all travellers who arrive at tech duinn, the house of the dead, the isle of the afterlife, are welcomed with a performance of the ancient ceremonial song: the gambler by kenny rodgers (acoustic)

Western jackdaw/kaja. Värmland, Sweden (July 22, 2019).

Fear of Chthonicism

So, after my post yesterday, (the answers were really helpful thank you)

confronting this properly for the first time and beginning to do some reading, I feel like other people’s beliefs and experiences do largely line up with mine. As muddled as they are. So maybe I’m not being naive and all chthonic and/or psychopomp type gods and associated traditions are not necessarily bad and to be avoided. There’s obviously a capacity to cause great fear, but I haven’t personally felt truly unsafe if that’s the right word. Maybe even the opposite.

I also see they’re more complicated than a single role. It makes sense since i “get” or associate (dk how to describe this, it’s so far outside the sphere of my pretty secular life experience so far) more images of dark earth, horses? (as status symbols?) gold/wealth/riches, plants (not “the wild” or the general Earth or fundament itself but the process of abundance coming from the soil, especially crops, rich fruits and dark leaves?) coldness, wetness, darkness and even peace, rather than the physical realities of death and bereavement. (This might be down to my own avoidance despite my job involving interacting with funerary goods and bodies)

It does raise a new problem…possibly about to pray to The CEO of The Bank???? :,((( (this is genuinely probably the best modern comparison I could make as much as I don’t want to lmao)

Does anyone have any experiences with chthonic deities?

For years I’ve had dreams of a pretty chthonic nature (O:) featuring certain recurring images and characters, it’s also a recurring theme during waking hours. It’s played a massive part in my life but I always maintained my interest in pagan gods/polytheism was totally academic since I wasn’t raised religious and didn’t want to seem crazy. I’m definitely at a point where I’m questioning that, for a while it had faded but after travelling to Greece and visiting the caves at Eleusis it’s come back. The idea of deities associated with death scares me though, I don’t want to tempt misfortune or something.

Some epithets of Donn as found in Contributions to a Study in Irish Folklore: Traditions About Donn by Käte Müller-Lisowski

Donn the Truthful

Donn, Son of the Crooked

Donn of the Hill of the Fawn

Donn from the Sidhe of the Little Water

Donn of the Old Hill

““In the literary sources quoted by Kuno Meyer, Donn appears as an isolated deity, keeping aloof….This characteristic of Donn is found in some folklore traditions, but in others he shows quite different attributes. He is the gloomy Lord of the Dead in some, in others a kind and helpful spirit; he is an imposing warrior and a little fairy king; he is fatal and terrible to people and is said to fetch them after their death to his palace for eternal banquets; he protects crops and cattle and causes storms and shipwrecks; he is a black magician, a wicked demon, akin to and confused with the devil, and he plays pleasant little tricks which show his good humor; he is quoted as an arbiter in disputes and his name is used in curses.””

— Contributions to a Study in Irish Folklore: Traditions About Donn by Käte Müller-Lisowski

years later I’m still president of the Mongan fan club

((I’m the only member))

I would genuinely give my soul for more stories of midir, mongan, lugh, an dagda and whatever/whoever crom cruach was meant to be…

NOT a genuine offer

The…Other Children of Lir

Lost princes || A family dynasty || Judgment 

Continuing my (very very slooow and overly specific) journey through Irish tradition, I wanted to talk about some of the more mysterious personages.  Tw for two (brief) mentions of assault/dubious consent, without detail. Manannan mac Lir is probably one of the better known figures (which is why he’s the jumping off point for so much of my writing) alongside his foster son Lugh and his pupil Aengus - but he’s also given an extensive family of children, including Mongan, Eachdond Mor, and Gaidiar. None are quite as well-known or have stories so well-preserved (apart from possibly Niamh of the Golden Hair) but what we do know about them is interesting. Niamh could probably do with her own post so I’ll respectfully leave her out of this one. Aine is also given as Manannan’s daughter in certain sources but I couldn’t verify this and she would also need her own feature.

Mongan is interesting in that in most stories of his birth he’s half human, half tuatha de - if such a division can be considered clear cut. In The Voyage of Bran, Manannan stops Bran (another appearance of Lough Foyle) at sea to tell him that he’s going to concieve a son who’ll be a great hero. Stories vary but generally, Mongan’s father Fiachna (meaning crow) is fighting in Scotland. He’s losing, until Manannan shows up and says he’ll help, for a price. Fiachna makes the old mistake - “I’ll give anything” - and Manannan asks for his wife. In other (nicer) versions, Fiachna’s wife is well aware and the all three people involved consent. Mongan is raised in the Otherworld until his late teens, when he returns to start his job as King. Interestingly, he doesn’t seem that interested in ruling and spends his time drinking wine and playing games. He has to be prompted into making decisions by his father, and even then he retains a sense of ennui and longing to return to the Otherworld. He shapeshifts into children, a washerwoman, a priest - he has as many faces and is as fluid as you’d expect.

Eachdond Mor, Mongan’s older brother, is pictured sitting as Manannan’s left hand, accompanied by his ally Abartach, a trickster who shares a name with a character from the story of the Gilla Decair and a “wizard”/sidhe lord/creature from Garvagh in Ulster, and may be connected with Midir.

Gaidiar is Eachdond’s brother, and commits “adultery” with Becuma, a “woman of the sidhe” (in some tellings he assaults her, in others it is consensual) while they are both in prior relationships, for which she is expelled from Tir na Nog beginning a saga involving a king falling in love with her and accidentally cursing Ireland. Becuma, as the woman, is treated as solely responsible while Gaidiar - and the king - seemingly avoid repercussions. 

Both brothers in their very brief appearances are portrayed as powerful lords or kings in their own right, rubbing shoulders with Aengus, the Dagda, Finbhara and Bodb Derg. 

((I’ll probably come back and edit this since I know there’s a story I’m forgetting, but I’m too tired to remember it properly now, but hopefully somebody finds it interesting!))

Months on and I get to see the disappointment/told you so in my elderly relatives faces when they ask what exciting archaeology job I’ve been working and I admit I haven’t been

A single one of them keeps hyping me up and sending me cards and it is the only thing I have now

no.1 thing about archaeology is lack of actual digging and finding. me n my pals spend 99% of our time sitting around hoping and begging we might be allowed by someone to shove our hands in the ground like sick little mole people. please oh please sir I spent so much money on this trowel please notice me smh

yeah my beliefs probably aren’t Authentic, and I don’t really care. I don’t fully understand the universe I live in and I don’t believe people in the past fully did either.

Maybe you could consider they had insights we don’t (though I don’t know them) but they almost certainly had blindspots too, and weren’t some sort of pure naïve font of Ultimate Truth.

Even if they were, so much as been lost or can only be guessed at. my beliefs are filtered through my personality, influenced by events that occurred between the Iron Age and now, flavoured by what I actually have access to. If someone somehow has reconstructed some perfect 100% accurate Prehistoric PreChristian belief system then a) please share with the scientific community and b) I don’t think I’d automatically want to buy in just because it’s old

i see this antlered figure.

and i’m not religious or reverent about anything, not my country or home or anything except for this thing i sometimes dream of with antlers and gold and running water and the dark bits of forests and field boundaries and the marble and ghosts of graveyards (not the bodies) and plague and healing. they have no name that i know yet. i try to keep separate from the past as I work but it found me and grew over me.

gave myself repetitive strain injury and learnt how to level a line in sub 2 seconds for nothing

no.1 thing about archaeology is lack of actual digging and finding. me n my pals spend 99% of our time sitting around hoping and begging we might be allowed by someone to shove our hands in the ground like sick little mole people. please oh please sir I spent so much money on this trowel please notice me smh

no.1 thing about archaeology is lack of actual digging and finding. me n my pals spend 99% of our time sitting around hoping and begging we might be allowed by someone to shove our hands in the ground like sick little mole people. please oh please sir I spent so much money on this trowel please notice me smh

i don’t know what else to say except that AI art is no longer simply a source of creativity or a wonder of human creation. it has become actively hostile and destructive toward the very thing it pretends to uplift and celebrate. it is void of any human element, any soul or ounce of emotion or self-expression. continuing to use AI art knowing that it comes from theft and robbing artists of their livelihood is disgusting. we need your support now more than ever. stop giving these thieves your money and admiration.

everyone still upset about the story of baldur’s death but we’re really just gonna let ailill away with doing that exact thing to fergus mac roich over in ireland huh

On the reptile Facebook group I am fucking crying 😭😭😭😭😭 she’s a BEAUTIFUL MODEL