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

The Feminine Mystery Cults

It has only been during the Celtic Pagan revival of the late twentieth century that women have been able to reclaim their roles as Goddess incarnate, priestess, and spiritual warrior on a widespread basis. We have taken what precious little we still know about the old feminine mystery cults and rebirthed them into a new incarnation to fulfill our current, day needs.

Women’s role in old Celtic religious life is a decidedly hazier sky to peer into than that of women’s role in Celtic society. Virtually noth, ing of substance comes to us in native writing, and our only choice is to study the past through symbols left to us by the Celts, by the writings of those who observed Celtic culture, and by comparing what we know of women’s mystery schools in other parts of Europe-and even from other eras—with the archaeological remnants discovered in Celtic lands.

In most early cultures, women and men carried on separate spiritual traditions. In some areas these overlapped, and perhaps even met, but in most respects they remained separate, with each sex cultivating its own mysteries and rituals that were likely kept secret from both the opposite sex and from the uninitiated. Even in later centuries, under patriarchy, the flourishing of women’s spiritual traditions has been known, particularly among the freedom loving fleeted in a law known today as the Golden Statute. It was enacted in early Ireland, the first known declaration of the legality of universal freedom of re ligion. Knowing what we do about the divisions of Celtic society being based on rank and not gender, there is no doubt that this law applied to women as well as to men.

These gender based pean cultures as well. The most famous of these is easily the Eleusian mysteries of Greece. For centuries, the city of Eleusia was a center for Goddess worship, and many pilgrimages were made to its temples and priestesses by women seeking the Goddess mysteries. Over time, the Goddess was eroded as a figure of power, replaced by the supreme male being of the new religion.

For several hundred years into Ireland’s Christian period, women’s spirituality most certainly functioned as a separate spiritual practice and likely was hidden from the male oriented male priests of the old. The persistent folklore surrounding “faery women,” possibly meaning Pagan in this case, who married human males has led some scholars to believe these are stories about the gender segregated spheres that existed until around 500 C.E., and perhaps longer. At least one ancient worship site remains today as evidence of this separation. Off the coast of County Sligo, on the small island of lnnishmurray, stands an aban cloned monastery dating to the sixth century C.E. The old ruins boast both a separate women’s chapel and a women’s cemetery that are clearly not part of the standard convent arrangements of the modern Catholic Church.²³ Nearby are the famous Five Speckled Stones, standing stones of neolithic origin, in scribed with an abundance of Pagan symbolism. Another women’s cemetery in County Tyrone boasts, “No women here alive; No men here dead.”

Later in Celtic history the feminine deities and their cults were diabolized, and Witch hunts to track down and destroy their followers—including some men-became standard practice not only in the old Celtic lands but throughout all of Europe.

Women as Druids

There has been much debate, both among scholars and Pagans, as to the place of women among the ranks of the Druids. The Druids were defined as both priests and philosophers, bards and historians, magicians and advisors, singers and storytellers; indeed, different Druids probably fulfilled all those roles at various times. Unlike Celtic clans, Druids appeared not to be bound by tribal territories²⁴ but could travel and study where they chose, their learning and judgment honored and respected by nearly all Celtic tribes. That they came to represent a very powerful force in Celtic life is a given, as is their eventual domination by males.

Some Celtic scholars have adamantly stated that there is no evidence of female Druids at all,²⁵ but that the role of women was likely that of prophets, healers, magicians, and keepers of sacred flames, all without the high status given to the initiated Druids. Much of this belief is derived from the writings of Julius Caesar, in which he described his campaign against the Gauls in the first century C.E. He refers several times to the power the Druids had to stop battles and advise kings, and refers to them all with masculine pronouns. Other scholars, however, cite early writings in which there are direct references to what they believe are female Druids, including those of the Roman warrior Tacitus. Tacitus described meeting a robed contingent that included women at Anglesey, a well-known Druidic stronghold until 61 C.E.²⁶ Like the male Druids they accompanied, these women appeared to Tacitus to be leveling curses and making other magick against the invaders.

It was in the role of prophets, or seers, that women clearly flourished, and this talent appears to have been greatly respected.²⁷ That this was one of the chief roles the Druids performed for their kings and clan chiefs is a given. One modem Druid writer claims that there was an entire class of women seers called ueledas in Old Irish, or banfhili (“woman-seers”).²⁸ The latter word is clearly related to the termfili, the name of a specific function and class of Druids.

Celtic legends also record the names of women who are cited as Druids, or who function as Druids within their stories. Among the women said to be Druids in Celtic myth and legends are Amerach, who was able to cast spells of agelessness; Argante, a healer of Anglesey; Birog, who helped a warrior take revenge on the Formorian God Balor; Chlaus Haistic, whose legends portray her as both Goddess and Druid; Dubh, the namesake of Dublin who magickally drowned her husband for his infidelity; Franconian-die-Drud, who is associated with dreams and the horse Goddess Mare; and Maer, who attempted to use love magick on the warrior hero Fionn MacCumhal. The Irish Goddess Facha, Goddess of poetry, is said by some to be a patron deity of the Druidic bards.

Another possibility for the mystery surrounding female Druids may have been that the path of the Druidic initiate was gender-segregated from the start, and that it was the men’s path that eventually became dominant in the hierarchy of Celtic society, while the women’s path took other forms out of the mainstream. This lessening of the women’s role may have been partly deliberate. Certainly the male Druids’ eventual insistence on the superiority of males as religious leaders and teachers-something that had taken place or was taking place in virtually all cultures during this time period-probably helped pave the way for the Roman church’s victory over the British Isles, as did many of the other sharp divisions in Celtic society.

Modern Druid sects are still predominantly male, but most are open to women. Women have also reclaimed this part of their spiritual past on their own and now boast distinct Druidic traditions with their own names, degrees of advancement, and mysteries. They do not appear to be as widespread as the “traditional” Druid groups nor as keen on taking part in the endless debates on what constitutes genuine Druidry. Members of one very interesting all-women Druid group I ran across while living in Texas call themselves the Dryads, named for the tree faeries known as Dryads; who, the women claim, bestowed their name upon the sect many centuries before. One of their primary deities is the Breton Goddess Druantia, a Goddess of trees.

Celtic Priestesses

It is possible that, as the Druids began to exclude women or as Druidism itself was eroded by the church, women broke away to form or to strengthen their own spiritual societies which were never based on Druidic structures.²⁹ These cults are easier to document, and evidence of their existence extends well into the modern era.

Archaeological digs in Celtic lands have retrieved pieces of iconography that appear to be figures of priestesses, or at least of women who are clearly performing ritual functions,³⁰ though arguably these might also be Goddess figures. Early literature that refers to women in priestly roles serving in temples or at the court of rulers is more precise.³¹ Queen Maeve of Connacht employed at least one priestess at her stronghold, Cruachain, who made it into print—a woman named Erne. Likely there were others as well—probably eight more, to be exact.

The Celts held the number three to be sacred, and the greatest manifestation of this was seen in three times three, or nine. Unlike many modern Celtic covens who strive to keep their numbers to thirteen,³² the early Celtic priestesshoods likely took advantage of the sacred symbolism found in the number nine, and kept their membership to this. This idea is born out in a piece of ancient Welsh poetry in which we are told that nine maidens attend the cauldron of rebirth in the Otherworld, and that only their breath may heat the fire that burns beneath it, and also in the classical writings of Strabo, who records that committees of nine women would greet returning warriors.

In Greece, Rome, and other early European cultures, women as priestesses often were given the care of sacred fires. The most well-known of these are the Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome, who tended the sacred flames of the hearth and fire Goddess Vesta. In Ireland and Gaul, two similar sacred flames were kept by women labeled “virgins” (see Chapter 8 for a full discussion on Celtic virgin Goddesses and heroines). One was at the hot springs in Gaul, sacred to the fire Goddess Sulis, a deity who found her way to England as Sul; the other was in southern Ireland at Kildare, where a sacred flame honoring the Goddess Brighid burned continuously for centuries.

Brighid was one of the Celtic Goddesses whose image and archetype was venerated over much of Celtic Europe. In Ireland she was known as Brighid, in England and Wales as Brigantia, and in Gaul as Brigindo. A Goddess of fire, childbirth, inspiration, fertility, medicine, music, animal husbandry, and crafting, she was a mother, a sovereign, a warrior, and a patron of warriors and of children. Brighid was widely and vigorously worshiped.

The early churchmen in Ireland sought to eradicate her worship, and even invented some very creative legends to link her with their own Goddess substitute, the Virgin Mary. The result of this merging of legends was the spurious creation of St. Brighid,³³ whose myths today contain a curious mixture of maiden and mother images, and whose feast day now falls on February 2, the old date of Brighid’s festival once called Imbolg, now known as La Fheile Brid (the Feast ofBrighid). Sometime during the fifth century C.E., Brighid’s shrine at Kildare and its eternal flame were taken over by the church, and for many centuries afterward its nuns tended the sacred fire. It is believed the flame that represented the eternal light of Brighid’s divinity burned unquenched until the mid-sixteenth century.³⁴

Brighid’s image as a Goddess of fertility is retained in modern Ireland through the many holy wells that bear her name, albeit in her guise of saint. Water and earth, being the two “feminine” elements,³⁵ are symbols of fertility in their own right, and many extant Irish wells bear the name of Tobar Brid, or the “Well of Brighid.” Pilgrimages for healing, fertility, and the protection of children are especially popular at these sites.³⁶

This adoption of sacred Goddess sites was a common practice among the churchmen, whose purpose was to coerce the native Celtic population to focus their adoration on the God of the new religion and on Mary as his earthly mother.³⁷ In southern Munster, Aine, a native cattle, fire, and sun Goddess, was given a sacred site at Knockaine. Until the early twentieth century, torchlight processions were held on her hillside each midsummer day, the one day of the year when her symbol, the sun, was at its zenith. These torches were also passed over fields and under animals to ensure their fertility.

As time passed, and the worship of the old religion was officially suppressed by the church, the once-venerated Celtic Goddesses fell to the status of faery women, such as the death-heralding beansidhe (banshee in English), or of demons, such as the blue-faced Cailleach of Highland Scotland who brings death with the touch of her skull-topped walking staff. The Celtic priestesses went into hiding, preserving there the thin thread of the old Celtic religion upon which we build today.

In the earliest days of Ireland’s Christian period, women participated as full members of the clergy, serving as priestesses, abbesses, deacons, and even bishops.³⁸ The strong presence of women in the Pagan priestesshood allowed greater choices for them when the Celtic lands began being Christianized in the second to fifth centuries C.E. Many ancient monastic sites in Ireland have ruins that contain separate women’s chapels and cemeteries, not a common feature of any church institution, including the modem Roman Catholic. One of the most famous of these sites is at Innishmurray, off the coast of County Sligo. Another is at the modem pilgrimage site of Glendalough in County Wicklow, where a small stone church known as the Teampall na mBan, or Women’s Church, sits just outside the main monastic enclosure.³⁹

Kele De, Smirgat, and Sheila-na-Gig

Among the most well-known of the feminine mystery cults was that of Kele-De, the Goddess for whom the Catholic monks known as the Culdees took their name. Her all-female followers were known as the Kelles, and her priestesses were exempt from all patriarchal laws, including the Brehon Laws that, by several centuries into the common era, forbid sexual freedom. The Kelles took any and all lovers they chose, whenever they chose.⁴⁰

Kele-De’s name has been a source of contention among scholars, with some saying it means “servant” or “bride of God,”⁴¹ and others relating it to pre-Celtic beliefs in an “all-power” or deity of creation whose myths have been lost to us. In her image as a devourer of sexual energy, a power linked by many ancient people to the life force, she is sometimes thought to be a derivation of the infamous Indian devourer Goddess Kali-Ma.⁴²

One little-known woman from Irish lore who represents the guardian spirit of feminine mysteries is Smirgat. Likely she was once a priestess, and was probably involved in an Irish feminine spiritual cult, though this cannot be proven today. We make this assumption based on a myth in which she told her lover, the hero Fionn MacCumhal, that if he ever drank from a horn he would die. To the Celts, the horn was a vessel of completeness, representing the womb of the Goddess on the inside and the phallus of the God on the outside. Drinking from the horn, particularly if it had been consecrated by a priestess for use in religious rites, would be a form of initiation into the greater mysteries—a type of spiritual rebirth.

Another divine feminine image that has been a source of controversy is the Sheila-na-Gig. Nothing at all is known about this mysterious figure beyond the fact that her blatantly sexual image has been found carved on stone thresholds, usually at sacred sites or other places of worship. One of these figures graced the entrance to Brighid’s shrine at Kildare.⁴³ The Sheila is a crudely rendered figure of a squatting woman who invitingly holds wide her vulva in a vaguely triangular pattern. On her stick-figure­-like face is a faint smile, one which is serene and almost knowingly complacent. Many of these Sheila carvings were used by nuns to adorn the doors of Irish convents. When the renderings were discovered by horrified churchmen, many of them were taken away and destroyed. In the late nineteenth century, an archaeologist found a pile of them buried near the ruins of an old Irish convent.

The meaning behind the Sheila-na-Gig has been argued to be one of blessing or protection, though it is more likely that she offers an invitation into the feminine mysteries. The triangular pattern of her vulva evokes the sacred number three of the Triple Goddess of the Celts; the virgin, mother, and crone in one who represents the full cycle of birth, death, and regeneration. In this aspect, the Sheila-na-Gig symbolizes an open gateway to the Otherworld for those brave enough to accept initiation into her mysteries. It may be that worshippers reverently touched the carving of her yawning vulva when entering the temple for worship, just as women in other cultures made a similar gesture of homage when entering the palace of the feminine mysteries.⁴⁴

The true meaning of the Sheila, and the impact she and similar divine images have had on modern women’s lives, is probably even more complex. In her physical form she represents the insatiable, devouring power long attributed to the feminine sex organs, an image potent enough to have caused many men-and some women—to fear and oppress this Goddess and her sisters, and to take out that fear on woman throughout the ages. This fearful image is one of the reasons why many of the old Goddesses, Celtic and otherwise, have been diabolized and recreated into vampiric demons, ugly hags, and evil faeries. Somehow they seemed less threatening in this form than when they were worshiped as deities and creators.⁴⁵

The devouring female who could not control her bodily urges was such an inspiration for terror that it can reasonably be cited as the primary reason why so many of today’s woman literally starve themselves to gain the approval of men. Making themselves appear weak, small, and childlike, devoid of normal human appetites, makes them less threatening and less Goddess-like.⁴⁶ With the diminishing of that status, the power of creation inherent in deities also vanished, leaving in its wake a feminine figure with no procreative powers, one who serves no purpose beyond that of servant and sex object. Today’s magickal women must never forget that will becomes reality; with this desire to appear less powerful came the true loss of power, and this allowed women to come more easily under the domination of men.

The Sheila-na-Gig is not hungry to devour just for the fun of it, nor to satisfy some insatiable physical appetite. In keeping with the eternal cycles of birth, death, and regeneration, the creator must devour in order to offer us rebirth. Rebirth in this instance is not just physical but can refer to a spiritual rebirth as well, an initiation into the greater mysteries of our gender. Therefore the Sheila is in truth offering us a gift, a positive manifestation of the never-ending cycle of existence that is such an important part of Celtic cosmology and religion.

23. Day, Catharina. Ireland (Chester, Conn.: The Globe Pequot Press, 1986), 310-311.

24. Herm, Gerhard. The Celts: The People Who Came Out of the Darkness (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 148.

25. Markale, Jean. Women of the Celts (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions International, Ltd., 1972), 38.

26. Green, Miranda. Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers (London: British Museum Press, 1995), 138-139.

27. Ibid, 139.

28. MacCrossan, Tadhg. The Sacred Cauldron (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 1992), 6.

29. Valiente, Doreen. An ABC of Witchcraft: Past and Present (Custer, Wash.: Phoenix Publishing, Inc., 1988), 97.

30. Green, 143.

31. Ibid.

32. Thirteen has been the traditional number for members in European culture-based covens for at least several centuries. The reason most often given for this is that these are the number of lunar cycles in the average solar year.

33. Condren, Mary. The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), 66.

34. Ibid, 107.

35. The other elements, the masculine ones, are fire and air.

36. For an excellent discussion of the holy wells of Ireland see Patrick Logan’s The Holy Wells of Ireland (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Smythe, 1980).

37. Markale, 16.

38. Rodgers, Michael and Marcus Losack. Glendalough: A Celtic Pilgrimage (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: The Columba Press, 1996), 72.

39. Ibid, 69.

40. Walker, Barbara G. The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1985), 78.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid, 80.

43. Condren, 65.

44. Walker, 80.

45. Keane, Patrick J. Terrible Beauty: Yeats, Joyce, Ireland, and the Myth of the Devouring Female (Columbia, Mo.: The University of Missouri Press, 1988).

46. Chemin, Kim. The Hungry Self (New York: Perennial Library, 1985).