Taliesin's Map

  The Celtic Creation Myth: Branwen, Matholwch, and Efnysien, or: Earth, Sky, and Rudra  Part 4 of 4 < Part 3 Ymir and the Norse “Father Sky” Armed with this understanding, we broach a more controversial issue. If Father Sky rapes, or abuses and impregnates, Mother Earth, and then is violently separated from her in the primordial scene in all these other branches, why does this myth of the violation of Mother Earth by Father Sky not seem to appear in the Norse creation, or in Norse myth anywhere? This moment is so charged and indeed so important mythically that it leads to the creation of the life of the cosmos and it is not even absent in the Welsh and Irish traditions, though buried deep in coded narratives that have not been fully understood. In these other branches, Mother Earth and Father Sky always are depicted as consorts of one another, there is usually some violence done to Mother Earth, the divine seed or child is produced, and Mother Earth and Father Sky are alwa...

The Celtic Creation Myth: Branwen, Matholwch, and Efnysien, or: Earth, Sky, and Rudra Part 3 of 4 < Part 2 The Castration of Saturn, Antoine Verard Indo-European Contexts If we follow Kramrisch’s suggestion that this overall myth connects to the time around the Vernal or March Equinox, we find further parallels confirming these readings. The Roman New Year is known to have taken place on the Ides of March, perhaps originally being tied to the full moon of this period, marking the end of Winter and the coming of Spring. The first inkling of the new light of the day of the year and the beginnings of fertility were for the Romans the moment the New Year would begin. A well-known myth from Phrygia connected to the festivities of the later Imperial Roman period, including the festival day Canna intrat , tells of Attis and Agdistis. Agdistis is a divine being having both male and female genitals and thus should be taken as an image of the primordial union of “Sky” and “Earth” or “Fathe...