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.

I'm publishing this one a little early, to make space for Brighid's issue on Imbolc - otherwise this would be going out just the day before hers.

If you have any friends who are really into burning stuff, shoot them a copy of this email. If you were forwarded this, consider subscribing:

Literal Naming Conventions

For starters: "Maedóc" is a pet-name form of "Áed", and the Old Irish word Aed / Áed literally means "Fire". That's a strong start, but just in case you think my identification here is too literal, Máedóc was actually not the first Fire-Saint I found. No, that's Maedóc's bestie, Molaisse, who I identified by myth-patterns rather than nomenclature. That name however is a pet-name form of "Lasar", also meaning Fire, maybe "Radiant Fire". The verb "Las" meaning "Light" is still in use in modern Irish.

Molaise gets his own feast day at 18th April and I'll give more detail and attention to his mythic connections to Manannán and Fire on that day. Between the two of them, we can say something with surety; Manannán was not only derived from a common fire-deity, he was viewed as a Fire Deity by the Irish. And, as they were essentially a shared deity, that's surely also true for Welsh Manawydan.

"Molaise" also shares his feast day with another Saint Lasar, but this one is female: Saint Lassair of Donaghmoyne. I'll include her in Molaise's email, exploring whether she represents a consort-deity, an aspect of Hearth-Brighid, or a female identity of the same Fire Deity (à la Loki).

The Tales of Fire

What are the roles of fire, mythically? You might have expected something like a Marvel Superhero, striding around garishly immolating problems. But, that happens surprisingly rarely with Fire-Deities.

If you consider the Proto-Indo-European religions in context, arising in the pre-modern age, Fire was central to daily life, social functions, and religious observance. The narrative roles of Fire often reflect this ubiquity, and what's common can become indistinct. At other times, Fire is cosmic and gives rise to crucial parts of the universe.. but this layer of myth is surprisingly prone to change or local variation (perhaps because how the world was made isn't usually directly relevant to human life), so it can end up very garbled.

However, there are some narrative roles of Fire Deities that can be identified in common across various pantheons. The Fire Deity takes part in various dramas, like the Division of Earth and Sky motif mentioned in the Féichín's issue. They also take part in a pattern of sequential marriages with several other gods, which J.Dolan discovered and terms the "Suryā's Bridal" pattern. The Fire Deity may be associated with the Sun-deity, with the Sun as Celestial Fire - Vedic Sun-god Surya (note; not Suryā, his daughter) associates closely with Vedic Fire-god Agni. The Fire Deity also takes a supporting role in many other dramas - helping to rescue the stolen divine food or drink, for example, and driving away hostile magicians from feasts or kine.

Fiery Friends

The Fire deity is a close associate of the Fionn-type deity - at early stages, these deities may be nearly fully identified, as they are in the Rig Veda. Similarly, in the Germanic and Celtic branches, the Fionn and Fire deities form a triplicity, a pattern alluded to last week and described by Taliesin's Map.

Now, that's a great Myth-pattern, and well worth getting to know. The trouble is, nothing distinctive enough jumps out of the lives of Lasars and Áeds yet to clearly parallel this primordial myth of dividing earth from sky, or of vivifying mankind. Possibly the manner of their arrivals at Rome could be it, but it's probably impossible to undo the Christianisations to know for sure what the original myth looked like.

There are a lot of Áeds in Celtic mythology and Hagiography. Some of them are "hidden" - Goll mac Morna, for example, was Áed before he lost an eye (Goll meaning one-eyed). Another suggestive Áed is Áed Sláine, a high king associated by his cognomen with the Fire-Ritual Hill of Sláine (why? We don't know).

There are more: The Áed, son of the Dagda, whose name has often been taken to indicate a Fire-association. Or, the Áed Dubh who kills his Foster-Father using fire, the High King Diarmait mac Cerbaill. Many of the Áeds show signs of parentage of, or descent from, other Fionn-group names such as Fiachra, Fintan, Mongán, etc. There are certainly signs here of Áeds having an ongoing relationship with other personalities of the expected Fionn/Fire types. Sometimes they even burn things.

What we would like to see are stories that more concretely bridge these Áeds with known Fire Deities, locally and internationally. Manannán's linkage to the international Fire Deity has been made convincingly already by Dolan - can we now seal the deal by linking Áeds and Lasars to Manannán?

Fortunately, Maedóc does display parallels that can tie him into Manannán. And, when combined with the Saints Lasar (in another issue), we can build a strong case for identification with Manannán and by extension with the wider Fire Deity role.

Where There's Smoke There Might Be Two Fires

Maedóc's birth myth is not very noteworthy and does not resemble St.Molaise's birth. However, another Saint Áed, Áed mac Bricc, has a very similar birth-myth to Molaise; both their mothers are warned to delay their births to the next morning at daybreak, and sit on a rock to do it.

Áed mac Bricc looks like nothing so much as a Sun Deity. Reading his life as translated by Kate Peck, we see a character who spends most of his time travelling by Chariot from place to place, a chariot which repeatedly flies supernaturally. He is repeatedly associated with blindness and restored vision - recall that Gods are often prayed to to resolve problems that they cause, so if a god can cause blindness (the sun) it then makes sense for them to cure blindness (indeed, Sun-God Helios heals the blindness of Orion in Greek myth). Now, the Sun can be viewed as the ultimate form of Celestial Fire, and if Áeds are Fire gods, having an Áed who drives the Chariot of the Sun suggests that the ancient Celts might have felt this way.

Molaise of Devenish (Lasar) (1), meanwhile, is more Earthbound. And while he shares a distinctive birth myth with Áed mac Bricc, his childhood association is with another Áed: Máedóc. These two are given a divine sign that they must part ways, as young students, and part they do until their adulthood. Both Molaise of Devenish and Máedóc of Ferns have distinctive mythemes that they share with Manannán - you might think this fractured connection would complicate things, but it doesn't: the Lives of both saints go to great lengths to indicate that they are, at some essential level, the same person.

In both Máedóc and Molaise of Devenish's lives, there is a lengthly section where they reunite and declare that everything one does, the other does, everything one receives, the other receives, and so on - it's as close to a full identification as you find in Hagiographies, and it's unusually symmetrical. Áed and Lasar are different, but also the same. And they're both Manannán.

What About Manannán?

Manannán has several distinctive myths that you can find in the lives of Lasars and Áeds. Let's focus on Máedóc, because it's his day.

Riders on the Waves
Saints often cross bodies of water in miraculous ways. And, there are a few ways that they cross water that are not distinctive or special - walking directly across water, for example, is very common, as is being ferried back and forth on a magic rock.

Curiously for Máedóc, though, he repeatedly crosses bodies of water while mounted on an animal. One of Manannán's most distinctive watery behaviours is to ride across water on his Chariot or his famous horse, Aonbharr. His counterpart Áed mac Bricc seems to get more Chariot-time, flying spectacularly across the sky, though Máedóc does also appear in a chariot one time, as described below.

Supplier to the Gods
Another key part of Manannán's characterisation is that he's the primary equipper of the Gods and Demigods. In many mythologies, the Fire Deity is closely aligned with, or fully combined with, the Smith or Craftsman God who produces and provides wonders - Manannán isn't fully identified with Goibniú in the way that Greek Hephaestus was both Fire and Smith god. But, he does host the "Feast of Goibniú" that maintains the Gods' immortality. And, Manannán does provide the weapons and tools that, presumably, were made by the Godly Craftsmen. He even has a special bag for containing these wonders, the "Crane Bag" made of the skin of a goddess named Aoife (yikes).

Máedóc, for his part, carries around seven wonders - one Reliquary, one Crozier, two Staffs, and Three bells. As a general pattern, it seems to me that weapons tend to become Croziers (or perhaps Staffs?), while instruments or vessels tend to become bells. Indeed, one of these bells resembles Manannán's chalice of truth-telling (see below). So he's bearing three possible weapons or tools, and three vessels or instruments - that's quite the Panoply already, without even considering the Reliquary.

Reliquaries are rarely mentioned as belonging to Saints: Reliquaries usually come after the saint. Perhaps it was once a Crane-Bag?

Apples and Islands
Another association of Manannán's is his Isle of Apples, Emain Abhlach (see also: Welsh Afalon), and his miraculous branch of tinkling golden apples which charm people to sleep. The association of the Otherworld with Apples is more general than just Manannán, but he certainly has a particular association with them. And indeed, we find an apple-myth; Maedóc is planting fruit trees, but even when he's tricked into planting non-fruiting trees, they grow into beautiful and productive apple and nut trees. We also see the apple-association with Molaise, whose mother dreams of 7 amazing (ambiguously golden?) apples at his conception; evoking Manannán's magical branch.

Manannán is not the only apple-god - Cían and his Saints also have Apple-myths. In some versions of Lugh's conception, Manannán is Cían's co-conspirator, and overall there is some overlap in the actions of these two gods. In the Vedic/Hindu case, Stella Kramrisch in The Presence of Shiva considers their joint action in a related Hindu myth as being part of a union of the deities Pushan (Cían) and Agni (Manannán). They're not the same, except when they are.

Oh, and like many Irish Fire-Saints and Manannán himself, Máedóc has particular associations with an Island. Fire Deities are often Island Deities, it seems. Perhaps their worship was causing too many forest fires on the mainland, or something. I find it interesting that Caiseal Mhanannán at Ráth Cruachan is the only mainly-stone construction in the complex..

Enabler of the Smith
I mentioned the tight association (sometimes identification) of the Smith God and the Fire God. In many saints' lives from the hagiographical corpus, you will see cameos from a character called the "Gobbán Saor" - generally assumed to be a reflex of the Triple Crafts god Goibniú and his two brothers.

It is in Máedóc's life, however, where we find his possible origin (the Gobbán, not Goibniú):

"Another time Maedoc wanted to build a church, and he could not find a wright..[He] blessed the hands of a man named Cobban, and made him into an excellent wright. [..] And there was no man who could surpass him or his church, and no wright who could surpass him from that time forth"

It's trivial to read "Cobban" as a variation on "Gobbán". It's a little harder to imagine why full credit wasn't always just taken by Máedóc for his subsequent works - unless this recalls Goibniú as a distinct deity enabled by but not replaceable by the Fire Deity themselves.

Tester of Truth
In one of his myths, Manannán has a special goblet that tests truth-telling. Curiously, one of Máedóc's bells has this property (recall, vessels like cauldrons and cups seem to become bells). Another version attributes this property to a book, instead. Regardless, attribution of truth-testing to fire is a widespread concept - consider the phrase "Trial by Fire", which was quite literal in some places and times.

Fire-Clay, Rush Candles
Máedóc's island gives a clay that was widely felt to be protective against Fire, as attested in multiple entries in the NFC-Schools collection.

There's also an attested form of fire-divination associated with Máedóc and Brighid on their adjacent feast-days. Recall that Irish days began at dusk - traditionally, the "days" of Áed and Brighid (matching Imbolg) may have been celebrated over multiple days of Fire celebration, but it's also possible that the feast-days reflect a joint single-day Celebration from Dusk to Dusk.

Other Traditions

A fair was also held on his feast-day (Imbolg Eve) in some places.

Máedóc is credited with introducing a particular type of fish unique to the lake, the Giolla Rua, after transmuting a chicken into a fish and then discarding the bones into the water. It's a minor thing, but Manannán does seem to hint that fish are like cattle to him, once.

The Other Gods

Two revealing interactions with other known deity-saints stand out to me in the Life of Máedóc.

One is when Saint Moling comes to visit - Moling is a fascinating saint who exhibits traits of Aengus and Cúchulainn, though primarily the former. It was this Saint who first made me consider whether Aengus and Cúchulainn could form two sides of a common god-essence, namely the so-called "Horse Twin" gods of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon. I'll have a lot to say about this in future issues.

One interaction of Manannán with Cúchulainn has a ring of rhyme with an event between Máedóc and Moling: in the former, Cúchulainn has an affair with Manannán's wife Fand, though Fand later returns to Manannán. Meanwhile, Moling tries, after Máedóc's death, to sleep in his bed at Ferns, but finds that he is cursed by it and must pray to Máedóc for forgiveness - whereafter none sleep in the bed again. It would not be the first time that I saw a woman being rewritten in Christianised myths as merely a senseless accessory.

This affair-pattern occurs elsewhere for the Young Warrior God and the Fire God, as demonstrated by J.Dolan for Cúchulainn/Manannán/Fand and Mars/Ares/Aphrodite and Krishna/Agni/Svaha (2). I feel that there's also a parallel in the way that Pryderi, the Welsh Aengus or "Peaceable Twin", gets abducted along with Rhiannon, the wife of Manawydan - but in this case, their shared "absconding" is not intentional and it's chaste: Rhiannon is Pryderi's mother.

The other divine interaction I find revealing is where Máedóc posthumously turns up to someone in a Chariot, alongside Saint Brigit, and cautions people to keep their feast days (which are adjacent in the calendar). This one is fascinating because one of Brighid's key aspects is the Dawn Goddess, and one of the theoretical identities of our Áed is the Sun-Fire.

The Dawn Goddess and the Sun are consorts in many religions, with her often riding in the solar chariot across the sky so that she may open the gates of heaven at dusk, too. When they are not consorts, they're still usually close colleagues. Here we have the Dawn Goddess appearing with a putative Solar-fire God in a chariot and reminding people of their shared Festival, Imbolg. Of course, it could just be that they're both Fire gods, too..

Knowledgeable readers will recall that Brighid is married to Eochu Bres (English: "yoh-khu Bresh"), who is also fairly clearly a Sun God - but the role of "Sun God" is fluid and multifaceted. It's possible that Áed is Bres, their behaviour shifting with the season, or that they're distinct and take turns in the role.

One way or another, alongside Áed mac Bricc's flying-chariot shenanigans, it's strongly suggestive that Áed was a Fiery Solar deity. Of course, Brighid was also a Fire and Dawn deity in her own right, and as alluded previously it's possible that the Female Lassair could represent an aspect of Brighid's alongside other Fire-Brighids like Gobnait. If the Sun is Celestial Fire, Áed and Brighid could be appearing here in either role, or both.

International Comparisons

Hephaestus is the Greek god of fire, and also the smith god. Like Manannán's and Goibniú's feast-of-immortality role, he serves drink to the gods at their feasts. Hestia, the Greek god of hearth and sacrificial fire, is apparently entirely distinct from Hephaestus, unlike Brighid, Áed, and the Lassars.

Hindu Agni has many parallels with Manannán, as Dolan has previously explored. Agni also has cross-parallels with Óðinn. Agni's relationship to the Sun-God (and sometimes Creator-God) Surya is very close but often indistinct.

The Norse case includes two key comparisons: Óðinn, who performs many of the narrative roles of Fire, and his brother Loðurr AKA Loki who also performs many Fire Myths such as retrieving the Apples of Immortality, and shares Manannán's trickster personality. I have a theory that Loki also comprises a "Demonised Horse Twin", which accounts for many of his negative mythic roles - but that's off-topic. Loki as Manannán-the-shapeshifting-trickster is fairly easy to see, at any rate. And, possibly they shared a Gender-fluid attribute, if Lasar/Lassair are one and the same.

Wrap-Up

Ferns in Co. Wexford is the home of Máedóc - Áed mac Bricc is associated with Rahugh in Co. Westmeath.

Máedóc's name was widely shortened further and anglicised to "Mogue", and you'll find lots of "Saint Mogue's Wells" around the country that may have been long associated with the Saint/Deity.

The name "Áed" in modern Irish is usually now written "Aodh", but a more common form is "Aidan" (coming from Áedán - little Áed). In original pronunciation Áed would be pronounced with the Irish "caol D" that, depending on your English dialect, may sound like the "dth" in "Width".

Footnotes

1. There are other male "Lasars" besides the female Lassair, but Molaise of Devenish is the most famous of the lot and the one with the most explicit links to Máedóc.

2. I should make it clear that Dolan and I differ on our interpretations here. Dolan identified both the "Suryā's Bridal" pattern and the "Warrior God and Fire-God's-Wife" patterns, and views them as distinct. This is because he considers that Cúchulainn/Mars/Krishna group to belong to a distinct god-type he refers to as "Vishnu Types". Whereas, I interpret Vishnu's incarnations as mostly being Horse-Twins, and I therefore interpret Cú/Mars/Krishna as being counterparts to Aengus/Quirinus/Balarama - to me, the affair with the Fire God's Wife looks like a latter part of the Suryā's Bridal pattern. The comparative results of these interpretations are very similar. Whichever way you slice it, these findings of Dolan's are amazingly useful and surprisingly well-conserved.

Bibliography

• The Second Life of Maedóc in Plummer's Bethada Náem nÉrenn
• The Life of Molaisius of Devenish at MaryJones.us
• The Life of Áed mac Bricc, Translated by Kate Peck. Note the way they associate ÁmB with women and the unusual abortion-miracle, otherwise associated most notably with Brighid.
• Kramrisch, Stella (1981), The Presence of Shiva, Princeston, USA: Cambridge University Press.

Title image today is by Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons. It shows Usil, the Etruscan Sun-Fire God, depicted on a Chariot Fitting.

Coming Up

1st Feb: Imbolc, an overview of my working model of Brighid, focusing a little extra on one of Brighid's parallels, Artemis.

6th Feb: Mél of Ardagh, bearing a small part of Midir's mythology.

11th Feb: Gobnait of Baile Mhuirne, Cork - an Irish Hearth-and Fire Goddess who is rather obviously a more local hypostasis of Brigid in her "Hestia" aspect.

15th Feb: Saint Berach, a Fintan Saint with a key role in the Childhood of Lugh

These may be followed by a break until March, or I may inject an issue on a non-saint character, for kicks.

Patterns in Celtic Comparativism, #4

The Elements of Fire and Water are taken to be opposites in modern understandings of the four-or-five elemental models, but it isn't always that simple. Actually, even the "four-element" model is largely a modern misunderstanding, as a "fifth element" is widespread in European tradition as well as Middle East and Asian traditions.

Various versions of Elemental understanding appear in the oldest written philosophies we have on the subject in Greece and India and beyond, sometimes with attempts to explain how the various elements decline from the original state of things.

Writing on the theories of Thales of Miletius, who held that Water is the original element that the others come from, Aristotle wrote:

..the nutriment of everything is moist, and that heat itself is generated from moisture and depends upon it for its existence (and that from which a thing is generated is always its first principle)"

So, heat from water. On the Indian side of things, the Taittirīya Upaniṣad describes the five "sheaths" of a person or "Purusha" (also a Hindu name for the fiery "Cosmic Person" Creator deity) as five elements: "From this very self did aether come into being; from aether, air; from air, fire; from fire, water, from water, the earth. Again, we have water directly from Fire.

So if Fire being at ease in Water seems an odd concept, it may only be due to our modern ideas about the Classical Elements.