Gobnait of Baile Mhuirne seems a rather clear hypostasis of the Goddess Brighid, appearing in her fiery aspect. She exhibits especially strong associations with Beekeeping, Boundaries, and Curing Disease.

As one of a variable triad of Brighid-like saint-goddesses in the South of Ireland, she also offers a useful view over some recurring tropes of this, and perhaps other, Goddesses (or "Saints"). Their feast days also seem to mark out seasonal transition-points for Spring, Summer, and Autumn. But why not Winter? Spoiler: I can only speculate.

This week's "Patterns" section will deal with Saints and Animals.

The Female Smith

Mél of Ardagh may be one face of Midir, Moon-Immortality God of Brí Leith (Ardagh Hill), son of the Dagda, fosterer of his brother Aengus, and close associate of Brighid. His feast day is 6th February.

I mentioned in the previous issue that Midir, the Irish "Moon-Immortality" god, has several saintly faces - suggesting a god who was important and much-beloved. But, he was downplayed in the sanctioned Mythology, except for his famous love-story with Étaín.

But how can I be sure that Mél of Brí Leith is Midir? Actually, compared to his other saint identities, Brendan and Mobhí, it's a far less certain thing. Indeed, the more I look at him, the more I think he's another heretofore-unknown deity - perhaps a "Fomorian Forerunner" to Midir. But let's get into it and present the case, because I think Mél, if he's part of Midir's identity or retinue, provides a lot of interesting colour.

This week's "Patterns" section is about Euhemerism and Hypostases - essential jargon for comparative mythology.

Brigit, more authentically Brighid, is a Celtic Triple Goddess associated with Fire, Dawn, and Poetry. Among other things, she's also the Celtic Artemis, which I'll explore today.

There is still a widespread attitude that there is a kernel of "Christian authenticity" to Brigit, that she's not "all Goddess". A lot of this is down to the strong personality of austerity and kindness to the poor and to downtrodden people; traits romantically associated with Christianity.

It's my contention that this is an authentic aspect of the Triple Goddess Brighid, and that the best way to understand this is to compare to the Goddesses Artemis and Diana, respectively of Greece and Rome.

Some people won't like this, because it means a beloved heroic woman was not a historically real person; I get that, I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me, in exchange for some documentation around probably Ireland's most feminist deity.

Let's meet one face of Ireland's Fire God: Áed, appearing in one of his saintly forms as Máedóc of Ferns. We'll need a few other saints to properly introduce him, though.

The Fire God is at once a really central god, because they turn up everywhere, but also quite subtle, being rarely the main character. Cosmogonically, "Fire" can be a key aspect of the proto-creator "Cosmic Person" figure, and can then later turn up in more specific manifestations. Fire can have multiple distinct aspects; Fire of the Sun, Fire of the Heavens (lightning, aurorae, etc.), the Fire of Earth, and perhaps the Fire of Stone or Water. This can make it a mess to find and figure out the "Fire God": Which one? Do they share a common top-level identity?

I mentioned in Féichín's issue that the Fire-Deity has an unexpected face: Manannán mac Lir. He's been assumed for centuries to be a sea deity like his father, Ler. It's confusing to our modern sensibility, but to Bronze / Iron age societies, Fire was not seen as the antithesis of Water. I'll give this some attention in the "Patterns" section, below. By comparison though, it's a sure thing: Hephaestus grew up underwater, Vedic Agni is repeatedly called "of the waters", and Loki (a Norse putative fire deity) is quite comfortable in water.

Manannán is not the only Fire God - it's long-speculated that at least one "Áed" (literally meaning "Fire"), a son of The Dagda, may have been an Irish fire deity. Today's saint, Máedóc (and a few other Áeds besides), will help bolster that case, by exhibiting parallels with the mythic attributes of Manannán. But this won't be the last major saint that lines up with Manannán. And, it's not all about Manannán either - there's a lot here to show other faces of Fire not before seen in the Mythological material.

Today, let's meet one of the fiercer deities of Ireland, and the god of (among more positive traits!) plague and mass-misfortune: Fiacha.

Every religion based on gods has to deal with the relationship of mankind to the gods. That includes the covenant of the Gods to bless mankind in some way, but also their tendency to punish the behaviours that displease them. If there are a lot of people to be punished, then it'll be a mass punishment. Sometimes, the head-god will do the mass-punishments themselves. Other times, it's delegated to a particularly fierce and dangerous god.

If you know anyone who'd like to learn a little about Ireland's meanest god, forward them this email!

The Raven, the Harbinger

In this issue, we meet Saint Íta, The Mórrígan, the ambiguous and compelling Goddess that governs war, prophesy, motherhood, and perhaps water and cosmic illusion.

The Mórrígan's aspects have fewer direct representations among the Saints. Motherhood in Christianity is the domain of Mary, after all. I'd love to deal with the Mórrígna (her aspects) separately throughout the year, as I am hoping to do with Brighid, but so far Íta is the only clear Mórrígan-saint I've found. So I'm stuck kind of doing them all at once.

It's Issue #2, and already likely to be one of the longest of the year. Believe me when I say, I've re-drafted this email many times and edited it down. There is a lot that I've left unshared, a lot of cross-identification and evidence that I've omitted. At this early stage of the Newsletter, I still feel that I need to justify my identifications carefully, whereas over time I'm hoping I can lean on prior work more and more, and keep things more brief.

That said, I tried this email by a friend and she said it wasn't too much.. so I re-added a little detail then. I'll be going over many of Íta's connected saints later in the year and she'll get even more detail by proxy: Íta as the Mórrígan is easily one of the most important saints of all, in my opinion.

I planned to take it slow for my first entry, because the others this month are all quite big characters (See 'Coming Up' at the end!). So, I selected Saint Fáelán, or 'Childhood Lugh', and then immediately regretted my decision. He was deeper than I estimated - Whoops!

I also committed to making my newsletters very short - well, I'm already drafting issue #2 and finding it quite impossible. Sorry for misleading you. I'll still aim to keep the issues focused on cross-identification of Saints and Gods, and leave the deep-dives on the Gods per-se for another format, at least until I can afford to upgrade the newsletter and add a tagging system for readers to filter their subscriptions by. In the meantime, if there is interest I could publish a separate 'Dossier' containing deeper detail on popular Saint/Deities, maybe.

I'm also going to try and include some fringe detail I hadn't initially planned to, but I think it'll help a lot:

1. I'd like to try and include some suggestions about names and places that may connect to the Saint/God.
2. If there's any good reading material I'll try to include it in a Bibliography.
3. I'll include a little segment dealing with general patterns in Celtic Comparativism that might help you explore the way that I do.

Applying Modern Comparative Mythology to Celtic Mythology

Using the toolset of Comparative Mythology, there has been some fantastic progress in recent years towards re-identifying the gods of Ireland, Wales, and France - and often, what we can then learn from these re-identifications can unveil more about more distantly-related religions such as the Greek, Norse, and Hindu religions, and more.

Applying this same toolset to a seemingly unrelated genre of Irish medieval writing, I've found a fascinating trove of authentic stories that directly come from the original native Irish religion. Just as with Saint Brigit and her original identity the Goddess Brighid, other saints of Early Christian Ireland were also gods in disguise. In fact, with only a few exceptions, it appears that perhaps the entire Irish Christian Hagioraphical tradition was in fact stolen directly from the native Irish religion. Yes, very much including the Hagiographical and Folkloric identities of the other two best-known Irish Saints, Colmcille and Patrick. Most Irish saints don't even appear to have a kernel of non-Irish religious identity.

What Use are the Saints?