The Mother Goddess* Among the most revered of Celtic deities were a range of powerful female figures who embodied the earth, fertility, fruitfulness and well-being. Shrines, statues and inscriptions to these mother goddesses have been discovered all over the Celtic world. They play an important role in Irish and Welsh mythology. In an age when most people did not live beyond early childhood, and when those who did spent most of their lives in a constant struggle to avoid hunger and disease, the mother goddess was of central importance. She presided over all aspects of female fertility and childbirth, and was frequently depicted breastfeeding a baby. People appealed to her when they were pregnant or sick, and sometimes buried her image with the dead: one small statue of a mother goddess was found, poignantly, in a the grave of a baby at Arrington in Cambridgeshire. Mother goddesses were also linked with the fertility of the land and individual prosperity, and could be shown dispensing apples, grapes, bread or coins to symbolise wealth and nature's bounty. The Tuatha de Danaan (Children of the Goddess Danu), the divine race if Irish myth, were said to be descended from one such goddess, Danu, who is probably identical to Anu, a goddess associated with the fertility of Ireland. Two round hills in Co. Kerry were once believed to her breasts, reflecting her function as a divine mother; the hills are known as "The Paps of Anu." She has a counterpart in the Welsh Goddess Don, the divine matriarch of the Mabinogion. Irish stories in particular feature a number of formidable divine matriarchs who embody the sovereignty and prosperity of the land. According to ancient tradition, the fertility of the soil, and therefore, the well being of the people were only assured if the king coupled with one of these divinities. The high king was ceremonially "married" to a mother goddess as part of his inauguration at Tara. The Book of Invasions recounts that when the Milesians, the ancestors of the Gaels, first came to Ireland, it was ruled by three kings whose consorts were the divine matriarchs Eriu, Banbha and Fodla. The Milesians named the land after Eriu (modern Irish Eire) in return for a pledge that they and their descendants would always govern the island. It was said that when a king was ritually married to Eriu, the goddess handed him a golden cup filled with red wine as a symbol of the sun and its benefits: the continued fruitfulness of the kingdom. Other Irish mother goddesses are closely associated with sexual potency, war and death. [See Goddesses of War] The most prominent of these is the Mórrígan, who is said to have coupled with the Dagda, the tribal patriarch of the Tuatha de Danaan. She also attempted to seduce the hero Cú Chulainn, becoming his implacable foe when he rejected her advances. The Mórrígan decided the fate of warriors, determining would die in the battle. Other deities representing the darker side of the mother goddess include Badb and Macha, and Maeve also has much in common with such figures. Both Badb and Mórrígan were able to metamorphose into a crow or raven, in which form the were said to hover over battlefields as harbingers of death to those fighting below. Celtic mother goddesses are very commonly shown in groups of three. [See Sacred Numbers]. Each of the figures of the triad represented a different aspect of the goddess, such as youth, maturity and old age; or birth, life and death. A trio of mother goddesses known as the Suleviae and associated with healing was worshipped as far apart as Hungary and Britain, where there were shrines at Cirencester, Colchester and Bath. Like images of individual goddesses, representations of the triple goddesses often show them bearing objects that symbolise motherhood or fertility, such as a baby, loaves or fruit. The triple goddess frequently appears alongside representations of the male triple god of fertility known to the Romans as the genii cucullati (hooded spirits). The second branch of the Mabinogion is titled "Branwen, daughter of Llyr"; she is the sister of Bran the Blessed. She is described as on of the "three matriarchs of Britain," which may be a reference to an older triple goddess of sovereignty. This may also be where the Twelfth Century writer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, got the idea that the mythical King Leir of Britain, who is derived from Llyr, had three daughters. In Ireland, the goddess Brighid was sometimes said to have two sisters of the same name — in origin the three Brighids were probably different aspects of one goddess, just as the Irish war goddesses, such as Badb and the Mórrígan, sometimes appeared in the form of triple goddesses. See also: Creatrix Goddesses *Source:
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