COPIES of a book which combines ancient Manx folklore and the modern world are being given to school children across the Island.

Students at King William’s College, Castletown, were the first to be given copies of Fynoderee, a book written by former pupil Alexander Caine and inspired by the school’s history.

The book is an adventure and modern myth, where the old worlds of ancient Manx folklore collide with today’s modern world with life threatening consequences.

Fynoderee tells the story of Juan Kerruish, a boy only ever noticed by the school bullies, whose world is about to turn upside down.

When he meets Bea the Fynoderee, a creature thought to exist only in myth, he discovers that he carries a message from the past that could change the course of the future.

The story has been compared to the books in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy

‘Fynoderee is not like Harry Potter or His Dark Materials, and it’s not set in Hogwarts or Middle Earth. It’s actually set in their home with landscapes they will recognise, and stories and characters that are part of their heritage,’ Alexander said.

‘Folklore can give people, and children especially, solid roots to a place that I hope they will never forget. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the Isle of Man with many of these wonderful stories around me.

‘The Island’s folklore is one of the richest in Europe, with a wonderful combination of Nordic, Celtic and Manx characters coming out of our landscape.

‘Now living away from the Island in the hustle and bustle of London, Fynoderee is in many ways my own love letter to the island, and a celebration of its magnificent scenery and rich array of characters and tales.’

Fynoderee is being distributed by Isle of Man publishing house Lily Publications, based in Ramsey. Copies are being given to every Island school, funded by businessman Roy Tilleard.

www.fynoderee.com

source

Originally posted 2008-06-19 19:02:10. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: The Guardian

It’s a funny thing. You find an amazing story of Celtic treasures turning up in a fire, and then somebody points you to an article about other treasures being discovered. They say there is no such thing as coincidence, don’t they? Just synchronicity… Listener and friend, Andy found the following article and says that he was there a few years ago, and the uncovered stones, rock art and other evidence dating from Prehistory to the 18th Century Alum Industry is amazing.

The Guardian released this news article back in the summer of 2008. It reads:

A catastrophic fire which “skinned” a precious moorland to its rocky bones has unexpectedly revealed some of the most important prehistoric archaeology found in Britain.

The uncontrolled six-day blaze on Fylingdales Moor in North Yorkshire has exposed a lost landscape dating back 3,000 years which is now to be made accessible to the public by English Heritage.

Unique rock art and unprecedentedly clear bronze age field boundaries have emerged from the soot and cinders which were all that was left of two-and-a-half square miles of the North York Moors national park when fire crews and heavy rain finally swamped the area in September 2003.

The intense heat destroyed the entire blanket of peat which had accumulated over the area, close to the North Sea coast, since farmers abandoned it for unknown reasons in around 1000BC.

We have always known that this part of the world is very rich in prehistoric remains,

said Graham Lee, senior archaeological conservation officer for the national park.

But the sheer number of new finds exposed by the fire is the most exciting development in archaeology in my experience.

The rock art list for the site, part of a vast moor also used by the RAF’s Fylingdales satellite tracking and early warning station, has grown to almost three times its previous size, with more than 100 sets of mysterious lines, cups and circles discovered since the fire.

You can read the full article on the Guardian website.

Pic: Sacred Texts

During the dark ages the arts of bookmaking, illustration and manuscript illumination were preserved in remote Irish abbeys. A number of unique, exquisite books remain from this period, masterpieces of world art. This includes the ninth century Book of Kells, a manuscript of the Gospel richly illustrated with Celtic motifs and deep symbolism. This book by Edward Sullivan (1920) includes an extended introduction to the Book of Kells, along with its historic and linguistic background. We have included high resolution scans of the illustrations, which include many famous pages from this amazing manuscript. This wonderful Book is now available for us all to read and marvel at on the Sacred Texts website.

So says the introduction to this amazing 1920′s version of the Book of Kells along with the glorious colour plates that tell so much about the development of early Celtic Christianity.

The town of Kells, in County Meath in Ireland, lies some twenty miles west of Drogheda and the Irish Channel. It was known in days as early as St. Patrick’s in the Latinised form of Cenondæ, bearing at a somewhat later date the name of Cenannus and Kenlis. Kennansa was its old Irish appellation. Within its narrow precincts to-day there are still standing three very ancient and well-known Irish stone crosses with characteristic carvings on them; an old church, the rebuilt remains of which date from the year 1578; a round tower—one of the many to be found still in Ireland; and a building which has long been described as the House of St. Columb.

ITS weird and commanding beauty; its subdued and goldless colouring; the baffling intricacy of its fearless designs; the clean, unwavering sweep of rounded spiral; the creeping undulations of serpentine forms, that writhe in artistic profusion throughout the mazes of its decorations; the strong and legible minuscule of its text; the quaintness of its striking portraiture; the unwearied reverence and patient labour that brought it into being; all of which combined go to mate up the Book of Kells have raised this ancient Irish volume to a position of abiding preeminence amongst the illuminated manuscripts of the world. Many attempts have been made to reproduce its unique illuminations; and, so far as form and outline are concerned, the reproductions have been as far as possible successful. But all such efforts have up till now failed to give a living representation of its marvellous pages—for without its colour harmonies no reproduction can be regarded as adequate from the point of view of art. The last important attempt at reproduction in colour was made about forty years ago; but the scientific knowledge of the time was unequal to the strain sought to be put upon it. In the years which have since elapsed the science of light, photography, and colour-reproduction has made rapid advances towards an accuracy which was unknown when the earlier attempts were published; and it is only by the aid of such advancement that the production of the present volume has become possible.

In this respect the work now published differs from all its predecessors; for, though still distant from absolute perfection, the reproductions here given will be found to be infinitely closer to the originals in the important matter of actual colour than any of the so-called facsimiles which up to the present have been included in any published work. For this reason the present volume should not be regarded as in any sense a rival of the uncoloured reproductions which have already appeared of the Book of Kells. Its office is rather to supplement in colour what has already been accomplished by ordinary photography and monochrome; to add a new value to previous efforts with the assistance of the most recent methods and processes of polychromatic photography and colour-printing. Looked at from this standpoint one may fairly claim for the work here produced that it fills with some measure of satisfaction a gap in the pictorial history of Celtic illumination, and affords as it were a nearer view of one of the most interesting and beautiful manuscripts which have yet come from the hands of man.

Any student of Celtic Art and early Christianity amongst the Celtic peoples just has to read this wonderful book on the Sacred Texts website.

Pic: The Guardian

Have you ever been confused about why some people talk about the exact time of an Equinox, or why the Midsummer Solstice is on the 21st in one year and the 22nd in another? I know I used to be quite perplexed. Popping over to Wikipedia explains why this is the case and thanks to a very dear Twitter friend, @pagan_hare, we can let you know about an amazing site that keeps its information about the Equinoxes, the Solstices and the cross-quarter days (such as Lughnasadh) in one place – on one diagram! That site is archaeoastronomy.com (pictured above).

The Equinox

An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the Sun being vertically above a point on the Equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. The name “equinox” is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, the night and day are approximately equally long. It may be better understood to mean that latitudes +L and -L north and south of the equator experience nights of equal length.

At an equinox, the Sun is at one of two opposite points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator (i.e. declination 0) and ecliptic intersect. These points of intersection are called equinoctial points: the vernal point and the autumnal point. By extension, the term equinox may denote an equinoctial point.

An equinox happens each year at two specific moments in time (rather than two whole days), when there is a location on the Earth’s Equator where the centre of the Sun can be observed to be vertically overhead, occurring around March 20/21 and September 22/23 each year. [Wiki]

The Solstice

A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year, when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is most inclined toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun’s apparent position in the sky to reach its northernmost or southernmost extreme. The name is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, the apparent movement of the Sun’s path north or south comes to a stop before reversing direction.

The term solstice can also be used in a broader sense, as the date (day) when this occurs. The solstices, together with the equinoxes, are connected with the seasons. In some cultures they are considered to start or separate the seasons while in others they fall in the middle. [Wiki]

Cross-Quarter Days

Pic: Wiki

To the Ancient Celts, these were known as Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain and Imbolg – the Fire Festivals; times at which enormous fires were lit. A cross-quarter day is a day falling approximately halfway between a solstice and an equinox. These days originated as pagan holidays in Sweden, Norway, Finland, United Kingdom and Ireland, and survive in modern times as neopagan holidays. The cross-quarter days were also independently developed in East Asia as four of the 24 Solar Terms.

Due to the sinusoidal nature of the Sun’s celestial latitude over the course of the year, the Sun is at (23.3° sin 45°) = 16.5° north or south at each cross-quarter, or just over 70 percent of the distance from the equator to the same hemisphere’s tropic. [Wiki]

The dates for these traditional festivities can occur as shown below

Beltane, anywhere between 4-10 May

Lughnasadh, anywhere between 3-10 August

Samhain, anywhere between 5-10 November (Now that one’s a shock!)

Imbolg, anywhere between 2-7 February

Archaeoastronomy

Earth’s annual orbit is The Master Clock because the common yardstick of our lives is the year. Years are divided by the seasons just as calendars are segmented by months. Mechanical and digital timepieces measure intervals that split into hours, minutes and seconds each spin of our planet on its axis. Yet, it is the earth’s regular, rhythmic loop around the sun that standardizes our timeframe of reference, regardless of geographic distances separating us from our acquaintances or generational distances separating us from our ancestors.

Our planet moves around the sun in an elliptical circuit deviating less than a second from one year to the next. Together we proceed through 8 significant, yet invisible, thresholds within each orbit. These spatial milestones mark the beginning, midpoint and end of each of our seasons. Equinoxes, Solstices and Cross Quarters are moments shared planet-wide, defined by the earth’s tilt and the sun’s position on The Ecliptic along 45° arcs.

To ancient civilizations fascinated and entertained by the cyclical motion of the heavens, the ability to fix these cusps just to the nearest day was highly-prized, even sacred knowledge. With modern measurements and calculators much better accuracy is possible for determining these moments.

Equinox and Solstice data from the U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington DC. Cross-Quarter moments are interpolated as the midway points between the Solstices and Equinoxes measured in degrees along the ecliptic. Former NASA scientist Rollin Gillespie uses this spatial method rather than simply splitting in half the time interval between a Solstice and an Equinox.

Bookmark this page is my advice, guys! archaeoastronomy.com

Pic: Ruthie

I just had to let you know that I received a wonderful gift last week. Gary had colluded with the wonderful visionary and mythic artist Cerri lee to make me some beautiful figurines! The full story? I had first seen a version of Cerri’s Spring Goddess when she posted a picture on her Facebook page. From the minute I saw her, I was in love and know I had to have one in our home. So I ‘strongly suggested’ that Gary come and look and I enthused rather a lot. You know how this works Ladies, right?

Then I put it to the back of my mind, after all Gary had just come home from hospital and I was just pleased to have him home again. The Lord of the Wildwood Figurine  I had also seen on Cerri’s stall at the Canterbury Faerie Festival two years ago and had mentioned that I really liked it to Gary. So I was stunned and overjoyed when Gary and Cerri gave me the figurines last week. Needless to say I love them. Just looking at them gives me hope and strength in what is a very difficult time for us.

Cerri Lee is a multi-talented visonary artist who can turn her hand to almost anything creative. She is inspired by nature, and the ancient Pagan myths and legends of many cultures, her beliefs as a modern day Druid as well as those around her. She can create anything from Rights of Passage gifts and altar pieces to wedding and birthday gifts, and will happily take on commisions. Each piece of artwork she creates is individual and can be personalised to you or your loved ones.

Pic: Ruthie

Her artwork has been used for album covers, featured in leading Pagan magazines, used as tattoos, and her sculptures are sent throughout the world.  Cerri is equally in her element when she is up to her elbows in clay or painting one of her fabulous pictures. She is partner to Druid musican and long-time supporter of our show, Damh the Bard and can be found supporting him at many of his performances.

To contact Cerri and see more of her fabulous artwork visit her Facebook page  or her website at Bardic Arts or on her MySpace page.

Pic: My Guide Ireland   The sculpture photographed above is from a 1988 commission entitled Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne), a large bronze relief in Sligo.

Taken from the magical article by Brendan Patrick Keane on Irish Central. We would like to apologise to Brendan Patrick Keane and www.irishcentral.com for inadvertently breaching copyright and thank them for their understanding and patience in this matter. Ruth & Gary

"Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair is a totally different thing. A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one. A love affair isn’t that. That is a relationship of pleasure, and when it gets to be unpleasurable, it’s off. But a marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you are not married…..When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you’re sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship."

[Read more of this magical article by Brendan Patrick Keane on Irish Central]

Pic: Roujo

We are extremely privileged to have famed Occult author, David Rankine prepare this amazing post for us explaining many of the similarities between Fairies, Demons, Angels and Elementals and how the ceremonial magican treats them. Over to David:

It is a little known fact that the magicians of the Renaissance who are best known for conjuring angels or demons were equally at home conjuring fairies and elementals. From the material in the grimoires it seems clear that spiritual creatures were not divided into such hard and fast categories as are often seen today. One thing that united the different types of spiritual creatures in the eyes of magicians was treasure!

The British monarchy was well known for its interest in treasure, as seen by the licensing of explorers and buccaneers, but the royal interest in magic was discrete and largely unknown. When magic and treasure met, the crown became extremely interested. For centuries the reigning monarchs granted licences to nobles and well-to-do figures to search for treasure trove, in return for a percentage of the findings. In the period from 1237-1621 authorizations were given for treasure seeking in a number of counties, particularly those in the southern parts of England like Cornwall, Devon and Dorset.

For example, in 1521, King Henry VIII granted a licence to Sir Edward Belknap, John Hertford and John Jonys (a goldsmith) to dig in Cornwall and Devon for treasure. [1]  As well as magicians and cunning-folk, priests were frequently called upon by treasure-seekers to raise spirits, being the types of people considered capable of dealing with the spiritual creatures that guarded the treasures. It was believed that such treasures were rarely unguarded. It is amusing to note that records show that the fairy king Oberion refused to talk to priests who conjured him, though he was more loquacious with magicians! [2]

In a time before the stability of the banking system, people often buried their money, and had done for centuries since before the Romans. As a result of this the quest for treasure was a common one, and this made the ruins of fine buildings, such as castles, monasteries and stately homes particularly obvious targets. Likewise old burial mounds and sites were considered prime candidates for buried treasure. The digging up of such sites for treasure was a common occurrence, to the extent that the term ‘hill-digger’ was used for a person on the make.

Another instance from the reign of King Henry VIII was recorded by the monk William Stapleton in 1528, where in the pursuit of treasure “one Denys of Hofton did bring me a book called Thesaurus Spirituum [1] and, after that, another called Secreta Secretorum, [2] a little ring, a plate, a circle, and also a sword for the art of digging.” [3]

The reference to plates is interesting, as these were often used in such conjurations as part of the equipment. William Stapleton mentioned a plate made for the calling of Oberion, and it is also significant that Stapleton explained how after obtaining a license to seek treasure, he spoke again to Denys, who informed him he would bring him two cunning-men.

One of the most important politicians of the late seventeenth century was Goodwin Wharton (1653-1704) who may be seen as the Indiana Jones of his time, and who rose to become Lord Admiral of the British Fleet. Wharton was aided for many years by the ex-leveller John Wildman and a spirit (of an executed criminal) called George, and went on various treasure quests including one for the legendary Urim and Thummim, the twin jewels from the High Priest’s Breastplate described in the Bible. Keith Thomas described Wharton as spending the last twenty-five years of the seventeenth century being “almost continuously engaged in a treasure quest for which he enlisted spirits, fairies and the latest resources of contemporary technology”. [1]

He even invented diving gear, allegedly with the aid of angels, in order to try and raise sunken treasure from a Spanish galleon off the north coast of Scotland. One of Wharton’s exploits was said to be the discovery of a fairy gate, to the fairy realms. Unfortunately when the document describing this resurfaced in the twentieth century the location had been built over. The building which now sits in the location of the fairy gate – Terminal 4 of Heathrow Airport! (So now you know where the missing luggage goes!)

(drawn from material in The Book of Treasure Spirits, David Rankine, 2009, Avalonia – see www.avaloniabooks.co.uk for more details of this and other works on related topics)

The Book of Treasure Spirits

Conjurations of Goetic spirits, old gods, demons and fairies are all part of a rich heritage of the magical search for treasure trove. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance the British Monarchy gave out licenses to people seeking treasure in an effort to control such practices, and this is one reason why so many grimoires are full of conjurations and charms to help the magician find treasure.

Published here for the first time, from a long-ignored mid-seventeenth century manuscript in the British Library (Sloane MS 3824), is the conjuration said to have been performed at the request of King Edward IV, with other rites to reveal treasure, to have treasure brought from the sea, and to cause thieves to bring back stolen goods. Conjurations to call any type of spirit are also included, recorded by the noted alchemist and collector Elias Ashmole, as is an extract on conjuration practices from the Heptameron, transcribed into English for practical use by a working group of magicians, before its first English publication by Robert Turner in 1655.

These conjurations demonstrate the influence of earlier classic grimoires and sources, with components drawn from the Goetia, the Heptameron, and Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft. The material includes spirit contracts for the fallen angels Agares and Vassago, and the demon Padiel, as well as techniques like lead plates for binding, and summoning into a glass of water, which hark back to the defixiones of Hellenistic Greece and the demonic magic of the Biblical world.

This material forms part of a corpus of conjurations all written in the same hand and style of evocation, linking Goetic spirits and treasure spirits with the archangels and planetary intelligences (Sloane MS 3825), and demon kings and Enochian hierarchies (Sloane MS 3821), making it a unique bridge of style and content between what are often falsely seen as diverse threads of Renaissance magic.

You can get David’s fascinating book from Avalonia Books.

The wonderful thing about a mythology like that of the Celts is that it is still so vibrant and alive. Over the centuries it has matured, evolved and developed like a fine wine. The fruit from which it is made is a rare and beautiful specimen, but with the passage of time it has become a full-bodied vintage. You can’t look at the Mythology in isolation. Take for example, the phenomenon of the Celtic festival that we find in modern times. The celebration of heritage, culture and the stories of myth has travelled all over the world following the path of the Celts as they explored and settled in far-off countries. Now it is no longer strange to find the Highland Games being celebrated in Tallahassee, at  the North Florida Fairgrounds – and celebrated with just as much joy as the Eisteddfod in Wales.

I find it wonderful that the Celtic Spirit can thrive and grow in this fashion and welcome each and every celebration.

We loved the previous location (Sunny Hill Farm on Roberts Road), said organizer Amy Ray. It was so picturesque. But we hope (moving to the fairgrounds) will be better for logistics.

We hope it’ll also allow us to go forward and grow and establish a more active Scottish presence in Tallahassee.

The local collective Celtic community is growing under the influence of such groups as the Tallahassee St. Andrew Society, Tallahassee Irish Society, various pipe bands and fiddle orchestras, and other organizations devoted to Celtic culture and heritage.

The presence of those groups will be felt at this year’s festival, along with visiting entertainers, vendors, genealogists and performers.

We’ll have the Wild Highlanders, a group that recreates the traditional fighting styles of Scottish Highlanders in mock battles and fights,” Ray said. “It’s quite a lively crowd, to say the least.

The festival proper starts at 9 a.m. Saturday and concludes with a ceilidh (pronounced “kay-lee”), a rip-roaring hoedown headlined by Celtic rock group Seven Nations.

Source

Originally posted 2008-04-18 09:49:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: Sacred Texts

The Cattle Raid of Cooley or The Táin is a legendary tale from early Irish literature, often considered an epic, although it is written primarily in prose rather than verse. It tells of a war against Ulster by the Connacht queen Medb and her husband Ailill, who intend to steal the stud bull Donn Cuailnge, opposed only by the teenage Ulster hero Cúchulainn. The 1904 translation is now freely available to readers on the Sacred Texts website.

The Táin Bó Cúailnge has survived in two main recensions. The first consists of a partial text in the Lebor na hUidre (the “Book of the Dun Cow“), a late 11th/early 12th century manuscript compiled in the monastery at Clonmacnoise, and another partial text of the same version in the 14th century manuscript called the Yellow Book of Lecan. These two sources overlap, and a complete text can be reconstructed by combining them. This recension is a compilation of two or more earlier versions, indicated by the number of duplicated episodes and references to “other versions” in the text. Many of the episodes are superb, written in the characteristic terse prose of the best Old Irish literature, but others are cryptic summaries, and the whole is rather disjointed. Parts of this recension can be dated from linguistic evidence to the 8th century, and some of the verse passages may be even older. [Wiki]

Sacred Texts also carry two other translations: the Lady Gregory Cuchulain of Muirthemne and the Joseph Dunn version The Cattle-Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cúalnge). We will try to work from all versions when we present the Ulster Cycle for you.

More power to the Sacred Texts elbow!

Pic: Inc. Gamers

We’ve reported on the development of this game from Nexon before but were unfortunately not able to test it as they had no European servers open. Now that is all about to change. Nexon has announced that the open beta test for its upcoming MMO Mabinogi will go live on 27 January. This beta test for the free to play fantasy MMO, which is based on Welsh and Celtic mythology, will allow hard-core fans as well as new users to try out many of the game’s features such as battles, quests and skill allocation. You can see a trailer for the game over on IGTV.  For more information about this title, check out the official site.

Mabinogi is a revolutionary 3D cartoon-rendered MMORPG, offering gamers a true-to-life, yet fantastic experience through animation-like graphics, a fantasy-life supported by self-sufficiency and dynamic combat. Players will sing, cook, make clothes, chop trees, and fight against the curses that have been plaguing Mabinogi’s fantasy world “Erinn”. The beautiful scenery of “Erinn” is not only a breathtaking view to admire, but offers vital foundation and materials for prosperous and exciting life at Mabinogi.

Mabinogi’s game content updates take place on a frequent, regular basis. Currently, there are two major “Generation Updates” in Mabinogi, each of which is organized by seasons. Players can look forward to a huge amount of new contents and systems that will make their lives at Mabinogi more vigorous and challenging with each update.

Free to play, Free to Download

The Fantasy Life of Mabinogi is free of cost!
Players can take advantage of the Rebirth System to upgrade their characters, and visit our soon-to-come Premium Shops and Item Shops to further develop their characters depending on their liking and game-play method.

You can read more, download the client and start playing from the Mabinogi site at Nexon!