Brychan of Wales is the Creator Deity - father to multitudes of gods, including higher & lower Gwynn-type God-Saints. He aligns with Irish Bile or Tadhg, or Hindu Brahma.

Today is another issue that's getting significant re-writes mid-draft, as I discover new details. It started out as an issue on Brychan as a Welsh parallel to Breoghan - but the more I looked at it, the more it appeared that I was mistaken, and that Brychan is closer to a Welsh Bile/Tadhg/Cíar - the "Demiurge" creator I covered in a previous issue. However, due to differences in how the Welsh euhemerised their Gods as Saints, this one is allowed to have somewhere between 10 and 63 children with various wives, while our Cíaráns are celibate..

Nevertheless, I think the nomenclature is still a bit murky, and I've decided to include some of my previous draft on Breoghan and "Monism" as today's "Patterns" section. Enjoy!

If you enjoy this or find it interesting, do me a favour: share it with someone(s) else who might like it, too.

On to Brychan..

It's Gonna Be Messy!

The origin of the name Brychan is seemingly very unclear - his name could come from Welsh meaning "Hill", or alternately "Spotted", or it could be a borrow from Irish meaning "Spotted", or it could be from an Irish name "Broccán" meaning "little Badger". But, when you look at the Saints name Broccán some of them are also called "Brogan" which is very close to Breoghan, meaning something like "Exalted" and cognate with Brighid, but also Brian and... ugh, what a mess.

Let's cheat: The name Brychan is given as the source of the kingdom he was based in. I declare that it's unlikely that the place-name is borrowed from Irish. And therefore that Brychan, an ur-ancestor of Welsh Saints-or-Divinities, was probably not named with an Irish borrow-name. This was, in my opinion, an invention of Hagiographers painting an arc of Christianisation from the West.

That leaves us with "Brych" which could still be related to either "Hill", "Spotted", or "Badger". Two of these are already perhaps associated with the Celtic Demiurgic god - "Hills" or "Towers" or "Mounds" being an association of this god in various religions, and Badgers being a thing we find in the Irish equivalent, as previously discussed. But Brych could also simply come from the same stem as Brighid/Breoghan, while describing a Demiurgic God: that's how it turned out in Hinduism, after all, with Prajapati being renamed "Brahma" (see "Patterns").

However, none of my reasoning depends on his name - which is fortunate, because my knowledge of Welsh is not great, and I'm not a Philologist. Suffice it to say I believe it's a native name, and that it aligns well with either the Celtic Demiurge or the Celtic Absolute/Monad.

SO MANY KIDS

Brychan has a very variable constellation of wives and children, which would be pretty weird if he were a real person being recorded in poetry and genealogical tracts as the early Hagiographers would have us believe. On the other hand, it's exactly what you'd expect of a set of regional mythological traditions being compressed into a pseudo-historical, euhemerised God-Saint.

My first reading of Brychan was in the Life of Saint Nectan (who's cognate with the Irish god Nechtan and will get his own issue (1)). It paints a hilarious and pitiable account of how he wound up with 24 children:

There was in the further parts of Wales a man [..] named Brecannus, from whom the province itself derived the name [..] This Breccanus therefore, before he had begotten of his wife Gladwisa either son or daughter, went into Ireland. He remained [there 24 years ..]. But afterwards [..] he returned to Wales, and there found his wife still living. After some time, as God had fore-ordained, although he had not proposed any such thing himself, he knew his wife, of whom afterwards he begat twenty-four sons and daughters..

This is presented as miraculous; he slept with her that one time and God hit them with all the children he'd dodged for the preceding 24 years. Yikes!

24 Kids sounds like a lot, but other traditions give him 63. Who are these kids? Look at the names in the Wikipedia article and you'll see a lot of tantalisingly similar names to known Brythonic gods (Arianwen, Gwen, the possibly gender-bent Mabon), and some that just are known gods, such as Lludd and Nectan.

But, if this guy's just got lots of kids, and some of them might be gods, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's the Demiurge, right? Even if he's a god, lots of gods have god-kids? This is true, but there's a certain conception-drama that consistently belongs to a certain set of gods including the Demiurge, and we can observe that drama for Brychan. His participation suggests that he is the Demiurge.

Fionn mac Cumhaill, Fionn Barra, and Saint Cadoc

In the conception story of Fionn mac Cumhaill, his father (a sort of forerunner of Fionn himself, to all appearances) elopes with Muirne ("neck" but maybe relating to the sea), the daughter of Tadhg ("Badger"; a recurring Demiurge-name), and they have a son who'll eventually be known as "Fionn", associated with spears, stags, and wisdom.

In the conception story of Fionn Barra (probably from the same Fionn-saint cluster as Berach (2)), his father Amergin (a "peaceable Fionn" name) sleeps with the servant-girl of the king against the king's explicit order, and they beget a son who becomes known as Fionn.

In the case of the Fionn/Fire trio who seem to separate Earth and Sky in the story of the Milesians, their father is "Galamh" (AKA Míl Espagne), a fierce and Fionn-ish character in his own right. His father is Bíle - meaning "Sacred Tree", a strong demiurgic symbol, as Taliesin's Map has indicated by comparison to Egyptian and Vedic theology.

There are several distinctive conception-patterns for the Fionn-types, and this is one of them (3). It sees a "Fionn-ish" Father, usually fierce, such as Cumhaill or Galamh/Míl, who's either son or son-in-law to a Demiurge, and whose son is the protagonist Fionn. In the original godly version, the parents of the Fionn are probably both offspring of the Demiurge, but in the euhemerised or incarnated versions of the myth only one of them is.

Now, let's look at another character who might be a Saint Fionn, (or should I say Gwyn! (4)): Saint Cadoc. This saint is pretty fierce, as saints go, and he's associated with hunting, wisdom, and deer - all very Fionn/Gwyn styled. He even has a myth where a powerful senior saint, David, has a great big party and doesn't invite him: really reminding me of the "Daksha Yajna" story of Hinduism where Shiva (Fionn) is snubbed by Daksha and gets wrathful about it. Oh, and his feast-day, Sept.25, is the same as Saint Finbarr.

Cadoc's father, Gwynllyw (note the Gwyn name..), is also very fierce and Gwyn-like. Rebuffed by her father in his advances, he seizes his future wife Gwladys by force, and they have for a son Cadoc. And Gwladys' father? Our saint-du-jour, Brychan.

That gives us a pattern very similar to Fionn mac Cumhaill - a fierce father is denied marriage to the daughter of a Demiurge-type god, seizes her by force, and they beget a Fionn/Gwyn type son.

In fact, there's another detail: while Cumhall dies in the story of Fionn's conception, his mother is threatened with burning by her father Tadhg until the high king, Conn Cétcathach, intercedes to grant her protection. In Fionn Barra's story, the king, Tigernach, also plans to burn Amergin and Fionn Barra's unnamed mother, until a miracle from God intercedes. In the story of Gwynllyw and Gwladys, they are fleeing from Brychan when King Arthur intercedes, forcing peace (though he contemplates stealing her for himself first). In each case, the conflict against the conception of the Fionn/Gwyn type is resolved by the intercession of a higher-power third party king.

This all matches the conserved pattern I've laid out in the "Patterns" section also: very frequently, the Fionn-type gods are grandsons to the Demiurge, via an intermediate character who also resembles a Fionn-type god but with less main-character-energy (credit to Taliesin's Map again for this pattern).

This is a conception format that's informative for Cadoc, sure - but it's also informative towards Brychan's identity. If he otherwise looks like a possible Cíar/Bíle type god, and he also takes part in this conception myth, that seems to confirm it. Brychan's a demiurge.

A Brychan Duplicate? Gwynllyw's dad, Glywys

Speculatively, the Fionn or Gwyn type at the most primordial moment is assaulting his own father-deity, who is in turn the father of all things.. including the woman he wants to elope with.

The Vedic/Hindu version of this story has Rudra (AKA Shiva) attacking a father god, sometimes his father, who is engaged in taboo sexual activity with his own daughter. But it doesn't seem to be a rivalry over her - perhaps the earlier Celtic versions do express a rivalry, with the Son taking his consort by force from their shared father: indeed, there are versions of Brychan's story where Gwladys is his wife, not his daughter. Perhaps in a primordial version, she was (temporarily) both?

This is normal god-stuff, but tends to get obscured or cleaned up in hagiography, and is usually abandoned entirely in incarnated god-myths because it's not necessary and nobody likes it. One way to clean these things up is to duplicate the parent, so the two consorts are no longer siblings.

So, when the hagiographised "Brychan" has his daughter Gwladys stolen by Gwynllyw, what are the odds that this aggressor was his own son? There is actually a small hint that he might have been.

Gwynllyw's father is Glywys, another king whose name is the origin, or is derived, from the land he rules. And Glywys has 24 children - a prodigious number, and equal to one reckoning of Brychan's. It's not much, but it's interesting; two kings named for their land, with 24 children. One has a fierce son, the other a beautiful daughter, and after a violent elopement together, they have a Fionn/Gwyn type son. Perhaps Glywys was Brychan?

The Other Children of Brychan..

..are for the most part unknown to me, so far. I haven't been immersed in the Welsh saints yet except insofar as they might be informative to my work on the Irish ones, for example with Saint Nectan. At a glance, I note that some of them look corrupted, like the poorly documented "Saint Mabon" (a name meaning "Great Son", strongly associated with Mabon ap Modron) who's speculated to have originally been a male character by several more modern hagiographers, such as Baring-Gould.

However, I will observe that there are a high proportion of Welsh saints from this cluster who are permitted to be Saints and king/queens, which is in contrast to the Irish pattern of duplicating Gods into Saints and separate Noble versions of them. The Welsh characters might therefore have better odds of being less garbled in some stories, if they're allowed (like Brychan) to do normal godly things like marrying and having kids, and making war on one another.

Wrap-Up

As mentioned, the name "Brychan" is of obscure origin. Is it Broccán (little Badger)? Or an Irish or Welsh word for "spotted"? Or is it related to Breoghan?

As to locations, Brychan is of course connected to the kingdom that shared his name, Brycheiniog, whose capital was Talgarth, today in modern-day Powys. Talgarth is the supposed site of the battle from which Gwynllyw eloped with Gwladys.

Footnotes

1. Oh yikes, I just realised Nectan's feast day is the same as Moling's, and I have so much to say about both of them.. I guess one of them will get bumped up-or-down-calendar a bit, or maybe I'll dispense with a "Patterns" and try to do a double-barrel issue?
2. Fionn Barra, AKA Finbar, will definitely get an issue too (Sep 25th?): he really helps firm up the Ber* group of Fionn-saints, and he's the patron-God-saint of my home City and University.
3. The other Fionn-type birth myth will get attention on one of Laisrén's feast days - it's the sort you observe with the conception of Mongán, where a (Fire?) god impregnates a woman while her husband is away. Possibly these myths were originally part of one ur-myth, but so far I've only seen myths of one type or the other for Fionn-type characters.
4. I try to hew to Irish nomenclature when talking about Irish gods (e.g. "Fionn Type"), rather than following Taliesin's Map's practice of modelling on Vedic theonyms (e.g. "Rudra Type"). But as this is a Welsh comparison, I'm trying to use Welsh names also without being confusing, out of respect. The Welsh parallel of Fionn/Finn is Gwyn - the two names are perfect cognates.

Bibliography

• Doble, Gilbert H. (1964) "The Life of Saint Nectan - Translated from the Manuscript Recently Discovered In The Ducal Library at Gotha". 3rd Ed. Bideford: Polypress Ltd.
• Life of Saint Gwynllyw, on MaryJones.us
• Life of Saint Cadog, on MaryJones.us

Coming Up

15th Apr: Ruadhán of Lorrha, apparently the Irish Prometheus. 23rd Apr: Ibar mac Lugna, a mysterious pre-Patrick character, possibly representing the earliest terrestrial Fionn-type. 30th Apr: Bealtaine Special: Mórrígna, and Rogue Suns 1st May: Cellach of Killala & Muiredach/Cúchongeilt, Divine Twins

Patterns in Celtic Comparativism, #12: Monism and Absolutes

As alluded to in previous issues, there's good reason to think the Irish religion, like Hinduism, was monist. Monist, meaning that the universe and everything in it, including the gods, derive from (and are still part of) one universal thing - The Monad, The Absolute.

This is in contrast to how many, perhaps most, Abrahamic sects see the world - as a thing created by but distinct from God. Some sects, such as Gnostic flavours of Christianity, come down somewhere in between: that God was busily unfolding a perfect universe from the Monad of themself, when one of God's emanations F-ed up and made an imperfect universe (separate from God), and now it's a whole mess that needs to be cleaned up, probably by Jesus.

In Hinduism, probably the most widely practiced contemporary Monistic religion, the name of this Absolute, this Monad, is "Brahman". Note: not the same name as Brahma (AKA Prajapati, the Demiurge) - Brahma is downstream of Brahman, with a variable number of steps in between.

Now, the Absolute is the pre-pre-cosmic union of all. Everything is it, and it is everything. Personifying the Absolute and giving it pronouns and a name shouldn't make sense. Praying to the Absolute, of which you and your problems are part, shouldn't make sense. But, that hasn't stopped plenty of religions from naming the absolute, as with Brahman - though when praying, Monist religions tend to pray to a more concrete emanation or aspect.

So, how can I say that the Irish (/Celts?) were Monists? Credit for that discovery goes to the Taliesin's Map folks, who have found in the Story of the Milesians a story-arc that closely matches an expected Creation-Myth, but also an etymylogical link connecting "Brahman" to the figure at the beginning of that story, who begets everyone else: Breoghan, ancestor of the Milesians.

As patriarch of the Milesians, Breoghan has a son "Bíle" (the Demiurge), who has a son Galamh. Galamh (AKA Míl) has sons who invade Ireland, and violently assault a triumvirate of King/Queen pairs, consisting of three grandsons of the Sky Father (An Dagda) and three Earth-Goddesses. Dolan of TM considers this a "Division of Earth and Sky" - a motif that turns up all over Proto-Indo-European and wider mythology. It appears to be a key element of the P.I.E Creation Stories, and the perpetrator usually corresponds to the Fionn (or Rudra) type. By the by: the Milesians are not, in my opinion, the only example of a "Division of Earth and Sky" story in Irish myth. I'll probably raise the other example in a future issue.

If you map the Milesian myth onto Norse (for example), you'd align the three brothers with Óðinn, Vili, and Vé - the ones who separate Ymir into Sky and Earth. Above those, you have Borr, who'd align with Galamh (AKA Míl). And above him you'd have Búri, who aligns with Bile. But.. where's the figure above Búri?

In Greek, you'd have Cronus dividing Earth and Sky, and his father is (unusually) the Sky and Earth themselves, and in the Orphic religion his grand-daddy was Protogonos.. but when you search upstream of Protogonos you don't find a named Monad..

However, with the Milesians, there seems to be a clear Monad: Bile has a narratively inert father who's the start of the story - and that Father's name "Breoghan" appears to be cognate with Brahman. Both names seem to derive from the Proto-Indo-European stem "brih", seemingly the same stem as Brighid.

Now, when a Euhemerist takes the Ineffable Monad and tries to make it into an "effable" character, the result will often look very similar to the Demiurge. Indeed, the Vedic Prajapati seems to have gradually been renamed "Brahma", a name very similar to "Brahman". Perhaps this is why Brychan, a Demiurgic character, has a name so similar to the Gaelic Monad - the Welsh religion may have simply given them similar or identical names.

I'm intrigued that Brighid and Breoghan share a name-stem, and I wonder whether the "celestial" goddess Brighid (who's featured heavily in three previous issues) was seen as a personified continuation of Breoghan, or whether at her most primordial she was Breoghan. I'd be interested to explore that in future, if enough signs come together to inform me one way or another.

Will I get to say more about Breoghan in the future? Who's to say.. there are a few possible Brogans, but there's little to identify them clearly. How could there be? A Monad is a big, confusing thing to euhemerise as a Saint, after all.

As compensation for now, let me offer you this: the name "Brian" comes from a root word for "High" or "Noble"... the same origin, in all likelihood, as Brighid and Breoghan and Brahman. So if you know any "Brians", you can tell them they're probably named after the Irish Brahman.