts to the Gods, or an exchange of life for life on the battlefield in the case of prisoners of war. Hypothetically speaking, the warriors of “our tribe” were successful and few were killed, but war is an arena of death and certain loss of life is expected or perhaps vowed as a part of the victory celebration, so prisoners from “their tribe” are sacrificed as a substitute for “our” warriors or as gifts to the deity of warriors. Other human sacrifices may serve as messengers to the Gods, carrying requests and information that cannot be trusted to lesser gifts. A human sacrifice, particularly as a foundation sacrifice, may serve as a spiritual guardian for the structure being built. But at some point, animal sacrifice was apparently substituted for human sacrifice in cosmic renewal ceremonies, as well as in other kinds of sacrifice, and so there would seem to be precedent for considered changes in this kind of ritual. We are not, then, looking for “an excuse to stop performing the sacrifice” but rather a theologically valid way to transform the sacrifice while maintaining its focus and impact, as was done in the alleged transition from human to animal sacrifice. I believe that we can argue for a theologically valid substitute for the body and soul of an animal.

We know from the story of Miach and Airmid, and from Alexei’s account of Breton herbalism, that herbs are associated with different parts of the body — an herb for every joint and sinew, as it were. We might say that the body could be created, built of herbs. Blodwedd is an example of a living human being magically created from nine kinds of herbs. We also know from a Welsh medieval medical text, and from Irish tradition, that the body is related to the cosmos in Celtic thought. The eyes may be the stars, sun be the face, breath be the wind, stone as bones, water as blood, soil as flesh, etc. I would argue that through these associations, a living “human” body could be created of certain ritually appropriate plants to serve as the vehicle of cosmic renewal. In this way, the death and dismemberment of the “herbal body” would serve as the living force that is the source of cosmic creation.
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