She Doesn't LOOK Druish

Join us as we explore Katie's Irish roots, and the ancient religious traditions of the Western European Celts. We talk a little about the religious sites that Katie has visited, and the ancestral gods and druidic arts that too few remember today.

We look at Julius Caesar's report about the Wicker Man, and discuss the musical magic of the Bards, Fili, and Druids. Some strong D&D vibes here.

Wicca finds some natural appeal in the Celtic tradition, but this tradition is more directed toward the goddesses like Brigid, Epona, and Morrigan.

All this and more....

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[00:00:12] Katie Dooley: Hi, Preston.

[00:00:13] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.

[00:00:15] Katie Dooley: I sounded very exasperated. I mean, hi, Preston.

[00:00:20] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.

[00:00:23] Katie Dooley: I'm really excited about this episode.

[00:00:25] Preston Meyer: So I thought of a name for this episode before we even started throwing content together.

[00:00:29] Katie Dooley: Okay, well, lay it on me.

[00:00:32] Preston Meyer: Well, she doesn't look Druish. Good old Spaceballs. I'm still waiting for the search for more money.

[00:00:43] Katie Dooley: Well, we're gonna find out why she doesn't look Druish on today's episode of. 

[00:00:48] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.

[00:00:55] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy.

[00:00:58] Preston Meyer: That's a great way to start.

[00:00:59] Katie Dooley: Right? Uh, we're doing another ancient religion. Today we are talking about ancient Celtic religion, which I was excited by having grown up as an Irish dancer. But it's also way more complicated than I'd say almost any of the ones we have looked at because it...

[00:01:24] Preston Meyer: They're all complicated.

[00:01:25] Katie Dooley: They are but this one like really morphs into Irish folklore. Eventually. And looks completely different from its original pantheon of gods, which is where I was like, this has a lot of branches to it.

[00:01:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the Romans put a lot of work into making the Celtic religious tradition family really hard to study and really pushed it into obscurity, which is weird because like we're talking before the Christian conquest of the Celtic people. It's frustrating.

[00:02:03] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And like you said, then it becomes this, you know, at some point it almost becomes children's stories,

[00:02:11] Preston Meyer: Pretty much.

[00:02:12] Katie Dooley: And so where, where do you draw that line and Celtic is a lot broader than Irish too.

[00:02:18] Preston Meyer: Right, a lot.

[00:02:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I was doing all this research and wondering if I was researching the right thing. But I hope you all enjoy this episode nonetheless.

[00:02:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, the Celtic people basically originated in Western Europe. Basically anything west of Italy that wasn't south of Italy, centralized and southern Germany and France. But the Celts also lived in Austria, Czechia, and most famously, the British Isles.

[00:02:28] Katie Dooley: Like the North Germanic peoples, we have very few written records about old Celtic religious traditions. And unfortunately, most of the old writings we have about Celtic worship come from Romans, including Julius Caesar himself.

[00:03:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Before he decided I am the god-emperor of this ridiculous nation, back when he was just General Gaius, then he was, you know, out fighting people and getting to know his enemies. And so the writings that we have from him about his enemies definitely are fully... What's the word I'm looking for? They're very heavily biased in a very negative way. Yeah, yeah. The Romans spoke about all the foreign gods as though they were only foreign names for their own gods. We had talked about this a couple episodes ago, and when they were talking about the Gaulish and the Celtic gods, this makes it really hard to know who they're talking about, because they don't actually map onto each other terribly well, which is really frustrating.

[00:04:02] Katie Dooley: Well then, of course, um, the Romans hated the Gauls. And then, of course, we have the Christians who hate polytheism, which this is another polytheistic religion. We don't have any positive spins on this religion at all. And some are just outright propaganda to diminish this Celtic pantheon.

[00:04:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's uh, it's frustrating. Very little remains of the Celtic, the Celtic cultural tradition outside of the British Isles today and really the only exception to that is that tiny little corner of France that's trying really hard to reconnect to Ireland.

[00:04:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and then again, I just wanted to point out that again. I said it's a polytheistic religion, but when we do our wrap up episode, it is the concept of a monotheistic religion is so weird at this point in time. And that's something now it's gone the other way, especially if you live in the West, where a polytheistic tradition feels so weird. But no, everyone thought. The Jews and the Christians were out of their minds. 

[00:04:42] Preston Meyer: it's an interesting world that we live in. Yeah. So diving into some of the the nifty elements that are the Celtic religious tradition, which of course, like everything we've talked about for the last few episodes and any religious group, nothing is ever monolithic. There's always diversity of thought, especially in a tradition that covers such a large part of Europe.

[00:05:40] Katie Dooley: Well, and again, no formalized writings. Like all the other ones we've touched on in these past couple of months, no formalized writing so there's nothing to go off of.

[00:05:50] Preston Meyer: There's no Celtic Bible. That's just not the way it goes.We don't even have something that really mirrors the Eddas very well either.

[00:05:59] Katie Dooley: There's like literally nothing on these people.

[00:06:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Which is rough. It's a lot of oral traditions that what we learn about them says that they would have been preserved in a way that should have been verbatim from generation to generation. But because there is such great diversity from east to west, from north to south, of the people that were called the Celts and the Gauls, it's not looking like it's really verbatim.

[00:06:26] Katie Dooley: Well, and then this is where, like I said, I had trouble researching because we do start to have good written record of Irish mythology. Which is where which comes from the Celtic pantheon. But there's not a lot on the Celtic pantheon. Anyway...

[00:06:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So generally speaking, the Celts were pretty interested in what we call animism, that most pagan folk were interested in the spirits of trees and animals. This was something that we saw a little bit with the Norse, where they were worried about sacred lands. But this is much more a part of the Celtic life than it was for the Northern Germanic people, which of course shouldn't be too terribly foreign to North American white folk who happened to be living on stolen land.

[00:07:14] Katie Dooley: Yeah, right? So unlike the harsh line between sacred and profane that we see in the Abrahamic traditions, Celts believed that spirits were in everything.

[00:07:27] Preston Meyer: Everywhere.

[00:07:28] Katie Dooley: Everything and everywhere.

[00:07:29] Preston Meyer: Like the land wights. 

[00:07:29] Katie Dooley: Lands and animals share dreams with the gods. Which is one of the few ways that we know anything about some of these gods.

[00:07:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it gets to be tricky business. The Celts were also particularly concerned with how animals behaved, considering almost any potential act to be an omen, either for good or evil. And if you've paid a lot of attention to anybody who believes in gods today, this is still the way a lot of people behave. Taking all kinds of things as signs from the gods.

[00:08:06] Katie Dooley: Totally, yeah. Animals and the gods are always tied up, even if you think of, like, temple sacrifice.

[00:08:12] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Absolutely. It's kind of interesting.

[00:08:15] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Good thing we're apex predators.

[00:08:20] Preston Meyer: I just watched the movie. I can't remember the name of it now. It's basically the story that Moby Dick was based off of the true story. And whales are awful. They are brutal and mean, sometimes.

[00:08:36] Katie Dooley: Killer whales are very mean.

[00:08:39] Preston Meyer: Sure, I think this one was mostly focused on sperm whales.

[00:08:42] Katie Dooley: Oh, interesting. 

[00:08:43] Preston Meyer: I think. I could be misremembering that. But yeah, they weren't. Even after the killer whales. They were after the big dark whales. Oh, yeah. With their goofy little flappy under jaws.

[00:08:56] Katie Dooley: Isn't that just Thor Ragnarok? The dark elves?

[00:09:00] Preston Meyer: Sure. Why not?  So there is only minor evidence anciently, of what might have been called witchcraft among the old Celts. But the rise of Wicca in the last century does offer a little extra perspective into how people have preserved the old ways and brought them back to life, whether or not they're faithful reproductions of what used to be going on anciently is an entirely different discussion.

[00:09:27] Katie Dooley: We're gonna get into that, though. Unlike the Norse tradition, who had no defined priesthood whatsoever, the Celts had classes of priesthood, all of which were open to men and women alike, which we do see in modern Wicca. 

[00:09:27] Preston Meyer: Anciently, bards were more than just performers sharing songs and stories. And if you're at all familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, which I know at least some of our audience is.

[00:09:55] Katie Dooley: Is it me? It's me.

[00:09:59] Preston Meyer: Bards have a sort of magic. And I thought it was really interesting. Magic and poetry or sorry, music and poetry share magical properties. And that's a really important part of the Celtic tradition. And it's it does show itself a little bit in the Harry Potter universe, where you see that nobody's using English words for their spells. It's always a slightly poetic sounding Latin-ish. If it's not real Latin, it's something that's meant to sound like Latin.

[00:10:31] Katie Dooley: Like Lorem ipsum. For my... Only a select few of you might understand that reference. I'm so sorry. It's graphic design, filler text. It's Latin-ish. It looks like Latin, but it's not.

[00:10:45] Preston Meyer: That makes perfect sense. Yeah, I like cheese ipsum.

[00:10:49] Katie Dooley: Ooh, pirate ipsum is a good one too.

[00:10:51] Preston Meyer: Sure, if you're looking for filler text, there's actually a lot of great services online. Yeah, but I thought that was really interesting that, like, I just thought it was dad doing this weird thing to bards that made poets magical. But no, this is a legit ancient tradition, so that's kind of cool. However, most people see bards as the lowest level of Celtic poets being more reciters than inspired writers.

[00:11:19] Katie Dooley: Interesting, so, an undergrad student?

[00:11:23] Preston Meyer: Sure.

[00:11:25] Katie Dooley: Then there were the fili. Which were the seers. Actually, I thought we should put the pronunciation in for basically all the gods. And I didn't, so we might need to do some googling. The Fili were seers, able to see the future and share their visions in poetic songs or riddles.

[00:11:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I feel like that would get really annoying for the layman.

[00:11:55] Katie Dooley: I feel like there's a pop culture character that does that, and I can't think of who it is right now.

[00:12:00] Preston Meyer: For people who are familiar with the Hebrew Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, there's famously good old Isaiah who talks in a very poetic voice a lot of the time and is pretty obscure for readers. So that's something that's reasonably common to religious folk today. 

[00:11:55] Katie Dooley: Because of the power of song, the Fili, their words and traditions survived the Christian conquest and recorded by Catholic priests.

[00:12:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I thought it was interesting reading up on these Catholic priests that were writing these things, why they felt the need to preserve something that they really hated. Feels really, really odd to me, but I can appreciate that the need for decent scholarship was enough that they did a thing that needed to be done, even though they weren't doing it for properly noble reasons.

[00:13:07] Katie Dooley: No. No enjoyment. There was no enjoyment there.  And in Ireland specifically, the Fili were counted as equals to Catholic priests, which meant that they received land from the chiefs equally. This became a hardship when pretty much anybody could become a Fili, so the title was restricted to only a few per family who were thought to have a special right to it.

[00:13:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that could be a problem. And it's I think it's really interesting that they were counted as equal under the law. I mean, anyone could become a priest too, but that doesn't mean you were going to get a parish right away, you know?

[00:13:44] Katie Dooley: No, I mean, that's and again, this is probably part of the reason why it morphs into, like I said, the folklore is that Ireland like still to this day, as Catholic as it is, they still have fairy trees that you don't cut down in your farmer's field, kind of like in Iceland, where you have to get permission from the elves to build civic buildings like it's the weirdest thing.

[00:14:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I'm curious how that actually operates from day to day, because I haven't looked that up. Do they just put a petition in front of a spot reserved for the elves and see what happens?

[00:14:27] Katie Dooley: I haven't looked into it either. I just know it's the thing.

[00:14:30] Preston Meyer: All right.

[00:14:30] Katie Dooley: But I did see fairy trees in Ireland where like in the middle of a field that, you know, here in Western Canada would be completely bare for grazing. It's like, nope, fairies live in that tree. Can't cut it down.

[00:14:43] Preston Meyer: Okay, cool. There's some question as to whether these are the same folks that the Greeks and Romans called the vates, but in English we call them ovates now, because learning Greek is hard. I know that because I've done it, but that's an embarrassing adjustment of a word. But ovates is easy enough to say in English, so I guess there's that. Druids. That's a word that I think should be a little bit more familiar. Were basically what we now know as priests in Celtic paganism, while there's little that we actually know about them, uh, there is a magical element to them. Many of their practices would be what we consider occult, including divination and spell casting. Just like other religious leaders at the time, they were also heavily involved in politics, medicine, law, and as information keepers. Basically, these were the guys that could read, but they didn't write things down.

[00:15:50] Katie Dooley: Bitches.

[00:15:51] Preston Meyer: Right. It's it's frustrating.

[00:15:53] Katie Dooley: It is frustrating. 2000 years later. You are correct. Did you know, Preston, that they performed human sacrifices?

[00:16:03] Preston Meyer: I mean, I've heard it about so many different peoples now that at some point we have to run across somebody that it's fully true.

[00:16:11] Katie Dooley: It's not this one, though. So I really just think this is Roman propaganda for all of them, or like Christian propaganda, I guess because Rome, there were rumors that in the Roman, ancient Roman they had human sacrifice.

[00:16:26] Preston Meyer: Well, even the Greeks would say it about the Spartans, that they would just destroy all their, their weak-looking children. Turns out there's no truth about that either.

[00:16:38] Katie Dooley: Weak-looking. Oh, that's sad. I can just, like, picture little Timmy being like, well, I'm sorry, you're a little scrawny. That's really upsetting.

[00:16:47] Preston Meyer: But this was things. That was something that the Greeks would say about the Spartans talking about, you know, their history looking backwards. And yet we've found no evidence that it's true. And some pretty strong arguments that the people that were saying this were just being dicks to people they didn't like.

[00:17:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So in in reading up on this round of human sacrifice, basically some scholars even deny that it happened at all. Um, it definitely didn't happen very often. If it did, in any instances of sacrifice were likely reserved for criminals.

[00:17:22] Preston Meyer: Makes sense. I mean.

[00:17:24] Katie Dooley: We still do that. So.

[00:17:26] Preston Meyer: Right. Julius Caesar, back when he was just General Gaius, would he actually said that one of the greatest things that he witnessed among the Gaulish people was that they would stuff people into these wicker men.

[00:17:43] Katie Dooley: Oh, yes, the Wicker man.

[00:17:44] Preston Meyer: Right. And the Wicker Man is kind of cool. But does a giant effigy actually need flesh and blood people inside it? Isn't that the purpose of an effigy is to not have the real thing inside the fake?

[00:18:00] Katie Dooley: I mean, yeah but even if they did, we burn people at the stake. Well, into the 1700s so...

[00:18:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so Julius said that they would stuff criminals into the wickerman, but when they ran out of criminals, when they just had a light year and people were being good, Santa Claus didn't have any to bring coal to. They would throw slaves and thralls into the wickerman, which seems really odd.

[00:18:27] Katie Dooley: Seems like a waste of labor.

[00:18:29] Preston Meyer: Right? You need your slaves?

[00:18:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I don't want anyone. I don't want anyone to have slaves. Period. But I don't want anyone taking my manpower. Paid. My paid manpower.

[00:18:40] Preston Meyer: Right? But this is a thing that people are saying about the old Gaulish people. Just like they were saying about everybody else in the neighborhood.

[00:18:51] Katie Dooley: Literally everyone has performed a human sacrifice.

[00:18:55] Preston Meyer: I mean.

[00:18:56] Katie Dooley: If we if we take what's been written, everyone has performed.

[00:18:59] Preston Meyer: I mean, human sacrifice is still an everyday occurrence in Texas today. Thank you government. But of course, these are criminals.

[00:19:10] Katie Dooley: Preston goes political.

[00:19:13] Preston Meyer: In Canada, human sacrifice is fully illegal and in many countries it is still totally acceptable. Just  a reality. I'm not getting political about it. I'm just. That's the reality. So back to the Druids. They're generally thought to have had something that looks like a mystery school, but those mysteries are now lost to time. If such an oral tradition had survived to the present day, some people claim that it has. That would make them the only people in the world to preserve that as a secret, rather than have it leak out. So we're basically looking at the Bigfoot of religious studies

[00:19:58] Katie Dooley: Cool!

[00:20:01] Preston Meyer: That's so tricky business. And of course, in most literature since the medieval era, druids have been portrayed as malevolent sorcerers who oppose the advance of Christianity. The second half of that makes perfect sense, since the Christians destroyed and conquered their way of life, but making them malevolent sorcerers just seems like an unnecessary negative set of baggage there. But in the last couple of hundred years, Neo-druid groups have popped up. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that later.

[00:20:35] Katie Dooley: I mean. We've all watched Outlander, so.

[00:20:38] Preston Meyer: I haven't watched Outlander.

[00:20:39] Katie Dooley: Well, you're missing out.

[00:20:41] Preston Meyer: Okay.

[00:20:42] Katie Dooley: It's really meant for the ladies, but there's a lot of gore, though.

[00:20:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah, okay.

[00:20:50] Katie Dooley: I fast forward for the gore and get to the sexy part.

[00:20:54] Preston Meyer: That makes sense.

[00:20:55] Katie Dooley: Yeah. The descriptions we get about the Druids make it look like they ran theocratic tribes, but it makes more sense that in smaller tribal groups, there wasn't much reason for the more senior members not to have a familial respect for the whole community, allowing them to lead in both civic and religious affairs, which is a tricky distinction to preserve.

[00:21:19] Preston Meyer: Indeed it is. There's. The natural state of having the old people that know how to read, leading things that make sense but, being both civic and religious leaders looks problematic.

[00:21:34] Katie Dooley: I mean, I it's almost a historical it's a historical fiction novel. Like, I recognize this, but the way they wrote the Druid part of the book is that you had your chieftain and then you had your high priest Druid. High Druid and they would lead together a like I mean, the chieftain would defer like the, the, the druid was his counselor.

[00:22:03] Preston Meyer: That's what we see in a lot of cultures.

[00:22:06] Katie Dooley: And if the druid said, we need to sacrifice a baby, the cheif would go, okay, we need to sacrifice a baby, and they'd sacrifice the baby.

[00:22:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah. When your role includes. A connection to the future sustainability of your people. And everybody sees your religious leaders in that position. You end up having a lot of civic authority.

[00:22:29] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So the Tuatha De Dannan translates to folk of the goddess Danu. She is the mother goddess in Irish folklore. So again, this is where this weird blending of Celtic into Irish, because there's no records. So. She's the mother goddess in Irish folklore, though some associate her with the land itself. So calling the land Danu. There are no legends about her specifically, but she lends her name to this ancient Irish pantheon of gods.

[00:23:06] Preston Meyer: Okay.

[00:23:08] Katie Dooley: The De Dannan dwell in the other world, but visit us through passage tombs like the one at Bru na Boinne, which is older than Stonehenge and really fucking cool. I went to Bru na Boinne. Cool. And yeah, it's from like 5000 BCE, I think. And they figured it out. The light and the passage tomb. It's illuminated on the equinoxes.

[00:23:32] Preston Meyer: Nice.

[00:23:33] Katie Dooley: And you can't you can't actually get into Bru na Boinne on the equinoxes. You have to win your way in. You have to enter a draw. 

[00:23:33] Preston Meyer: Because so many people want in.

[00:23:42] Katie Dooley: Because so many people want it in. I entered the draw. I did not win.

[00:23:45] Preston Meyer: Makes sense.

[00:23:46] Katie Dooley: I would have flown back to Ireland though, because how fucking cool would that be! Sorry, I got real nerdy there. Yeah, so it's way older than Stonehenge. Doesn't get nearly as much credit as Stonehenge. Google Bru na Boinne.

[00:24:02] Preston Meyer: We're going to include the spelling of that.

[00:24:04] Katie Dooley: Or you can also look up Newgrange, which is spelled just like it sounds.

[00:24:08] Preston Meyer: That's that's helpful.

[00:24:10] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So like in Norse and Greek mythology, the De Dannan are not the first set of gods, but rather descended from Nemed.

[00:24:21] Preston Meyer: Oh yeah.

[00:24:22] Katie Dooley: Scholars believe that the story of Nemed is Euhemerism and that he was a real person.

[00:24:27] Preston Meyer: Nice. It's cool when you can spot that in religions,

[00:24:31] Katie Dooley: Right? There are other supernatural races in Irish mythology that have some relation, one way or another, to the Dannan. The Aos Si are the descendants of the Dannan. The Fomorians are an evil race that fought the De Dannan, and the firbolg were ousted from Ireland by the Danaan and the Milesians. Milesians. Milesians. Milesians.

[00:24:59] Preston Meyer: Part of me wants to say Malaysians. But that's not right.

[00:25:01] Katie Dooley: No, it's not Malaysians. The Milesians are the final race of the present-day Irish people who arrived after they struck a deal with these gods and split Ireland above and below ground. They, the present day Irish people obviously got the above ground. I hope I don't need to clarify that.

[00:25:21] Preston Meyer: The dwarves and the elves are underground. And the fairies?

[00:25:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah, everything's underground except for humans.

[00:25:27] Preston Meyer: I think we got a pretty good deal there. Yeah, we need sunlight for happiness and health.

[00:25:33] Katie Dooley: But everyone below ground is magical, so...

[00:25:36] Preston Meyer: So they're probably fine.

[00:25:37] Katie Dooley: They're probably fine. But then do we get the short stick? We got light and they got magic. That sounds like an unfair deal.

[00:25:43] Preston Meyer: Oh, rough. Okay, unfortunately, very little is known about the deities of the Celtic and Gaulish tradition because there are very few written records, as we mentioned before. But we do have some decent oral traditions that the Druids were able to keep alive. And a bunch of place names are able to preserve these names as well. But not always helpful in telling us what they were gods of.

[00:26:11] Katie Dooley: Nope. Nope.

[00:26:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there there are some that remain from the broader Celtic tradition. And then we have lots that are specifically Irish from the Tuatha De Dannan tradition.

[00:26:29] Katie Dooley: You start so I can tell the story.

[00:26:31] Preston Meyer: Oh, okay.

[00:26:32] Katie Dooley: You start with the Dagda.

[00:26:34] Preston Meyer: All right. The Dagda is basically the all father associated with agriculture, fertility, manliness, and of course, in the Celtic tradition, magic and wisdom. He's another bearded man and the husband of Morrigan, lover of Boan. And he has seven children: so we got Aengus, Brigit, Bobd, Derg, Cermait, Aed and Midir.

[00:27:01] Katie Dooley: We really should have put pronunciations on there. I...

[00:27:06] Preston Meyer: Those look legit to me.

[00:27:08] Katie Dooley: Okay. Carry on.

[00:27:13] Preston Meyer: So the Dagda, carries around a club of life and death. You know what? That makes sense. A club can save a life or bring death. I like it. Uh, so the one end of his club gives life. The other end can brutally destroy you. Yeah. He resides at the beautiful Bru Na Boinne. As you had mentioned earlier.

[00:27:40] Katie Dooley: I definitely added the word beautiful because I was so excited about it. Thanks for reading it, Preston.

[00:27:46] Preston Meyer: I'm happy to read the words you give me here. In a challenge from their opponents, the Fomorians, the Dagda successfully finished a meal from his cauldron of plenty that was known to produce a bountiful feast. Okay. Good deal.

[00:28:04] Katie Dooley: World's first competitive eating.

[00:28:06] Preston Meyer: It reminds me of a story of Thor, where he was given this trick mug that he was supposed to finish the mug. Turns out it was a big ass straw piped straight into the ocean.

[00:28:16] Katie Dooley: And he did it.

[00:28:17] Preston Meyer: And he did it.

[00:28:18] Katie Dooley: He did it. This is that. This is that.

[00:28:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:28:26] Katie Dooley: So the Morrigan, her name translates to great queen or Phantom Queen like Athena. She is the goddess of war, which I love all these strong women being the goddess of war.

[00:28:38] Preston Meyer: Right? Well, every time we see a male god of war, they're always. What's the word I'm looking for? Clumsy and brutal and totally devoid of strategy or any sort of useful wisdom. But that's not what we see in the women. Every time a woman is a goddess of war, she's great.

[00:28:58] Katie Dooley: Good at it. I had to pee in a shop bathroom yesterday, and I could tell that no woman had entered there ever before me. And I thought of your Masonic Hall, and I was like, I don't know how men run the world. I really don't. It's the grossest place I've ever been.

[00:29:21] Preston Meyer: I'm sorry you had to experience that.

[00:29:23] Katie Dooley: I'm sorry I had to be there, too, but I did. But. Yes. Anyway. She is also, the Morrigan, is also the goddess of fate. And she could foretell victory or defeat in battle. She is a shape-shifter, commonly found in either the form of a raven or an old crone, if she's not her war goddess self. She has also been described as a tripartite goddess or three goddesses in one, and this actually happens a lot in the Celtic pantheon, which I found very interesting. The names of three goddesses vary. We always have Bodh, Macha and either Nemain, Anad or, Danu. But I couldn't find anyone that agreed on that third one. So, as always, we have a fun little story about one of these gods and goddesses. In this case, we have one about the Morrigan, and she features heavily in what is known as the Ulster Cycle of Irish folklore. So again, this is where religion starts to blend into fairy tales, essentially. Kind of like Santa Claus in the West, right? He was based on a saint and now he's a fairy tale. Um, or he's real. I don't know who's... I don't know who's listening.

[00:30:46] Preston Meyer: He's also dead.

[00:30:46] Katie Dooley: I don't know who's listening, but he's real. Um, so these stories take place around the time of Christ in the first century. But manuscripts date much later, from anywhere from the 12th to 15th century, though these stories are likely to have been passed down by oral tradition for a much longer. So the first time Morrigan saw Cu Chulainn was when he was defending the province of Ulster from Queen Maeve. Cu Chulain is basically Irish Hercules for brevity's sake. He's  a demigod. Very strong, very hunky. For Morrigan, it was love at first sight and she tried to seduce Cu Chulain. But despite her godly and womanly ways, he rejected her, Preston!

[00:31:34] Preston Meyer: Ouch!

[00:31:34] Katie Dooley: Yeah. However, she was not deterred. She used her shapeshifting powers to turn into an eel, and swam to where Cu Chulain was in a fjord and tripped him up with her eel body. Mostly embarrassed, at least, I imagine he starts to punch the eel. Morrigan. So she shapeshifts into a wolf. While in her wolf form, she ran at a herd of cattle to drive them into the direction of Cu Chulain, to trample him to death. Fortunately for him, he grabbed his slingshot and temporarily blinded the Morrigan when he shot a stone in her eye. Again with the cows, she transforms to join them to get the stampede, heading to Cu Chulain again. He gets away, though, because he's Irish Hercules. He breaks her leg with a stone and she accepts defeat for now. Cu Chulain goes through his battle and wins, and on his way back, he comes across an elderly crone milking a cow. The crone was, of course, blind in one eye and had a leg injury. The crone offered the warrior some fresh milk while he drank, and he blessed her in thanks, unknowingly restoring the goddess to her full strength. Now Morrigan didn't attack, for she was happy to be restored. But it is said that when Cu Chulain eventually died in battle, a raven was said to have landed on his shoulder. Dun dun dun!

[00:33:10] Preston Meyer: Like right before the killing blow or afterwards in mourning his death. 

[00:33:14] Katie Dooley: As in a mocking. This was meant to happen to you.

[00:33:18] Preston Meyer: Gotcha. Yeah. Rough.

[00:33:20] Katie Dooley: Yeah. There you go.

[00:33:23] Preston Meyer: Huh? Fun story.

[00:33:25] Katie Dooley: Was it? Lots of animals.

[00:33:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. There's a lot of shapeshifter gods.

[00:33:33] Katie Dooley: I mean, I think it's the way that you can actually, like, visualize your deity.

[00:33:40] Preston Meyer: I guess.

[00:33:42] Katie Dooley: Is that a crow, or is that Morrigan?

[00:33:43] Preston Meyer: Right? There's a pretty strong tradition in some parts of the Christian world that are kind of odd in this way, that say that Jesus is also a shapeshifter and that he can be anything at any time, and you never know when he's right around the corner. It's kind of weird.

[00:34:02] Katie Dooley: And then I'll just add in really quickly before we go on to Brigid, Morrigan's also in the Arthurian legends, and she's very similar to the Celtic goddess. So you can see again how it went from gods and religion to folklore and change. Right? That's a very British versus a very Irish telling of the Morrigan.

[00:34:25] Preston Meyer: Well, the the Bretons and the Celts and the Gauls and all that, they're related peoples with similar mythology between them. And it just makes sense that the Arthurian legend would include something like that. All right, next on our list. Brigid or Bridget, the exalted one. Brigid is the goddess of healing, fertility, and motherhood. Her role in fertility and motherhood extended to animals as well. So she also was associated with domesticated animals. That just makes sense. The celebration of Imbolc is in her honor. At the beginning of February, the start of the Old Irish calendar, as she is considered a solar and fire deity represented by her red hair. Now I'm just thinking of a girl from Brave.

[00:35:16] Katie Dooley: I mean you're not far off.

[00:35:20] Preston Meyer: Right? And also, this is reflected in the meaning of her name. The Catholic Saint Brigid is believed to be just a Christianization of this goddess. And this happens a few times. There are a good handful of Christian saints that are definitely just syncretizations of gods to keep people happy as they're forced to adopt a new religion.

[00:35:44] Katie Dooley: Well, and Brigid is kind of like the like Thor, where while she's not one of the top two, we have a ton of writings about the goddess Brigid. Um, so yeah, I can totally see how they're like, oh, we'll just put a saint in front and make her a good Catholic woman and ta da!

[00:36:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And now your tradition is validated into this new system that we're going to force down your throat.

[00:36:11] Katie Dooley: Then we have Lugh who is also a very popular.

[00:36:15] Preston Meyer: Is it Lug or Loof? A GH is a weird thing that.

[00:36:19] Katie Dooley: Well, because you say Lughnasadh because you say Lughnasadh, not Loofnasadh.

[00:36:26] Preston Meyer: All I can do is take your word for it.

[00:36:27] Katie Dooley: I think it's Lugh.

[00:36:28] Preston Meyer: Okay.

[00:36:29] Katie Dooley: Anyway, someone's gonna come on and.

[00:36:32] Preston Meyer: Go ahead and correct us. We're okay with it.

[00:36:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It's true. He's the god of justice. Oath keeping and the nobility. He is a prominent god with his whole day being Lughnasadh, which is August 1st. He is also known as a trickster, even though he is the god of justice and was known to deceive his opponents to get his way. Odd right?

[00:36:56] Preston Meyer: It's incongruous.

[00:36:59] Katie Dooley: Yes. I feel like he and Loki would have got. Loki would have been like, I like your style.

[00:37:05] Preston Meyer: I guess.

[00:37:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah, he would be like, I see what you did there. He's also said to have invented many Irish games, including horse racing and fidchell, the Irish precursor to chess. Lugh's son is Cu Chulain. So the the hero I just told you about. And again, this is where religion starts to bleed into folklore and tales.

[00:37:32] Preston Meyer: Is horse racing a game that the Irish claim is theirs?

[00:37:37] Katie Dooley: I mean I don't I that's what the thing said. I can see the Irish doing that.

[00:37:42] Preston Meyer: Oh well yeah sure. But I mean, I also have an issue with saying that chess originated in the West, but, if fidchell is an old Irish game, then that's the way it goes.

[00:37:56] Katie Dooley: It's probably wrong. I can say that as an Irish person, they were probably drunk again. I can say that as an Irish person who was drunk last night. Um. Oh, dear.

[00:38:11] Preston Meyer: Next on our list, we have Angus, the god of love, poetry and youth. It's nice to see a man as the god of love and poetry. I mean, we did have Eros as, like, a half-ass god of love in the old Greek tradition. But it was mostly his mom's job, Aphrodite.

[00:38:33] Katie Dooley: He was just Aphrodite's little bitch.

[00:38:35] Preston Meyer: Kind of. And poetry has been ascribed to a decent variety of gods over history. But Angus is a pretty good symbol for bringing these things together. He's the son of the Dagda, and he resided at the Bru na Boinne as well. He had the power to resurrect the dead, which is pretty awesome.

[00:38:59] Katie Dooley: That's pretty potent. 

[00:39:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I'm curious how many instances we have in history of this happening in Ireland, or even the entire Gaulish region. And again he is a shape shifter known to transform into a swan. So birds are his favorite and he would transform kisses into birds. You blow a kiss to a friend and then it actually hits them in the face in the form of a dove. That'd be great.

[00:39:28] Katie Dooley: To you, dear listener. Caw caw!

[00:39:34] Preston Meyer: So because he's a god and the God of love, he is pretty much always pictured as a very hunky man, but also surrounded with birds because that's his thing.

[00:39:46] Katie Dooley: It's also worded like that because Katie wrote that and poor Preston had to read it. Now we have two. I mean, there's not a lot of details on these guys. I'll just lump them together and you can move on to the other deities. I felt them noteworthy because of their parallels or their importance, but there's literally no records on these guys. So, Manannan mac Lir was the Irish Sea god, guardian of the underworld and rides a sea chariot. Does that sound familiar? Anyone? Anyone?

[00:40:15] Preston Meyer: That's our soggy boy.

[00:40:17] Katie Dooley: That's our soggy boy, Poseidon. So I thought that was interesting. And then we have Nuada. He's the first king of the Tuatha de Dannan. He got a silver hand after losing it in a battle to the Fomorians. He is the husband of Boan. So he's cuckolded by the Dagda and he's associated with hunting, fishing and leadership. So I felt like that was noteworthy. So you know where wine came from. And he's the first king and he's cuckolded.

[00:40:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What a great history to have a whole nation look back on with pride. Yeah, so there are other gods that are not part of the Tuatha De Dannan. They're thought of as the older gods. But because of this, we also have a lot less information about them.

[00:41:09] Katie Dooley: I actually like I had a whole list, and then when there was one sentence on each of them, I was like, well, I guess we're not talking about this guy. So there's only three, but...

[00:41:18] Preston Meyer: Well, we've got Cernunnos, the antlered god, the precursor to the Horned God that we see pretty solidly represented in the Wiccan tradition. Interpretations vary on what he represents everything from animals to travel. It's kind of messy.

[00:41:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah, when you're that old and there's literally just carvings of you, people can make whatever they want. Then we have Taranis, the god of thunder. His name literally means thunder comes from the Proto-Celtic word Toranos. Taranis, toranos. He could control storms. He was in a triad gods with Toutatis and Esus, also known as Turian in the Irish tradition. There is not much known about Toutatis and Esus. Some think it's an the triad gods situation, though couldn't find anything else on them.

[00:42:12] Preston Meyer: Okay. And another one. My favorite.

[00:42:16] Katie Dooley: Everyone's favorite.

[00:42:16] Preston Meyer: Is Epona.

[00:42:17] Katie Dooley: Neigh!

[00:42:18] Preston Meyer: Epona was a horse girl. And if you know horse girls, you know what that means. She's a goddess of horses, a protector of horses, donkeys, and mules. She's also the famous horse steed of Link in The Legend of Zelda.

[00:42:37] Katie Dooley: That's why she's named that, yeah.

[00:42:39] Preston Meyer: That name is definitely taken from this tradition. Worship of Epona was pretty widespread, which is kind of interesting for the time as a lot of people worshiped really centralized, local-specific gods and goddesses. Her tradition is a little wider than one would expect.

[00:42:57] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Like and quite well-documented as far as especially for something this old as well. So there's a lot in the old Celtic tradition and then there's even more that's been lost, which is kind of sad.

[00:43:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's a very depressing blank in a lot of the knowledge that we should have about these people.

[00:43:22] Katie Dooley: Now, in the last three episodes, we were talking about neopaganism and what it looks like now, and this one got quite interesting. Part of me was, you know. They do it now. The one sentence that we've repeated the last three episodes. But this one's really interesting because Wicca kind of folds into this. Even though Wicca is a 70-year-old religion and the lines that are drawn, I guess, um, it's...

[00:43:53] Preston Meyer: Separate but connected.

[00:43:54] Katie Dooley: Yes. And there's actually I found four sort of distinct classes of Celtic neopaganism that we'll talk about. So these are not all the same, but there are definitely similarities. And we're kind of going to go from the from the most traditional to Wicca is how I've laid this out. So we have Celtic Reconstructionist paganism. And this is focused on the historically accurate uh oh...

[00:44:24] Preston Meyer: Tricky.

[00:44:25] Katie Dooley: Right? Reconstruction of the polytheistic tradition. This is a genuine belief in the pantheon, much like the Greek restoration that we talked about a few episodes ago. But there's less wooery that we're gonna get into. They're big on the revival of Celtic culture as a whole, including music, dance and language in addition to the folklore, because so little has survived, for us to even put together an episode! They stress individual research and study, but also see the value in spiritual practices. They give offerings to the spirits and celebrate all major pagan holidays like Samhain and Imbolc.

[00:45:11] Preston Meyer: Sounds pretty all right. Tricky. Super hard to be good at. I mean, let's be fair. A lot of people are terrible at Christianity, and that's been well-established for a couple thousand years.

[00:45:24] Katie Dooley: I mean there's been a few councils about doctrine, too, right?

[00:45:29] Preston Meyer: But Celtic Reconstructionist is just hard.

[00:45:33] Katie Dooley: It is hard. And I think it's hard regardless. But we there are people smarter than us out there. In this particular subject. Maybe not in everything. Right? So if you're like, really into it, like we put this together in a week. You know, as we do. If you really wanted to deep dive, I'm sure there's more, but it's still tough.

[00:45:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:45:58] Katie Dooley: Then next step up is Druidry or Neo-Druidism. Not to be confused with Dudeism.

[00:46:09] Preston Meyer: Important distinction.

[00:46:11] Katie Dooley: Yes, this is similar to Wicca in that it celebrates the connection to the natural world. There is no historical link between the OG druids and neo-druids. Neo-Druids believe in the Awen or the "flowing spirit" in all things.

[00:46:30] Preston Meyer: Easy enough to get on board with.

[00:46:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah and again, they celebrate all major pagan holidays.

[00:46:36] Preston Meyer: Makes perfect sense.

[00:46:37] Katie Dooley: Which is. But this is also where I can see people getting confused. Right? There's four different groups, probably more that celebrate Samhain.

[00:46:45] Preston Meyer: There's loads of different groups that celebrate Christmas and Easter.

[00:46:47] Katie Dooley: That's true.

[00:46:48] Preston Meyer: I take no issue with that.

[00:46:50] Katie Dooley: Fair. But we do not lump them all together.

[00:46:53] Preston Meyer: Right.

[00:46:53] Katie Dooley: Then we have Celtic Wicca, which is very similar to modern-day Wicca, but they believe in the full ancient Celtic pantheon, not just, duotheistic Wicca.

[00:47:10] Preston Meyer: Sure.

[00:47:11] Katie Dooley: So it's very similar to Gardner's Wicca. Gardner's Wicca is duotheistic and Celtic Wicca is pantheistic. Again, they celebrate all the major pagan holidays.

[00:47:27] Preston Meyer: I just don't see any reason why they wouldn't.

[00:47:31] Katie Dooley: Everyone should.

[00:47:32] Preston Meyer: Sure.

[00:47:34] Katie Dooley: And can we have an Imbolc party?

[00:47:35] Preston Meyer: Sure.

[00:47:37] Katie Dooley: Okay.

[00:47:39] Preston Meyer: It wouldn't. I don't think it would be a faithful Imbolc party, but it could be an Imbolc party.

[00:47:43] Katie Dooley: We could sacrifice a baby. I'm kidding.

[00:47:49] Preston Meyer: That sounds like a problem.

[00:47:52] Katie Dooley: I'm kidding. And then just to tie a nice bow on all of this and to move along swiftly from that comment, there's Wicca, which we did a full episode on, if you want to jump back and listen to it. But it was developed in the 1950s with inspirations from Celtic paganism. Like the holidays, but it's a typically duotheistic religion with the Horned God and, i don't remember the goddess.

[00:48:24] Preston Meyer: The triple goddess.

[00:48:25] Katie Dooley: The triple goddess. Thank you.

[00:48:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's unfortunately not a lot more that we could include here. There's just so much that's lost to time. There's stuff like some small groups talk about this thing, but there's really not a lot. They're not one giant homogenous group because there is no one giant homogenous group, as we've seen as we've made these explorations. But it's interesting to see how they have a lot of similarities to the Norse being both Germanic peoples, the Celts and Gaulish were the West Germanic and the Norse were North Germanic. And there are similarities that we see between the two groups, and yet they're both really quite different from what we saw in Greece and Rome.

[00:49:17] Katie Dooley: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is a great example of just geography affecting religion. Right, because Greek and Roman are so similar and Celtic and Norse are so similar.

[00:49:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Some pretty cool stuff.

[00:49:33] Katie Dooley: But they're all going to get usurped by Jesus right away.

[00:49:36] Preston Meyer: So yes, unfortunately, we've watched, uh, pretty brutal conquest, looking back in history of how all of these traditions and their really great stories are just kind of buried. And many of them never to be seen again by the Christian conquest.

[00:49:55] Katie Dooley: You want to wrap up this episode?

[00:49:57] Preston Meyer: All right, so we've got our Patreon that we've got a handful of exclusive episodes just for people who support the podcast.

[00:50:05] Katie Dooley: With more coming this year.

[00:50:06] Preston Meyer: With more coming this year. I'm looking forward to doing more of those. We've got our shop where you can buy all kinds of stuff with a good and decent set of... No, with a good variety of great graphics, representing our podcast and some of the ideas that we share. You can get them on shirts, tote bags, water bottles, mugs,

[00:50:31] Katie Dooley: You name it.

[00:50:32] Preston Meyer: Basically, if it's a thing that people normally get branded, it's available and that's great. You can find us on Discord, join the chat, tell us that we said something incorrect or mispronounce something.

[00:50:45] Katie Dooley: Probably.

[00:50:47] Preston Meyer: We also post some great memes and some really cool infographics. I've found a pretty good collection of infographics for the last few episodes illustrating the family trees of the gods.

[00:51:00] Katie Dooley: Bushes.

[00:51:00] Preston Meyer: I mean, some of them are pretty bushy. Uh, some good fun. And also, you can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all kinds of great stuff.

[00:51:13] Katie Dooley: Anywhere your podcasts are cast.

[00:51:16] Preston Meyer: I mean, I trust that if you're listening to our episode, you found a way that you're comfortable listening to us.

[00:51:22] Katie Dooley: Oh hey, share with a friend too. Share with a friend.

[00:51:25] Preston Meyer: Definitely do that.

[00:51:27] Katie Dooley: That would be helpful.

[00:51:28] Preston Meyer: We would really appreciate that. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:51:32] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.

#Brú na Bóinne #Tuatha Dé Danann #Cu Chulainn #Cuhullin #Ulster Cycle

#Spaceballs # Old Gods #ancienthistory #ancientcivilizations