“The wind concentrated upon the ship where Donn the king was, and Donn was drowned at the Sandhills; whence Tech Duinn derives its name.” – Lebor Gabala Erenn, volume 5

There is some debate about whether the Irish have a God of the dead, but if they do its generally agreed that it would be Donn, a king of the Milesians who died at sea when the sons of Mil were trying to take Ireland. The place where he died, off the southwest coast of Ireland, was called Tech Duinn – Donn’s house. Tech Duinn became equated in folklore with the Otherworldly land of the dead and Donn with a primal ancestor and underworld God (Jones, 2004).

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So I’m working on the sequel to the novel I wrote last year for NaNoWriMo, and I’m having as much fun with it as I did with the first one. Something I did to help stay motivated during NaNoWriMo last year was to post word counts and little summaries of plots points or how the writing was going every day. I’m doing it again for the new book on facebook but I thought it would be fun to post the recap of all the posts from the first one, Murder Between the Worlds. It’s an interesting look back at the process I went through while I was writing and also some fun hints about the way the story developed:

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I know I don’t often write about my own personal experiences with deities and spirits. There’s a couple reasons for that, including that it’s often hard to put such experiences into words. I also find that discussing such experiences is a very soul baring, exposing kind of thing and I’m not a big one for offering up that part of myself to public scrutiny. The biggest reason though is probably the simplest: it is nearly impossible to put a numinous experience into words without losing the very quality in it that made it numinous. Trying to describe it loses its feeling of mystery. You just can’t really convey in words what it was to experience the thing you are trying to share. Nonetheless I am going to try here, but I’ll take a page from the old Fili and Druids’ books (pun intended) and attempt to do it in poetry.

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Yesterday I wrote a guest blog for Raise the Horns on Patheos titled The Morrigan, War, & How We See Our Gods. It looks at the more difficult aspects of the Morrigan’s mythology and character and why it’s important, in my opinion, to face those things in her we fear or are disturbed by instead of turning away from them or trying to minimize them. It also touches on the equally challenging subject of the value of war in the quest for peace. Click over and give it a read if you’re interested.

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We talk a lot about goddesses of sovereignty, especially in Irish polytheism, but there is a disconnect between the ancient understanding of what those goddesses did and what they are seen to do in a modern context. Often the way that sovereignty is perceived is heavily colored by modern ideals of the value of the individual and of individual freedom, while the ancient view saw sovereignty as the right of one person to exert control over others. This disconnect is born from a misunderstanding or romanticism of the historic concept and yet may also represent a way in which the old gods are evolving and adapting to a new world.

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Recently there was an interesting blog about hands-on worship, the idea of honoring our Gods with practical physical actions. I thought it was well written and made good points but it also got me thinking about how often we may be called to do that in our own lives and how – or whether – we respond. So I wanted to share a story about my experience with Frau Holda, and the way that tangible skills are an act of worship in themselves.

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In the Earth

(Out of respect to the author, no mangling snippet of the poem will be posted. Please click the link below to see the full work.)

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An interesting topic that crops up in Celtic pagan discussion groups from time to time is whether the Irish (or more generally Celtic) Gods and spirits travel with the people who acknowledge them, or whether they are stationary, tied as it were to specific locations. People who argue for the latter view point to the way that Irish Gods were strongly associated with specific locations and the way that they were said in some cases to be embodied by the land, such as the hills called the Paps of Anu. How, this argument says, if the Gods are so strongly connected to those places can they also be elsewhere? Now my own view takes the former side and I decided to use today’s blog to explain my viewpoint.

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This year we are celebrating Lughnasa by it’s older name of Brón Trogain. For my family it begins today, July 31st as we go out and start picking berries. Berry picking for several years has been the main activity of our holiday, the way we officially begin celebrating.

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It is clear from my last blog that for a modern practitioner there is an abundance of material to work with in finding ways to celebrate Lughnasa. I’m going to offer several suggestions for practice that could be used for anyone with a Irish leaning, or who would like to celebrate this holy day in a Irish manner, but I leave the actual ritual up to the individual or group to design. Personally I follow a basic structure of blessing the space, invoking the ancestors, daoine sidhe, and Gods and offering to them, praying or saying something about the purpose of the ritual, making a main offering for the holiday, divination, thanking the Powers, and feasting. My own approach is Irish Reconstructionist in nature and that doubtless colors my view, but I would like to offer this to anyone of any faith who celebrates Lughnasa.

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