For four thousand years the warriors of a masculine oriented society who view death defiance as the focus and force
for the future have besieged the world cultures. In the Tain, a warrior saga whose very title suggests the
theft of a venerated icon of the matrifocal culture one which epitomized the ancient goddesses of life-giving
sustenance. One can see in this epic the beginnings of a battle between the sexes that would be waged down
through the millennia, subjugating the feminine in spiritual as well as temporal power, as well as reshaping the
landscape of the family and physical environments. This physical change can be seen in the two warriors of Ulster
attacking the sacred hills of Dun Ailinne and Brugh na Boinne, sites associated with the pre-Celtic
culture.
In the film The History of English and Charlie's lecture on Linguistics, we can see this shift in the
movement from the proto Indo-European language to the various Celtic Classical languages. In the early proto
Indo-European language the importance of family ties is shown by the consistency of the suffix ending 'ter' for all
close (blood) family associations in the subsequent branches. By the time we move to the Classic languages of Latin,
the national ties of king and country have superceded these family ties. The power and control that would have
previously been linked to the life giving power of a mother, thus stressing the importance of family, has been
usurped by the power of 'rex', the ruler or king, signifying the temporal power of the state or supremacy of one family
over others. 'Rex' becomes 'righ' becomes right, which will later suggest the divine right of kings to represent the
word of god in the temporal world. Dannan suggested the bias in Latin towards this right, in the words for the
left/right directions, they being sinster and dexter; sinster becomes sinister. All aspiring ceremonial magicians are
told to avoid the dark or left-hand path to power, while the left-hand pillar in Kaballah is associated with the
feminine.
The greatest implications of this shift is not so much in this move from family based structure to that of the
nation-state, but in the suppression of the feminine in religious and temporal power and thus the marginalization of
sexuality, the original manifestation of the woman's power. The original awe with which humanity viewed the birth
process, as well as the agricultural activities was firmly centered in the feminine. Death was also viewed with the
same sort of reverence and associated with the feminine, as can be seen in the womb-like burial mounds where
the wealthy were lain to rest awaiting their rebirth in the otherworld. As Sean's lecture illustrated, sexuality was an
incredibly important aspect of early Irish culture, one very alien to our own worldview where this magickal act is
stigmatized and weighted with morality and guilt. In life affirming cultures this interaction of the feminine and the
masculine breeds a healthy respect for the sensuality of existence. In the Classical cultures this polarity is shown
in the battle between the forces of reason (Apollo) and emotion (Dionysus). Like the early Irish, Sean suggested in
her personal introduction at the beginning of the quarter, she has two distinct sides to her multiple personalities,
which instead of competing, like the forces in Classical culture, they cooperate to insure a healthy worldview where
neither has supremacy over the other. One of the best descriptions of this interactivity from the Tain, is the
magical weapon Gea Bolga, which can only be used at the interaction of the two feminine elements earth
and water. It represents through the sexual connection of feminine Earth goddess and masculine sky god its power
lightning, both creative and destructive. This balancing of oppositions, acting in cooperation is the basis for most
magickal formulae, from the sexual tantrism of the Indian trinities to the 'holy hexagram' of King David in Judaism.
This dynamism is the very essence of modem-day Wicca or Witchcraft, as shown in the masculine and feminine
aspects of deity throughout the 'wheel of the year'. One could go so far as to say that the desacralization of this most
sacred act of creativity is the basis for a majority of psychological dysfunction. For in not acting out internal desires
we internalize their energies through guilt and inevitably swallow our own grief like a seed of impotence and death.
It is easy to see in the moralization of sexuality and the usurpation of the power of family ties, a concentrated effort
to destroy those things which honor life and replace them with those things which are relative to death and
objectification. Power becomes possession, and in this arena there is no place for the sexual politics of polyandry
and polygamy, which characterizes a culture devoid of the ownership of sexuality.
In the film The Secret of Roan Inish, we can see that the honor of the feminine remains a vital part of the
Gaelic worldview in the Western lands. It was here, that the Tuatha De Dannan were driven, when the Celts of
Iberia began their conquest of Ireland. It is here that the love of the elements is still the greatest, and consequently
also the area where Gaelic still survives. One of the many things I found interesting about this beautiful tale, was
the baby bed made of the wood of a ship which had sailed the seas. Shaped like a coracle it reminded me of the
boats/baby baskets that carried the young Horus and Moses in Egyptian and Jewish mythology. In each instance a
'woman with her wits about her' was protecting the young male leader from destruction at the hands of other men
who were bent on maintaining their own power. Interestingly Eamon Kelly suggests that storytelling is bad luck
when done during the day, except for fisherfolk waiting to pull in the nets. The importance of the sea in the
consciousness of the Irish, especially in the West is mirrored in the Hebrew Kabbalah where the supernal feminine
Binah is associated with the sea, the great womb from which we all sprang.
Two magickal feats in the Tain which have bearing on our modem-day conundrums are shape-shifting and
the salmon leap. Sean suggests that these are not magickal except in their effect on the psyche of the individual
attempting them. Shape shifting is as she says, 'done to throw off that which fetters us to return to the essence of
what we are'. A salmon leap is the ability to go beyond our own self-determined limits and make a leap into unknown
territory. Both of these acts are relative to our future for only by shape-shifting from our present worldview to one
which recognizes and honors the feminine powers of creativity and the inherent wisdom of life giving activities
can we survive the destructive nature of our masculine modernity. While in order to get back to the values of a more
wholistic and healthy culture, we must make a salmon leap out of this modernity and into a post-modem worldview.
A worldview, which honors those things we have left behind in our mad race to embrace the destructive warrior's
soul and subdue the original love of the mother of creation.