Celtic mythology bits

[theswordmaiden]

I temporarily stopped reading novels, because I am back to reading Irish mythology. Again. It's so hard to work through this weird stuff. I am used to reading Greek mythology, and this is so different

Comments

[fpb]

I am a culture historian specializing in Indo-European early religion, and I have published about Celtic religion. (Fabio P.Barbieri, Gods of the West, Series of Memoirs of the Belgian Society for Celtic Studies, no.11.) So I can tell you about that "proto-celtic triad" nonsense. It is nonsense. Pay it no mind. It has to do with the pseudo-scholarly writings of Robert Graves on mythology. Graves was, unfortunately, a genuinely great poet, but - to give you an idea of how I feel about him: he was an alumnus of St.John's College, Oxford. I happened to be there when he died (1985), and I positively refused to attend the ceremony of commemoration. I regard his influence as poisonous and his theories as trash - in so far as they have any coherence - and I find it irritating to have to warn people against him, or, in this case, against people who take him seriously.

[theswordmaiden]

Graves! Yes! That's the name I was looking for. All I could remember was "Gardner" because I thought this regarded Wicca, but yes. And James Enge reminded me of The White Goddess.

Does St. John's College suck that bad? (or was that not part of your criticism?)

I understand how you feel, it's annoying when incorrect information like this is spread and then just taken for granted. This proto-Celtic triad thing was actually in an endnote in the book I read, and it did not itself have a reference. If he'd researched that source, things would have been different. I hope.

[jamesenge]

I never quite got the narrative rhythm of Irish myths (which probably says more about my limits than theirs). Often a story has what seems to me a long meandering beginning, no middle and an abrupt end. What I've read interests me, but I have to admit I feel more at home with The Mabinogion or Norse myth or classical myth. Or Farscape, for that matter.

This triple-goddess thing (usually associated with the phases of the moon) is the brain-child of the Cambridge Ritualists, I think. I see it a couple places in Jane Harrison's Themis for instance (e.g. where she mentions Hekate or the Horae). But there's little doubt that Graves' White Goddess was the vector for infecting the rest of the world with this idea and transforming it into the perceived norm for prehistorical matriarchal religion.

Graves was, as fpb says, a great poet, and he was genuinely and deeply learned, not to mention a gifted writer of prose. But a quack nonetheless, and one of the quackiest.

[theswordmaiden]

Thank you for reminding me of the White Goddess! I have heard that that was beautiful writing, but never did read it. Now I know a bit more about it, as well.

I had read about the triple goddess/moon phases thing in the Wiccan religion, so I thought the idea came from Gardner. Who might have been a Cambridge ritualist, I don't really know. :) Have you read The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory : why an invented past won't give women a future? I haven't gotten to it, but the title already pretty much sums up my feelings so far.

Lastly, I personally agree with your preferred mythology. I like Irish because it's so weird, but the Mabinogion is much easier to understand even though I'm new to that as well. The Irish legends seem, I don't know, they look as though the text keeps getting cut off, and that they are alluding to other stories that have not survived in writing. That we're lucky to have the stories that did.

[jamesenge]

The White Goddess does have wonderful stretches of writing: I think the Invocation is one of his greatest poems, for instance. And, just rhetorically, he has this allusive way of writing that makes you want to say: Ah, yes, of course even when you don't know what he's driving at (and he may not either). Big chunks of the book, though, are squawking gibberish that look like transcriptions of schizophrenic babbling. (The chapter titled "The Holy Unspeakable Name of God" is my favorite under this heading.)

I haven't read Eller's The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory... but from the title and from this sample it looks like maybe I should. Thanks!