Happy thanksgiving everyone. I’m doing a book giveaway for a signed copy of my new book Pagan Portals: the Morrigan when it’s released next month. If you are interested you can enter here:
Giveaway ends December 10, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
I am once again doing National Novel Writing Month this year and attempting to write the third novel in my trilogy. I may have been a smidge ambitious this time since I only just finished the second one and am, in all honesty, a bit burned out. However I’m soldiering on to get the first draft done. In the 25 days of NaNo I’ve written a bit over 54,000 words towards what I expect to be between 100 – 120,000 when its done. So I’m about halfway there. It’s been taking a lot of my attention though and as with last November the blog is suffering a bit.
I’m a bit busy but I don’t want to not blog at all, so here’s a tidbit of translation, Irish courtesy of Hennessey’s The Ancient Irish Goddess of War, translation my own.
[Out of respect to the author, no excerpt or mangling of her poem will be posted here. Please click through to her site to read the entire post as intended.]
My third attempt at translating a normally untranslated portion of the Cath Maige Tuired: this excerpt occurs during the battle itself when the Morrigan appears to incite the Tuatha De Danann to win the battle. The Irish text is from Gray’s 1983 version from the Irish Texts Society. The English translation is my own, with the usual caveat that I am not fluent but am offering my best understanding of the material. Usually it ends after “Kings, arise to battle….”
Last weekend I attended the Changing Times, Changing Worlds conference, an annual regional conference on metaphysics in the northeast United States. I’ve done workshops at the conference 4 out of the 5 years its run and I really enjoy attending. This year was no exception, with many good workshops and panels as well as excellent conversations with both attendees and other presenters.
One of the most interesting panels I saw was “When is it okay to tell someone they are wrong?”.
The following is an excerpt from my article ‘The Witch, the Bean Feasa, and the Fairy Doctor in Irish Culture’ published in the Lughnasa/Samhain issue of Air n-Aithesc, a peer-reviewed CR journal available here: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/779616?__r=486121
What is particularly worth noting though is the connection between Irish and Scottish witches and fairies, something that is shared with bean feasa and fairy doctors, as all three Irish folk magic practitioners are believed to gain their occult knowledge and some of their power from the Fair Folk. While the latter two use the knowledge they gain from the Other Crowd to heal or cure magical afflictions, the witch uses her fairy-given knowledge to harm. The witch knows how to use elfshot, and does so in ways that – according to the Scottish witch trial records anyway, which we must look to given the scarcity of Irish witch trials – seem to have been an attempt to use supernatural power where social power was lacking. What we find often in the Scottish trial records is socially marginalized women using fairy knowledge to curse or harm people in higher social classes or in positions of power (Hall, 2005). Often in these trial records we see witches confessing to making deals with or consorting with fairies, going to fairies for knowledge, and going to them to obtain elfshot (Hall, 2005). In the Irish we see witches, like fairies, taking the form of hares in order to steal milk from the cows and this may indicate another connection between the two (O hOgain, 1995). So similar was Irish witchcraft and fairy enchantment that one of the reasons to call in a fairy doctor was to ascertain which of the two was the source of ill luck or other magical problems so that the proper cure could be administered.
The terms bean feasa and fairy doctor are often used interchangeably and indeed there is at best a fine difference between the two. It is highly likely that the two terms, one in Irish one in English, originally were applied to a singular type of practitioner; however in the modern source material we do see a nuanced difference between how the two terms are used. The bean feasa is often called to find lost objects and discern through divination the cause and cure of ailments, from illness to butter failing to churn, whether the cause is mundane or magical (O Crualaoich, 2005). The fairy doctor, on the other hand, is called when fairy involvement is known or suspected, especially relating to afflictions caused by them, or when witchcraft is suspected, in order to discern the best cure (Wilde, 1991). The ban feasa was said to never teach her magic to others or preform her charms in front of people, while the fairy doctor could teach others, particularly passing her knowledge on to her child (Wilde, 1991; Locke, 2013). One might argue that the bean feasa is more of a general practitioner while the fairy doctor is a specialist, but both derive knowledge and power from their relationship with the Other Crowd.
Read more here
Probably the single most consistent debate you can count on seeing in the Celtic Pagan community is about the dating of the four Fire Festivals. Like all such debates each side tends to hold its own view quite passionately. There are three main arguments: the dates of the celebrations were set astronomically; the dates were set using a calendar; the dates were based on agricultural signs. Each side has merit, but the truth is there is not enough solid evidence to ever know with certainty how the ancients timed their celebrations.
Canann Badb.
feannóg guth
Garbh agus amh.
Canann Badb.
Tagann an gheimhridh
i sioc agus scáth.
Canann Badb
“Badb speaks
a crow’s voice
rough and raw
Badb speaks
winter arrives
in frost and shadow
Badb speaks”
I wrote the above poem this morning as I listened to a crow calling to me, perched on a tree outside my window. Today is the beginning of my three day celebration of Samhain, and tonight belongs especially to the daoine maith, the Good People. I’ve written several times over the years about how my family celebrates Samhain and about the history of the holiday so today I decided I want to tackle a more personal topic, that is celebrating this holiday with a child who has complex medical issues.
So here’s another translation from Old Irish, this one is the Morrigan’s prophecy from the Cath Maige Tuired. The Old Irish text is from Sean O Tuathail’s version. The English is my own, as always with the caveat that I am not fluent but am offering my own understanding of the material based on the way I personally translate it.
Sídh go neimh…