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Cu chulainn during the tain

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@days-like-dominoes prompted me to draw Midir and Étaín, and so I did!

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As much as I love Ireland’s Immortals for a lot of reasons, I’m kind of bummed the author doesn’t seem to detect the same pre-Christian substrates that I do within the medieval works.

For example, I’m noticing what appears to be genuine pre-Christian narratives nested within in the medieval story The Second Battle of Moytura, particularly in the bit about Bres’s conception. I’ve not seen a single author address it so far, and most boil down this conception-event as “Elatha and Ériu fucked on the beach.”

But it's not.

For those who aren’t familiar, here’s the passage in question:

Now the conception of Bres came about in this way. One day one of their women, Eriu the daughter of Delbaeth, was looking at the sea and the land from the house of Maeth Sceni; and she saw the sea as perfectly calm as if it were a level board. After that, while she was there, she saw something: a vessel of silver appeared to her on the sea. Its size seemed great to her, but its shape did not appear clearly to her; and the current of the sea carried it to the land. Then she saw that it was a man of fairest appearance. He had golden-yellow hair down to his shoulders, and a cloak with bands of gold thread around it. His shirt had embroidery of gold thread. On his breast was a brooch of gold with the lustre of a precious stone in it. Two shining silver spears and in them two smooth riveted shafts of bronze. Five circlets of gold around his neck. A gold-hilted sword with inlayings of silver and studs of gold. The man said to her, "Shall I have an hour of lovemaking with you?" "I certainly have not made a tryst with you," she said. "Come without the trysting!" said he. Then they stretched themselves out together. The woman wept when the man got up again. "Why are you crying?" he asked. "I have two things that I should lament," said the woman, "separating from you, however we have met. The young men of the Tuatha De Danann have been entreating me in vain-and you possess me as you do." "Your anxiety about those two things will be removed," he said. He drew his gold ring from his middle finger and put it into her hand, and told her that she should not part with it, either by sale or by gift, except to someone whose finger it would fit. "Another matter troubles me," said the woman, "that I do not know who has come to me." "You will not remain ignorant of that," he said. "Elatha mac Delbaith, king of the Fomoire, has come to you. You will bear a son as a result of our meeting, and let no name be given to him but Eochu Bres (that is, Eochu the Beautiful), because every beautiful thing that is seen in Ireland—both plain and fortress, ale and candle, woman and man and horse—will be judged in relation to that boy, so that people will then say of it, 'It is a Bres.'" Then the man went back again, and the woman returned to her home, and the famous conception was given to her.

In case you’re not familiar with the cast of characters here: Ériu represents the physical landmass that is Ireland. Elatha is a fomorian king. The fomorians are thought to be sea-dwelling supernatural beings of some kind. People have equated them to the titans of the Greeks and the jötnar of the Norse, but I think this is a false equivalence and that the fomorians may instead be reflections of an older pantheon of gods.

I think this because of the weird, somewhat-disjointed way everything is described in this passage. From my experience reading the Norse myths, when a text has this kind of nature it’s because it’s saying one thing while meaning another.

There’s a theory out there that Elatha was originally a sun-god due to his dripping-gold imagery. But personally, I think the descriptions of him and his vessel are meant to represent this bad boy:

And the reason why I think Elatha represents Halley’s Comet (or another comet of rare and exceptional appearance) is for a number of reasons:

First, unlike the sun and all the usual fixtures we see in the firmament, Elatha appears once to Ériu and doesn’t return. His appearance is not only unanticipated, but so spectacular that he woos Ireland in a way that no other celestial body has done before, despite their repeated attempts.

Second, Elatha’s vessel is described as being of a great size and indistinct shape, which slyly hints that its nature is something other than a boat. (Also, the fact this sky-vehicle is characterized as a seafaring vessel rather than a chariot suggests this is a very old story.)

Third, the sea is described as calm and still as if it were a level board. If you were sailing on such a sea on a moonless night, it would probably look and feel as though you were sailing into open space. This is evoking the imagery of the sky by using the imagery of the sea, suggesting we’re in fact talking about the former by hiding it behind an unusual description of the latter. (It’s also possible this story preserves the kind of atmospheric conditions that occurred during this hypothetical visitation of Halley’s Comet. Who knows?)

And finally, the fomorians are said to be “from the sea.” Later interpretations of this cast them as sea-raiders or something like aquatic demons. But theoretically, this could have come from a older belief that the gods came from “beneath the sea” in the sense that they came from “beyond and beneath the horizon, where the sun rises and sets.” If cosmic bodies were thought to be gods, it would have looked like they entered and exited the material realm via water, because Ireland—being an island—is surrounded by the sea on all sides.

(This in fact pairs very well with the theory that the early Irish believed bodies of water were portals to the Otherworld, evidenced by the number of offerings found deposited in them. If they watched their gods rise and set from the ocean, it’d make sense they’d view any body of water as a way to access the gods’ otherworldly realm.)

So now, with all that said, this puts the visuals behind Elatha and Ériu squarely into Proto-Indo-European territory—Their meeting echoes the archetype of the Sky God copulating with the Earth Goddess. Normally I’m not one for P.I.E. comparisons, but this feels pretty on the nose and I’m curious whether it has academic weight.

If so, it also suggests their son, Bres, may have once been a significant figure in pre-Christian Ireland; much different than the half-rate villain he’s cast as in the Second Battle of Moytura. This would also explain why his wife is Brigid, a goddess who was likely just important back then as she is now (supposedly she’s a reflex of a Dawn Goddess).

The overall plot of Moytura itself is an Irish equivalent of David and Goliath—in other words, very Christian—but this is just one of several nuggets of older myths I see scattered within it, disincorporated but otherwise preserved. The presence of these nuggets are hard to detect because they’re supposed to be; they’re written in such a way that our minds automatically smooth over the small, granular disruptions they cause in favor of plot continuity. But this is exactly how people would hide information inside information as a way to preserve it; they would exploit loopholes in the way cognition works so that these things would go by undetected. I saw it with Snorri’s Prose Edda and I see it here.

Unfortunately, it seems the Irish had to take more aggressive measures than Snorri to hide this information, so the substrate of their old mythology is wedged in really deep. It’ll take me months just to find all the threads in Moytura alone, and even then I don’t know how much can be resurrected from it.

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A friendly word of witchy advice: just go with it.

You’re trying to contact a deity and you immediately have a random thought? just go with it. It doesn’t make sense? Whatever, write it down. Maybe it will make sense later.

Wondering if you should and get the feeling that you should? do it.

Suddenly think you shouldn’t? don’t.

Doing tarot and the card comes out sideways? It’s sideways. Interpret.

When I go for a walk and take a seat on a bench and think, gods I wish I had some shade, and the clouds conveniently come together to block out the sun, I just go with it.

Thank you :)

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Truth will reveal itself with time.

People ask me all the time, how do you know Lucifer is speaking to you? I trust him, even when it doesn’t immediately make sense, even when it seems random.

Your first thought, yes, write it down. Your random inclination, follow it.

This doesn’t mean that everything is a sign, it means stop prohibiting yourself from receiving signs by constantly hyper analyzing everything. Let your brain and body perceive without fighting against them.

You heard a whisper in the wind? Listen.

You think you saw something in the smoke? Draw it.

Confusing nonsense that probably means nothing? Document it anyways.

Just go with it.

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Foie Graphics

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extremely annoying that my art is still flagged😤

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I wish I'd made my legal name the Irish spelling, even if I continued to use the anglicization

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The world's oldest story? Astronomers say global myths about 'seven sisters' stars may reach back 100,000 years https://phys.org/news/2020-12-world-oldest-story-astronomers-global.html

Holy shit, this is cool!

So many cultures call the Pleiades some variation of the "seven sisters" despite only having six visible stars. There only appear to be six because two of the stars are so close together as to appear as one.

The myths also mention one sister leaving or hiding to explain why there's only six. And based off observations and measurements, those two that are so close together used to be visibly separate. One literally has moved to hide.

And based off the similarities between the more commonly known Greek myth and the Aboriginal Australian myth, plus some other stuff, this myth could possibly even date back to when humanity still all resided in Africa!

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'The Old Hall, Fairies by Moonlight, Spectres and Shades, Brownies and Banshees' by John Anster Fitzgerald, c. 1875.

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Evening Hawthorn - Gerald Dewsbury

British , b. 1957 -

Oil on canvas board , 15 x 21 cm.

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@

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I doubt I'll have time before Midsummer, but I'd like to make a similar art nouveau-style poster for Áine as well!

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A fair man illuminating level places, Rowan Kal, 2025, digital painting

ᚐᚏ ᚋᚐᚅᚐᚅᚅᚐᚅ ᚋᚐᚉ ᚂᚔᚏ

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" One day I'm sweet another I'm bitter," replied the Kern.

I'll sit or I'll not sit; for nought do I but that which may be pleasing to myself.

I will not have it ; nor shall any that is of gentle blood ever have wherewithal to taunt me.

here I'm out to you, and watch me well or I am clean gone away

One day I'm sweet, another I'm sour

I am a frisky flighty strolling fellow

be she fair or be she foul mine she shall be.

for a poor rambling shambling flighty loon am I

for I am a foolish frisking rambling fellow

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I meant to make this meme ages ago when pride month was still on but yeah gé (pronounced gay) is the Irish for a goose.