Celtic Women's Spirituality: Accessing the Cauldron of Life - Edain McCoy 1998

The Divine Sovereign

The Goddess as the personification of the land, who is wedded to the sacred king who rules over it, is at the heart of the Celtic concept of the divine. The land was the true sovereign. It provided everything needed by humanity. It nurtured and it taught. The land was ever faithful. It was only when people failed to remember to honor the land that nature appeared to turn against them.

Unfortunately, this ancient belief, one of the few unifying elements among the Celts, took a beating in the intervening centuries and is only now being restored to its rightful place as a central feature of Celtic Paganism. But even among those who seek to restore this aspect, it occasionally remains misunderstood.

One of my first exposures to this concept and its perversion came when I was only fifteen, reading Thomas Tryon’s bestselling novel Harvest Home,¹²³ about an old fertility cult in modern New England. The cult members kept alive the practice of hallowing and sacrificing the sacred king by forcing unwilling young men to play this role. The result was something of a horror novel that kept all the death imagery but failed to show the eternal rebirth aspects of the sacred king.

Shortly after I read this book, the movie version of the stage musical Camelot was released, a show about King Arthur and Guinevere. One man who had seen the show remarked to me, “See that? It was a woman who brought down the perfect kingdom.” The comment stung. More than that, on some intuitive level I knew that was not the message I was supposed to be getting from this legend. Here was Guinevere, married to an aging king, yet wanting the strong, youthful knight. Her reward? Charges of treason.

Treason? It just didn’t quite make sense. There was definitely something amiss in both the book and the musical, but it would be many more years before I could figure it all out.

The idea that the land is the Goddess, sovereign and supreme, and that there was a king who was wedded to the land, is an ancient one that still echoes through the lands the Celts inhabited. Over the centuries the process by which the king has been wed, or hallowed, has altered, but the concept re mains the same. The king becomes the God incarnate, marries the Goddess and, like her consort, must die so that she may give him rebirth and begin anew the cycles of life. It is through her gift of sacred marriage that consent is given to him to rule. When she withdraws from the marriage, as Guinevere did with Arthur, then he is no longer able to remain king. A new, younger, stronger king must be chosen to replace him so that the land and its people can remain strong and healthy.

So intricately wedded to the land was the king that, in old Ireland, it was decreed that the king must be “blemish free.”¹²⁴ Any weakness, scar, or disfigurement, no matter how small, disqualified one for kingship. This was because the king so deeply represented the land that what befell him would befall the land. If he was blighted, so would be the land, its people, and its animals.¹²⁵ It was the duty of the Goddess/queen, who was the land, to do what was best for it by mating with the new, younger king, and discarding the old.

It is only within this framework that the charge of treason against Guinevere makes any sense. Can you imagine a queen today being accused of treason because she chose to sleep with another man? Guinevere’s “crime” was not her infidelity to a man but her fidelity to the land she represented. When she turned to another man she was, in fact, granting him the right to rule Camelot, to replace the old king, Arthur. A woman did not bring down the perfect kingdom but saved it by granting her sacred marriage to the one best suited to represent the land. Guinevere was accused of treason only because, through her, Arthur would lose his throne.

A similar glitch in interpreting Celtic history dates to first century when the woman warrior and chieftain Cartimandua left her chieftain husband and made another man her lover. The result of this was an intertribal war similar to that presented to us in the Camelot legends.¹²⁶

Since when do people go to war because the wife of a head of state chooses to sleep with another man? If this were common practice, the world would be even more constantly at war than it is now. This dissension among Celtic tribes can only be adequately explained when the leaders are assuming the ancient roles of sovereign Goddess and sacred king. The Celtic myths clearly show us that troubles in paradise ensue not when the Goddess/queen takes another lover, but when the old God/king fights the inevitable change in leadership.

That this concept was perverted by the patriarchy is not surprising.¹²⁷ In many cultures, women’s mysteries and power cycles suffered similar blows. Most notable is the use of the menstrual lodges of the tribes of the Native North Americans. The menstrual period was once viewed as a time when women were at their most powerful and it was for this reason only that they separated from the men of the tribe during this time, to enter a sacred space in order to take part in the women’s mysteries with other women.¹²⁸ Over time the separation began to be viewed as something to protect men, not from the Goddess-like power of women, but from the “evilness” of their blood.

Celtic myths are rife with references to sacred kings, though many have been buried under centuries of patriarchal debris that paint the woman/Goddess in the role of temptress or whore who leads her mate to destruction due to her infidelities. Again, this fear goes back to the image of woman as the devourer, the one who consumes life as freely as she gives it. From blood men are born, and in blood they die.

Such triangular arrangements are popular features in Celtic myth. Sometimes it is two male lovers who fight for the sovereign Goddess; at other times it is a father who is fighting with a son or a potential son-in-law, the new God/king destined to replace him. But in all the myths two themes remain: the concept of the sacred number three as being one of action and creation, and the concept that the Goddess is supreme and that only she can grant a God/king the legitimacy of his kingship.

The Irish seanachai, or storytellers, differentiated between love stories of wooing and elopements and love stories involving these sacred trios. These latter were called secra, or tales of “Loves” in which two men eternally contested over one woman and the powers she brought to the victor. One uniting feature of these secra is that most of them take place in May, the month of the Bealtaine festival when the sacred marriage of the God and Goddess is celebrated. Often the culmination of the tale was made to fit the season. The man who represents the dark lord aspect, or underworld, is victorious at Samhain, the point in autumn when the dark part of the year begins and the land lies barren. The dark lord takes the sovereign Goddess to his underworld realm where she cannot bless the land with her fertility until she is won or stolen back by the light or bright lord in the spring (or at the festival of Bealtaine, the point opposite Samhain on the Celtic solar calendar).

Among these sacred Celtic trios are:

✵ Isolde with King Mark of Cornwall and Tristan (uncle and nephew)

✵ Guinevere with King Arthur and Lancelot (king and warrior)

✵ Mm:gan LeFay with King Arthur and Modred (father and son)

✵ Creiddylad with Gwythyr Ap Greidawl (a solar deity/warrior) and Gwyn Ap Nuad (an underworld ruler and leader of the “Wild Hunt,” a nighttime quest for souls for the underworld)

✵ Grainne with Fionn MacCumhal and Diarmuid (old warrior and young warrior)

✵ Olwen with Ysbadadden and Culwch (woman’s father and his potential son-in-law)

✵ Queen Maeve with King Ailell and several other men (king and warriors of their kingdom)

✵ Blodeuwedd with Llew and Grown (uncle and nephew)

✵ Deirdre with King Cormac and Naoise (older king and young warrior)

✵ Dubh Lacha with Bradubh (an Ulster king whose name means black raven” and who represents the dark half of the year and death) and Mongan (a warrior who represents the sun and the light half of the year)

✵ Blathnat with CuRoi (a Fianna warrior) and Cuchulain (an Ulster warrior who took many wives and lovers)

✵ Rhiannon with Gwawl (a warrior whose name means “light) and Pwyll (a king of the underworld), representing two halves of the year with “ownership” of Rhiannon as their turning point

✵ Branwen with Mathowch (a Welsh king) and Bran (a war chief and a deity who represented protection and divinatory powers)

✵ Edain and King Eochaid (a mortal king) and Midhir (a “faery” king who represents the underworld)

✵ Goewin with Math Ap Mathowch and several other men (king and warriors of his kingdom), and with the twins Gwydion and Gilfaethwy.

Not all sacred kings fought the inevitable change in kingship. In numerous fairy tales, many of which are Celtic in origin, we see kings who offer their daughters to men in their kingdom for some display of great bravery. This offering has been interpreted by modern feminists as showing the man’s ownership of the women of his household when, in truth, it is the king’s way of selecting his own successor. By giving a royal woman, he was offering not just a mate but the gift of sovereignty, the right to rule the land.

When the king was wed to the land he became a God of fertility, able like he Goddess to pass along his powers of fruitfulness to his people. This is likely the rationale behind an old Irish law known by the French term droit de seigneur,¹²⁹ allowing the king first right to bed a new bride on her wedding night.

This image of the old God/king being replaced over and over again is echoed in the myths concerning the turning of the wheel of the year. At the two solstices we are presented with the symbolic struggle between two forces, one representing waxing energies and another representing waning energies. At these turning points in time, one aspect is victorious and the other “dies,” then the battle is picked up again in six months with the former loser becoming the victor. The Oak King (waxing year) and Holly King (waning year), the Red Dragon (waxing year) and White Dragon (waning year), and the eternal battle of Gwythyr (waxing year) and Pwyll, Lord of the Underworld (waning year), are prominent examples whose battles are often reenacted in Pagan circles at the changing points of the year. Whenever a woman is involved in the battle myth, she is undeniably representing the sovereign spirit of the land. She does not choose the younger, stronger man for selfish reasons but because it is her duty to select the best ruler to be joined with her in sacred marriage. The most fit ruler makes the most fit land.

In many Celtic myths the older, outgoing king does not struggle physically with another man but against the inevitable tide of time, and puts up a fight to keep his sovereignty. One example of this is in the Welsh myth surrounding Olwen. Olwen wants to marry Culwch, but her father, King Ysbadadden, sets up obstacles of nearly insurmountable proportions because it has been foretold to him that a grandson of his would slay him and take his throne. This is clearly meant in the context of the sacred king, yet the old king fights to keep his place. Another grandfather and grandson sacred duo of battlers are Lugh and Balor, both sun Gods. Lugh slays Balor and represents not only a change in sacred kingship but the turning of the wheel of the solar year from dark half (waning sun) to bright half (waxing sun).

Hallowing the Sacred King

Unlike the hapless young man called Worthy in Tryon’s Harvest Home, the sacred king of Celtic lore meets his sacrificial death willingly and with full awareness that it is for this duty that he was born and to this end that he took his vows of office. Even in the modern-day British coronation ceremony, many aspects of hallowing, of wedding the monarch to the land, remain intact.

One did not become a sacred king by accident. The best man for the land got the job, which may be one of the reasons why the early Celts did not adhere to the custom of primogeniture, where the eldest son inherited everything, including a throne. One had to prove one’s worth and then be made sacred through symbolic wedding of the Goddess of the land. At various stages in Celtic history, and in different parts of the Celtic world, this process was handled in slightly different ways.

In general, all the Celtic legends involve the hallowing of the king, or making him sacred by giving him an object or talisman of empowerment that he is to use and guard.¹³⁰ This item most often—but not always—has its origins either in stone, which is symbolic of the earth element, or in water. Both water and stone, as representatives of the earth element, are symbols of the divine feminine and of the sovereign essence of the earth itself.¹³¹ At other times, the object is a gift from the sovereign Goddess herself.

Symbols of hallowing found in Celtic myth include banners, shields, cauldrons, chalices, grails, cloaks, mantles, crystals, stones, spheres, scepters, drums, blades, swords, game boards, harps, lances, spears, lamps, crane bags (magickal pouches similar to Native American medicine bags), runes, scabbards, staves, and wands.

Weapons are the most often seen hallows, and are among the most widely known in terms of popular legends. Ulster’s greatest hero, Cuchulain, though not a king, was hallowed by the gift of an invincible spear from his teacher Scathach of the Gae Bolg. When thrown at an enemy, its barbed edges dealt a painful death. Like the sacred kings, Cuchulain was impervious to many spells and other maledictions impressed upon others. In his case, he was immune to the curse of Macha (discussed in Chapter 10) that affected the other Ulster warriors. He died at the hands of the forces of Queen Maeve, and his blood was spilled on the earth.

Bran the Blessed of Welsh mythology is given a cauldron that gives life, one of the most pervasive and important of the Celtic hallows, and one intimately associated with the Goddess. Also from the Welsh tradition is Gwyddiw Garanhir, who has a cauldron, or basket, that provides a neverending supply of food. Nuada of the Silver Hand is given a sword that, like the GaeBolg, never fails to kill the enemy.

Probably the most famous of the hallows is Excalibur, the sword of sovereignty given to young King Arthur. Thanks to the book The Once and Future King by T. H. White¹³² and to Walt Disney’s animated movie The Sword in the Stone, most people are aware of the legend telling of the young Arthur being able to extract the sacred sword from a large stone after all the warriors of the kingdom had failed. Though these two presentations preserve the essence of the legend, they carefully worked around the Goddess’s role. It is doubtful that this was intentional, but was merely the result of their creators using medieval texts, such as those of Mallory and Geoffrey of Monmouth, which had already created popular versions of the ancient legend that either eliminated, downplayed, or diabolized the Goddess.

In these “Christianized” versions, the stone from which Arthur pulled the sword was found in a churchyard. The idea is still that a divinity granted sovereignty, but in this case the focus has shifted from the ancient Goddess who was the sovereign of the land to the Christian God. This is where the modem concept of the “divine right of kings” comes from. In the original Arthurian myths, Excalibur was presented to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake, a Goddess who embodies the spirit of the land and the essence of the water element. Excalibur was embedded in a stone that either rested in her lap or floated on her lake, and it was from this that Arthur extracted his hallows.

The belief that a stone can be sovereign and has the right to bestow legitimacy of rulership is ancient. The most famous sovereign stone is without a doubt Ireland’s Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny, that was said to roar when the rightful ruler stepped onto her.¹³³ Another Lia Fail (or perhaps the same one, only stolen) was used in Scotland until the thirteenth century, when it was in tum stolen by England’s Edward I. In London’s Westminster Abbey, the stone that sits under the throne of the British monarch is said to be the same Lia Fail, still granting the gift of sovereignty to kings and queens.

Another famous stone that once had spiritual links is Ireland’s Blarney Stone. If one can kiss the stone while leaning over backwards, it will bestow the gift of glib speech.¹³⁴ This was once likely a sovereignty stone that “gave life” to rulers the same way other cauldrons took away speech when used as a portal between worlds. This is seen in the myth of the battle between Ireland and Wales, in which the Welsh used the Cauldron of Rebirth to restore life to their warriors, though they came back to life minus their powers of speech.

All over the Celtic lands table-like stone formations, called dolmens, exist that likely served as altars in the past. Again, the symbology is that of earth/Goddess/female as the grantor of sovereign power. It was the use of stone as embodiment of the Goddess that gave rise to the use of human women-priestesses-as altars. Several references to old Pagan practices talk about using the body of a woman as the altar, a practice that has been per, verted by those who do not understand its sacred significance and see it only as another opportunity to degrade the female body.

In some myths and legends, the hallows are known as the “four hallows.” They relate to the four elements central to Pagan practice: earth (stone), water (chalice), fire (spear), and air (sword).¹³⁵ Sometimes only one element is present, such as that of air (or fire by some interpretations) symbolized in the Gae Bolg or Excalibur; at other times there are two or more hallows, each representing a different element. One excellent example of a four-fold hallows given to one man is the Four-Sided Cup of Truth presented to Ireland’s High King Cormac MacArt. Myths vary on exactly who presented this cup to him, but at least one cites an Otherworld Goddess on one of his many trips there. In still other myths, there is a “palace” of the four hallows, either implied or actual, through which a potential sacred king must navigate and prove his worth while attaining his hallows and healing the scarred land.¹³⁶

Sometimes the marriage of king to land is more sexually symbolic than the mere acceptance of a hallowing tool. The Irish kings at Emain Macha, the stronghold of the Ulster kings in present,day County Armagh, were at one time required to symbolically mate with the Goddess in her white horse guise.¹³⁷ We have already discussed the many Goddesses who took a horse form and, as such, symbolized the power of the sovereign. In Gaul they were important both in the economy and for war, as well as in a religious context.¹³⁸

When a king ritually mated with a horse who was a representation of the sovereign Goddess, it made him the sacred king, the mating act taking the place of his being offered a physical hallowing symbol. This union of Goddess and God is irrevocable, ending only with death, which is why a symbolic commemoration of this union, known as the Great Rite, is an integral part of modem Pagan practice. In the Great Rite symbols, or hallows, of the Goddess and God are united in ceremony to reenact their eternal sacred marriage. This is usually done by ritually placing an athame, or ritual blade (representing the phallus) into the chalice (representing the womb area of the Goddess). The ceremonies are quite moving and, when performed correctly, the energy they produce can be a tangible presence in the circle.¹³⁹

It is not only the act of the Goddess mating with another man that removes sovereignty from the old king, but that of withholding sex as well. In a Breton legend we read of Princess Marcassa,¹⁴⁰ who refuses to sleep with a dying king. Only engaging in sex with her can cure his “disease.” The Princess refuses and “hibernates” until the king dies, possibly a metaphor for going through a crone period until she is a sovereign virgin again in spring. When she awakens, she weds the young warrior of her choice.

The Sacred King as Sacrificial God

In keeping with the eternal cycles of birth, death, and rebirth that the Celtic God undergoes, the sacred king who accepts the role of God incarnate must also endure periodic sacrifices in order to keep the land fertile and healthy. Like a great cosmic father, his seed, in the form of blood, must be spilled on the land to fertilize it. To die a sacred death, the old king must shed his blood on the earth in a fertility rite so ancient that its origins are not pinpointable. As he performs this last act of love for his land, Goddess, and people, he dies so that his younger, more fit, self may step in and assume his place.

This concept—that it is the male who must die through a sexual act, one either symbolic or de facto—is part of what gave rise to the fearful myths of the devouring female examined in Chapter 2. But the symbolism is clear. After sexual intercourse, the women bears the seed of the man (sperm) and then contains within herself the potential for procreation. There are no scars and usually no outward evidence on the female body that a sexual act has taken place. For her, the process is internalized, the power taken within and turned into potential life. On the other hand, the male body shows evidence of spent sexual energy in the form of a detumescing penis that has voided itself of life, giving qualities and, to the naked eye, appears to be “dying.” The same idea is present in the spilling of the blood of the sacred king on the earth which functions as the womb of the Goddess.

As time went on, the oral legends became even more perverted, casting all women in the devourer role, until much of the original meaning of the sovereign Goddess was forgotten. One such example is the Goddess Nair, a sovereign who came to personify regicide. Old Irish legends tell us that all kings who slept with Nair would die, but neglect to mention for what purpose.

The precise extent of the practice of sacred regicide, or king, killing, has been hotly debated for many decades, though in Ireland there is evidence that it may have persisted until at least the seventeenth century.¹⁴¹ At the heart of the reign of the sacred king is the knowledge that he will also be called upon to die for the land in a sacred act in which his blood is spilled upon it, fertilizing the Goddess so that she can give birth anew to crops, animals, people, and most importantly—so that she can mate with a stronger, younger sacred king.

In Margaret A. Murray’s controversial book The God of the Witches,¹⁴² she traces several kingly deaths to what she believed were sacred murders, thus building a case for the survival of Paganism in Britain and Ireland. That these religions have survived is a given, though her assertions that British mon archs, or their chosen substitutes, are still dying in sacred rites is open for de bate. One intriguing look at this concept is presented by science fiction author Katherine Kurtz in her novel Lammas Night,¹⁴³ in which she builds on Murray’s hypothesis to create a compelling tale surrounding ancient rites in World War II England. Though it downplays the Goddess element, it is a novel I highly recommend.

In modem Paganism we commemorate the death of the God/sacred king during the harvest season, usually at the sabbat, or solar festival known as Lughnasadh or Lammas. This coincides with the harvesting of first grains in much of the northern hemisphere, and it is in this harvest that the king is em bodied. When the king weds the land, he shares its fate. When a plant gives up its fruit at the harvest, it begins to die, symbolically sacrificing itself for the good of the people. The sacred king also begins the dying process, one that is seen in many Pagan traditions as being completed in the late autumn when the last of the harvest has been taken in. In many Pagan traditions, Celtic or otherwise, the last sheaf harvested is kept and honored throughout the re mainder of the year as a symbol of this sacrifice, of the living legacy of the deities. In other traditions it is woven into the form of a female, sometimes called the Com Dolly, who represents the sovereign spirit of the land.

Even after death the sacred king’s role as guardian of the land on behalf of the Goddess and her people does not come to an end. Bran the Blessed in sisted that his head be buried near the present day don.¹⁴⁴ It was to face south to guard and warn against invasion. And King Arthur is said to be sleeping in a hidden cave with his warrior legions, await ing the call of his people in need so he can rise again to defend them.

These legends of sleeping sacred kings are tied to the many legends of the wounded land, or wasteland, that only the restored, healthy king can cure. This is seen clearly in the Fisher King of Arthurian myths, in which a sacred king lies wounded (“blemished”), waiting to be healed by the return of his hallowing symbol. His wounds separate him from the power of sovereignty,¹⁴⁵ presumably because of the misuse of his power, and only the continuation of the sacred cycle of death, rebirth, and his rehallowing can restore him and the land he protects on the Goddess’ behalf.¹⁴⁶

Identifying the Sovereign Goddess

The Goddess of sovereignty comes in many guises, but learning to identify her is easy. In Celtic myth she is the one who symbolizes either the land or the right to rule over it. In some Celtic myths many of the sovereign Goddesses are hard for the uninitiated¹⁴⁷ to readily recognize, since many seem to play a lesser role than the males in the stories. Yet when examined with a knowledgeable eye it is clear that these Goddesses are at the very heart of the myths, for they represent the land and all that has befallen or shall befall it.

Not all sovereign Goddesses are involved in romantic triangles. Some simply embody the power of the land through their name, or by some action or place of association. These Goddesses belie their sovereign nature by being deities of places on earth: of streams, of stones, or of other natural landmarks. All these so-dubbed “minor” Goddesses of land features and water at one time functioned in sovereign roles for the clans or tribes that lived near them. In the Celtic traditions there are hundreds of these Goddesses, many of their names lost to us today. Occasionally male deities ruled some of these sites, but by far the female predominated.

Though she was never part of a romantic triangle, Eire, for whom Ireland is named,¹⁴⁸ is the supreme sovereign of that island. She has been worshiped by modem Pagans as both a sovereign and Goddess of protection. In the earliest oral traditions, Eire was created along with the land. (Though the myths do not say who or what did the creating!) In later myths, Eire was said to be a daughter of Dagda and Delbaeth, a virgin aspect of a Triple Goddess that included her sisters Banbha and Foldha, whose names are also used poetically as synonyms for Ireland. Eire’s magick was so potent that she was able to toss mud balls, which became living warriors, down on the Milesian (Celtic) invaders. She won the initial battle, but still lost the island to the Milesians. Out of respect for her display of power, the bard, Amergin, agreed to name the island in her honor.

Eire’s symbol was the harp, an emblem that still stands as a proud symbol of Ireland’s sovereign spirit. The harp has graced Irish flags and coinage, and the Irish have defended this symbol with the same ferocity that modem soldiers display in honor of the flags of their respective nations.

Another sovereign whose fame is honored in the name of a country is the Anglo-Celtic Goddess Brigantia, also known as Brittania, symbol of the sovereign spirit of Great Britain. She was also a Goddess of fire, crafting, and inspiration, like her Irish counterpart Brighid. In 1667, King Charles II revived an old Romano-Celtic custom and had Brittania’s face put back on English coinage, where it remains today.

When nations attempt to chronicle the achievements of the first human to set foot on their lands, they often look to the story of a man, a foreign explorer or warrior, whether or not indigenous people had already lived there. Columbus and his “discovery” of the Americas is one such example. The indigenous people of the Americas already knew it was there, so technically it had already been discovered many centuries earlier. Ireland’s first human was a woman named Cessair, who led her people, the Partholans, through a great deluge that left only three women and fifty men alive. As such, she is considered Ireland’s first ruler and sovereign. Some scholars hypothesize that she was once a pre-Celtic mother Goddess, since her myth credits her literally as being a source of life’s regeneration and renewal.

Another famous sovereign of the land is Taillte, a Goddess of the earth, competition, harvest, first grains, and particularly of wheat, which is a feminine fertility symbol. She has been called “the foster mother of light,” which has been interpreted by some as meaning she is the mother of the sun, indicating that she may be part of an old, lost creation myth in which the Goddess gives birth to the sun before creating anything else. Similar themes are echoed in both the oral and written creation myths of several other cultures. Many of lreland’s famous year-and-a-day trial marriages (see Chapter 1) were celebrated on the great playing field she had cleared near Tara.

One sovereign Goddess who was never directly connected with the land, yet was clearly a sovereign, was Goewin, the official “footholder” of Wales’ King Math. He was permitted to rule only so long as he kept his feet planted in her lap. The only excuse for removing them was going to war. Goewin also stood up for herself when Math attempted to make her a slave, and she was at the heart of several battles and stories of rape,¹⁴⁹ all of which tell us she was a sovereign, and that mating with her was a must for any man who wished to rule Wales.

Queen Maeve, and the other women of legend who splintered from her myths, served many archetypal functions, including that of sovereign.¹⁵⁰ This Connacht Goddess, made into a queen by the transcribers of the myths, personifies the heights of feminine power. Some texts present Maeve as “promiscuous,” a necessary attribute for a sovereign who must mate with the men who are best able to rule the land. Her warrior and sexual aspects are quite strong, and some legends record that she often boasted that she could sexually exhaust thirty men in a night. Both of these were part of how she protected the land.¹⁵¹ Her husband, King Aillel, who plays only a passing role in his wife’s myths, always seemed to understand that it was Maeve’s duty to take other lovers from among their warriors. One myth records his saying that this was something she “has to do.” Whether this is an open admission acknowledging her sovereignty or a casual acceptance of her infidelity is open for debate. In any case, Aillel did not try very hard to keep Maeve from taking lovers.

A Leinster queen named Maeve Lethderag, or “Half Red,” likely a splintered version of Connacht’s Maeve, was the wife of nine different High Kings in succession. Note here the use of the sacred three times three. This Maeve would allow no king to sit at Tara without her as his wife.

In Wales and Cornwall, an archetypal guardian of the feminine mysteries and Goddess of sovereignty is Condwiranmur, wife of Sir Percival of the Arthurian myths. After he marries and has sex with her, he returns to the sealed Grail Castle for the second time, and this time is admitted. When blessed by her sovereignty, he becomes one of the three knights who achieves the quest of finding the grail, another feminine symbol of sovereignty.

The search for the grail is ultimately a search for the sovereign. Only when she is brought back to the “wounded land” can it be healed and made whole again. Like the Goddess in the underworld, the missing grail represents a people cut off from the fertile and life-giving powers of the sovereign Goddess of the land. The grail myths serve as a warning of what happens when we forget to honor the land, and nature turns against us, as it has in our modern world.

Goddesses who return to a virgin state upon having sexual relations with men are also sovereigns. In Chapter 6 I mentioned Flaithius, who made this transformation, decreeing that her lover, Niall of the Nine Hostages, would become a great High King. Since many of the Goddess myths have been devalued into “faery tales,” a great many of these transformative deities are found within Celtic folk legends surrounding faery women. Nearly all of them involve female figures who are intimately associated in some way with the land, making their identity as sovereigns unmistakable.

One of these faery tale women is the Irish Goddess Becuna, who became the faery mistress of High King Conn. She felt she was not being treated with the respect her station deserved and decided to seek vengeance by bringing mass infertility to Ireland’s people, animals, and land. In this aspect she represents the crone of winter, a time when the land lies fallow and the animals rest. In the myth, another faery woman of the same name, representing Becuna’s virgin/spring and sovereignty aspects, banishes the crone faery aspect and restores the fertility to Ireland.

Numerous other heroines and Goddesses have sovereign attributes, and the old myths need only be read to ferret them out. Many times the imagery is quite evident, but at other times it must be looked for more closely.

Building on these legends, many modern Celtic Pagans still hallow sacred kings in the form of their priests, and it is still women who hold the key to his leadership.

Using Modern Ritual to Hallow the Sacred King

Rituals in which a woman is made the earth sovereign who hallows a man as sacred king are fairly common in modern Celtic based gender Irish coven in Texas did this each August. We would select one woman to act as sovereign. Then the eight female members of the coven would do a private ritual with her, in which we established her connection to the earth through meditation and symbolically invest her as the earth’s queen. This was done by having her lie prone on the earth and guiding her through a meditation in which she melded her energies with the earth’s. She was di rected to visualize the condition of the land, to allow its spirits to speak with her, to watch them acknowledge her as a holy part of itself. We would anoint her as one would a queen, and we would remind her of her responsibility to the coven in the coming year. It would be her duty to look out for the land on which we met, to protect it and make sure it was being used in a fitting manner. She would also be called upon to serve the coven at times when gaps in leadership or communication had to be filled.

After we had created our sovereign we would meet with the rest of the coven: the four men. Together we selected a willing man to be our sacred king. Remember that to be valid the sacred king must take on his responsibility willingly.

With the women assisting the sovereign and the men acting as pages to the sacred king, we offered him the hallows of the four directions that formally connected him with the spirit of the earth. During the year to come he was required to serve the coven in any reasonable way needed. At the end of his year he would offer a symbolic sacrifice to the earth, usually a gift of food or a ritual object, and then we would mourn his symbolic death and hallow our new king.

I have known of women’s covens who use a stalk of ripe grain, such as a corn stalk, to represent the king. They first seek out a stalk that seems willing to perform this task for them. If possible, the ritual is done in the field where the stalk is growing. They perform the hallowing ceremony in the same way as they would if a human man were present. After this is done it is easy to sacri fice him by ritually severing the stalk from the earth.

Even if you are working alone you can use a grain stalk or small patch of garden to represent the sacred king. The important thing is that the item you select feels to you as if it truly represents the spirit of the land. Spend time meditating with the earth and its spirits, and feel yourself sovereign over your own area of land. Then do the same for the grain you have chosen to be the sacred king. Offer it the hallows, the symbols of the four elements. The traditional Celtic hallows are listed below, but feel free to substitute where needed:

Earth: Stone

Water: Chalice

Fire: Spear

Air: Wand

When the ritual is done, sacrifice the willing sacred king to the good of the land and its people.

123. New York: Knopf, 1973.

124. Matthews, Caitlin. The Elements of the Celtic Tradition (Longmeade, Shaftsbury, Dorset: Element Books, 1989), 29.

125. Ibid., 26.

126. King, John. The Celtic Druids’ Year: Seasonal Cycles of the Ancient Celts (London: Blandford, 1994), 50.

127. Green, Miranda J. Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers (London: British Museum Press, 1995), 70.

128. One book that looks in depth at this practice, and includes practical information, is Kisma Stepanich’s Sister Moon Lodge (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 1992).

129. Power, Patrick C. Sex and Marriage in Ancient Ireland (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1976), 23.

130. Matthews, Caitlin (1989), 30.

131. Mann, Nicholas. The Isle of Avalon: Sacred Mysteries of Arthur and Glastonbury Tor (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 1996), 130-31.

132. New York: Berkeley Publishing, 1966.

133. Ellis, Peter Berresford. Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 1992), 142.

134. Walker, Barbara G. The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1985), 54.

135. For a more detailed look at each of these hallows and how they relate to the Arthurian myths, please see Caitlin and John Matthews’ Hallowquest (Wellingborough, UK: Aquarian, 1990).

136. Matthews, John. The Elements of the Grail Tradition (Longmeade, Shaftsbury, Dorset: Element Books, 1990), 25—26.

137. Matthews, Caitlin (1989), 19.

138. Green, Miranda J. Symbol and Image in Celtic Religious Art (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1992), 23.

139. For more on the Great Rite, and for detailed rituals, please see any of the books on modern Wiccan/Pagan practice currently available. Virtually all of them discuss this rite and its meanings in detail.

140. Much Celtic folklore calls these women of power “princesses” when the original title was closer to “chieftain.” In this case it was likely pennsvierges. In Brythonic languages the root word pen means “head,” as in “the head of something,” like a clan.

141. Green (1995), 72.

142. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1952.

143. New York: Ballantine, 1983.

144. Matthews, John (1990), 19.

145. Wolfe, Amber. The Arthurian Quest: Living the Legends of Camelot (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 1996), 191.

146. A king could be rehallowed if a willing substitute first died in his place..

147. In this case the term “uninitiated” has nothing to do with formal declarations or ceremonies, but with personal knowledge of the subject at hand. It is used this way in several places throughout the remainder of this text.

148. Eire is the Gaelic word for Ireland. The popular appellation Erin for Ireland is merely another form of Eire’s name.

149. Green (1995), 62.

150. Matthews, Caitlin (1989), 27.

151. Green (1995), 40.