Discovering The Sidhe - Their Goddesses?
We are into March, and March is a month through which I always love to talk about, and join in conversations, about trees and woods. Here in Ireland, March is the last month of the seasonal tree planting season. Despite being the time when the tree sap wakes up and gets moving again, this also seems to be the month when the most bare root tree planting happens, even though the bare root tree planting season starts in November. I will start my tree folklore series her very soon.
My passion for ‘Nature Folklore’ has been with me since I was a very young child, and that’s a very long time ago, despite memories seeming as if they are from yesterday. Many people ask me, “When are you going to write your memoirs/biography?”. Well, this Nature Folklore stuff is my memoirs :-)
Not long back, during another article, I mentioned several trinities that could fit into the symbol of Awen, that is especially popular among members of ‘The Order Of Bards, Ovates, & Druids’.
To quote Awen directly from Wiki …
“Awen" is a Welsh, Cornish and Breton word for "inspiration" (and typically poetic inspiration). In Welsh mythology, ‘awen’ is the inspiration of the poets, or bards; or, in its personification, Awen is the inspirational muse of creative artists in general. Neo-Druids define ‘awen’ as "flowing energy," or a force that flows with the essence of life."
For me, it seems a trinity ‘awen’ I carry for ‘Nature Folklore’ is ‘trees’, ‘water’, and the ‘sidhe’. The ‘sidhe being what holds it all together and makes everything carrying life flow. Oriental countries beautifully describe this as ‘qi’ (pronounced ‘key’).
Through Ireland, UK, Europe, North America, and other countries that explore and carry wonder about what is ‘Celtic’ do not seem to carry a simple definition of what ‘Sidhe’ is. This is just like it is impossible to carry a defined interpretation of what ‘Celtic’ is.
Maybe, that is the full interpretation of what ‘Sidhe’ is? Something impossible to define in words, but it is very pure when we dare to let go of trying to form ‘interpretation’ but instead attempt to take away all of the words, symbols, and any other images.
But as we are human, and now most of us educated to read and write, we speak words; and through words we try to create things. We enjoy, become passionate, and form beliefs with images that we form in our minds and dreams. We passionately create transitions from purest wordless feelings into ‘images’. We attempt to craft words around our visions and images.
Some of the images we form in our minds, and maybe through our art, may carry what we are the ‘Sidhe’, or more commonly what we may call ‘fairies’.
In Ireland people like prolific storyteller and writer Eddie Lenihan, and ‘fairy whisperer’ Pat Noone from Co. Galway, have created beautiful fairy world ‘industries’ from this. I believe their lives and sharing of their fairy visions and tales are very worthy for us. Perhaps much more educational and worthy than much of the stuff we pick up from school, and especially from that ghastly ‘homework’ we are forced to do at home, as children.
For me, I prefer to let my own belief, and maybe understanding, of the ‘Sidhe’ as being an unseen, unwordable, unmeasurable, timeless flow that is in all life. But to ‘make’ our own human life more interesting, more colourful, more entertaining, and especially more joyful with abundant smiles and laughter, the images we imagine and make real from the ‘Sidhe’ flow I believe is very essential for us. I doubt we would get much done, be creative, or have warm inspiring memories without these or similar visions.
The Goddesses? The Queen Bees of The Sidhe?
There is also a strong belief among ‘Celtic’ followers and pilgrims that there are some divine being or beings that is, or are, central and ‘mother’ to all of what we may image as being the ‘Sidhe’.
Through some of my years, especially during the past 20 years, I have been guiding and sharing with women’s groups from other countries, especially North America and Australia, who visit Ireland as a ‘pilgrimage’ to meet the ‘goddesses’ at sites where they believe communications with them are the most potent. Some people now call these spaces ‘Thin Places’.
These ‘thin places’ are most frequently sites of remains of ancient stone structures built by humans usually between 6000 and 3000 years ago.
There has also been growing interest in structures built during early Medieval times, from 1600 to 1100 years ago. Some people on pilgrimage to early Medieval sites may call themselves Celtic Christianity pilgrims, yet are usually still searching for the ‘goddess spots’ more than ‘Christ’.
If you try a ‘Google Search’, though I gather ‘ChatGPT is becoming more popular, but I never use that myself, you will find your search and chat results pop up several Irish Goddess or Celtic Goddess names.
Many of these goddesses will have names that you have never heard of. But after reading the short profiles of each of them you may find one or two that may cause you to feel … “That’s what I believe in! That’s my goddess!”
You may go onto feeling and saying, “I want to explore this goddess, find out more, track her down, meet her, and work with her”. Those are all comments I have often heard from women that I have had the pleasure of travelling with to what they call ‘thin places’, that they may request we went to.
Maybe this is me expressing my limitations as a man, but I often question, “what images of ‘goddesses’ manifest within the souls, inspiration, conscience, minds, and interpretation of these women seekers? When and where I can, I loved to pause to have space, during our travels, for these women to speak of and share this from ‘their hearts’ through their poetry and stories, maybe from journals they have been writing since we have travelled together.
These pauses I tried to arrange among trees, and beside water, with awareness of the presence of the ‘Sidhe’, rather than among ancient stone remains built by humans. At ancient stone sites I always ask, “what was here, though nature, before us humans rearranged the site and applied our instinct motivation to create and build structures with stone?” So that’s why I prefer sharing these experiences among trees or beside water, or preferably both together. I still receive requests to facilitate this for people, mainly womens groups even though I ‘think’ I have retired from this.
Of course, I also ask, “what images do men carry of goddesses too”? To sort of answer that, I must repeat a custom of the Hebrides.
Men going into a pub to meet other men and join in conversation often find this conversation moving into, “how’s your missus, old lady, the wife, she who must be obeyed …” etc.
In the Hebrides, sadly not so much now, this conversation would flow something like this … “how’s yer calliach?” Though translation of this may be “how is your hag or crone”, I prefer that this may be meaning “how is your goddess?” As Calliach is another popular word for earth goddess, and a very wise one at that.
That is also an example of how and why my ‘Nature Folklore’ interpretations are largely personal and biographical. My published content is pulled from conversations and listening much more than from pulling texts and info from ancient books and manuscripts, and maybe even ChatGPT these days.
To me, the ‘Sidhe’ is also the ‘engine’, some say ‘energy’, of active life experience. I just cannot imagine the ‘Sidhe’ as being of anything that is archived and lifeless. To me a book is merely a ‘coffin’ of what was once lived.
But when we read a book, or script, or article, there are symbolic prompts within books that arouse our consciousness, instincts, and inspiration. We resurrect a part of that book content as it becomes synthesised with our deepest collective memories, that become recharged and alive.
If we perform something from a book to share it with others, somehow the ‘Sidhe’ is awake and with us and it becomes our voice using the book’s archived content … and often we add our own words to this too, when we feel that is more fitting to the space we are in.
Similar things can happen, and for me much more profoundly, in conversation, when we attend performances of poets and storytellers, and being very present in very alive spaces … especially among trees and water
.At this time of the solar cycle, from Imbolc to Spring Equinox, it may still seem we are not much further forward from Midwinter Solstice when the ‘imagery’ is quiet and barren above ground but transformation happening underground.
There’s water moving there in that dark underground, water in the womb of the earth. And now between Imbolc and Spring Solstice, despite seeming fairly quite on the earth surface, there is some incubation happening from that Earth womb with the knowing of the warming cycle is just ahead.
For women who have been mothers, is there some related imagery between your own births memories, and this stage of the annual Earth’s cycle?
But what is the imagery of women who have not been mothers of human babies? Nuns for example? For this, I personally think of how Nuns spend much of their lives tending to gardens and woodlands. Living as midwives serving nature’s birthing and growing.
I am also thinking of nuns who attend to bees as well as encourage plants that attract bees to their pollen. This reminder also includes thoughts of St Gobnait, a saint of bees and honey, and her special day very soon after Brighid’s in February.
I find it interesting that the old and modern Gaelic for honeycomb is ‘faighin mhaela feeni valla’ describing the sockets that bees enter to make honey. Taking those words and trying to attempt to translate them one at a time we end up with a translation towards ‘vagina honey transforming wall’. So there we have another gaelic phrase that may not make sense as individual words, but together is the seed of stories.
That gaelic word ‘faighin, feeni’ has also gone through changes to get to our modern word ‘Fanny’.
Mind you, thinking of that, doesn’t this give a whole new expanded interpretation of that blues song, “I’m A King Bee”?
“Well I’m a King Bee baby, Buzzing around your hive. Yeah I can make honey baby Let me come inside”.
Now, Back to the Nuns …
Let’s not forget the Nun’s brewing projects too, especially Mead. There are several passionate stories in the folklore world about Mead, but I will not share those yet.
Through Part 2 chapter article of this ‘Sidhe’ series, I will look at some folklore story interpretations of the ‘Sidhe’.
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I think everyone probably grows into their own interpretation of those words. For me, ‘Awen’ is the most recent. First time I heard it was when I was beiefly working in Pembrokeshire around 1971, and did not hear of it again until meeting some OBOD people, probably from mid 80s. I have always thought of it as being a word for the path of inspiration and the flow of life, but described as a ‘trinity’ held together as a cycle of wholeness.
Imbas, I think I first heard mid 60s in Scotland in reference to clairvoyant and prophesy practice. The idea of using prompts to bring on vision and inspiration that is very handy in poetry. I think today our interpretation of Imbas and Awen is much the same along with the oriental Qi, maybe. Interesting thinking of the words ‘wisdom’ and ‘enlightenment’ as I tend to believe wisdom comes from enlightenment.
Sidhe is a word I was brought up with and I have just accepted that as being a handy word for us to describe life itself, and maybe that life is what generates the Imbas or Awen because without having those perceptions, enlightenment, we may not be aware of the presence of the ‘sidhe’ . A bit like how some people describe how they ‘found Christ’ or ‘found God’.
But before I ever heard the Imbas and Awen words what was said to me was “the sidhe is the spirit that guides us and helps us to see the unseen, understand it and interpret it” . Fairies I was often told of as a child was invented for ‘fun’ as a way to show some of the ways that the sidhe lives.
Ha, ha, I never promoted myself as a women’s group guide, but it was mainly women’s groups that booked me. I would never have promoted myself as such, though.