Kiss Me, I'm an Irish Sovereignty Goddess

Ah, Saint Patrick’s Day… The day when everyone gets to be Irish and you remember you never actually liked corned beef or cabbage.

You know all about St, P., right? He’s the fellow who drove out the snakes out of Ireland (though there never actually were any there in the first place).  He’s the one who taught the poor, ignorant natives about the holy trinity with the use of local flora. He’s the bloke who gave people across the world a reason to spill beer on people on March 17.

For as long as the modern pub-going can set can remember, these stories of snakes and shamrocks have served well enough over the requisite round (or six) of Guinness. And yet, I wonder… 

We live in an age when we’re called to question the relentless progress of colonization, to consider indigenous rights and stories, and to ask whether the representatives of the church were always acting on righteous authority.

This St. Paddy’s Day, what if raise our glasses to a different Irish story?

In our complicated times, the simple savior myths rarely meet the diverse needs of the collective. When history looks more like a Celtic knot than an upright cross, we might need to drink to stories that are a little more… serpentine.

Four Brothers and a Goddess

Once upon a time (or “fadó fadó” as they say as Gaeilge), four royal brothers were out hunting in the wildest, most remote part of Ireland. The stag they chased took them deeper into the wilderness than they’d ever been before. As night fell and they sought shelter in the forest, there was no food nor water nor comfort to be found.

Oh, what luck! They came across a well. But, just as the eldest brother was about to reach down and take a drink, a loathsome hag appeared. Hairy chin, pocked face, milky eye… the full nightmare of the aging feminine stood before them. 

“I am the guardian of this sacred well,” she announced. “Ye can drink all that you like, but first… a kiss.”

This particular young man was accustomed to the pretty young things who hung about the castle. He’d rather die of thirst than give himself to such a wizened crone. He told her so and went off to sulk and lick his own dry lips. 

Picture a similar scene with the next two brothers. Thirsty, arrogant lads and an old woman who stands her ground, wrapped not in an embrace, but in a lonely passion for her work. Youthful stubbornness and ancient dedication, side by side. 

But then, the youngest brother, Niall, made his way to the well. For the fourth time, the guardian makes her offer, “You can drink all that you like, but you must kiss me first.”

Cynics might say that Niall was just terribly parched. Romantics might say he saw something in that ancient creature’s eye. Students of myth might say that he’d heard this one before and knew there was more than a tumbler of water in his future if he accepted her offer.

He kissed the crone, the cailleach.

The old woman was transformed into a siren who would give any modern fantasy heroine a run for her money, and the two didn’t stop when they hit first base.  Not too long after, thanks to her aid, Niall would become king and this magical being from the well would be his queen.

The old woman, of course, was the Sovereignty Goddess in disguise.

According to Celtic mythology, not only is she the keeper of sacred waters, but she embodies the sanctity of the land as well. The Sovereignty Goddess bestows kingship on the man who is worthy of her, the country, and its people. For at least part of the story, she’s the real force behind the throne.

When we tell different stories we find a new way forward

Perhaps you feel like you’re on a divine mission to drive out ignorance and spread your version of revelation. If you’re that certain of your path and you see St. Patrick as an archetype who empowers you to keep on keepin’ on, slaying demons, and spreading your almighty vision, fair play to you. Let us know how that goes.

I myself must admit I’m not all that excited to jump into the conversion game.

Let’s drink to transformation, a different kind of power, and seeing past a woman’s looks, shall we?

I’ve got my ideas and passions, sure, and I do believe I can help people change themselves and the world for the better, but I can see my story reflected more clearly in the waters of a sacred well than in a saint’s nationwide anti-reptile campaign. 

When I have my chance to show off my knowledge of Irish lore this St. Paddy’s Day, I’m going to tell this story. I’ll tell it because I want to remind folks that no one is too old to kissed (with consent) and because the straightforward, easy narrative is rarely true or satisfying.

3 Lessons from the Sovereignty Goddess (that just may help you before, during, and after a pub crawl)

1) This Sovereignty Goddess, she models what it means to know your value and worth, even if the average member of a stag party couldn’t see it. She wasn’t going to give her power away for free and she wasn’t going to lavish her gifts on anyone who would demean or disrespect her.

2) The Sovereignty Goddess teaches us how to embody the magic rebirth and reinvention. Sure, life may have been hard, and she may have lost a bit of her sparkle and shine along the way. She might have chosen to hide from the world until she’d gathered her strength. But, when the time was right, she could reclaim her energy and reemerge into the world.   

3) Finally, the Sovereignty Goddess shows us how to be the source and catalyst for others’ transformation. She gave Niall the chance to show he wasn’t the shallow cad his brothers were. Thanks to her guidance and support, he would achieve what would have seemed impossible for a youngest son: the crown.

And, the goddess gave the land and its people what it needed at that time: a just leader who respected women and natural resources and could see beyond his own ego.

A note on being a different kind of hero

Let’s not forget Niall here. He’s got plenty to teach us as we plan a St. Patrick’s Day fueled by a new set of stories.

Niall was a man could look past first appearances, meet a challenge, accept a gift when offered, make his own decisions, and see wisdom and possibility where others saw a person to be discarded. He was surrounded by the testosterone surges of his brothers, but he saw the truth and potential of the feminine. Put simply, in this story, he ditched the toxic masculinity and he did the right thing.

The messages in the story of Niall and the Sovereignty Goddess are varied, conflicting, and multi-layered. You might be inspired by goddess’s shapeshifting abilities or the way age is nothing but a number. You might find the magic in the sacred relationship that begins in an unexpected way. Perhaps you just need a break from the old narrative that tells us that snakes are bad and that every sacred well needs to be re-christened in the name of a saint. 

No matter how you read and retell this story: accept the invitation, know your own power, be kind, and drink deep.

Want more of the Sovereignty Goddess and the lessons she can teach us modern beings?

My book, The Sovereignty Knot: A Collection of Thirteen Beginnings is coming in October, 2019. Join my launch team to get a free advance copy and other bonuses!

“But how can it be a good story if it’s so sad?”

“But how can it be a good story if it’s so sad?” It was hard to make out the words because she was burying her face in my belly, but I understood exactly what she meant.

It seems impossible that we could love something that awoke our darkest fears and left us in a weeping puddle. It seems like madness that we would subject our children to such pain. But, like countless parents since the beginning of humanity, I’d merrily offered up some entertainment that would terrify as much as it delighted.

Within thirty seconds I figured out the basic plot of The Song of the Sea, the fantastical animated Irish film about the silkies - those seals who came to shore and became human women for a time. This is another mystery of story - why would we devote so much time and lavish so much emotion on something so predictable?

Well, I could predict that the pregnant mother singing so sweetly to her young son wasn’t going to make it into scene two. What I couldn’t predict was that wondrous journey and the magical images that would pull us along for the next hour and more.

These tales of otherworldly parents and children on a quest for happiness in the real world pretty much always end up the same. When I kept reassuring my six year-old that it was all going to end well I was pretty sure I was telling enough of the truth. After all, everyone was smiling in a sweet family tableau at the end. But my daughter couldn’t see all that through her tears.

While the credits rolled I reminded her of how much she’d loved the rest of the movie. I told her to think of how the children were so happy with their daddy even if their mama was off with the other fairyfolk in the sea. Most challenging of all, I tried to make her understand that the best stories are those that open our hearts to experience something powerful and meaningful. Considering that now, two days after that initial viewing, she wants to see it again, I can only assume she heard me. More likely, it’s just a testament to our devotion to stories that transform our everyday view of the world and make us feel.

Brigid's Blessings, #365StrongStories 32

We lived one hundred feet from the fastest flowing river in Europe. At least that’s what the guidebooks said. Those same books also hinted at the legends of fairy forts and the mysteries of those standing stones that anchored farmers’ fields in something even more ancient than Guinness and junior year abroad programs.

We’d been in Galway for six months and had the audacity to call it home. Myth and poetry were the most important things in the world. Even more important than kissing Irish men. Well, that’s the story I’m telling my kids anyway.

And so, on Imbolc, it was time to honor customs that were as old as that frantic River Corrib. Brigid - the goddess who sculpted the land before anyone had ever dreamed of Christ and his saints - this was her night. Legend has it that this is when she passes by, blessing the cloaks of the faithful.

Brigid is one of those handy, all purpose goddesses. In addition to being the patron deity of home and hearth and smithcraft, milk and fire and birthing women, she wore a healing mantle that could be hung on a sunbeam and her coming was the herald of spring.

Being a fresh faced pagan girl on sojourn from a Catholic college, I hung my new shawl in the damp night. I was going to soak up every drip of magic in the Celtic twilight.

Did she stop that night? Did an American girl who knotted her own story with this green, rocky place get the attention of a goddess? That Imbolc feast was almost half a lifetime ago, but I know I met Brigid this very morning in my New York back yard.

She lingered in a warm breeze that had no business shaking the bare trees of a February Hudson Valley. I stood by the summer fire pit in its neat iron bowl, looking back at that house that glowed with the babies I had birthed and nursed.

Without a doubt, I knew she’d graced my every step from then to now.

Bright Brigid blessings to all - especially the brilliant Suzi Banks Baum because it seems that we've been sitting around the same sacred fire all along. Read her St. Brighid's Day post (and learn about the invention of whistling!) here.