| The Sacred Fires of Kildare There is a sacred Hill of Tlachtga, associated with the Hill of Ward in County Meath, and named after the goddess Tlachtga, where the ceremony of Samhain and the lighting of the winter fires was held. As a conceding to patriarchal religion and mythology, she is raped by three sons of Simon Magus, and bore three children who became noble warriors. Again, we have the symbolism of the number three. She was the red-haired daughter of the Druid Mug Ruith. Mug was a powerful mythic Druid priest. He was blind but could turn to enormous size, and his breath caused storms and could turn men to stone like Medusa. He was a student of Simon Magus who taught him magic skills and helped him build the flying machine roth rámach. The Roth Ramach is described in texts as a chariot driven by oxen with poles of electrum, sides of glass, and equally bright both day and night. It could also blind people, make them deaf and even strike them dead. (50) Sounds very much like a UFO of some kind and it’s associated with “magic” in this scenario. The efforts on Rome’s part to Christianize Ireland were not going very well until the 7th century or so. After this time, churches associated with Brigid of Kildare worked as long as they could to retain the rites of the goddess but a strong contingent of Roman bishops and priests in Ireland worked equally hard to insure participation and loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church. This created a change in the makeup of Ireland socially when monasteries built on lands held by families increasingly fell under the control of those families and Rome lost some of its authority or power over Ireland. (51) It seems one of the last blocks that needed to be removed by the priests in order to rid the idea of female hereditary succession would be the creation of apostolic succession. The church would now pass down family wealth from bishop family to sons. (52) By 1220, the abbess at Kildare had all but disappeared due to controversies and the papal legate, Henry of London, ordered the fire extinguished. Instead, the people rose up and he ordered the fire relit, though this was mostly a symbolic act because the monastery was still in decline and was finally disbanded during the suppression of the monasteries in 1540-41. (53) In the conversion of ancient Celtic goddesses into Christian Saints, we have a history going back to St. Brigid of Kildare, who retained her position from the early goddess traditions pretty much until the time of King Henry VIII when the sacred fire was finally extinguished. The goddess Venus became St. Venere, Artemis became St. Artimedos, Mercury became St. Mercurios, Dionysus became St. Dionysius, and the god Helios becoming St. Elias. (54) As with all festivals, they became “Christianized” and cleaned up slightly for purity and sexual control purposes, but the main events still take place in the form of the Festivals of Lights. |
Describing the difference between the churches in England and the Celtic churches, Graves cites a passage from C.S. Boswell’s edition of the 10th century Irish Fis Adamnain, The Vision of St. Adamnain: “While the Christian Church of Teutonic England owed its existence, in the main, to the missionary enterprise of Rome, the much older Celtic Churches, and notably the church of Ireland, were more closely connected with Gaul and the East.” (55) Boswell records that the Irish population was mostly Greek from its inception and maintained Syrian and Greek learning in the Irish schools while numerous pilgrimages from Ireland to Egypt occurred up through the end of the eighth century. This inevitably led to a Greek influence in ancient Irish tales. (56) The Bard, or master-poet was a priest and a judge as well. In Welsh, the word derwydd, or oak-seer, is where we get the word Druid from. In Irish he was called fili, a “seer.” This was the shaman essentially, someone who was a visionary for the people. The visions were expressed in poetry, which was how the first languages and writing were expressed. They were expressed as songs and poetry inspired from the mushroom. The bard or ollave held the highest position in society and when two armies went to battle, the bards from both sides met at the top of the hill and debated the battle in verbal poetry. In The White Goddess, Graves describes how the combatants would accept the version of the story of the battle, of whichever bard won the debate or described it best. (57) The master-poets had become court officials who had a chair provided for them at the royal table and who were indebted to the crown. In the 13th century with the fall of the Welsh princes, the tradition was still maintained in the noble houses. (58) The ollave, or master-poet was the only one besides the queen who sat next to the king at the table. The word “Bard” meant a master poet in medieval Wales, but in Ireland it denoted a lesser learned poet who had not gone through the “seven degrees of wisdom” which took twelve years to accomplish. (One should note the magical numbers 7 and 12). (59) In contradistinction to some of the myths we have read which include these numbers, the idea of schooling lasting seven or twelve years probably has some real validity to it. (50) The Myths of the Gods: Structures in Irish Mythology by Alan Ward, 1981 (51) Serpent and the Goddess, p. 48; Frank O'Connor, A Backward Look (London:Macmillan, 1967), p. 55 (52) ibid, p. 174 (53) ibid, p. 138; Cf. J. Healy, Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and Walker, 1893), p. 138 (54) White Goddess, p. 143 (55) ibid, p. 147 (56) ibid, p. 148 (57) White Goddess, p. 21-22 (58) ibid, p. 18 (59) ibid, p. 22 |