Alferian (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} alferian) wrote,@ 2007-06-20 18:03:00 |
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Woden's Day
Well, I must be off shortly to Merlin's Rest, the pub where our Grovegather group is meeing now. I have been lax in attendance for months, and now the new organizer is trying out this new locations, so I'm eager to go check it out. What better location could one have than "Merlin's Rest"? I'm tempted to wear a pointy hat. But it's rather warm today for that.
It is Woden's Day, a good day for communication, of which I've done precious little. Haven't even checked my e-mail completely. I have been reading a manuscript for Llewellyn Publications. I've been dilly-dallying on it for too long. It's problematical. I am writing too much on it and objecting to too many things. The primary objection is one I've made to other manuscripts - the tendency of authors to articulate their own opinions and beliefs as facts. Druids do this, druids do that. Or, worse still, giving little short paragraph descriptions of what each of the "Celtic" gods and goddesses do. Has anyone else heard the idea that Cerridwen is associated with the Moon? This idea that goddesses have to be associated with the Moon, or the Sun for that matter, or that somebody has to represent the Moon and Sun, if you please -- this is a pernicious notion, an assumption based upon very superficial teaching of the Roman pantheon.
The Romans seem to have wanted to bureaucratize their gods, give them a job, so to speak. Or at least a resumé. Comparative mythologists have exaccerbated this notion by going around through the first half of the 20th century looking for sun-gods everywhere. And Robert Graves, of course, is well known for seeing Moon Goddesses everywhere -- the White Goddess in her Triple aspect corresponding to the (supposedly) three phases of the Moon. (There are three light phases, but obviously the Dark of the Moon is a fourth phase.) But people willl insist upon their triplicities. Me, I like to take divinities like everyone else. They are mysterious, largely enigmatic, impossible to simply pigeonhole, and very often quite different than the job title on their business card would lead you to suspect. I have heard Arianrhod linked to the Moon, which makes a certain sense out of her name "Silver Wheel." But she's also linked in the actual stories about her to the constellation Corona Borealis. In talking to her myself, she clarified the matter by pointing out that the Silver Wheel referred to is the spiral armed Milky Way Galaxy and that she is the spirit of it. Cerridwen and the Moon? I wish I knew where the author got this idea. I'm not averse to it, but just would like to know where the idea comes from . The Stories about Cerridwen emphasize her role as a sorceress seeking universal wisdom and being deprived of it for her ugly son by Gwion, by accident or fate. When I have worked with Cerridwen, I believed her to be an Earth Mother, Queen or Captain of the Deeps of the Earth, deep springs, the Cauldron of chaos and creation, the well of wisdom. Wellsprings.
Another thing this author said that rather irritated me was to develop his own system in which one Goddess is described as "the Living Earth" while another is described as the element of Water (I forget which at the moment). This seems to me to be taking the "three realms" imagery of Gaelic myth too literally. To suppose that "the Living Earth" is separable from water? That is hardly likely to make sense to a modern person with an understanding of ecology. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine that our ancestors were dimmer bulbs than we are today, but I generally give them more credit than that. Speaking of Earth, Sky, and Sea is a logical division of the phenomenal world that we see (especially if you live on an island like Eire or one of her smaller sisters. But to then suppose that there are separate divinities who represent or symbolize water as distinct from Earth, confuses the Greek system of four elements with the poetry of lived life. Yes, water and soil or rock are different, but you cannot imagine an "Earth goddess" without combining the elements. Divinities are not elemental spirits. I do think the Earth Mother archetype relates to the Earth element, but I do not think of her as limited to one of the elements. Does The Great Goddess love dead asteroids rolling in space better than the living planet upon which we breathe and move? Does she love us for our solid atoms and not the liquid water in our bodies? I'm engaging in a reductio ad absurdum argument here, which may not give enough credit to the author I am reading, but it just seems so dreadfully oversimplified to me.
I really wish modern druids could get away from the comparative mythologists a bit more and just read the stories of these people. How would you like it if you met someone and they looked at you and said, aha, you look like a lunar person, or a Mercurial one and then proceeded to ignore your personal story your life and deeds, happy to have pigeonholed you. It's like one of those dreadful people who ask you what your "Sign" is (as if one's Sun Sign was the beginning and end of one's personality.) Any astrologer worth his Salt will quite understand that the complexities of a personality and a life are myriad, bottomless indeed. You can go on calculating midpoints aspects and harmonics until you keel over. So, if we respect the life story and deeds of ordinary people like you and me, should we not all the more respect those of the Tuatha Dé Danann or the Children of Don? Gracious. Why, reduce me to a paragraph and call me a sun-god and I'll come after you with my cane!
Harumph.
Well, I must be off shortly to Merlin's Rest, the pub where our Grovegather group is meeing now. I have been lax in attendance for months, and now the new organizer is trying out this new locations, so I'm eager to go check it out. What better location could one have than "Merlin's Rest"? I'm tempted to wear a pointy hat. But it's rather warm today for that.
It is Woden's Day, a good day for communication, of which I've done precious little. Haven't even checked my e-mail completely. I have been reading a manuscript for Llewellyn Publications. I've been dilly-dallying on it for too long. It's problematical. I am writing too much on it and objecting to too many things. The primary objection is one I've made to other manuscripts - the tendency of authors to articulate their own opinions and beliefs as facts. Druids do this, druids do that. Or, worse still, giving little short paragraph descriptions of what each of the "Celtic" gods and goddesses do. Has anyone else heard the idea that Cerridwen is associated with the Moon? This idea that goddesses have to be associated with the Moon, or the Sun for that matter, or that somebody has to represent the Moon and Sun, if you please -- this is a pernicious notion, an assumption based upon very superficial teaching of the Roman pantheon.
The Romans seem to have wanted to bureaucratize their gods, give them a job, so to speak. Or at least a resumé. Comparative mythologists have exaccerbated this notion by going around through the first half of the 20th century looking for sun-gods everywhere. And Robert Graves, of course, is well known for seeing Moon Goddesses everywhere -- the White Goddess in her Triple aspect corresponding to the (supposedly) three phases of the Moon. (There are three light phases, but obviously the Dark of the Moon is a fourth phase.) But people willl insist upon their triplicities. Me, I like to take divinities like everyone else. They are mysterious, largely enigmatic, impossible to simply pigeonhole, and very often quite different than the job title on their business card would lead you to suspect. I have heard Arianrhod linked to the Moon, which makes a certain sense out of her name "Silver Wheel." But she's also linked in the actual stories about her to the constellation Corona Borealis. In talking to her myself, she clarified the matter by pointing out that the Silver Wheel referred to is the spiral armed Milky Way Galaxy and that she is the spirit of it. Cerridwen and the Moon? I wish I knew where the author got this idea. I'm not averse to it, but just would like to know where the idea comes from . The Stories about Cerridwen emphasize her role as a sorceress seeking universal wisdom and being deprived of it for her ugly son by Gwion, by accident or fate. When I have worked with Cerridwen, I believed her to be an Earth Mother, Queen or Captain of the Deeps of the Earth, deep springs, the Cauldron of chaos and creation, the well of wisdom. Wellsprings.
Another thing this author said that rather irritated me was to develop his own system in which one Goddess is described as "the Living Earth" while another is described as the element of Water (I forget which at the moment). This seems to me to be taking the "three realms" imagery of Gaelic myth too literally. To suppose that "the Living Earth" is separable from water? That is hardly likely to make sense to a modern person with an understanding of ecology. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine that our ancestors were dimmer bulbs than we are today, but I generally give them more credit than that. Speaking of Earth, Sky, and Sea is a logical division of the phenomenal world that we see (especially if you live on an island like Eire or one of her smaller sisters. But to then suppose that there are separate divinities who represent or symbolize water as distinct from Earth, confuses the Greek system of four elements with the poetry of lived life. Yes, water and soil or rock are different, but you cannot imagine an "Earth goddess" without combining the elements. Divinities are not elemental spirits. I do think the Earth Mother archetype relates to the Earth element, but I do not think of her as limited to one of the elements. Does The Great Goddess love dead asteroids rolling in space better than the living planet upon which we breathe and move? Does she love us for our solid atoms and not the liquid water in our bodies? I'm engaging in a reductio ad absurdum argument here, which may not give enough credit to the author I am reading, but it just seems so dreadfully oversimplified to me.
I really wish modern druids could get away from the comparative mythologists a bit more and just read the stories of these people. How would you like it if you met someone and they looked at you and said, aha, you look like a lunar person, or a Mercurial one and then proceeded to ignore your personal story your life and deeds, happy to have pigeonholed you. It's like one of those dreadful people who ask you what your "Sign" is (as if one's Sun Sign was the beginning and end of one's personality.) Any astrologer worth his Salt will quite understand that the complexities of a personality and a life are myriad, bottomless indeed. You can go on calculating midpoints aspects and harmonics until you keel over. So, if we respect the life story and deeds of ordinary people like you and me, should we not all the more respect those of the Tuatha Dé Danann or the Children of Don? Gracious. Why, reduce me to a paragraph and call me a sun-god and I'll come after you with my cane!
Harumph.
