The Saints Cíarán represent the Irish Bíle or Cernunnos, the Creator-Deity or "Demiurge" who establishes nature and provides its generative power. Today we look at "old" Cíarán of Saighir.

I've mentioned Cíarán before - at least one of them, anyway. The two Cíaráns are similar in theme and share a great deal - it's my view that they correspond to the same underlying deity, and I'll treat them as such. But more than that, they have an intriguing continuity with several other gods.

Because Cíarán's primary theological role seems to correspond to the Hindu Prajapati, or the Greek Phanes/Protogonon, I call him a "Creator Deity" or a "Demiurge". But don't let that suggest that he fades into obscurity afterwards; like the Hindu god "Brahma" (approximately the later form of Prajapati), Cíarán takes an ongoing role in temporal and even political affairs among the latter-day gods and even humanity.

Today's "Patterns" concerns the concept of the Demiurge. It's going to be a month for Creation-Mythos.

The Demiurge and their Forerunner

The business of Creation is complicated - usually there isn't one god who's wholly responsible for it all. Even the Abrahamic god seems to be referred to in the plural in Genesis! However, there is often a god who's the first to directly create the sensible world we inhabit. This "Demiurge" may begin creating on their own, or as encouraged or prefigured by a forerunning Cosmic deity. A forerunner might create the "Cosmos" in an abstract sense, with the Demiurge giving it sensible form from the inside thereafter.

In the case of Cíarán of Saighir, he leaves Ireland at age 30 and spends another 30 years in Rome. But he meets Patrick then, who directs him to go to Ireland and set up his foundation at a particular well, promising that he'll turn up in another 30 years to meet him there (Cíarán is one of the longer-lived saints). I suggest that we read Cíarán's establishment of Christian worship close to the centre of Ireland as being a metaphor for the work of Creation right in the middle of Ireland (where else?).

Patrick, I've said before, is primarily the Irish Lugh-saint. But that's a bit odd; how can Lugh, the "Perfected Late Arriving Sovereign", have a role in the pre-creation scene where our Demiurge (Cíarán) is getting sent down to create the world? Short answer: Lugaid and Lugh may be usually distinct characters, but it's no accident that the names are used synonymously. It looks like the Celtic understanding of the "Late Arriving Sovereign" was that he was the Cosmic Person, finally incarnate in the world. And Patrick seems to play both roles - sometimes acting as a distant director of things prior to his own arrival (nationally and regionally!), and sometimes arriving in person as the bringer of victory, law, and peace.

Read this way, Patrick sending Cíarán to Ireland looks awfully like the Cosmic Man sending the Demiurge ahead of himself into the world. And this Demiurge begins their work close to the geographical and spiritual heart of the Holy Island, Ireland.

The Sacred Centre and the First Animals

Given this directive, Cíarán goes to Ireland and dutifully sets up at a particular well, as instructed by Patrick and guided by a magic bell. He establishes his foundation at "Saighir" (not quite as close to Uisnech as Clonmacnoise).

Right as he's starting his work, a great Boar turns up and helps him dig and construct things. Boars are a symbol primarily of two deities in Irish Myth; Cían, and Aengus. Cíarán is neither of these deities; rather, we expect him to be the creator of animals from the beginning. It's possible that this Boar is his first creation. It's also possible that this Boar is, in fact, Cían or Aengus - both deities seem to interact closely with Cíarán in some way. Cían in particular seems to share close identity with Cíarán, and I think they show that the Celtic religions saw the "Cernunnos" Demiurge and the "Wild Fringes / Green Man" god as being aspects of the same essence (2).

Anyway, after this Boar has helped build out the site, a few other animals join as "monks". They are Fox, Badger, and Wolf (and in one version, "Doe"). Fox reverts to his naughty foxy ways, and runs off with something precious belonging to Cíarán: usually his shoes. Badger is dispatched to bring Fox back - he either trusses him up or maims him horribly, and drags him back to Cíarán in either case. Cíarán then makes Fox repent his ways and rejoin as a well-behaved monk.

We've already seen how Boar could be interpreted as an emanation of Cíarán's, Cían. Now, these other animals may also reflect emanations in the same way. An old-Irish word for "Fox" is "Crimthann", which is the birth name of Colmcille - whose overall aspect suggests a lower emanation of the Demiurge (compare to Hindu Daksha). An old-Irish word for Badger is "Tadhg", a name already suggested as a name of the Demiurge by Dolan (3). That's potentially three of Cíarán's animal-monks who have names connecting directly to the divine character of Cíarán himself.

These aren't the only animals that may be the first of their kinds. When Cíarán's later human monks complain of not having food or clothing, he provides both by creating Pigs and Sheep, and it's stated that these animals produce huge numbers of offspring - it's easily read that they are progenitors of the whole species.

Curiously, though Cíarán provides the means of producing clothing for others, and both Cíaráns have myths that associate them with their mothers' fibrecrafts, Cíarán of Saighir is clearly stated to never have worn woven cloths - instead, he only wears furs or pelts.

The Creator, The Horned One, The Wanderer, The Moon, The Death God

Cíarán of Saighir is, unsurprisingly, a close associate of the other Cíarán - it's likely that they were offshoots of the same original character, after all. It's important to remember this, because these characters are clearest when combined. Cíarán of Saighir has the story of him being the first sent to "Ireland", while Cíarán of Clonmacnoise has the myth of setting up essentially at Uisnech, and the only place in Ireland where you'll find iconography matching the continental god Cernunnos.

I wouldn't be the first to suggest that Cíarán is the Irish Cernunnos. That honour belongs, as far as I know, to Mike Greenberg of MythologySource.com. Dolan's own work on Cernunnos identified a compelling link between Cernunnos and Daksha Prajapati (4). Cíarán being the only figure associated with a carving of Cernunnos in Ireland is telling.

I alluded already that there's a linkage between Cíarán and another wildling-fertility god, Cían - whose saintly alter-ego is named Coemgen. The linkages between these two are so deep they imply that they were understood to be faces of the same essential god. The birth-myths of the Cíaráns, the Coemgens, Cían, and Conchobhar mac Nessa, are a tangle of shared parent-types and birth-myth patterns. Cíarán of Clonmacnoise wills his bell to Coemgen of Glendalough, suggesting a sort of continuity. A number of matching narrative events, such as a problematic interaction with a "Dímma" and a blackberry bush that produces out of season, occur in Cíarán of Saighir and Coemgen of Glendalough's lives.

But for all that, they remain distinct - the Cíans are loner wanderers who enforce law on the fringes, only later settling down to create their own permanent habitations in remote places. Whereas the Cíaráns are central, mostly static, and tightly linked to the stories of Kings and Scions.

If Cíarán and Cían are so closely linked, then I'm immediately wondering who their third face will be: the Celts aren't known for having dyads, but triples. My main candidate for the third face is one of my favourites: the Moon-Immortality god, Midir, best known in his Saintly form as "Brendan" (but also as "Mobhí"). The Moon-Immortality god, representing the ingress of the ultimate divinity in consumable sacred form as the immortality drink of the gods, is a recurrent associate of the Demiurge and the Fringe-Wildling god (Cían) in other religions.

But, the Moon Immortality god also seems, in many religions, to be associated or identified with the underworld god, and the underworld god in turn to the Perfected Sovereign God - Dionysus and Hades were considered identified by many in the ancient world, for example, while Hades and Zeus were brothers and part of a triad with Poseidon. In the Hindu Mahabharata, it is an incarnation of the "Underworld and Righteousness God" Yama/Dharma who serves the role played in other epics by the late-coming perfected sovereign, such as Meneleus in the Iliad, and Lugh in the Battle of Maigh Tuired. There's this undercurrent connecting these deities together that seems to follow them from religion to religion.

In the Irish case, the Underworld God has two primary names: Donn, and Diarmaid. While Cíarán of Saighir interacts with Brendans (the Moon-Immortality God), Cíarán of Clonmacnoise also interacts closely with the High King Diarmait, who acts out a mythic role very similar to the Hindu underworld god Yama/Dharma (5). This won't be the last hint that the Irish Moon-Immortality and Underworld gods were related - We'll explore some more when I cover Saints Brendan and Mobhí and their parallels in the Ulster Cycle.

That makes for a mess of a triad, but it's very interesting to meditate upon - Cíarán is, appropriately enough, at the heart of a web of gods that span the temporal and the spiritual, life and death, beginnings and endings. It might be possible to even draw out a pair of triads - one for the lively solar aspects of each, another for their darker lunar/cthonic aspects.

Interactions with Powerful Kings

I mentioned how Cíarán of Clonmacnoise interacts closely with the "Doomed Sovereign / Underworld God" Diarmaid - Cíarán of Saighir meanwhile interacts primarily with an Aengus mac Nadfraech, King of Munster. As far as I can tell, these are quite distinct characters and shouldn't be read as duplicates.

Aengus' name immediately suggests that he represents something more like the Peaceable Divine Twin type, though we don't seem to see that familiar archetype play out in this case. He's not young, scrappy, and out to prove himself, and he's not in a supportive role; he's a mature king.

This Aengus' grandson, who becomes a foster-son of Cíarán's, is Carthach (the elder), whose own student and namesake Carthach (AKA Mochuda) does act out a myth matching one of Vishnu's incarnations (which, for the most part, are Divine Twin mythos in my opinion). These two Carthachs in immediate succession might reflect a single character who's being drawn out from an earlier to a later generation, with a little death in the middle to make it more believable.

The names of Aengus mac Nadfraech's other offspring are mostly also recurrent god-names, which suggests to me that this Aengus is best thought of as a minor "Great Father" deity, rather than a classic Divine Twin.

Cíarán also interacts with a King Aillil of Cashel (note: a seat of the Munster King), in a similarly bivalent fashion - sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. At times, the myths seem like duplicates - references are made to a grandson of Aillil who has a similar relationship to Cíarán as Carthach, for example, and I wonder if Aengus and Aillil were originally one character who was later divided in the Hagiographical account.

This Aengus->Aillil transition wouldn't be unique: Aillil Olom, a demonic king who rapes the goddess Áine and kills her father, was named Aengus before this pivotal crime. This precipitates a demonic shift in his aspect, and triggers a feud with the gods that ends in the destruction of his family and legacy.. seeming in fact Apocalyptic in tone - we'll return to this when we deal with Lugaid in future issues.

In fact, Aillils may often associate with faces of Cíarán: Aillil mac Máta of Connaught is a long-running rival of Conchobhar mac Nessa.

Both of these foregoing Aillils take on a "Father Deity" aspect, and the Aillil of Connaught even has a death-scene that strongly resembles the Daksha / Cernunnos death scene identified by Dolan. Perhaps part of the Aengus-to-Aillil transition is a sort of usurpation of Cíarán's own role?

There's a lot to say about this Aengus/Aillil axis, this Peaceable-Trickster-Twin to Illegitimate Usurper vector, and whether it indicates parallels in the Norse mythosphere that would help explain that most infamously confusing deity, Loki. But I'll leave it to another time.

Ambiguous Endings

The Demiurge, when they remain in the world, generally does so indefinitely; Brahma doesn't die off, for example. The Demiurge is, in a spiritual sense, the space and time of creation itself - they die with the end of the world. Cíarán of Saighir of course does die, because he's being rendered as a human for Christian reasons. It's not a very narratively consequential death, nor a very distinctive one in comparison, so as far as the death itself, I'll leave it there.

The only detail that's interesting to me is that Finnian comes to visit when he hears Cíarán's about to "kick his clogs" - this might be interesting only because of the usually oppositional nature of these deities, but the Cíaráns and Finnian/Fintan characters seem generally to get along.

This stands in contrast to one of the other faces of this Deity-Type, "Cairbre", a name that at least regularly ends up in lethal or highly-consequential opposition to the Fionn types. That is, one of the expected ways that a Creator deity might die (if at all) is by the hand of the Fionn types. But as I said, the high-creator seems to rarely if ever actually die - instead, lower emanations of the creator do the dying. This makes Cairbre more like our "Daksha Prajapati" analogue; the lower creator that conflicts with the Rudra/Fionn type.

Among the Saints, the main deity of this class seems to be Colmcille, whose opposition to Finnian leads to his exile from Ireland.. though as we saw in the issue for Berach (another of the apparent Fionn-type saint-groups), Colmcille finds welcome with Berach when nobody else will have him. So, these gods and saints have a highly elliptical orbit - sometimes buddies, sometimes mortal foes. But while Colmcille's esoteric identity with the Cíaráns is indicated in many subtle ways in the various lives of both saint-groups, they are not the same. And Cíarán seems to have a generally chiller relationship with the Fionns.

Wrap-Up

Cíarán is still a popular name in Ireland - there's no difficulty there. Tadhg, too, is still a poplar name in Ireland. Crimthann and Cairbre are not, but perhaps they're due a comeback. Bile was probably never a name given to a kid - it literally means "Sacred Tree" and, like Breoghan, was probably viewed as a bit sacriligious to use for a person. Whether this indicates some relative positioning of the names in terms of cosmic order, who can say?

Sacred sites: obviously, Saighir, or Saint Cíarán's/Kieran's well and sacred tree. But, reading the hagiography will reveal a few interesting alternative sites, too. The existence of the river Brosna is attributed to Cíarán in the first life in Bethada Náem nÉrenn by Charles Plummer, for example, while a rock in the sea where he prays with his foster-mother Cuinche is sacred to both.

Any sacred tree or Bile might be considered sacred to the god who may have "Bile" for a name - the tree is a symbol of creation, the pillar upholding the sky from the earth, the omphalos. Ireland does still have its share of sacred trees, even if we don't tend to call them "Bilí" anymore - usually these are dedicated to other "Saints" but they are nevertheless sacred trees, and would have some association with the god of Sacred Trees per-se.

Footnotes

1. "Purusha" is a complicated concept that goes further than just the Creator-deity Purusha. In this document I'm discussing only the latter.
2. But where's Cían coming from? Surely Dian Cécht hasn't arrived on the scene yet? Well, maybe he has.. Dian Cécht may be closely aligned with Cathbad (though not, I think, identified), and the birth-myths of Conchobhar generally agree that Cathbad is involved somehow. These gods fall into a category of "Divine Preceptor" and often seem to be emanations from Lugaid when they appear at the earlier or cosmic layer, even if officially Dian Cécht appears only later as a son of An Dagda. See also: the Adityas of the Hindu pantheon, who include parallels for Cían, the Divine Smith, the Sun God, and the Divine Preceptor.
3. If you know your Irish, you might have heard "Broc" as the word for "Badger", but Tadhg is another archaic word for Badger.
4. Dolan's work identifying "Fionn and the Man in the Tree" and Derg Corra as the Cernunnos myth are compelling enough, but there's a closely parallel myth "Lomna's Head" that has Coirpre/Cairbre as the name of the Cernunnos character. This name is the more recurrent: Cairbres turn up regularly, and Fionn's ultimate foe is Cairbre Lifechair, with whom he has a battle incited by a woman, in which Cairbre dies and Fionn and his Fianna are forever diminished.
5. "Diarmaid" as a name for the Irish "Yama" is also something demonstrated very comprehensively by Dolan and Co in their comparisons of Diarmaid and Gráinne to other gods of the "Yama" type.

Bibliography

• Plummer, Charles (1922) "Bethada Náem nÉrenn", Part 5: "The Life of Old Ciaran of Saighir" (1), Available on UCC Celt
• Plummer, Charles (1922) "Bethada Náem nÉrenn", Part 6: "Life of Ciaran of Saighir" (2), Available on UCC Celt
• O'Grady, Standish (1892) "Silva Gadelica (I-XXXI): Life of S. Kieran of Saighir." Available at Maryjones.us
• Bartninkas, Vilius (2023) "Traditional and Cosmic Gods in Later Plato and the Early Academy". Cambridge University Press (I've not read this yet but it looks very valuable!)

Coming Up

13th Mar: Mochoemóg, the first of our "Cían" saints, a related deity who's more mobile, closer to the fringes of society, than Cíarán. 17th Mar: Patrick, Ireland's most famous Saint - Lugh and Lugaid, a complex deity who bridges the beginning and end. Complicated by being one of the few whose narrative was framed on a real person.. 30th Mar: Crónán (AKA Mochua) - the Healer of the Gods, Dían Cécht.

Patterns in Celtic Comparativism, #8: Creation and the Demiurge

It is my view that the original story of the Irish Creation Myth, and the Welsh for that matter, is gone. However, that doesn't mean we can't look at what we have and see the outlines of how it went. In fact, if you have the right framework, we can see more than just outlines - it may someday be possible to reconstruct enough of the myth's narrative that we can re-write a fairly faithful rendering.

J.Dolan's work on reconstructing the Celtic Creation Myth pattern is already highly informative. Basing his work on the Coming of the Milesians, and on the Welsh Second Branch of the Mabinogion, he's already uncovered compelling signs of a multi-layer Creation Myth descending from a single personification of the "Absolute", akin to the Hindu "Brahman". In fact, the Irish name for this Absolute, "Breoghan", appears to be cognate with the same Proto-Indo-European root as that of Brahman, both names remaining outwardly similar after all this time.

Along the declination from this absolute, we see other names that can be linked to international Creation Story motifs; the sacred tree and the cosmic water, for example, are motifs that appear alongside the Hindu creator deities yet also appear as names of Breoghan's near desdendants. Dolan lays it all out quite clearly in his videos - I'll leave it to him rather than re-hashing it.

But what shape does this creation-myth seem to take? Briefly, we have a declination of steadily more specific deities from an Absolute (Breoghan), probably passing through a Cosmic Person deity (Lugaid or Delbaeth (or, I conjecture, Labraid)), and then through a male and female aspect of the Cosmic Person or Precosmic Scene we get a Demiurge (Bile, Cíarán).

The Cosmic Person (Dolan refers to them as "Purusha" after the Vedic/Hindu name) often appears to be a Voltron-like assemblage of their forerunner deities, and this can lead to confusing patterns of supernumery parentage, or a character who literally seems to be composed of different parts. This character may also fan-out immediately afterwards into their component deity-types again, and if this gets hagiographised into a parent-child graph, you end up with a mess like the various "Delbaeths" in the family-tree of the early Tuatha Dé Danann gods.

The Demiurge, on the other hand, tends to have a single father and a single mother. Though the accounts of who these parents are may vary myth-to-myth, it seems to me that the fathers tend to belong to a class of Solar-Fire aspected gods such as the Cosmic Craftsman (having the name "Beóán" or "Beoanus" or similar, rather than the more familiar Goibniú we meet later), the Divine Preceptor (Cathbad), the Divine Healer (Dian Cécht), or Lugaid directly. The mothers meanwhile either have names that suggest Cosmic Water deities, or they're also Lugaid. Sex or Gender means very little prior to the Demiurge, and even the Demiurge is often hermaphroditic or without sex characteristics, even if they are generally referred to with male pronouns.

At any rate, the Demiurge is then responsible for Creation, even though we no longer have accounts of the Germanic or Celtic act-of-creation itself - probably because Christianity. What we do have are shared myths in how this Creator's offspring behave thereafter. For example, the Irish Bile's grandsons include Eber Finn, Amergin, and Érimón, who perform a series of actions that seem to correspond closely to the grandsons of Búri in the Norse myth, or the grandson of Phanes in the Greek (Cronus), etcetera; these grandsons (sometimes direct sons) are the ones who divide the union of Earth and Sky to create the liveable habitat-space that we now enjoy.

In many cases, the Demiurge fades into obscurity after creating the cosmos. Phanes, for example, is basically absent from Greek myth after creating the world and the lower emanations of godhood. However, it is not always so; the Hindu Prajapati has many lower emanations who remain as significant gods and narrative characters, and the later god "Brahma" usurped much of Prajapati's role and developed into the "Creator" part of the Trimurti - a cosmic and high god, but one who is still immanent and approachable. It seems the Irish, at least, had the same idea; Cíaráns remain present in the world and interact frequently with the other gods, and they had several sites of worship. Their association with other gods who may share identity, such as Cían and perhaps even the Brendans (Midir), makes them remain relevant and immanent in Irish pseudohistorical myth, too.

Even in mythologies where they don't openly stay present and relevant, there can still be hints: the creative power of the Demiurge might re-occur in later manifestations as a fertile or erotic aspect, and the distant, peri-cosmic nature of the Demiurge might lead to a later emanation as a god who simply lives on the margins. For example, Hymn six of the Orphic Hymns, to Phanes, has: "For this I call you Phanes, I call you Lord Priapos", apparently identifying the peri-cosmic Creator God with the weird garden-god with the giant, uncontrolled phallus. Priapus' iconography and godly function looks suspiciously like that of Pan (or the Pan-like parts of Hermes), whose Irish parallel is Cían. Cían, then, has a great many links that suggest partial identity with Cíarán, bringing us full circle - it seems that the Irish Saints again can be seen to support patterns found elsewhere for these god-types.