By Popular Request: The Goddesses of Avalon (Chapter Two of My Book "The Mysteries of Avalon")

As I just finished discussing Geoffrey of Monmouth's Avalon in the previous post, some correspondents have asked me about the goddesses of Avalon as found in the Galfridian tradition.  I wrote about these many years ago in my book THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON.  Here is the relevant chapter...

[The entire published book THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON can be found posted chapter by chapter in the earlier portions of my now inactive, but still accessible blog site https://secretsavalon.blogspot.com/.]

CHAPTER TWO

The Goddesses of Avalon

The nine sisters placed on Avalon by Geoffrey of Monmouth are known Irish goddesses. I have identified these sisters as follows:

Geoffrey’s Nine Sisters      Irish Goddesses   

Morgen                           Morrigan             

Moronoe                         Muireann, mother of

                                      Fionn mac Cumhail      

Mazoe                             Macha

                                      (Imona / Emain)

Gliten                                               

Glitonea                        

Gliton                             Clidna triplicated

Tyronoe                          Tuireann, sister of

                                      Muireann or Fionn’s

                                      sister

Thiten                                              

Thiten cithara

notissima,

‘lyre-famous’                   Dechtine

                                      (the –ch- is silent),

                                      mother of Cuchulainn

                                      duplicated and wrongly

                                      linked to Irish  tet, theoit,

                                      teoid, ted, ‘harp-string’

                                               

The argument has been made for Morgen – the later Morgan le Fay or Morgan ‘the Fairy’ – being a native Welsh goddess. However, not a single source mentions such a goddess prior to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Life of Merlin. The Morgens found in an early Welsh genealogy featuring Glast, a fictional eponymous founder of Glastonbury, are male princes and cannot, therefore, be Morgen.

Geoffrey describes Morgen thusly:

“The one who is first among them has greater skill in healing, as her beauty surpasses that of her sisters. Her name is Morgen, and she has learned the uses of all plants in curing the ills of the body. She knows, too, the art of changing her shape, of flying through the air, like Daedalus, on strange wings. At will, she is now at Brest, now at Chartres, now at Pavia; and at will she glides down from the sky on to your shores. They say she had taught astrology to her sisters…”

The bird-form assumed by Morgen is, of course, the crow aspect of the Irish Morrigan, the ‘Spirit-Queen’. And there is now no reason to doubt that Geoffrey merely substituted the familiar Welsh name Morgen for Morrigan. The Morrigan was the preeminent battle goddess of the ancient Irish, but she is also known for being present at the death of the greatest of the Irish heroes, Cuchulainn. This last fact may have been Geoffrey’s inspiration for having Morgen appear to ferry away the dying Arthur. ‘The Morrigan’, as she was sometimes referred to, also tried to seduce Cuchulainn and this sexual motif may have contributed to Morgan le Fay’s sleeping with her brother, Arthur (see ‘Anu’ in Chapter 6).

The Spirit-Queen resided not in Emain Ablach, but in the frightful Otherworld Cave of Cruachan at Rathcroghan near Tulsk, Co. Roscommon. Of course, all otherworlds are Avalon, which could be a place of both dread and delight, emotions engendered in us by our conflicting view of places of burial as both houses for the dead and portals to the happy afterlife. For anyone who has ever ventured into an ancient passage grave, the sensation of exposure to numinous power is evident. Apprehension and anticipation go hand in hand when exploring these kinds of funeral monuments.

Muireann was the mother of Fionn and the divine wife of Cumhail, i.e. the god Camulos (see Chapter 6). Fionn and his fiana or ‘warrior band’ are in many ways the Irish counterpart of Arthur and his champions. The word fiana contains the same ancient root as Latin venatio, ‘hunting’, and so we find Fionn as Gwyn the mighty hunter in the Arthurian tale Culhwch and Olwen. In Welsh tradition, Gwyn became the lord of the Otherworld.

Macha (see Imona in Chapter 6) was an important Irish horse goddess. We have seen above that Emain Ablach belonged to her.

The goddess Clidna was worshipped in Co. Cork. She came from Tir Tairngire or the ‘Land of Promise’, a designation for the Otherworld, and she owned three magical birds that ate apples from a sacred tree. We may compare these birds with those belonging to the Welsh goddess, Rhiannon.

Tyronoe is Tuireann or Uirne, variously the sister of Muireann or Fionn’s sister, whom has a spell cast upon her while she is pregnant which transforms her into a bitch. She gives birth to twin hounds, Bran and Sceolang, who become Fionn’s prized hunting dogs.

Dechtine, the mother of Cuchulainn by Lugh Lamhfota or Lugh of the Long-hand, is said to come from the Newgrange passage grave on the Boyne, an Otherworld house that belonged to Aonghus Og or Mac Og, the Irish equivalent of the Welsh Mabon the Divine Son.

What are we to make of the fact that Geoffrey of Monmouth inhabited Arthur’s Avalon with Irish goddesses? Some would doubtless say that this was proof that Avalon was a concept borrowed from the Irish. Others would go even further and claim that if Avalon has as its denizens Irish goddesses, then Avalon itself must be an Irish island.

I would counter both of these statements by saying that none of the Irish sources place all of these goddesses on Avalon. In fact, only Macha (= Imona) is expressly associated with the Isle of Apple-trees. It seems fairly certain, therefore, that Geoffrey selected these various goddesses from disparate Irish sources because he lacked the names of corresponding British goddesses. The existence of the Irish goddesses was known to him and so it was convenient to have them preside over Arthur’s Otherworld-island.

However, having said this, it is true that Geoffrey’s Avalon goddesses remind us to an uncanny degree of the Gallizenas of the island of Sena, modern Ile de Sein, off Pointe du Raz on the western coast of Brittany, mentioned by Pomponius Mela in c. 40 CE:

“Sena in the British sea, opposite the Ossismician coast, is remarkable for an oracle of the Gallic God. Its priestesses, holy in perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They are called Gallizenas, and are thought to be endowed with singular powers, so as to raise by their charms the winds and seas, to turn themselves into what animals they will, to cure wounds and diseases incurable by others, to know and predict the future; but this they do only to navigators who go thither purposely to consult them.”

Various origins for the term Gallizenas have been sought, but I think none of them very satisfactory. This is, rather transparently, a form of Old Irish caillech or caillechan, ‘crone, elderly woman, hag, witch’, but also ‘nun’, as the word originally meant ‘veiled one’. And if I am right, then the placement of this island off the coast of Brittany is likely an error for Inis Cathach, modern Scattery Island at the mouth of the Shannon River in Ireland. Shannon or Sionainn is a river-goddess name. It comes from *seno-ona and means ‘Old Goddess’. Sena, the ancient name of the Ile de Sein, would appear to have the same root (cf. Senuna, Sena, Senua, as a goddess name on votive plaques found near Baldock, Hertfordshire).

The island of Inis Cathach was taken over by the Christian Saint Senan (whose own name, probably not coincidentally, is a diminutive of the same root found in Sionainn and means ‘old’) in the 6th century. A strict misogynist rule was imposed that no woman could ever set foot on the island. This was doubtless a Christian reaction to the fact that pagan priestesses or caillechan had once inhabited the place.

A couple of interesting legends regarding pagan worship by priestesses on Scattery Island have been preserved. First in importance is that which concerns the péist (‘beast’) ‘Cata’ or Cathach, a water monster similar to the female Caoranach of Lough Derg. St. Senan (about 500 CE) found this monster dwelling on Scattery Island. The Cata devoured the saint’s smith, Narach, but Senan brought him forth again alive. In the subsequent combat between priest and péist, the latter advanced with ‘its eyes flashing flame, with fiery breath, spitting venom and opening its horrible jaws,’ but Senan made the sign of the cross, and the beast collapsed, was chained and then thrown into Doolough near Mount Callan (the black lake, ‘Nigricantis aquae juxta montem Callain in Tuamonia’). In the oldest (metrical) Life of Senan, the péist appears as the ‘immanis bellua’ (monstrous beast) or ‘bestia,’ while Iniscatha is rendered ‘Belluanam Insulam’ (island of the beast). The legend is alluded to even in the late eighth-century Calendar of Oengus under March 8th, ‘Senan of Inis Cathaig gibbeted Naroch’s foe.’ The story is remembered widely, and among all classes at Scattery and along both banks of the river, at Kilkee, Kilmihil, and round Doolough and Miltown Malbay. In the fifteenth-century details of the ‘Cathedral’ of Scattery a large-eyed dragon with crocodile jaws is conspicuous; there was another carving at Kilrush; and a third, - the ‘pattern-stone’ removed from Scattery and until lately at Kilkee,—showed the Cata as ‘the amphibious beast of this blessed Isle,’ a nondescript creature with spiked back, scales, fish tail, nose curling up spirally, and clawed forefeet.

After Senan had expelled the Cathach, a local chieftain called MacTail, or Mactal, hired a druid to put a spell on the saint. However, as the druid landed on a nearby island, a tidal wave enveloped him and swept him to his death. The island is still pointed out as ‘Carraig a Draoi’ or The Druid’s Rock. It lies between Hog Island and Scattery, and can be seen at low tide.

The ‘Lady’s Grave’ is found at the low tide mark to the west of Rinn Eanaigh. It is said to cover the grave of a young lady called Connara whose advances Senan had repulsed. Connara is described as an Irish princess or the ‘holy nun’ who founded the convent of Cill na gCailleach (Church of the Caillech) on the side of Poulnasherry Bay on the mainland.