It is the most delightful land of all that are under the sun; the trees are stooping down with fruit and with leaves and with blossom. Honey and wine are plentiful there; no wasting will come upon you with the wasting away of time; you will never see death or lessening. You will get feasts, playing and drinking; you will get sweet music on the strings; you will get silver and gold and many jewels. You will get everything I have said…and you will get gifts beyond them which I have no leave to tell of.”

“ Thus it was that the Otherworld, the mystical enchanted land of many Celtic myths, was described to the warrior Oisin by the faerie-woman Niamh of the Golden Hair.

In Irish myth, the Otherworld was created as the domain of the divine race of the Tuatha de Danaan following their defeat by the Milesians (Ireland’s fifth and last race of invaders). The Milesians, it was decided, would rule the visible part, while the Dananns took possession of the invisible regions below ground and beyond the seas. This Otherworld was accessible through lakes, caves and above all the Sidhe or faerie mounds, the countless prehistoric burial mounds such as those of the Boyne in Co. Meath. Continue Reading »

Originally posted 2008-04-23 12:36:31. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

This is the first half of our Autumn Holiday Special for 2010. We’ve got a fantastic collection of customs and history about the Fey in Northern Scotland, three great pieces of music, some listener feedback and a superb poem about Summer by Alexander Pope. Top all that off with our usual chat, and you’ve got a superb show. Hope you enjoy it and have as much fun as we had making it!

You can find out more details about this show  in the Shownotes section. The Episode is available for subscribers on the feed, or you can download it or listen to it from our Episodes page.

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You can also now download a Celtic Myth Podshow App from the iTunes store. This is the most convenient and reliable way to access the Celtic Myth Podshow on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You’re always connected to the latest episode, and our App users have access to exclusive bonus content, just touch and play! To find out more visit the iTunes Store or our Descripition Page.

If you come to the site and listen or listen from one of our players – have you considered subscribing? It’s easy and you automatically get the episodes on your computer when they come out. If you’re unsure about the whole RSS/Subscribing thing take a look at our Help page.

Pic: Northumberland Gazette

NEARLY a thousand new archeological sites have been discovered off the North East coast as part of an English Heritage-funded project. Helen Woods of the Northumberland Gazette tells us: The survey, conducted by EH archaeologists along with help from Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, has been done to help researchers understand the history of the coastline and damages it may face.

Among the results were a number of Iron Age multivallate forts and hillforts. At Howick Hill, these are still used as earthworks. David MacLeod, senior investigator with English Heritage’s Aerial Survey Team, said:

“Often, it’s only by looking at a site from the air that you start to understand its size and structure. Historic sites along the coast are vulnerable to the effects of both natural coastal change and human activities. Although erosion has actually helped to reveal a number of nationally important sites along the North East coast, such as Bronze Age burial mounds at Low Hauxley in Northumberland, too often it poses a threat. This project will help us understand not just the history of our coastline, but also the dangers it faces now and in the future.”

Continue Reading »

Originally posted 2009-02-07 03:32:59. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: BBC

The BBC reports that the chief executive of MG Alba will ask the BBC Trust to consider allowing the broadcast of the new Gaelic digital television channel on Freeview. Programmes, launched a month ago, are available on Sky and Freesat, but it was not planned to show them on Freeview for another two years.

Culture Minister Linda Fabiani said the Scottish Government had been very impressed at the reaction to the programmes. She added:

As we consider the recommendations of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission’s report, it’s great that BBC Alba has launched with such distinctive and high quality programming.

The culture minister said she would support efforts to secure the coverage.

[Source]

Originally posted 2008-10-24 09:38:59. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Times Online tells us:  On Sunday BBC Scotland’s biggest, most expensive venture begins – the landmark, multimedia series Scotland’s History. For £2million plus – the price of but a few jokes from Jonathan Ross – the ten-part, two-year initiative sweeps 2,000 years of history, bringing a fresh perspective to what we think we all know. The series, which starts on BBC One Scotland with a network screening on BBC2 to follow, is being co-produced with the Open University and is linked with radio, the internet, an interactive game, audio walks, concerts and events going through to late next year.

Pic: Iguana Jo

“We are going into areas even a lot of historians don’t know,” he said. “It’s history with a small ‘h’. You can’t have THE history of Scotland, it’s A history and we think it’s the best.” said  presenter Neil Oliver

His approach, he says, is as a storyteller. “I’m an archaeologist and I’ve come across a lot of history but I’ve never had a lecturing style. It’s more, ‘I’ve heard something fascinating and let me tell you about it’. That’s the way I talk. And if I sound excited about something, it’s because I just found out myself.”

To illustrate that sense of changed perspective, he described how the crew went to Finlaggan, on Islay, to film the story of the head-to-head rivalry between the MacDonalds and the Stuarts. “You talk to people, you talk to Gaelic speakers, you do realise there’s another country up there that’s the other half of Scotland.” Continue Reading »

Originally posted 2008-11-06 10:29:22. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Ishtar’s Gate

Ishtar’s Gate is a website devoted to pushing the boundaries of scientific understanding by examining evidence and discussing theories that are not normally consdired related. We are very proud to publish the questioning and stimulating article below written be Ishtar herself and urge you to visit her site and explore the very lively forum. Over to Ishtar:

Some of us Celts like to warm themselves by the fire at night with the knowledge that we’re really half-Atlantean. After all, are we not descended from Igraine, King Arthur’s mother, who, some myths tell us, was from an Atlantean bloodline? And in the alluring half light of those flickering flames, we dream about the mythical drowned island of Hy-Brasil, which is said to reappear every seven years off the west coast of Ireland, and other tales about sunken lands under the waters of Cardigan Bay. And so it is not an unlikely proposition that these lands were actually Atlantis and that we are half-Atlanteans.

But is it true?

Well, there is no doubt that, after the last Ice Age, the melting of huge glaciers did cause massive flooding of land all around the world, and the British Isles was no exception. This artist’s impression, based on known geological data, shows what could certainly be Hy-Brasil and another island called Waveland just before ‘the big melt’ around 12,000 BCE.

Figure 1. Just before the big melt 12,700 BC.©Michael Bix

However, whether Cardigan Bay or Hy-Brasil was actually the legendary island of Atlantis (Atlas’s Isle) first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, is another matter. And to understand why, we really need to learn a little about how myths work. So please bear with me while I lay out that toolkit before using it to re-examine the myth of Atlantis.

The cognitive world of our ancestors

Most mythologists and shamans understand ancient myths to be allegories or metaphors for what we call, today, scientific processes, and most of these myths deal with the way in which our ancestors perceived how the creation of the universe occurs.

For instance, we now understand that our ancestors did not live in just one world, as we do today. They lived in three realms, known as the Upper World, the Middle World and the Lower World. These three dimensions are extra dimensions to this one — they exist on a completely different 4D time/space continuum, and in fact, there is no Time there. It was in these extra dimensions that our ancestors set their myths with great panoramic dramas played out over the 4D landscapes of the three worlds which were reflected in this 3D dimension back here by 1) the celestial spheres (the heavens, 2) Middle Earth or Midgard (the Earth plane) and 3) the Underworld.

The Underworld is the portal to the 4D extra dimensions through what we call the imagination, although in this case, imagination doesn’t mean ‘make believe’; the imagi-nation is the nation or realm of images accessed through the right hand hemisphere of the brain by shamanic trance. Instead of our thoughts being in words, in the right hemisphere they present themselves as pictures and as is always said: “A picture speaks a thousand words”; therefore they are very effective way of carrying and transmitting information.

Why creation myths begin with a flood

All creation myths, whether the Hebrew Genesis, the Sumerian Enuma Elish, the Norse Edda, the Indian Srimad Bhagavatham, and the Maya and Egyptian creation myths are all set in these three 4D worlds and they ALL start and end with a flood. The flood represents the End of Times and the Beginning of Times. These so-called creation myths should really be called creation-maintenance-destruction myths (as reflected in triumvirate gods such as Brahma the creator god, Vishnu the maintainer god and Shiva, the god of destruction). This is because the ancients also had a holographic view of the cosmological processes, and reflected in their stories how the microcosm within the macrocosm was continually birthing, dying and then being reborn again, from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy.

So just as at a birth of a child, the first sign that the birth is imminent is when the mother’s water ‘breaks’ (the amniotic sac breaking causes its water to flood out) so a flood in mythology signifies creation or “a new life”. However, because creation comes at the end of a previous cosmological cycle, these mythological floods are associated with death as well as birth.

This type of cosmological model is seen in concentric circles with ever-increasing circles going out from the Earth at the centre, to represent how the whole of creation circumambulates around a pole. For instance, we have neutrons, protons and electrons processing around the cell nucleus (microcosm) to the macrocosm of sun and the planets revolving around it, and even higher than that. Everything circles or spirals around some sort of nucleus.

Figure 2. The microcosm

Fig 3. The macrocosm

Click on an image to enlarge it

Beyond the circle of the sun lies the circle of the Milky Way. In Egyptian mythology, the Milky Way was represented by Hathor, whose original name, Mehturt, meant ‘great flood’. In the Norse myths, the same cosmic cow is known as Audhumbla, and from Audhumbla´s udder floods rivers of milk, which is why we call it the Milky Way.

Fig 4. Hathor as the Milky Way

Releasing the waters of the firmanent

In myths, it is usually the Hero who releases the waters of the firmanent, or the flood of milk, from the grip of a sea serpent, at the end/beginning of a cycle, so that this birth/death or creation/destruction can take place. So this is why you may have seem such pairings as Zeus and the Typhon, Indra and Vritra, Marduk and Tiammat, and Thor and the Midgard Serpent or Jörmungandr, to name but a few serpent or dragon slayers. In Norse mythology, this battle between Thor and Jörmungandr takes place at an event called Ragnorak, which is the name of the Norse Apocalypse or Armageddon. (That Ragnorak comes at the end of a precessional cycle (or astrological age) we know from the numbers that are used, but that’s a story for another day.)

Fig 5. Thor goes fishing for the Midgard Serpent/Jörmungandr

The Pillars of Hercules

Next we must deal with the Pillars of Hercules, beyond which, according to Plato, lay the land of Atlantis. There are two pillars of Hercules, and they guard the gate or portal to the extra dimensions. These two pillars are used as literary device to indicate that the hero (Hercules or Ulysses) has left the every day world when he goes through them, in the same way today we use the device of: “Long, long, long ago, deep in the mists of the time.” This is a signal to the listener that they will need suspend their judgement because they will be entering another world with different rules. This ‘other world’ is known in mythology as the Underworld.

In the Renaissance, the two pillars were said to bear the legend: Nec plus ultra (“nothing further beyond”) which was the equivalent of “Enter at your peril” for sailors and navigators.

In Dante’s Inferno, we see Ulysses justifying risking his crews’ lives by going through into the world of Nec Plus Ultra or the Pillars of Hercules by insisting that it is the true explorer who dares to venture where others fear to tread in the quest for knowledge. After passing through the Pillars of Hercules, and after a further five months at sea, Ulysses sights the mountain of Purgatory. Purgatory, as we know, is not in this world and therefore we can rationalise that neither are the Pillars of Hercules which Ulysses has to go through to reach Purgatory.

Jason (of the Argonauts) also has to pass through the two pillars of ‘clashing rocks’ (the Symplegades) in his quest for the Golden Fleece.

Fig 6. A cartoonist’s view of the Symplegades

We see these two Pillars of Hercules again and again in religious iconography, for instance, showing up in the Temple of Sol-Ammon as Boaz and Jachim. They appear at Tyre, Byblus, Paphos, and Telloh, and in shrines dedicated to Astarte, they are represented by the two ash trees standing guard either side of her doorway.

We can also see them in the Sumerian tale of Adapa as Tammuz and Gishzida who guard the gateway to Heaven, and the two columns also turn up on the High Priestess Tarot card.

Fig 7. Tammuz and Gishzida

Fig 8. The High Priestess

So I believe that we are wasting our time looking for the Pillars of Hercules in the sea … any sea, whether the North Sea or the Straits of Gibraltar…. as much as I believe we are wasting our time looking for a real lost land of Atlantis, even though there were surely inundations of huge tracts of land which were submerged following Ice Ages and comets and then ‘rose’ again when the water again became trapped in glaciers.

But the inundation of Atlantis itself is just another creation-destruction myth, a death-rebirth myth, a tale of the amniotic sac bursting, dying, to release the waters heralding new life, and this process never ends. Atlantis is continually being drowned and rising again in the life-death-rebirth cycles going on around all the time, at every level.

Every night, Atlantis goes under and then rises up again. With each daily cycle, the Milky Way seems to move around the Heavens and also throughout the year, it appears to undulate, to go up and down like a serpent, because of the tilt of the Earth.

This continuing cycle of the Milky Way is also seen as a fertility dance of the male Father god and the female Mother god that the ancients visualised as simulacra in the Milky Way ~ with their never-ending dance of life, death and rebirth.

Figure 9. The fertility dance in the Milky Way

Figure 10. Graphic of Milky Way

Figure 11. Ancient Danish rock art of Milky Way couple

This article was first published on Ishtar’s Gate (www.ishtarsgate.com) a website and forum dedicated to the study of early man through archaeology, anthropology and mythology to reveal his shamanic roots.

© Ishtar Babilu Dingir 2010

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You can also now download a Celtic Myth Podshow App from the iTunes store. This is the most convenient and reliable way to access the Celtic Myth Podshow on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You’re always connected to the latest episode, and our App users have access to exclusive bonus content, just touch and play! To find out more visit the iTunes Store or our Descripition Page.

If you come to the site and listen or listen from one of our players – have you considered subscribing? It’s easy and you automatically get the episodes on your computer when they come out. If you’re unsure about the whole RSS/Subscribing thing take a look at our Help page.

BBC News reports that a rare 2,000-year-old Roman skull has been returned to the cave beneath the Yorkshire Dales where it was discovered by divers in 1996. Archaeologists were called in after cave divers unearthed human bones in what is believed to be one of the most important cave discoveries ever made.

The skull dates to the 2nd Century and is that of a local woman in her 50s. It was stored at Sheffield University for carbon-dating and recently returned to the cave, which has now been sealed. Experts believe the cave could have been a tomb, but that some of the deaths may have been through sacrificial ceremonies.

Mr Lord calls the cave an “ancient time capsule” because of the many different remains inside. He believes the cave was considered a sacred place for centuries because of its supposed entrance to the underworld.

One theory is that she may have been a high-born figure from the local area who voluntarily sacrificed herself, believing she would enter the underworld.

Other factors could, however, point to the woman wanting to escape Roman hardship.

Read the full article here.

Originally posted 2008-04-12 11:22:12. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

This show is designed to get us going podcasting again. We give you the winner of the Damh the Bard competition (although we forget to mention that the actual answer is: Rhiannon! D’oh!). We also set a new competition for you guys with a Beginner’s Manual for Celtic Design as the prize. So if you fancy knowing how to draw, paint or make some of the astounding knotwork of our ancestors you’ve got to have a go at this competition!

We also bring you three pieces of wonderful music – you can find out more details about these artists  in the Shownotes for this episode. Two of them you have heard before and are long-time favourites on our show, but the third band, Portcullis, specialise in late medieval music and conjure the atmosphere of an Arthurian court perfectly.

We also talk about the iPhone/iPod Touch App that we have released enabling you to stream or download the shows on your iPod. You lucky iPod owners also have access to some unique content with certain episodes that is unavailable elsewhere. True at the moment, until we find out how we can release the show on the Android platform! We set the price at the minimum we could so as to make it easy to access for you, and that is $1.99 or £1.19 – hope you like it.

The Episode is available for subscribers on the feed, or you can download it or listen to it from our Episodes page. You can find the Shownotes for this episode in the Shownotes section.

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You can also now download a Celtic Myth Podshow App from the iTunes store. This is the most convenient and reliable way to access the Celtic Myth Podshow on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You’re always connected to the latest episode, and our App users have access to exclusive bonus content, just touch and play! To find out more visit the iTunes Store or our Descripition Page.

If you come to the site and listen or listen from one of our players – have you considered subscribing? It’s easy and you automatically get the episodes on your computer when they come out. If you’re unsure about the whole RSS/Subscribing thing take a look at our Help page.

Deal in Kent, UK you can get to see the Green Man Festival on Sunday the 27th. They say on the Magical Festivals site: Seasonal Gatherings, Festivals, Fayre’s & musical evenings are held throughout the year at a number of locations. Our main events are held in the beautiful seaside town of Deal in Kent where people of all paths come together to enjoy a selection of Talks, Workshops and Performances and browse through our exhibitors stands. Our events are held inside but have be known to spill into the high street!

Many Special Guest Speakers and Performers attend our events. Some of our 2008 visitors are Maxine Sanders, David Wells of Most Haunted, Damh The Bard, Cat Von Trapp, Touch The Earth plus many more! We welcome people of all paths to come and spend a day with us and enjoy what Magical Festivals has to offer.

Source

Originally posted 2008-07-25 21:29:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Harbor Seal Pic: Mike Baird

Selkies (also known as silkies or selchies) are mythological creatures in Faroese, Irish, Icelandic, and Scottish mythology. They can transform themselves from seals to humans. The legend apparently originated on the Orkney Islands, where selch or selk(ie) is the Scots word for seal (from Old English seolh).One folklorist theory of the origin of the belief is that the selkies were actually fur-clad Finns, traveling by kayak.

As the anthropologist A. Asbjorn Jon has recognised though, there is a strong body of lore that indicates that selkies

‘are said to be supernaturally formed from the souls of drowned people’.

The Selkie is a shape shifting faery that lives in the cold waters off the coast of the Shetland and Orkney Islands in the United Kingdom.

The Selkie appears as a seal, but with distinctly human eyes. When it removes its skin, it appears as a beautiful woman, or a handsome man.

It is said that the Selkie men make good lovers, and they are happy to please any of the unsatisfied women on the islands. Though they can be a bit mean, and don’t actually make very good husbands. If a woman desires a Selkie lover, all she has to do is go to the sea and cry seven tears into the water.

On occasion, a mortal man may desire a Selkie woman for his wife, for to have the love of a faery wife is to have heaven on earth. To do so, he must carefully watch the beach for a Selkie woman to remove and hide her seal skin cloak. Then, while she is distracted with dancing, playing or sunning herself on a rock, he must steal her seal skin cloak and hide it where she can never find it. She is then obligated to be his wife, and will do so faithfully, if not happily.

There once was a man who managed to gain himself a Selkie wife. They had three children together, and were married for many years, and though she was a faithful wife, her heart was filled with longing to return home to the sea. One day her children were playing and they found an old trunk that was unknown to the Selkie woman. At the bottom of the trunk was a mysterious skin, and the children took it to their mother, asking her if she knew what it was. Recognizing her seal-skin cloak, she took it to the seashore and disappeared into the sea.

Some say her husband died of a broken heart, for having once loved a faery woman, the love of a mortal woman can never compare. Some say that the Selkie returned to her home on the land on occasion to teach her children faery healing.

The story of the Selkie reveals to us the power of our connection to our homeland, and the homeland of our ancestors. No matter how much the Selkie loved her mortal family, her heart constantly called her back to the Sea. Somewhere in our past, the land of our ancestors calls to us, and we too, know the feeling of longing for home.

Selkies are able to transform to human form by shedding their seal skins and can revert to seal form by putting their selkie skin back on. Stories concerning selkies are generally romantic tragedies. Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a selkie, and wakes to find them gone. Other times the human will hide the selkie’s skin, thus preventing them from returning to seal form. A selkie can only make contact with one particular human for a short amount of time before they must return to the sea. They are not able to make contact with that human again for seven years, unless the human is to steal their selkie’s skin and hide it or burn it.Examples of such stories are The Grey Selkie of Suleskerry, a ballad, and the movie The Secret of Roan Inish

In The Secret of Roan Inish, a fisherman steals the selkie’s pelt while she is sunbathing. She then returns to his house and becomes his wife and bears him children. He stashes away her skin and years later, one of the children mentions it and asks what it is. The wife immediately drops what she’s doing, retrieves the pelt and returns to her former life as a seal.

The selkie legend is also told in Wales, but in a slightly different form. The selkies are humans who have returned to the sea. Dylan (Dylan Eil Don) the firstborn of Arianrhod, was variously a merman or sea spirit, who in some versions of the story escapes to the sea immediately after birth.

Male selkies are very handsome in their human form, and have great seduction powers over human women. They typically seek those who are dissatisfied with their romantic life. This includes married women waiting for their fishermen husbands. If a woman wishes to make contact with a selkie male, she has to go to a beach and shed seven tears into the sea.

If a man steals a female selkie’s skin, she is in his power, to an extent, and she is forced to become his wife — a regional variant on the motif of the swan maiden, unusual in that the bride’s animal form is usually a bird. Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly to the ocean. If her skin is found she will immediately return to her home — sometimes, her selkie husband — in the sea.

Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him. In these stories, it is one of her children who discovers her sealskin (often unwitting of its significance) and she soon returns to the sea. The selkie woman avoids seeing her human husband again but is sometimes shown visiting her children and playing with them in the waves.

Selkies are not always faithless lovers. One tale tells of the fisherman Cagan who married a seal-woman. Against his wife’s wishes he set sail dangerously late in the year, and was trapped battling a terrible storm, unable to return home. His wife shifted to her seal form and saved him, even though this meant she could never return to her human body and hence her happy home.

Some stories from Shetland have selkies luring islanders into the sea at midsummer, the lovelorn humans never returning to dry land.

Seal changelings similar to the selkie exist in the folklore of many cultures. A corresponding creature existed in Swedish legend, and the Chinook Indians of North America have a similar tale of a boy who changes into a seal (see the children’s story The Boy Who Lived With The Seals by Rafe Martin). Jane Yolen incorporated such a changeling as a selkie into her picture book, Greyling.

You can hear  fabulous short story  about a Selkie by author  William Meikle called The First Silkie  in Special Episode SP02a

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You can also now download a Celtic Myth Podshow App from the iTunes store. This is the most convenient and reliable way to access the Celtic Myth Podshow on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You’re always connected to the latest episode, and our App users have access to exclusive bonus content, just touch and play! To find out more visit the iTunes Store or our Descripition Page.

If you come to the site and listen or listen from one of our players – have you considered subscribing? It’s easy and you automatically get the episodes on your computer when they come out. If you’re unsure about the whole RSS/Subscribing thing take a look at our Help page.