The Lady with a Mead Cup
This article was pre-released in exclusivity to my Patreons, who received privileged access before its official publication. However, it has been modified slightly since its first circulation.
John Duncan, Semele, 1966-1945
Recently reminiscing my reading, a number of years ago now, of the book Lady with a Mead Cup: Ritual, Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tène to the Viking Age by author Michael J. Enright, from whom I am now kindly borrowing a very evocative title, it struck me that there were obvious links and parallels to be made between 1) this primordial image of a virginal Cup Bearer, 2) poetic inspiration as was understood by the continental and insular Celts (and in this case, from British, Gaulish and Irish tribes in particular), and 3) prophecy as a sacred ritual - meaning: the power to make and unmake reality by speaking true through performative speech, often carried by the Otherworld. I wish to share some notes around this reflection, which will touch upon some core notions and realities of my practices as an occultist and Faery intercessor - including, non-exhaustively, fairy mysteries, Grail maidens and (ig)noble knights, Brighidine attributions, fixed stars lore and starrytelling, Fire-in-Water, the meaning of honey wine, and spiritual sovereignty as a boon granted by those invisible we share the world with.
Ganymedian Vessels, Faery Accord(s)
The genesis of this reflexion concerns itself greatly with the primordial vessel of the “Mead Cup” and, perhaps more acutely, the image of the Cup or Chalice itself, as well as its Bearer(s). But whilst the Cup or Chalice’s connexion to fixed star Alkes, as primordial vessel, is of course significant here, it is the image of “bearer(s) of” sacred objects (as a sign of their contract with the Otherworld) that is one I am personnally most deeply intrigued by, especially when it comes to Faery - the notion of Sword Bearer being a personal favourite, and one I have explored prior to this, in relation to other important figures. Immediately, the image of a Chalice or Cup Bearer will evoke many epic tales and myths, and one in particular that we ought to consider in due course - that of the Grail or Graal. But I have briefly talked, in a previous article, about the meaning of constellation Aquarius in a broader context as it relates to snakes, rivers, and Fairy/Ferry-men (a delineation that a good friend and astrologer alerted me to), the ganymedian figure of the immortal “Cup Bearer” is not one I have gone into about with depth, and it is where we now ought to start.
Aquarius is seen as the Zodiac sign of the “Water Bearer” or “Cup Bearer”, a kneeling figure emptying various vessels of water outpouring down freely to the earth - jugs, cups, chalices, amphoras, jars or pitchers, even bottles but, strangely enough, never from its own hands. Although an air sign, governed by Saturn, Aquarius is thus often mistaken for a water sign: its name derives from the Latin word for “water-carrier” or “cup-carrier”, and its astronomical symbol ♒︎ is indeed a representation of moving water. Even the old Greek name for the constellation, Udrokoos, means the “water-pourer”. There is, of course, a lot to be said about this image of a water bearer channelling and transmitting, and about water pouring out of vessels emptying, water of life, precious substance that is not hoarded by man, but shared with the world, nourishing and healing water of growth and substance - and indeed a lot has been written on the symbol, from knowledge circulating, to magic being received and enacted. I wrote a little about the relationship of this image as it pertains to the tarot major arcana XVII - The Star, as I believe the reflection of the night sky in pools of shining water an important aspect of astrolatry as it relates to the Gentry.
To the Greek and Roman worlds, Aquarius was Ganymede - an androgynous boy so beautiful and fair, whom Zeus Himself, King of the Gods, ravished under His eagle-form and carried away on His back to the Heavens, to make Ganymede his personal Cup Bearer and, by extension, the Cup Bearer of the Gods - the one giving out the very nourishment of the gods itself, the illustrious drink called nectar, granting immortality. This movement of ascension of Ganymede, carried to the mountains or heavens, is in itself significant: it is a divine movement, implying being carried to higher ends and purposes, but also being high, physically elevated or, indeed, exalted (we will come back to this). Ganymede was thus privy to all the feasts and banquets, and to all the secrets of the Immortal Ones - poured as nectar itself was poured.
Constellations of Words proposes the following etymology for the name Ganymede: from the Greek ganumai, “I rejoice” or “I exalt”; the Proto-Indo-European suffix possibly coming from *med, meaning “to take appropriate measure”. Others instead have suggested *medea, meaning “art, skill, counsel, plans” - a root-word also found in the names Med-ea or Med-usa. But I would like to interrogate the significance of the possible following: *medhu, meaning “honey wine”, or, in other words and modern British parlance, “mead”. Relating back to the very content of the cup Ganymede is indeed rejoicing to be carrying, this would help us link together mead and nectar as the drink of the gods, and as the highest spiritual sovereignty possibly attainable, which is of course of the proper nature or essence of the Gods Themselves - that of the immortality, of Those Worthy of Becoming myth, of Being Sung About in tales.
The nature of myth is such that stories of old are bound to evolve in our ancestral memory: myths become legends, and legends become fairy tales - last remnants of the ritual component that underpinned our relationship to the Otherworld (for more on this, see Pierre Gordon’s article “L'origine et le sens des contes de fées”).
To someone who is, like me, versed in fairy lore, and deeply invested in the remembrance, revival and enactment of its rituals in the contemporary world, it is of course nearly impossible to consider the story of Ganymede, a beautiful youth taken by Otherworldly forces from atop a hill or mountain, without considering its striking similarities and relationship with indigenous Celtic fairy lore. Indeed, stories of fairy beings falling in love, lusting over, and/or kidnapping talented human beings, are abounding, their indistinction from the rapture of inspiration, trance, and pleasure, being a core part and parcel of their deeper significance, and the soundboard of their resonance in today’s ears still. And if the movement of this rapture or ecstasy is not so much anymore one of ascend, but rather, of descend, into the Otherworld - katabasis - (we may think of such figures as Persephone or Orpheus), it is, always, about the Underworld Muse, or Initiator, or Grace, or Gift, or Sight, touching, blessing, cursing (your pick), a talented / beautiful youth, whether shepherd, writer, or musician - always artist, subtly treading the line of the dead, the mad, or the poet, perhaps all at once. One who is forever changed besides, by their contact with the Other.
Fixed star Vega, of the constellation Lyra, is said to be the lyre of Orpheus - the inspired poet of the gods, exemplifying the story of a human being touched by this Otherness and granted fabulous gifts of inspiration, poetry, prophecy - the Sight expressing in art-form, as it should be. The tragic end of Orpheus, dismembered by the very people he entranced, his decapitated head singing still, was however the fine prints under the dotted line of his contract to the Otherworld - and of the accords and pacts existing between our world and Theirs, we now have to talk about.
Over the years, there are numerous theories that have moved me where it concerns the nature of our relationship, as Human beings, with the Otherworld, and between Humans and Fairies in particular - the love and hate shared, the friendship and enmity we show, in short: why we seem to be so constantly intertwined still. I have loved and been seduced by some of the expositions presented in such books as Red Tree, White Tree: Faeries and Humans in Partnership by Wendy Berg, positing theories of common ancestry, or of forgotten starry lineages whose memory is carried in our respectively red and white blood. I have given many thoughts to the interbreeding of our races, this mingling of species somewhere in the Uncanny Valley, and which the recent movie The Watchers (2024) so cunningly exemplified by asking the pressing question: is there an evolutionary reason for us to be afraid of something that looks (almost) human, but absolutely isn’t ? Have we - Human beings, emerging from the Sapiens - forgotten how They - the Gentry - may derive perhaps indeed from another Homo-something, potentially explaining why one of our deepest rooted fear, knee-jerk reaction akin to the fear of spiders, this eerie spark of recognition and repulsive strangeness we feel at once when facing the primal Other, the un-familiar (unheimlich) - the psychological and fundamentally aesthetic relation between an object's perceived degree of resemblance to a human being, and our emotional response to this object -, is as it is ? But none of these considerations have spoken to me as much, none has struck such a vibrant cord, within myself, and what I know of my craft and of its purpose, as the notion of a primordial “Faery Accord” broken, an image première at the root of our mutual trauma, as is presented in the 13th century Old French poem or text known to us as the Elucidation.
(If I find myself so partial to Arthurian legend, it is in part, as some of you may have reckoned already, because these tales travel and bridge the gap so well between France and Great Britain, belonging to both and neither - something which, as a French native and expat, having emigrated to the UK, I am particularly moved by and sensitive about.)
In The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord, author Caitlín Matthews performs extraordinary undertaker work carefully unveiling this long-forgotten prequel to the Grail quest stories. The Elucidation is a text which was written to serve as a prologue to Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, le Conte du Graal, preserved in only one manuscript. In her book, Matthews provides not just an English translation of the poem, but “a complete commentary (…) revealing a startling alternative cause of the Wasteland and the Grail quest, one which has a profound resonance with our own times. [She] examine[s] the forgotten story of the Faery Wars and explain[s] the Faery Accord, an agreement that once existed between humans and the Faery and upon which the spiritual and physical health of the land depends. The offering of the Grail and its regenerative powers by the Maidens of the Wells - Faery women - was part of this Accord. King Amangons and his men violated the Accord, through their abuse of the Well Maidens and other evil actions, causing the wasting of the land. The Knights of King Arthur seek to avenge the Well Maidens and rebirth the Grail to restore access to the lost paradisiacal “Courts of Joy” held in ancestral memory (…) in long wars of attrition, yet their quest to restore the generous hospitality of the Wells - the true Grail, the Faery Grail - continues”. In particular, in this work, Matthews presents a seductive idea: an original distinction between the (Christian) Holy Grail, and the Graal as chalice or vessel lost to pre-Christian memory, containing the metaphorical and/or physical drink of sovereignty, pillar upon which rightful relationships between this world and the other repose, ensuring the prosperity of the land.
In the Elucidation, itself like Perceval an unfinished romance, the reader is told that a degree of reticence about the secrets of the Grail must be kept, and the manuscript warns us besides about the “seven guards” present in the poem. Enchanted texts and manuscripts are of course no strangers to the knowing, cunning occultist’s studies, but more niche indeed is perhaps the complicated duality of having to reveal and conceal at once, which is so intrinsically linked to Faery glamours. Essentially, the story is one of oath-breaking, of the sacred being defiled by the profane, and of taboo being broken. Its memory goes thus: the hidden Maidens of the Wells (fairy women by all accounts) used to serve food and drink to every human visitor, enacting sacred hospitality between Their race and ours (the “Accord”), and guaranteeing the health of the land. That is… until King Amangon and his men raped the Maidens, defiled Their sanctuary, and took off with Their golden cup - the Graal. As a consequence of the crime, the land turned into a barren wasteland. Fast forward to the world of King Arthur and his knights, the reader is soon made aware that the very quest of the Arthurian knights of old, the very source of the many Grail/Graal legends, stems from none other than their intend to seek redress for this crime, punish the wicked, retrieve the lost Grail/Graal, and thus so restore the land’s sacred sovereignty. Alas… insofar as this romance is concerned, the Knights of the Round Table are unable to find the wells, nor the Maidens, nor the golden Cup, nor the rapist “knights”. But they find other maidens indeed, whom they vigorously defend in battle with the help of other knights, before it is soon revealed that these maidens and knights descend from none other but the forced union of the Maidens of the Wells with the wicked Men of King Amangon - all long dead, so that there is no offense to repair anymore, no oath to make right, no maiden to alleviate any longer - but, perhaps still, the golden cup or Graal to find.
This is a story of mourning what was, and of proceeding forward as the myth did. And thus here is laid out the story of the first intermingling of our races. And thus the Quest, or the Grail/Graal myth, is a quest ever going, ever repeating, ever happening and never happening at once, for that is the very essence of myth, its strange temporality a circle, coming back unto itself. The overlay of pagan and Christian mythology, the double meaning of the symbol, the double attribute of the Grail/Graal knight of legend, apparent in every Arthurian myth, is thus once more made whole, once more made complete.
But what of the Grail/Graal you ask, what of the Cup or Chalice and its content - and, perhaps more importantly, what of its purpose ? If the Maidens of the Wells are as equally Aquarian figures as Ganymede, what is to be extracted from both these myths, and understood by us ?
Arnold Böcklin, Sacred Grove, 1882
Divine Nectar: from Mead to Fire-in-Water
In the book Lady with a Mead Cup, Enright spends a long time, and goes into great length and wealth of details, to explain and go through the significance and importance of mead in Celtic and Nordic cultures, particularly in the region of Gaul separating France from Germany today - explaining the origins, function, and employment of fermented honey wine in the context of sovereignty rituals in these antiques societies and tribes. I will not repeat what is being shared, nor discuss again my impression of the sacredness of honey as a substance with an elevated spiritual value, save to briefly repeat its association with the goddess Brighid. The long and short of it is that mead is a sacred ritual drink that grants not just lordship, but kingship - meaning rightful sovereignty, with hospitality (rightful relationships with the Otherworld) being seen as an obligation of rulership - the “Accord”.
In ancient and medieval Ireland, the drinking of mead was a key part of a king's inauguration ceremony. Queen Medb of Connacht, in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology, makes for a most interesting counterpart to the chaste Maidens of the Well of the Elucidation discussed above. As a notoriously short-tempered and sexually promiscuous woman in the myths, she is more than a simple Cup Bearer: Medb’s very own name is connected to mead, deriving from that Proto-Indo-European root-word *medhu (“honey wine”) - the drink of sovereignty but also, and perhaps especially, intoxication. And indeed, Medb is a name that can equally come from *medua, “intoxicating” or “inebriating”, showing us how it is always ever a matter of balance, and how polarities and opposites tend to tell the same story… like fire, like water. Medb the Mead-Woman, She Who Inebriates, Medb the Intoxicating One, Sovereignty Incarnate, is such precisely because sovereignty and power are intoxicating, inebriating, even poisoning at great doses. Medb the Queen is sexually promiscuous because many are those who crave power, yet none of those who typically want it find themselves deserving or even worthy of it. In short: Inebriating Medb will lie down intoxicatingly with the many, but will grant sovereignty only to the very few. In her role as a primordial, feminine sovereignty figure emerging from the land itself, Medb is to be embraced with caution, perhaps even mourning, and always with reverence. Queen Medb is both the Cup and the Drink, the Chalice and its content: she chooses a king by offering him a sacred alcoholic drink (mead), and is sealing his contract to the Otherworld by lying down with him, thus bestowing sovereignty upon him - for Medb could also come from the Proto-Celtic *medwa (“ruler”). In so doing, Queen Medb teaches us something fundamentally important about the spirit world and our interactions with it as practitioners - not the least of which, that sexual intercourse with spirits is rarely ever about sex for its own sake, but almost always about the transmission of power.
Prophecy (as performative speech, that which moves the fates and turns the Wheel), sovereignty, and, to an extent, sex, are intrinsically linked together in many Celtic myths and beliefs, particularly perhaps Irish and Gaulish - though we could of course argue how the Lady of the Lake, giving Arthur his sword, inherited from this pattern of thought. We might recall, for instance, how the Morrígan speaks of who will live and who will die before battle, how She grants or withdraws Her favour to heroes and gods, beings from this world and the other - the unabated protection of Fate. Perhaps the most striking example of this might be found in the Cathe Maige Tuired with the myth of Her lying down with the Dagda, a week before Samhain, above the river Unshin - allowing Him to subsequently secure crucial victory on the battlefield during an epic conflict opposing the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorians. The crow that flies with the Great Queen, the Phantom Queen, is not just the carrion bird of bloodshed and death, but the corvid of the seeing - not, exactly, equivalent to Óðinn’s two birds Huginn (“thought”) and Muninn (“memory”), nor to the Three-Eyed Raven of one Bran or another… but something in-between, pecking at the eyes of the dead and the living.
“The following interesting story, which, so far as I know, has never been noted, has come down to us in a late Middle Irish text from which I now translate it for the first time. (…) The bird asking Fintan “…since he was a poet and a prophet” to tell him the greatest evils he had ever experienced. (…) He [Fintan] goes on to describe that a crow eating his eye was the worst thing he’d experienced and the crow admits to him that it was him who took out his eye. Fintan demanded his eye back but the crow refused and went on to describe the various battles he witnessed in Ireland. ‘As for the Battle of Moytura in Cong: It was there thy twelve sons fell; to see them awesome was the blow, and I gnawed off each fresh body, either a hand or one foot or one eye.’ The old crow it was who carried off the hand of Nuadh covered with rings, which had been lopped off in the slaughter, and which was replaced later on by a silver hand… but his real hand was the plaything of the crows’ young for seven years. He recounts all the eyes he had picked out of heroes’ heads after famous fights. It was he too who perched upon Cuchulainn’s shoulder…”
— Douglas Hyde, Legends of Saints and Sinners
Sovereignty goes beyond mere human years, particularly in the case of the spiritual sovereignty of the land. But if the Irish of old were no doubt decidedly Aldebaran people, cattle-raids and bull fighting being extremely significant when it pertains to a king’s status (or lack thereof), it is in fact another animal that signals the power and status coming with the function of sovereignty: the horse. In order to understand this, we must remember that horses were a rarity, owning one a privilege granted only to the few. Aside from its psychopomp associations, the horse is thus also, like the cow, a clear mark of wealth. Multiple horse goddess appear in the mythology and folklore of the Celtic lands, associated with the land, fertility, kingship / sovereignty, and war. We think of Rhiannon, we think perhaps even of the Lady Godiva - all believed to potentially derive from the same Proto-Indo-European goddess or divine principle. But as I was alerted, upon writing this article, to the presence of a particular goddess looming over my shoulder, it feels only fair and just that I should now respectfully adjust my writing in consequence: Macha, one of three sisters or faces of the deity triad that is the Morrígna / Morrígu - and whom I myself would recognise, if pushed to make definitive statements, gladly as Badb, Nemain, and Macha. Several figures called Macha are present in Irish mythology. All are, once more, tying together notions of prophecy and sovereignty - whether harvesting severed heads on the battlefield, or being the fierce mother who runs “faster than the king’s horses” while pregnant, bearing twins, and delivering two foals instead in the plain which is now named after them.
At the heart of the heavenly or Otherworldly feasts forbidden to mortals on penance of eternal rapture (trance or imprisonment, or perhaps both - a state of ecstasy somewhere between madness and illumination - intoxication), the fabled sustenance of the gods, the nectar in Homer's poems, is usually the divine drink cleansing all defilement from flesh, washing away all miasma, and granting immortality - as supreme sovereignty. Nectar, the sweet liquid of flowers, is a viscous, sugar-rich fluid produced by plants, which plays a crucial role in the foraging economics and evolution of nectar-eating species such as the bee: indeed, nectar is an economically important substance, as it is the primary sugar source for honey, suggesting a possible indistinction between mead and nectar as a drink of youth and eternal life, with the bee as translator and, indeed, psychopomp principle in the equation, alchemically transmuting the substance.
In his book Deep Ancestors: Practicing the Religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, author Ceisiwr Serith is the first to connect the creation of mead as the drink which is nectar, and the Nectar or nektaar / nekter itself with the principles of Fire-in-Water, stating that “the fire in water theme finds its ritual expression in the drink known as *Nekter - the ‘death overcoming’”. According to the author, Mead/Nectar is “the drink that provides immortality, inspiration, ecstasy, and power (especially sovereignty)”.
Fire and water, are exceptionally holy.
In my own devotional calendar, the period of time stretching from Imbolc to the Spring Equinox is a great re-enactment of the cosmological principle of Fire-in-Water. Fire and water are the two complementary susbtances through which the divine can be accessed, with Fire as the soul of Heaven in this world, a medium for the gods an ungods above (Albios), related to Order, and Water as an Otherworldly portal, a medium for the gods and ungods below (Dubnos), related to Chaos. In discussing the origin of primordial ritual elixirs, Serith recalls how it was originally thought to be crafted, brewed, or churned, by the gods themselves, and in particular by a Great Snake thrashing in ocean waters, using the mountain (Axis Mundi ?) as a churning rod - we will recall, for example, the Hindu myth of the Samudra Manthana. The fiery waters, flaming waters, boiling and foaming under the Water Serpent’s movements, are thus transformed into milk, solidifying its association with snakes and snake venom.
Fire-in-Water, the divine combining of the precious substances of fire and water, is a demiurgic principle, a creative power that is near and dear to my heart: from the sacred intermingling of these two elements is magic born, is nectar poured - and it is why I could never see snakes as fully poisonous beings, nor constellation Hydra, the great Water Serpent in the Sky, as a fully chaotic, devouring entity of monstrous lust - but ever as a divine Creator in its own right.
Fire-in-Water, is perhaps the most sacred of the mysteries in my tradition: the source of divine breath, ensouling fire of higher inspiration quenched in the cauldron that creates and shapes or destroys and annihilates, that which animates; literally, inspiration as “that which breathes life into”, formed of Order and Chaos, all opposites reconciled in it - and a mystery or principle that I have, in time, come to associate with imbas forosnai, the “great knowledge that illuminates”, as one of its manifestations.
Serith writes:
“The sacred drink exists in both a cosmological and a ritual sense. In the cosmology, the point at which the drink enters our realm is the mouth of the well: it enters from the very center. This is where the water from the well (…) meets the fire of offering, Nekter is formed by this mixing. On a ritual level, this drink is a mixture, perhaps to reflect its dual nature. Most commonly, it contains water, honey, a psychoactive substance (alcohol, ergot, ephedra) and something white (a dairy product, usually milk, and/or barley).”
Pan-Celtic folklore holds an ancient memory of sacred wells containing flaming waters, a fiery liquid that gives wisdom, health, power, wholeness, prosperity, inspiration, to the worthy few deserving of the wells’ gifts - the virtuous, granted access to its ecstasy. And the memory of this knowledge overlaps with the history of mead and, to an extend, that of poetic / prophetic inspiration.
The “Great Knowledge That Illuminates”
“O for a Muse of fire…”
— Shakespeare, Henry V
The ascending movement of fire, the descending movement of water… or perhaps the ascending movement of water, and the descending movement of fire…
Imbas forosnai, the “great knowledge that illuminates” (from imbas, “great knowledge, poetic talent, inspiration”; forosnai, “that which illuminates/enlightens”), is the visionary gift of inspired clairvoyance that poets of old could summon to descend upon themselves, or will to ascend to: in the Táin Bó Cúailgne, the woman-poet Fedelm thus enters a rapture, a ritual or ecstatic trance, and uses imbas forosnai to predict the outcome of a battle. It involved such techniques as sensory deprivation in order to enter the trance that would bring about answers.
In the Celtic traditions, poetry serves primary conveyance of spiritual truth. But the source texts tend to differentiate between regular poetry, which is a harmonious agencing of words and sounds in a rythmic manner, and matter of learned skill; and "inspired" poetry - which is seen as a gift from the gods, the Voice from the Otherworld. Descriptions of the ritual allowing the poet to exercise imbas forosnai are found in the 10th-century Sanas Cormaic (Cormac's Glossary). The poet chews a piece of the “red flesh” of a pig, dog, or cat (which some have suggested could in fact be fly agaric), and then puts it on a flagstone and chants an invocation over it to unnamed gods. The poet chants over their two open palms and asks that their sleep not be disturbed, and then puts their two palms on their cheeks and sleeps. Men guard them that they may not be disturbed or turned over. At the end of three days and nights the poet may judge whether imbas forosnai has come to them. This power thus appears to be a combination of fios (occult power), a hallucinogenic / psychedelic element, and teinm laída (an incantation or charm of divination breathed upon substance).
As someone for whom mysteries of the Voice, the breath, the soul, the face, and truth / honor are particularly important, I am struck by this. In my own practices, I have taken upon reciting sacred verses, breathing over substances such as oil, fire, water, quietly whispering and awakening power in my open palms.
Poetic and prophetic inspiration have little to no difference in a Gallo-Irish worldview, because both are intoxicating and inebriating performative gestures, speech, iterations and utterances “breathing life into” reality, shaping it, giving it form and purpose. Both are, quite simply put, “the tongue of truth aflame”: knowing things beyond one’s knowing, being the universe speaking through itself to itself. Imbas forosnai comes as a crown alight with inspiration, on the brow, ablazing, and it is how we may know Brighid to be the High One, the Exalted One (from the Proto-Celtic *Brigantī) - why we climb up, and look up, and light flames that reach up - why our inspired self is our highest self. The poet-ancestors had rituals to call upon it, long gone ways to ease into it, as a trance or ecstasy, though these were just ways - methods to get to the state, but never the state itself, guides but not requirements.
It is possible that one of the first words for fire / feu is related to purify (*peH₂ur / *peuHx). Fire served as a central spiritual or religious symbol in ancient civilizations, and our evolution as a species is contingent to our ability to tame, control, and maintain fire. Fire is considered to be an agent of purity, a symbol of righteousness and truth, and thus sacred fire is often a place for offering, sacrifices and prayers. Death by fire or the ritual cremation of corpses were also a dramatic and powerful development in our understanding of the Otherworld.
In her book Saining for Gaelic Polytheists, Marissa Hegarty reminds us about the power of fire in this ancient capacity of purification in the Gaelic world, and largely, the Celtic world as a whole - the bonfires lit on Quarter Days to purify cattle and men, the fire consuming sacred herbs to cleanse a house, the fire of the hearth that makes a home and grants ownership (i.e, stewardship) of the land... Fire is a higher means of purification, and in my tradition, a staunch expression indeed of the purity and truth of its guardian goddess, Brighid.
“You are the center of all things
The first fire at the beginning of time
You are the light of the Sun
Which marks out day from night
You are the fire of every hearth
All fires are lit from you
You are the Daughter of the Sky
The soul of Heaven in this world
She who puts Fire in the Head
And breathes life into people:
I make you, Fire,
In the way of Briganti.”
It matters to me that we shall speak of Brighid in the context of sovereignty, particularly as I personally harbour a strange and no doubt controversial UPG of Her being born of two mothers - the Cow and the Horse, Boann and the Morrigan. I will perhaps expand upon it one day.
Brighid is guardian of Fire’s three incarnation in this world - inspiration (Fire in the Head), healing (Fire in the Heart), and smithcraft (Fire in the Hands). As the fire of inspiration and the fire of healing and the forge, all under Her purview, are seen as exactly the same thing, there is no separation between the inner and the outer worlds, and none needed either, between ours and the other. Brighid is Fire, a way for the sacred to make its way to our world, the daughter of the Thunderer (that much we know for certain) - recalling just as how, in some myths, the “first fire” comes down from the heavens, either from lightning, or the Sun itself (and we will remember how Brighid is thought to be, much likely, a primordial dawn / rising goddess). “Bearers of” sacred flames, as I aspire to be as a Brighidine devotee in service, and a Flame Tender myself (inghean au dagha, “daughter of the fire”, or breochwidh, “fire-keeper”), thus hold the power to make holy / consecrated fire, and transmit and transmute its quality into ritual. Therefore, those entrusted with tending this flame, held a very sacred, important and demanding role - spiritual hearth keeping to a greater extent, guarding and protecting the community (to read more on the topic, please see also Rome's Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome's Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic And Early Empire, by author Robin Lorsch Wildfang).
There are many stars whose singing fire evokes inspiration. But only one, I believe, is also linked with the notion of sovereignty, twins, and horses, across myths and lands: fixed star Castor. Have I thus found one of Macha’s twin foals, the divine colt ?
My friend Ivy wrote quite extensively about Castor, exploring its relationship with fire and inspiration in writing, specifically poetry. Castor is a star of fate-weaving, myth-making, story-telling. It is a delineation attested in classical astrology. But in particular, Ivy recalls the following:
“In Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth, it is stated that the Aztecs took Castor and Pollux to be “the first fire sticks, from which mankind learned how to drill fire”. Similarly, in Myths of the Origin of Fire, it is said that the Tasmanians also “felt indebted to Castor and Pollux for the first fire”. Castor, therefore, represents this so-called “first fire”. It is a star of deliverance and hope. It is the light in the darkness, the warmth in winter. When the world seems dark and cold, Castor is the torch and the fire. It is a star of hope in the face of despair, hope in the face of utter annihilation. It is the Star shining above the Lightning-Struck Tower. Bernadette Brady similarly draws a parallel between Castor and Lucifer, the light-bearer. In her words: “the morning star was also known as Lucifer (light-bearer) and the evening star, Vespers (evening). Lucifer’s expulsion from heaven and into the whirlpool is possibly the mythological retelling of the slipping of Castor into southern declinations.”
The notion of “first fire” is especially intriguing and, not having consulted the same sources as Ivy, I nonetheless came to the same conclusions through my own UPG. In Deep Ancestors, Serith comments on how it is not often clear, in the broader archaeology of myth, whether it is fire itself, or the ritual drink of mead / nectar, that is being stolen, but that we know how oftentimes the thief is a bird with celestial and fire associations. Firebirds and phoenixes are recurring figures in myth and folklore, often far too sacred and dangerous for anyone to approach - anyone, that is, who is not virtuous / ritually pure (which means true in their intention, and in “Accord” with the Otherworld). The bird, it is said, is a detector of oath-breakers (religious truth or falsehood), and punishes pretenders and transgressors severely.
I look up at fixed star Ankaa, Heart of the Phoenix. Its presence in my chart, like Castor, is prominent, and I question their significance. Goddess-Asteroid Vesta / Hestia, travelling with Jupiter in my Virgin House of Value, could also possibly be indicating fire-priesthood. Do we start in the ashes, or do we return to the ashes ? Sometimes, the responsibility of it all feels overbearing, and I too small to even comprehend.
What I do know, is that poetry and stories are healing tools, and wordsmithing an inspired gift: storytelling is therapeutic to a narrative species such as ourselves, Faery and Human. Storytelling is how we know to preserve memory, ritual, tradition. It is how we weave culture, meaning, purpose. Words heal and harm, raise and unmake, cast a blemish or restore wholeness. There is a profound continuity between myth and history, as well as between life and literature, the crux of the matter being in poetry – something which, as occult practitioners, poets, bards, and priests, we know intimately: with the knowing of altered states of consciousness such as the fever dream of inspiration and spirit-induced visions, comes the knowing of altered realities, times and spaces.
I have found myself pondering Castor’s link to imbas forosnai more than once, and the truth of this relationship, to me, is in fire itself. The fire that heals, the fire that makes, the fire that inspires, is one and the same. The poet of old known as the filid knew this to be true: the Rosc, a type of Old Irish poetry and a form of unrhymed verse that uses alliteration and regular metre, was how the very first stories were told, describing both the setting and the action. The Carmina Gadelica is full of them, latent magic awaiting to be activated through the soul-breath or pneuma. Castor is, also a navigation star, a star of sailors and of guiding lights at sea, the star of Fire-in-Water. Waves are the horses of Manánnan. Poetic intoxication as prophecy posits the mind as “crowned in fire”, with the body a lighthouse of brilliance: when one is possessed or mounted by the spirits, the body gives way, lost at sea, and the mind runs wild… like a horse indeed. It is the ecstatic madness or rapture of inspiration… but the craft of the filidecht is one of bardic frenzy as well as utmost sovereignty: capable of making or un-making a king, such poets were truly accomplished, including mastery and wisdom of all known things such as literature, law, medicine, song, satire, aside divination and prophecy. And the importance of prophecy in a pan-Celtic worldview cannot be underestimated, because prophecy is a sacred utterance, understood as inspiration / truth spoken from the Otherworld itself. Prophecy is a form of performative speech, it impels rather than compels: it creates as it is birthed, and it shapes the materiality of the world, of reality, as it is spoken. Prophecy as a beacon creates and weaves mythical time and space, and is the language of truth, for it is the language of spirits: Fate, as that which one’s own soul is sworn to, a reality so always agonizingly literal that we, as human beings, can only ever comprehend it in the guise of metaphors - hence, poetry.
In the sky, the Crow (Corvus), the Chalice (Crater), and the Great Snake (Hydra), all sit together in tight embrace.
One drop of nectar is enough for the mortal heart, gently melting under the tongue, or smoothing one’s eyelids…
When I pour mead at the altar and light consecrated fires, I know myself to be partaking in the gloaming feast of the gods.