Celtic Women's Spirituality: Accessing the Cauldron of Life - Edain McCoy 1998
Introduction
The Celtic spiritual traditions are arguably some of the most popular in the modem Pagan revival. One explanation for this phenomenon is that in the United States and Canada, where a large percentage of today’s Pagans reside, the ancestral gene pool is pri marily Celtic. Perhaps our interest is one of ethnic pride, or perhaps it is a deeper intrigue born of genetic memory. Women have also flocked to the new spiritualities seeking divine images to which we can better relate, deities who are like ourselves—female! We call this path “women’s spirituality,” yet we rarely give it a single cultural focus.
The term “spirituality” is often preferred over the label “religion” by practitioners of alternative worship. Some Pagans balk at the use of the word “spirituality,” feeling it casts what they believe and practice into a lesser role. This is simply not true. A religion is a broad framework in which spirituality may or may not play a part. A religion, properly defined, is a set of beliefs, a dogma with a definable and static outward form. It has little or nothing to do with inner connections to the divine. Catholicism is a religion. Judaism is a religion. Islam is a religion. Even Paganism, in its broadest sense, is a religion. How many non-practicing people do you know who nonetheless claim a religious label but who seem to feel nothing for the deeper meaning of the faith to which they so tenaciously claim allegiance?
For the majority of English-speaking people, the word “religion” has come to mean a set of unnatural rules for living. One book on Paganism defines religion as “that which is taboo or restrictive.” The word religion actually comes from the Latin reUgio, meaning to “re-link.” Ligio is the same root word from which we get the word “ligaments,” those tissues that link bone and muscle and allow our bodies to move. There is nothing in it that means taboo. However, languages evolve over time, and the word spirituality now strikes most of us as the term that best sums up the idea of re-linking ourselves with the divine. It is the divine to which we aspire to reconnect through ritual, and in the rituals of women’s spirituality it is almost exclusively an aspect of the Goddess to which we desire to re-link ourselves.
Spirituality is an inner quality that speaks to our feelings about our faith. Spirituality can be either coexistent with the practice of any religion (by proper definition) or celebrated outside of orthodox religious forms altogether. It implies an active role in religious life that goes beyond outer expressions, attempting to take the mysteries of the faith and fully incorporate them into all aspects of the self, uniting that self with the divine.
In most of the religions women have abandoned in order to embrace Paganism, we were not wanted as full participants. We were needed merely as warm bodies to fill pews, as followers who could be told what to do and think by others who were supposedly in closer connection with the divine, and as necessary vessels in which to breed new followers of the faith.
When we practice a spirituality, we cannot help but connect with the divine, in both its inner and outer aspects, and experience it on a deep level that creates a lasting and positive effect on our lives and, presumably, upon our afterlives as well. No mere religion can do all that because it does not encourage the experiential explorations that allow spirituality to happen. The fact that women are rediscovering this fact scares the mainstream religious leaders to the bottoms of their clerical collars. The Pope himself cautioned women against earth-centered (read Pagan) spiritual teachings that could lead to, oh horror of horrors, the practice of Witchcraft!1
In spite of the extreme popularity of both the Celtic Pagan and women’s spirituality paths, they are rarely seen united, as if the outward label and the spiritual inner-connections are somehow incompatible. The idea that women’s spirituality and Celtic Paganism must be mutually exclusive is silly. It is true that many of the best documented Goddess-worshipping cultures were African or Mediterranean, but the Celts provide us with some of the strongest, most archetypally accessible images of strong women onto which we can focus our spiritual impulses. Warriors and queens, mothers and crones, sovereigns and shapeshifters are all to be found within the Celtic pantheon, and all have im portant lessons to teach us about ourselves and our universe. When we combine our interest in Celtic Paganism with that of women’s spirituality, we nat urally create for ourselves a personalized pathway that links two important aspects of ourselves: the feminine and the hereditary (or adopted) Celtic. This union can help make us more whole, more powerful, and awaken us to new realities previously untapped by our subconscious minds.
One path is not contradictory to the other. For several years I was part of a mixed gender Celtic coven and very happy with it. Still, I sought some contact for the times in between the solar and lunar festivals, and became part of a fledgling women’s spirituality group. Eight of us from diverse backgrounds and varying levels of experience soon discovered we shared a passion for all things Celtic. Though we never developed into a fully working coven, the experience taught me that women’s spirituality can function beautifully hand in hand Celtic Paganism, or within virtually any other culturally based Pagan tradidtion.
Because Celtic women’s spirituality is not a tradition with a set of long held rules and a preprogrammed set of rituals and rites to be followed, it can be blended with or added to any other spiritual paths you may be following. Celtic women’s spirituality can be your solitary path while you enjoy another one with a group or it can be used to enhance your existing practice, regard less of its cultural basis. No one is going to excommunicate you from Paganism for forging a personal tradition from the archetypes and myths that inter est you and in which you find meaning.
Numerous books and groups teach about Paganism in general, and all should be explored if the Pagan path is new to you. Also, in recent years, a huge number of books have been published that look more deeply at the Celtic aspects of Paganism. As with any. culturally based ents characterize it and make it stand apart from the others. In general, the defining characteristics of Celtic Pagan spirituality are:
✵ An acceptance that the spiritual traditions of the ancient Celts still have something to teach humankind
✵ An acceptance that the divine is manifest in all living things
✵ A belief in the Otherworld as a mirror of the physical world
✵ An acceptance that part of the self is manifest in the Otherworld
✵ A belief that the Otherworld, and the spirits and deities who dwell there, can be accessed by human beings
✵ A belief in reincarnation or in the natural cycles of regeneration following physical death
✵ The acceptance of dual divinity, Goddess and God, of which the feminine archetype in her three forms (virgin, mother, crone) is the stronger element
✵ Belief in an eternal Goddess and an eternally reborn God
✵ Belief that a rightful king (as God incarnate) weds the land (the Goddess incarnate), and that what befalls the king befalls the land
✵ Acceptance of the number three as sacred
✵ Acceptance of the warrior-self as an important aspect of spiritual development
✵ Looking to nature for spiritual guidance and for determining the date of festivals and sacred days
✵ Belief in the faery world and an acceptance that its denizens can interact with and aid or hinder humanity
✵ Lack of a definable creation myth but a belief that the Goddess, in union with the God, manifested all things
✵ Belief in magick as a natural operation of the universe
✵ Acceptance of omnipresent time as opposed to linear time
Women’s spirituality has been even less likely than other sects of Paganism to identify itself by a particular label, though a few all-women traditions have sprung up over the last few decades, including the Wise Woman, Woman-Spirit, and Dianic. Because of this fierce independence, their common ground is not as readily evident but, in general, the defining characteristics of women’s spirituality are:
✵ Emphasis on the supremacy of the divine feminine or Goddess
✵ Acceptance of all women as Goddesses incarnate
✵ Acceptance that all women have inner strengths that were gifts of the Goddess and that can be accessed through ritual
✵ Belief that all women are worthy of being priestesses of the divine feminine
✵ Belief that all women are natural psychics
✵ Belief that following the Goddess path will restore balance to the self and to the world
Blending Two Paths Into One
Women’s spirituality can be as easily crafted from Celtic Paganism as from any other cultural path. However, resistance often comes from the persistent warrior images that are unavoidable in Celtic history. Women following general women’s spirituality paths like to emphasize in their spiritual life the ideals of peace and reciprocity usually found only in cultures nearer the equator, where an abundance of natural resources made warfare less necessary.
These women are missing the point of the warrior archetype and losing out on a valuable tool for self-expression. As they crusade for women’s rights and other causes dear to them, they fail to recognize that they are already calling upon their warrior selves. Celtic women’s spirituality, with its emphasis on the warrior self, can provide a framework for consciously recognizing and drawing upon this important aspect of the inner-self.
This focus on the feminine side of Celtic Paganism is not intended as a slam on men. Too often both women’s and men’s spirituality groups routinely bash and trash the opposite sex as part of their ritual experience. We have all given in to the impulse occasionally. This is simply the way the battle of the sexes has shaped up over the centuries and, at times, it is an understandable and acceptable emotional outlet. What is not acceptable is making it a routine part of our spiritual practice. Admittedly, it is difficult for women looking back on five thousand years of oppressive history, during which a great deal of trashing was done to our Goddesses, to remember that the patriarchy that shaped our modern world also hurt a great many men in its zeal to purvey one worldview upon us. Men who wanted to live in peace, not chase wealth as the highest goal, and who had no wish to worship only one preselected male God were silenced just as quickly as their female counterparts. This not-so-subtle conversion campaign continues today, and it remains one of society’s most effective control measures. Trust that when the Witch-hunters come knocking on your door, they won’t spare the males under your roof out of respect for a common Y chromosome. As women fight for their own spiritual rights, we fight also for those of the men who are our allies.
Women and men have pursued divergent spiritual paths since the first reli gious impulse was recognized in the human soul. Though the end goal may be the same-that of union with the divine-the necessary archetypes, symbols, and mysteries that make sense to us and open up the door of initiation clearly contain some gender divisions. Early-twentieth-century psychologist and student of the occult mysteries Carl G. Jung believed that without courting these divisions, men and women became like “devils” to each other, impeding the progression of spiritual fulfillment.2
Many modem women feel a need to follow a separate spiritual path that emphasizes the Goddess and challenges them to seek out the divine feminine within themselves. This is best done in a non judgmental alone or with a small group of committed women. Women have had a much harder time than men in accepting themselves as valuable people, and old wounds often require treatment in an all female healed. The overweight or underweight woman, the too tall woman, the small busted nose or limp hair, and all our other sisters who somehow feel they do not measure up physically can feel very intimidated in mixed gender problem of personal insecurity can be compounded if the woman becomes involved in a coven that practices ritual nudity, known as going skyclad. Unused to viewing themselves as Goddess because—willingly or not—they have bought into the feminine stereotypes of our modem world, they lack the confidence to stand in a mixed gender with dignity as an incarnation of the divine. Even when we know intellectually that any lesser self image and emotional well being, men are present. Even Pagan men, who from my observations have largely overcome the need to denigrate or elevate women based on their physical appearance, can be viewed as a threat to self esteem have not learned to love and trust themselves. When we overcome this conditioning by exploring the powerful archetypes on the Celtic women’s spiritual path, we learn to recognize ourselves as powerful and beautiful and we can command the respect that will allow us to rise above any further attempts to manipulate our sense of self worth.
It is only when we learn about and accept our own wholeness of being, via archetypes that at first seem more masculine than feminine, that we can begin to work in tandem with men in dual gender oriented our full spiritual potential as Goddesses incarnate. The same is true for men. They must connect with the divine masculine within themselves before they can hope to connect with their feminine aspects and come to us as Gods in camate in a true spiritual partnership.
Many Pagan men are discovering the spiritual value of single sex and are delving more and more into men’s sacred rites, as evidenced by the books on the male mysteries that have appeared over the last few years. I see these two separate gender paths as being a positive experience for the entire Pagan community. These gender based us more powerful as a whole when we work together; each group in perfect balance, each member confident in his or her personal power, his or her self as the divine incarnate, and both proudly representing two halves of the whole, able to unite and to spark raw ideas into full manifestation.
The great challenge in putting together a system of Celtic women’s spirituality lies in the unalterable historical fact that the patriarchy, the era of rule by men, was already in place when Celtic history was being made in Europe. While the fables of the golden age of universal matriarchy are largely untrue, there were small tribes living in Europe that had a matricentric3 focus and lived in relative peace, using reciprocity as an economic base. One of the explanations for why the patriarchy came about has to do with a change in land use and economic base when these peaceful hunter-gatherer societies came into conflict with herding societies.
The Celts were primarily herders. Coming out of the Caucasus into Europe as early as 2000 B.C.E.,4 they sought to conquer and “possess” great tracts of land for grazing. To most hunter-gatherer societies, the concept that one could actually own the land and all its bounty was foreign, and even when another tribe clearly dominated a territory, the idea that its resources could not be shared was inconsistent with their economic system of reciprocity. To the Celts wealth meant cattle, and this would remain so for nearly another 3000 years.5
Celtic clan leaders were often men, the strongest warriors of the tribe, though many women achieved this rank and, as a whole, lived enviable lives for their time period in terms of personal freedom and communal status. Celtic Goddesses continued to hold an exalted place in the spiritual system of the Celts until the new religion6 was forced to adopt some of these unvanquishable deities into their pantheon of saints. Most Celtic myths were not committed to paper until well into the Christian period, yet they retain strong female im agery that speaks volumes about how substantial their imagery must have been, since it is generally believed that Christian clerics watered down aspects of a strong divine feminine in any myths they transcribed7 To have endured cen turies of subtle alteration in oral custom as the patriarchy advanced and then to be transcribed, either in the same or very similar form, is a testament to the power of the feminine Celtic archetypes.
Crafting New Ways From the Old
Whenever we work within the Celtic Pagan traditions, there always arises the inevitable debate over the classification of information. Everyone wants to know what material comes from a source known to be a rock solid what comes from a source we think we know to be fact, and what comes from a source we only suppose we know, based on conjecture. Unfortunately, almost every bit of historical information we possess can be classified and re-classified—all with sound arguments to back up each decision—depending upon which scholar is doing the classifying. History, especially prehistory, is just not that amenable to our modern need to categorize. It is not a hard science, as many suppose, but a discipline whose conclusions are based upon argument and counter argument, always fluid adn every-changing... just like spirituality itself.
If we were able to hop into a time machine, push all the right buttons, and travel back 2500 years to witness ancient Celtic rites, any attempt at bringing them unaltered into the present would render them useless in a spiritual sense. They would be a religion; an outer form incapable of speaking to us on deeper levels. Certainly we could connect with the Celtic reverence for na ture, the high placement of a feminine divinity, and the cycle of seasons, but so few of the actual rites of the past would have any meaning for us today. We would also find that the Celts were not the cohesive people many modern Pa gans would like to believe. Though the common culture gave them many sim ilarities in spiritual belief and practice, the precise way in which those beliefs were put into action would vary from country to country, clan to clan, and century to century.8
Religions must evolve along with people. They must become spiritualities. If a religion does not change to meet the deepest spiritual needs of its follow ers, the religion loses out, and people flock to systems that do work for them, that speak to their souls. A simple look at the statistics showing the rapid decline in attendance and membership in churches and synagogues that have increasingly purveyed religion over spirituality for purposes of control tells the tale very well.
If we tried to accurately recapture the Celtic past, we would be disappointed by more than just the lack of spiritual connection. Celtic women had communal status far higher than women of other cultures during the same time period, but it was not a perfect society. A patriarchy was already in place, and by the second century C.E., women’s status had fallen considerably and was destined to sink even further in the years to come.
We can certainly learn from the past. Women can take the old Goddesses, the observance of the yearly cycles, the myths, and combine them with our current needs to synthesize a new style of Celtic Paganism-one that cele brates the Goddess in each of us in a way that we, as modem women, can un derstand, work with, and use to help us grow spiritually.
Celtic Paganism has often been touted as a path of the individual. Certainly it is true that in any spiritual system we derive the deepest insights from solitary introspection, but’it is also true that the Celts highly valued their clans and community. Some rituals simply cannot be satisfactorily worked in solitude, and it for this reason that I have included one group ritual, and many suggestions for adapting solitary ones to group settings, in this text. The vast majority, however, remain for the female solitary.
Dipping Into the Bottomless Cauldron
The subtitle of this book, Accessing the Cauldron of Life, comes from the pri mal symbol of Celtic Paganism-the magickal cauldron. Though it becomes a portable grail or chalice in later legends, the cauldron is used widely in old Celtic myths and within modern Celtic Paganism. At its most basic, it repre sents the womb of the Goddess from which all life flows and to which all life must return to await rebirth. In some myths, the cauldron even functions as a portal between the physical world and the Otherworld from which the dead are brought back to life. Most of the famous Celtic cauldrons were bot tomless, providing endless sustenance (Bran’s), endless knowledge (Cerridwen’s), and endless life (Badb’s). Even the word for the cauldron’s smaller cousin, the chalice or grail, comes from an old French word graal, meaning “a bottomless bowl.”
The cauldron’s fertile powers extend to the physical when it becomes a pot in which food is prepared. In a number of myths we see the cauldron as a vessel of never ending tents ever-renewing themselves. It is also a source of status, inspiration, wisdom, and transformation. Though no Celtic creation myth has survived, the link be tween the liquids within the cauldron and the womb blood of the original mother Goddess is clear.
The five fictions of the Celtic mythic cauldron can be summoned up in five broad categories, each relating to a specific element:
Creation = Water
Sustenance = Earth
Inspiration = Air
Transformation = Fire
Regeneration= Spirit
Using Celtic archetypes, such as the cauldron, women can successfully com bine their need to connect with the divine feminine with their interest in Celtic Pagan spirituality. Through this path we can awaken the warrior queen within and establish new avenues of spiritual awareness, explore and probe women’s mysteries through a Celtic framework, and connect with the power of the very potent and evocative Goddesses who dominate the Celtic pantheon. Celtic Women’s Spirituality: Accessing the Cauldron of Life, draws on the limitless power of the Goddess and presents Celtic women’s spirituality in what, I hope, is an understandable and workable format, one that women can use and build upon to create powerful and meaningful traditions for themselves, their daughters, their sisters, and their friends.
1. I cannot recall now the time, date, or place where this statement was made, though I am sure it was in the early 1990s. Sadly, I cannot recall the precise wording either. The Pagan and feminist presses had a proverbial field day with this statement before it became old news.
2. Jung, Carl G. Memories , Dreams, Reflections (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 381.
3. The term “matriarchy” implies rule by women, or of a woman or group of women having hegemony over men and younger women. Few, if any, early societies can be proven to have lived under such a system. On the other hand, “matricentric” refers to societies in which the central focus of the clan or tribe was a mother figure. These societies usually had a Goddess as a supreme being and counted their clan as those linked though blood ties to a female ancestor.
4. B.C.E. means “Before the Common Era” and refers to what is generally called B.C. (Before Christ) by some writers. Likewise C.E., “Common Era,” makes a similar reference for AD. I prefer these more scholarly and ecumenical designations, and they will be used throughout this book when dating events.
5. Hubert, Henri. The Rise of the Celts (New York: Bilbo and Tannen, 1966).
6. The “new religion” is a Pagan term referring to Christianity in Europe as replacing the “old religion” of Paganism.
7. See Chapter 1 for a full discussion on theories about Celtic myths and their relationship to the lives of Celtic women.
8. This is why there is no practice we can refer to today as being representative of “the” Celtic tradition. Many variations on the Celtic theme abound, and all can make a case for themselves-a dichotomy that would likely be understood and appreciated by our Celtic ancestors.