John Michael Greer<\/a> for suggestions, one of his first was Gods and Fighting Men<\/i>.<\/p>\nGods and Fighting Men<\/i> was written by Lady Augusta Gregory and first published in 1904. It\u2019s her compilation and translation of Irish myths from several sources. As the subtitle indicates it\u2019s divided into two parts, \u201cThe Story of the Tuatha De Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland.\u201d <\/p>\n
Several things struck me in reading these stories. The first is that was a society that valued fighting. Their heroes killed hundreds in a single battle and a handful of the Fianna could defeat a whole army. They weren\u2019t celebrating huge conquests like Alexander or Julius Caesar, they were celebrating frequent, low-intensity raiding and retaliation between tribes and cities. This seems consistent with what I\u2019ve read about tribal societies.<\/p>\n
The stories place a huge emphasis on honor, keeping your word, and doing the right thing no matter what. People make open ended deals: I give you this, and you\u2019ll give me something of my choosing, at a time I select. You\u2019re then honor-bound to give what\u2019s asked. <\/p>\n
The best example of this is Cormac, who bargained with a stranger for a shining branch with nine apples of gold. At the end of the year, the stranger came back and asked for Cormac\u2019s daughter, then his son, and finally his wife. Cormac goes after them, runs into the mists (the transition to the Otherworld) and eventually finds that the stranger was Manannan mac Lir, and that his family has been unharmed and untouched. I think the point is that when you do the right things \u2013 when you keep your word no matter what \u2013 everything is going to work out OK in the end. <\/p>\n
The gods in these stories are the gods of a polytheistic people \u2013 very human-like, but more<\/i>. The Tuatha de Danaan are the children of Danu, but Danu is mentioned only in passing. My [rather limited] understanding is that this is fairly common \u2013 many peoples have gods and goddesses who either created the world or founded the tribe and then stepped away, leaving the running of things to their children. In the Egyptian stories Ra created the world, but it is his grandson Osiris who rules the underworld and his great-grandson Horus who rules this world. <\/p>\n
I find the role of women to be very interesting. In the stories of the Tuatha De Danaan, goddesses are more or less equal to the gods. There aren\u2019t as many of them and they aren\u2019t as involved in fighting, but they are clearly not second class citizens. As you move what appears to be forward in time, you see female warriors and Druids \u2013 not very many of them (they\u2019re rare enough to be called out), but you do see them. As you get into ordinary men and women, women are \u201cobtained\u201d and \u201cgiven\u201d in marriage, but they\u2019re still independent actors. Moving deeper into the stories of the Fianna, women become less and less important and seem to be relegated to the roles of wife, mother and lover. I\u2019m an engineer, not a psychologist or anthropologist, but it seems to me the stories reflect the tribal memories of a matriarchal society and a pragmatic attitude of \u201cif you can do it, we don\u2019t care what gender you are,\u201d which gradually gave way to a male-dominated society.<\/p>\n
I enjoyed the Gods section and it went fairly quickly. The Fianna section slowed down, in part because it wasn\u2019t as interesting to me and in part because reading time got harder to come by. But I really liked the last section, which were conversations between Oisin (who had returned to Ireland after spending hundreds of years in the Other world) and St. Patrick. Patrick constantly tried to convert Oisin, telling him that Finn and the Fianna were being tormented in hell because they weren\u2019t Christians. Oisin steadfastly refused to convert and insisted there was no hell and no devil that could keep Finn and the Fianna under bonds. <\/p>\n
I have to wonder when that was written (i.e. \u2013 composed). Presumably it\u2019s more recent than the other tales and well into the Christian era. But the writer is very sympathetic to the old beliefs.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been good to read these stories. They\u2019re the closest tangible connection we\u2019ve got to our ancient Celtic ancestors and they\u2019re part of the foundation of Druidry both ancient and contemporary. I\u2019ve picked up bits and pieces here and there over the years, but that\u2019s no substitute for actually reading them. <\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t read these stories I encourage you to do so. Gods and Fighting Men<\/i> is in the public domain and it\u2019s available on sacred-text.com<\/a> and as a free Kindle download<\/a>. It\u2019s also available in hardcover and paperback.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For all my Druid reading I had never read any of the Irish myths. I\u2019ve heard many of them: some in my OBOD studies, some in academic works like Celtic Heritage, and some in songs and rituals. Earlier this year I felt the need to start working with the Irish literature, and when I asked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/div>\n