The following text apparently no longer has any type of copyright, and I wanted to save this particular writing from being lost. I would suggest using FromTextToSpeech.com for anyone who just wanted to sit back and listen rather than read. I find the "Heather" voice to be clear and easy to understand. I can recall republishing a wonderful text interview which the Odinic Rite conducted with a representative of the Slavic Faith Association from Poland a few years ago. I was very surprised that the OR discarded it. Also, I wanted to add that this isn't necessarily a "Norse Creation Myth" as much as it is a Teutonic Creation Myth. It could very well have originated in the original Teutonic homeland north the the Himalayas, probably well over 10,000 years ago, and perhaps much longer. "Nordic" is a region, while "Teutonic" is a people who lived in many regions over the course of time.
Odinic/Asatru Creation Myth In the beginning, there was Ginnungagap, the yawning void or the vast abyss. It was a region so tremendous, so limitless that it extended for ever in any direction, with space to contain a million universes and still have room for another few million. To contemplate it would make you sick with dizziness, would make you weightless, would bend your mind with terror for it had no length, no breadth, no up, no down. In the beginning there was nothing in Ginnungagap that any human thought could grasp, not a drop of water, not a blade of grass, not a even a grain of sand. There was no light, no darkness, no silence and yet no sound - only a yawning void. Although this nothingness was so vast and shapeless, it was still not empty. It had no form but it was definitely not empty. Only the gods know this secret. After the beginning, this nothing began to be something and there were seen to be in it two contrasting regions.
First of all was a region of fire, called Muspell (also known as Muspellheim). No ordinary being could live there for the land was ablaze and the air aflame. Later the combusting fire giants were to make Muspell their home. Muspell means "Home of the Destroyers of the world".
The second of the great regions in the vast abyss of Ginnungagap was cold, bleak wilderness of ice and snow and freezing fog, called Niflheim. Niflheim like Muspell, had existed for countless ages before our earth was created. In the center of Niflheim there surged and foamed up the mighty fountain of Hvergelmir, the Roaring Cauldron. All the rivers of all time proceeded from Hvergelmir. Their names were fearsome and their forms were magic: Howling, one was called, others Storming, Frightful, Bubble-blasting. One was said to be composed entirely of chunks of ice fighting their way along in the shape of weapons - spears, javelins, swords and battle-axes.
Another tumultuous fountain in Niflheim was Elivagar or Icy Waves. Elivagar, too had welled up from its unknown source since time immemorial. Some even say that Hvergelmir and Elivagar were only different names for the one primeval fountain. However that may be Elivagar's crunching, creaking, groaning mountains of ice expanded and exploded and spread lay upon layer as glaciers all over the northern quarter of Ginnungagap. And across the ever growing sierras of ice, whirled winds of hail, blizzards and frozen torrents of rain.
Most important, there bubbled up through Elivagar a poisonous scum which set the slag which runs out of a furnace. This hardened into black ice. When the mass stopped and flowed no further it hung suspended, forming colossal icicles and icebergs log jammed up and up, one on top of another. So between them, Hvergelmir and the poisoned Elivagar completely filled the northern part of Ginnungagap. At last the yawning void which lay to the north quarter was blocked with heavy and crushing ice and frost; while in contrast, the southern sky of Ginnungagap glared with sparks and molten gases gushing out of Muspell.
It was quite obvious that after eons of time the regions of fire and ice in the yawning void must meet. When this eventually happened there arose that most amazing of all phenomena, which no one since the world began has been able to explain - Life. When the two elements came together in space, the yawning void was as mild as the windless air, but as the ice of Niflheim touched the fire of Muspell there was a tremendous explosion and a mighty booming band. The fermenting drops of venom bubbling up through Elivagar were fused to life by the fire and across the length and breadth of Ginnungagap their there formed the body of a giant. He was shaped like a man and at first he hardly moved. A broth of bubbling and boiling mud and ice gave birth to his ferocious head, his arms, his torso and his sludge-streaked legs. His later descendants, the frost giants, named him Aurgelmir which meant Mud Boiler, for they knew the secret of his creation; but others called him Ymir.
For long ages Ymir lay sleeping in his porridge of poisonous, seething mud and ice. At last his body was solid and he began to sweat. Under his armpit grew a male and a female; then one of his feet mated with the other to produce a six-headed son, Thrudgelmir, who in due course gave birth to Bergelmir, the direct ancestor of the frost giants.
Not all the ice of Niflheim was impregnated with the poison from Elivagar, and where it remained pure but was still melted by the fires of Muspell, a vast cow appeared in the thawing ice. Her belly spread across the heights as a colossal cumulus cloud and her legs were columns at the corners of space. From the udder of this great cow the giant Ymir suckled. The frost giants called her Authumla meaning Great Nurse. Authumla herself needed sustenance and she began to lick the continents of ice about her, finding them pleasantly salty to her taste. Just as a master sculptor sees in a block of marble an image which only he can release, so when Authumla licked the ice something new began to appear.
By the evening of the first day her questing tongue had licked out the hair of a man. All next day she nuzzled and slobbered until a man's head appeared. By the third day she had licked a complete man into shape. The gods called him Buri for they claim him as their firs ancestor: he was beautiful and bright to look at, a great and mighty god. As time went on, Buri had a son called Bor, a name which means born, for all those thousands of years ago there were still not very many words available. Bor's wife was Bestla the daughter of a giant known as Balethorn. Bor and Bestla had three sons called Odin, Vili and Ve.
All these beings, the ancestors of the giants and the gods, and the universal cow Authumla, had formed the primeval form lessness Ginnungagap. Because of the venom proceeding from Elivagar some were evil. Others, like Buri, were good. But it is well known that good and evil cannot live peacefully together and before long there was a tremendous battle between the cosmic powers.
The frost giants were a dark and violent race, misshapen, monstrous and noisy. Old Ymir's son, born by the union of his foot with the other, was a glacier-like being with six-heads called Thruthgelmir or Mighty Roarer, and his son was known as Bergelmir or Rock Roarer. When they and their ancient father and grand father Ymir met in council with the notice was ugly and and Odin, Vili and Ve, the sons of Bor were irritated beyond endurance.
Odin and his two brothers quarreled with old giant Ymir and after a great battle they killed him. When he fell, hacked to pieces, so much blood flooded from his body that all his giant family were drowned except the youngest, Bergelmir, and his wife. Bergelmir swam through the billows of blood dragging his wife by the hair until he was able to scramble on to a giant mill and there they sprawled across the millstone gasping for breath. In this way, the race of frost giants and hill ogres was able to continue.
Odin, Vili and Ve dragged Ymir's carcass, still pouring volumes of blood into the middle of Ginnungap. There were so many wounds in Ymir's body that the blood flowing out formed the sea. All oceans, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, pools and streams came from Ymir's blood.
Wondering what to do with the remains, the sons of Bor decided to sculpt it into something useful, so they set to work. They pounded, kneaded, chopped and slashed his tremendous corpse, pushing and pulling his flesh this way and that as though it were clay until they were satisfied. When they had finished the first part of their gruesome task they had produce the groundwork of the earth: the rolling hills, plains, dry river beds, empty lakes, and empty sea-bed. Into all these hollows they poured Ymir's blood so that the earth lay entirely surrounded by the sea with rivers running through it. His bones they hacked and splintered to make mountain crags. They made individual rocks and seashore pebbles from his toes, double teeth and remains of broken bone. They used Ymir's hair for tree's and bushes. For soil the made out of his flesh, and the race of dwarfs appeared spontaneously rather like maggots. Bor's sons had now created the earth and the beaches and the sea but yet there was no sky. So Odin, Vili and Ve between them heaved up the mighty skull of Ymir to form a dome over the earth. Now they had to find a way to keep it in place.
Fortunately (because without a sky the earth would been a dark and miserable, not to mention uninteresting place to live in) a solution was at hand: they were able to make use of the dwarfs. Odin, Vili and Ve peremptorily ordered four of them to stand forever at the four corners of the world to hold up the sky. They called them Nordi (North), Sudri (South), Austri (East) and Westri (West). A little later on Odin created the winds by posting a giant (one of Bergelmir's sons) in the form of an eagle at eh ends of the earth to flap his wings for ever. And into the stream of air Bor's sons cast Ymir's brains to make the clouds.
The dome of the sky was now firmly fixed, but it remained dark and menacing. Freed from the supporting sky, the sons of Bor caught the glowing cinders and sparks which were thrown up and out of Muspell and poised them in the middle of the yawning gulf to light both heaven and earth. They appointed positions to all the stars: some were fixed in heaven, some were to pass backwards and forwards in regular patterns. In this way the seasons of the years were marked out, but as yet there was no sun and moon, and day was not separated from night.
Odin, Vili and Ve now gave a great grant of land encircling the outward shores of the ocean for the race of giants to settle in, calling it Jotunheim or Giant land. Finally the gods took Ymir's brows to build a circular stronghold of the cliff-like walls around the earth. They called this fortress Midgard, meaning the Middle Enclosure.
Creation of Night and Day
Narfi, one of the first giants to colonize Jotunheim, had a stunningly beautiful daughter who was quite unlike the Viking women in appearance. She had a dark complexion and dusky hair. Her name was Nott (Night). Beautiful she was, she made herself more so by wearing bright stars in her long dark hair. Naturally enough, many men wished to marry her and being a young woman of strong character, she married three husbands, one after another.
Nott's first husband was a handsome young fellow called Naglfari or Darkling, who may well have been a distant cousin of hers. Their marriage did not last long, but long enough for them to produce a son called Aud (Space). If you happen to be alone on a dark night with no clouds and the stars twinkling away into infinity, you will be well aware of the presence of Aud.
There was some mystery about Nott's second husband. Nobody ever called him anything else but Annar (Another). It looks suspiciously as if 'Annar' was simply a bye-name, a name employed to disguised the person's identity. People frequently speculated about who could really be or where he came from. There seems no doubt that he was not a giant and if that was the case, then he must have been a God, for no other beings have been created at that time. It is probably no was to find out whether Annar was someone of supreme importance who felt embarrassed about acknowledging a relationship by marriage to the giants. Whoever he was, Nott and her second husband Annar had a lovely daughter who was named Erda (Earth). Now, here is the surprising thing: of all the gods, Odin himself also had a daughter called Erda - so people are left to draw their own conclusions.
Night's third and last husband was Dellinger (Dawn), god of Dawn, He was definitely a relative of the gods and as his name implies, he was bright and fair. Their son Dag (Day), took after his father's side of the family and was very blond and beautiful.
It is clear that the Gods knew all about Nott and her various children and they were only too happy to work them into their scheme for the universe. The gods decided that each twenty-four hours should be divided into twelve and twelve and that half should be light and half dark. They gave Nott and her son Dag each a chariot and a pair of horses and sent them up to the heavens to drive around the earth, one after the other, once every twenty-four hours.
Nott drove first with her lead horse, Hrimfaxi (Frostymane) who each morning sprinkles the ground below with dew as he champs at his bit. The froth and glitter of his spit can be seen as it gathers in beads on the leaves and petals before dawn.
Behind, gallops Dag. His lead horse Skinfaxi (Shiningmane). The resplendence of his two shining steeds and of his own long golden hair, illumines all the earth and the sky with light.
Creation of Sun and Moon
In the old days the sun and moon, made like the other stars and planets from the flames of Muspell, swung unguided across the heavens. At that time there lived on earth a man named Mundilfari. It is not clear whether he was of the giant race of a poor relation of the gods. His name means 'the world turner' and in the beginning he man well have charged with making the world spin round - under the direction of the Gods of course. Perhaps this important work may explain his rather arrogant nature which in the end, got him into trouble.
Mundilfari had two children so bright and handsome that he thought nothing in creation could compare with them except the sun and the moon. Proudly he called the boy Mani (Moon) and the girl Sun (Sol). When the Gods heard about this they took offense. Vainglory of this kind was too much for them to bear and they snatched the children away from their father and put them to work in the heavens. It is these children we see as bright lights in the sky.
They made the girl he named Sol ride like a jockey on one of the horses pulling the chariot of the sun. The two horses drawing Sol's chariot, Arvakr and Alsvin (Early-Wake and Supreme-in-Strength), had to be protected from Sol's great heat, the Gods fixed an indestructible shield known as Svalin (Iron Cool) between the horses and Sol. Year after year, until the end of time, they follow their path across the sky, varying its height and length with the regular pattern of the changing seasons.
Sol's brother had to ride one of the horses of the moon, called Alsvider. But because his journeys were much more complicated than because the moon he was set to a guide of waxes and wanes each month so that it is never quite the same for two days in a row. Mani could not manage this himself and he in his turn kidnapped two other children from earth. A little boy named Bit and his sister Hiuki, had been sent up a high mountain by their father to fetch water from a well. That was the last the old man ever saw of them.
As Mani drove behind the peak in his glowing chariot, he snatched the unsuspecting children and took them along with him. On a clear night of the full moon they are both visible: people on earth call them the children in the moon and it is they who make the moon wax and wane. How exactly they do this is a puzzle. No one knows whether they draw a curtain across Mani's face, or whether they persuade him gradually to turn his head sideways and then back again.
From the earth both the son and the moon can be seen racing across the sky. This is not only because they are drawn by splendid galloping horses. They have a pressing reason for losing no time in their journey: they are both being pursued by wolves.
A long, long way away from Midgard, where it is almost always winter and dark forests stretch as far as the eye can see, in one desolate ravine where the tree trunks are corroded iron, live evil witches, troll women known as Ironwooders. Evil breeds evil. The worst of these witches became the mother of dozens of giants, all born in the form of wolves. Their brutish father was himself a wolf or at least a werewolf and it is said that he was no other than the famous Fenrir. Two of his cubs grew into such huge, terrifying animals that the powers of evil were able to set them like ravening dogs onto the sun and the ever-changing moon.
Bounding through the sky, the wolves chase the horses and the chariots as though they are rabbits or hares. One shaggy, dark wolf pursues the sun; the other just as hideous, leaps along, following the moon. Sun and moon have no hiding place from these evil beasts and are doomed to run away until the doom of the Gods.
The prophecies say that in the end the wolves will overtake Mani and Sol and swallow them up completely.
Creation of Humans
The three sons of Bor were at first known as Odin, Vili and Ve. Though Odin developed many names during his years, he was still mainly known as Odin. Vili was sometimes known as Hoenir and Ve often called Lothur.
One morning, when all creation was new, the sons of Bor were walking together along the ocean shore. As they looked about them they could not help admiring the world they had made. The pure air sparkled with light for everything was running according to their plan - the sun was thinning, the breezes were blowing enough to cool and refresh the skin, puffy white clouds adorned the blue sky and the waves lapped pleasantly along the vast empty strand.
Empty? Well, not quite. In the distance, just beyond the waterline, the three gods made out two logs of driftwood. They had only been recently deposited on the yellow sand by the waves sweeping in from the ocean and were so near the water's edge that the tide still splashed the side of the one nearest to the sea.
Odin looked at his brothers Hoenir and Lothur and a wild idea came into his mind. Together they strode along the firm golden sand until they stood over the two logs. As the bay curved round, the sun happened to be behind them and Hoenir's shadow fell along the log nearest the water while Lothur's shadow lay along the other one.
Odin watched as the shadows of their legs and arms moved, making it look as if the logs too, were moving. He dropped down onto his knees by the log nearest the shore; it had been the trunk of some primeval elm tree. Placing his lips to the rough bark of the tree, he breathed out his divine spirit. Then he stood up and the three stepped back to watch.
Slowly, perhaps even hesitantly, the bark of the elm log began to shrivel and split and roll back until the body of a naked woman appeared. She was very beautiful but her skin was blanched like plant grown for a long time with out light and her eyes were vacant. She lay quite still without moving a limb.
Odin bent over the other log, which had come from an ash tree. Once more he breathed on the thin bark and this time the figure of a man appeared in the wood. His eyes open vacantly and he, too, lay motionless.
All this time the shadows of Hoenir and Lothur lay alone the newly released bodies. The three young Gods looked at each other and without speaking each knew what to do.Odin had released Woman and Man and given them a soul and life. Now the other two brothers made their gifts. As Lothur looked down on the woman he transferred to her the flush of youth, the use of her five senses and the power of understanding. Slowly she sat up, looking around the new world. Then she turned to look at the body still lying motionless and empty beside her.
Lothur then transferred his power to Man. The warmth of blood began to course through his veins and he, too, received understanding and the gifts of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
Hoenir's gift was the faculty of speech.
The two new beings, the first man and the first woman, looked at each other in full understanding, rose to their feet and embraced. Odin name the man Ask (Ash) and the woman Embla (Elm), from the trees out of which they had been formed. He took off his clock and draped it over the woman and put his tunic around the man's shoulders. Together the first human beings turned away from the sea and walked hand in hand into their new world. .
By David Jones - New Dawn Magazine - March 21, 2003 (Portions of this interview with Dr. Flowers have previously appeared in the British journal 'Rûna: Exploring Northern European Myth, Mystery and Magic') This is an excellent interview from a decade ago, with one of the important figures in Germanic Heathen studies, and the Germanic Heathen movement, Dr. Stephen Flowers In case you may not be aware, there is an excellent text-to-voice site which can read back large blocks of text for you. If you want to read a long article.. but are not really in the mood to sit and read it, you ought to try it. It is: http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/ If it is slow to respond, just back-click and try it again. I usually have no problems. Also, you may save it as an audio file if you wish. Stephen Flowers is an academic, and his main area of interest is Germanic/Heathen studies... basically Odinism and the spiritual/occultic end of it. Also, he's an expert on Hermeticism, Western ceremonial magic, occult studies, and the "left-hand path"... which appears to be Satanic if I'm not mistaken. I think I could accept someone who dabbles into Satanism before I could tolerate the supremely intellectually and spiritually dishonest people who are anti-folkish regarding things which are clearly folkish in nature. The "right-hand path is based "white magic." Of course, Dr. Flowers translated 'Secret of the Runes' into English, and as I found out... he apparently was the owner of Runa-Raven Publishing (now defunct). He translated 'History of the Aryo-Germanic Folk' which I purchased from that company. I also was not aware that he was one of the founding members of the Asatru Free Assembly in the 70s, later the Asatru Folk Assembly. He is the author of many books, articles, lectures, etc., and founded the Woodharrow Institute, which seeks to promote Germanic scholarship within mainstream education.. where forces have long been pushing it out. If I understand it correctly, to promote educational materials on the pre-Christian culture and spirituality of the Germanic cultures. Also it appears to be a focus on Indo-European studies in general. There are many excellent points made in this interview. I would like to enter just one of the questions here. The interview as conducted by Michael Moynihan, the North American editor of 'Rûna: Exploring Northern European Myth, Mystery and Magic'.
Michael: Why is the notion of a scholar of pre-Christian religion who actually adheres to the spiritual ideas that he also studies such a radical one? Is this simply a byproduct of the situation in the West where any religious path outside of the “mainstream” monotheistic faiths is painted as cultic and marginal?
Stephen: I think this attitude stems almost entirely from two sources: 1) the antagonism of the materialist worldview toward the traditional spiritual one, and 2) the opportunity the adherents to the materialistic worldview have taken to attack the spiritual view based on historical events surrounding World War II. This materialist worldview is “monotheistic” in the sense that it allows for only one set of orthodox values. In this way it is really a secularised form of monotheistic religion. The Judeo-Christian system of thought has lent itself very well to being secularised in such a way that it can be turned into a model for modern political and economic theories. As a side-note, Islam has been much more stubborn in its adherence to its original values, which has caused it to be very much “out of step” with its monotheistic cousins.
Judaism and Christianity can be tolerated by the establishment scholarly world because they can be viewed as theoretical prototypes of the materialistic and positivistic model that now dominates thought in the West. Earlier traditional models are seen not so much as a threat to religion as they are seen as a threat to the monolithic political and economic order. The pre-Christian, traditional philosophies are too divergent and multivalent to be coerced into one single “market” of ideas. This points to the fatal hypocrisy of the current crop of modernistic “thinkers,” who spout off about “multiculturalism” and tolerance, but who exclusively support monolithic socio-economic models that enact the opposite of what they publicly espouse. Surely the ancient, traditional and pre-Christian world is more in line with what really sounds best to most people. Are not ancient, pre-Christian Athens or Alexandria more ideal models for the future over medieval Rome or Constantinople?
Clearly the animosity to those who see value in pre-Christian models stems
not from the religious side of the debate, but rather from the secular challenge traditionalism poses to the current political order. What is needed is a campaign for the re-education of the academic world to show that the idealised future is one that is more likely to be based on the mosaic of pre-Christian traditions than it is to be based on the monolithic Christian model. Scholars of pre-Christian tradition must indeed be sympathetic and even empathetic to the paradigms they are studying. If they do not have a subjective link to the paradigm they are seeking to understand, then they have categorically placed an insurmountable barrier between themselves and the “object” they seek to understand. Hence they have in fact disqualified themselves from ever being able to really understand the patterns of thought in question.
Dr. Stephen Edred Flowers (from the Woodharrow Institute)
Dr. Flowers (b. 1953 in Bonham, Texas) is recognized as an expert in the field of early Germanic history and runology. He has authored over two dozen books and hundreds of papers on a wide range of subjects. Dr. Flowers did his graduate work in Germanic and Celtic philology under Professor Edgar Polomé at the University of Texas at Austin from 1973-1984. In 1981-1982 he studied both runology and the history of occultism at the University of Göttingen, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 1984 with a dissertation entitled Runes and Magic: Magical Formulaic Elements in the Elder Tradition. From 1984-1989 he was a lecturer in the Departments of English and Germanic Languages|at the University of Texas at Austin. Over the last quarter-century he has also written a number of well-received books on esoteric subjects under the pen-name Edred Thorsson. In addition to being a prolific writer, Dr. Flowers has translated a number of rare Icelandic, Old Norse and German texts and manuscripts into English, making them available to a wide range of readers for the first time. Dr. Flowers is currently the director of the Woodharrow Institute of Germanic Studies. .
This video was produced by the John Mainer's YouTube channel, who is an Odinic Heathen. I'm not always going to put the originating YouTube or other channels in the future since they're easily accessible on the embedded format here. I think that by merely redistributing someone's work gives them credit, a larger audience, and a way for someone to find their channel. One aspect of the Odinic tradition, which I think is missing in modern folkish magical traditons, is the issue of evolutionary struggle. Life is struggle. That certainly doesn't mean that it wasn't present in ancient times, but that it has been lost from having been forced underground by Christian societies for so long. The wolf perfectly represents evolutionary struggle. Wolves are comparable to humans in nature within a historical overview. They, for example, mate for life. They form tight kinships and work together to survive. It's not hard to see how the mythology of the "werewolf" came about; and that ties into both the warrior tradition as well as individual, family, or clan struggle
It's interesting how wolves are a big part of other northern peoples (Amerindians, Siberians, Mongolians) who saw the same spiritual qualities and allegorical connections. However, they did not actually incorporate--as far as I know--wolves into their daily clan life... or actually being part of the family or clan as allies (man and dog).
For the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the Strength of the Wolf is the Pack
I take offense to the image of wolves as only beastly hunters. Not all wolves are fanged beasts waiting in the woods to devour you. We are civilized, orderly beings with laws and leaders. There are some lessons I have learned from my noble brothers and sisters, the wolves.
The Wolf as a symbol of the Wild
The wolf has long symbolized the wilderness in all of us. They roam the lands free of constraints, something that some of us can greatly identify. Wolves are the wild in all of us, and can teach us about the unexplored realms in all of us. Following the wolf, I have found freedom within my heart. The most wonderful feeling in the world is that of running across the plains, the wind ruffling your fur, and a clear moon overhead.
The Wolf and the Moon
The wolf and the moon have long been entwined with each other in myth. The wolf sings to the moon, and in return the moon gives the gifts of intuition and spiritual guidance to the wolf. Silver, the color of the moon, is a powerful color, giving this wolf a special connection to Luna.
Qualities of the Wolf
The qualities of the wolf are many. But most of all there are the qualities of loyalty, love and trust. Wolves are fiercely loyal, protective of those around them. Their pack is everything, family, friends, all are important to the wolf. Wolves are also teachers. They teach the pups so the pack may grow strong. I am proud to say a wolf has been one of my great teachers..
Some scholars give a good explanation of what this conversion may have looked like. They suggest that this conversion is not what we would consider conversion by today's standards. Indeed, just because some pagans decided to accept Patrick's gods does not necessarily mean that they abandoned their own. Because pagans were used to accepting a number of different gods into their pantheon, it would follow that when they were introduced to this new god, it probably meant that they included him in their worship, not that they limited their worship to him (Hopkin 21).
So, unlike in Muirchu's account of the conversion of Ireland, no one found Patrick so threatening as to warrant a call to arms over Christianity. There was never a recorded act of violence between Christian and pagan, nor was there a single martyrdom in Ireland over the conversion to Christianity (Hopkin 21).
Although Patrick began the process of introducing the Irish to Christianity, it does not appear that he had nearly the phenomenal success that later writers would attribute to him. In fact, Patrick himself died in obscurity. Far from being the arrogant miracle-worker who made disbelievers pay for their skepticism, the historical Patrick "was not remembered as an enormously successful missionary—because he was not enormously successful. At the time of his death Ireland was still predominantly pagan, aggressively pagan" (Thompson 158).
Why, then, does Muirchu go out of his way to describe Patrick as being singlehandedly responsible for the submission of pagan religion to Christian belief, or for the annihilation of the Irish druids? What exactly were the circumstances surrounding the conversion of Ireland to Christianity, if Patrick himself had little impact on the Irish? And how did the Irish druids react to this conversion?
It would not be out of the question to assume that in the years Muirchu was writing, around the late 600s, a large part of the Irish population was Christian and not pagan. At least, the pagans and druids who remained were not "aggressively pagan" as they had been immediately after Patrick's death. Otherwise, how could Muirchu get away with his harsh portrayal of pagan and druid alike? If Patrick could not get away with such hubris in the fifth century AD, it would follow that Muirchu could not do so either among an "aggressively pagan" society. So what happened during these two hundred years that brought pagans over to Christianity? Historical Saint Patrick did introduce the island to Christianity, but we know that his success was small. What brought the majority of Irish over to Christian belief enough to tolerate such a negative portrayal of paganism and the keepers of paganism, the druids? And what was the point of Muirchu writing such an untruthful hagiography of Patrick?
Most scholars agree that Muirchu was successful in reintroducing the Irish to the accomplishment and life of Patrick (Hopkin 36). In the seventh century AD, few in Ireland knew who Patrick was (Thompson 156). He obviously did not have a huge impact on their collective consciousness, and so writers like Muirchu were allowed to reinvent Patrick to suit their own purposes.
These purposes are not in doubt. We know that Muirchu belonged to the monastery of Armagh near the Hill of Tara. The clergy claimed this monastery was founded by Patrick. At the time Muirchu was writing, there was a divide between the northern church and the southern church on the island. It appears that the northern church of Armagh needed propaganda to promote the position that their church should reign supreme in Ireland. So Muirchu's stories of Patrick being the primary force behind the conversion of Ireland to Christianity helped their goal in their "campaign to dominate the Irish church. As its power grew, so too did the cult of its founder" (Eaton, McCaffrey).
It is also clear that the church leaders in Ireland wanted very much to convert the remaining pagans to Christianity. By the seventh century AD, they were in a far better position to do so, for it is known that the majority of pagans had already turned to Christianity en masse. The exact reason for this change of religion is debated.
Some say that the majority of pagans turned to this new religion for reasons unflattering to the church. They argue that this conversion came as a result of the natural disasters and massive plague that killed off half of the population one century earlier in the sixth century AD. It appears that church leaders attempted to convince the people that such tragedies stemmed from the worship of pagan gods. "Christianity's spread across Ireland was accelerated in the sixth century by climate disaster and plague, the result, according to church leaders, of pagan wickedness" (Eaton, McCaffrey).
In addition, "Scholarly monks in the seventh century AD reinvented Ireland's heroic, mythical past—the stories known today—in order to convert its pagan people" (Eaton, McCaffrey). "Since writing only came to Ireland with Christianity, the church also controlled literacy and thus the primary means of education." (Eaton, McCaffrey) Hence the vitriolic stories of the pagans and druids that writers like Muirchu espoused. Another method Christians used to convert pagans was to take over traditional druidic sites of worship, usually holy wells, and give them Christian names (Ellis 19). The takeover also extended to various holidays, as illustrated when Muirchu's Patrick proved the superiority of Easter over the pagan Beltane feast.
Other scholars say that the conversion of pagans between the fifth and seventh centuries was a result of less sinister motives. They suggest that Christianity offered pagans values not embraced by the pagan theology, such as forgiveness and redemption. The renaming of wells, then, does not necessarily demonstrate a threatening behavior, but instead showed the willingness of Christians to adopt and welcome the pagan beliefs that had come before (Sellner 21).
Scholars know very little about the druids as a group, so it is no surprise that we have no recorded reactions from the Irish druids about the methods of conversion. Since druidic beliefs were exactly what Christians wanted to replace, some historians argue that one way they did that was through devaluing the worth of the druid in society. druids still existed at that time, as they were still mentioned in the law books as having a place in Celtic society (Ellis 20). But it appears that by the time Muirchu came along, they were far fewer in number.
The re-characterization of druids as sorcerers seems to have played a large part in the Christian propaganda of the seventh century AD, when Muirchu wrote the Life of St. Patrick. Muirchu was not unusual in his portrayal of druids as magicians. This was effective in downplaying their importance. Some argue that Christians replaced them as the intellectual class.
[T]he general Christian attitude to the druids was inimical. They were obviously portrayed as opponents of Christianity, upholders of the ancient religion, and thereby were relegated to the role of shamans, magicians . . . although this prejudice varied from writer to writer. (Ellis 70)
With all these negative assessments of the importance of druids in Irish society, is it any wonder that the druids turned to Christianity as a way to fulfill the functions their ancestors had filled in the past? Christians were the new intellectual class. It seems that if one wanted to be a respected member of the learned class, one did not go into the woods to learn "oak knowledge" as in the past, but rather to the nearest monastery. Being a part of the clergy was respected, while being a druid was not anymore. As Ellis argues, "With the arrival of Christianity, the druids began to merge totally with the new culture, some even becoming priests of the new religion and continuing as an intellectual class in much the same way as their forefathers had done for over a thousand years previously" (18). Other scholars argue that the young Irish were attracted to the new values advocated by Christians, such as forgiveness and redemption.
There is a story that illustrates the decline in druidic religion better than any research paper could ever do. In this story, the druid preferred to die with his faith rather than convert. Two hundred years after Muirchu wrote Patrick's hagiography, a man named Wrdistan wrote a hagiography of the sixth-century Saint Guenole, who lived in Brittany, a Celtic region of modern-day France. In this land, the druids were considered "elderly adherents to a dead religion" (Ellis 89). When the king of Brittany was dying, he called the saint over, and there the saint saw the druid. The king warned St. Guenole not to treat the druid poorly because the druid had endured much already. The king said the druid "has lost his gods! What sorrow can compare with this sorrow? Once he was a druid; now he mourns a dead religion" (Ellis 90). The druid and the monk buried the king, and in that spot the druid asked Guenole to build a monastery, admitting that that spot used to be a sacred site for his kind. He insisted that it be done anyway, and said, "[I]t is my wish, the wish of one conquered but resigned to the changing order of the times, one who feels neither bitterness nor hatred" (Ellis 90). The druid handled the loss of his religion, and thus of his connection to his ancestors, gracefully. When the monk suggested that the druid take up Christianity in place of his dying faith, the druid kindly refused by pointing to the sky and telling the monk that when they died, maybe they would come to realize that all their different faiths were in vain for "perchance there is nothing but a great mistake" (Ellis 90). When Guenole became outraged at this and again urged the druid to come with him back to the monastery, the druid once again gently refused. He would rather dwell in the woods as he had always done. Besides, he told Guenole on his way toward the forest, "Do not all tracks lead to the same great centre?" (Ellis 90).
In conclusion, the historical Saint Patrick did not banish the druids or the pagan faith by sheer force of will as Muirchu suggested. The saint's pilgrimage to Ireland brought about the changes in that island that would eventually come to replace the old ways. Some pagans may have converted because they were attracted to new Christian values such as forgiveness, while others may have responded to more manipulative methods of conversion. Muirchu was not unusual in typifying the Irish druids as superstitious workers of magic. This seems to have been one of a number of tactics for converting the pagan Irish people to Christianity. These included appropriating Druidic sites for Christian worship and taking advantage of the natural disasters that befell the Irish people in the sixth century AD by saying that these were the result of pagan beliefs.
Footnotes
[1] Presumably, the prominence of snakes in Irish Celtic spirituality is a holdover from the Celts' earlier ancestors, who did not originate in Ireland but instead migrated from mainland Europe. Additionally, Irish Celts had frequent interaction with their British neighbors to the east, and certainly would have known of snake species abroad.
[2] It is likely that the church's views on the Celts were influenced by earlier Roman accounts of Celtic customs, which were overwhelmingly negative and described such practices as headhunting and human sacrifice. The validity of ancient Roman sources has since been called into question by modern scholars. Whether such practices occurred or not is better left to a separate article, but as far as Roman scholars were concerned, descriptions such as these served the function of painting the Celts as uncivilized. Modern scholars suspect that most Roman accounts of Celtic activity can be traced back to one source: Posidonios, a Greek ambassador of Rhodes, who set out to study barbarism as an exercise in stoic philosophy (Ellis, 50). Though Posidonius's works survive only in fragments, he is known to have been a friend of Pompey, and seems to have taken an amicable view of Roman expansionism (Franklin). Contemporaneously, when Julius Caesar wrote about the Celts, he was in the process of subjugating various Celtic strongholds to Roman rule. He had a vested interest in portraying the Celts as barbarous and in need of a civilizing presence such as Rome (Ellis 53).
Bridgette Da Silva is still pursuing her dream of taking over the world with her husband Notah and two mischievous rabbits. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from St. Catherine University (formerly the College of St. Catherine) and continues to write historical and speculative fiction as well as nonfiction. She has another Strange Horizons article entitled "Medieval Mindsets: Narrative Theory and The Mists of Avalon." Updates on her writing can be found on her blog, or feel free to email her at dasi0004@yahoo.com. .
Raids, such as the one Patrick fell victim to, were not uncommon in the fifth century AD. There was a general lawlessness about Britain at that time. The Western Roman Empire was collapsing, many groups of people warred with each other for power, and different groups of raiders took advantage of this instability. This was the period when the mythical King Arthur is supposed to have lived, the king who united all the warring tribes under the Cross in peace. Sadly for Patrick, this was not the case when he was a boy, so he was abducted just like "thousands of others" (Hanson 76). For six years, Patrick toiled as a shepherd for a minor Irish king in the Wood of Fochloch, which is believed to be near what is now Killala Bay on the west coast of the island (Eaton, McCaffrey). The conditions under which Patrick worked as a slave were not necessarily as bad as they could have been. He does not appear to have endured abuse, though he suffered from the weather and isolation (Thompson 17). His lonely situation was enough to make him turn to the Christian religion he had disregarded as a boy. He wrote that he would wake up before dawn to say up to one hundred prayers (Hanson 86). Essentially, Patrick was taken from his atheistic, materialistic boyhood, and thrown into the trials of slavery. In this challenging period of his life, he turned to Christianity to console himself.
His newfound Christianity seems to have given him hope about his situation. According to Patrick, one day God told him a ship was waiting for him, to take him back home. This is what sparked Patrick's decision to escape his servitude. In what must have been a terrifying event, Patrick stole away from his pagan master and made his way to the other side of the island, seeking a ship that would take him back to Britain. He must have come upon a trading port, for a week or so later he found a boatful of traders waiting to leave the coast. Patrick begged for them to take him along. Some think that Patrick may have used food he stole on his escape to barter his way off the island (Thompson 22). At first, the Irish pagan crew refused to take Patrick with them, but in a surprising twist, they changed their minds and called him back to the boat. Patrick describes the captain as a particularly surly man who was proud of his pagan faith and refused Patrick's attempts at conversion.
Historians are uncertain of what happened in the next three years of Patrick's life. In fact, it is not even certain where exactly these traders took Patrick. It took them three days to reach land, but which land is a mystery. Some scholars have proposed that they landed in Britain, but that does not explain why it took Patrick three whole years to return to his family. Why did he not immediately go to them if they landed in Britain? The most agreed-upon answer is that they took Patrick to Gaul. Patrick says that after their landfall he was sold again into slavery by the surly Irish captain and crew. This would have been easier for them to do in Gaul, considering that Patrick would not know anyone in Gaul to escape to and he would be unfamiliar with the terrain. The Irish sailors "knew that he was an escaped slave, friendless and without resources or influence, an ideal subject for a kidnap" (Thompson 28). It would certainly explain why the sailors changed their minds and let Patrick board their ship after first refusing him. Perhaps they realized he would be a benefit to them after all, if they could sell him into slavery in Gaul. Patrick apparently escaped once again, and ended up working for three years to be able to pay for a boat ride back home to Britain.
There is also a darker theory that has been suggested to explain this period in Patrick's life. We know that Patrick wrote the Confession as a reaction against some sort of criticism he received from a group of fellow Christians, who questioned the rightness of his promotion to bishop. Some scholars have proposed that there are certain inconsistencies in this section of the Confession, and that the best way to explain this is to assume that the Irish sailors actually intended to plunder Gaul and that Patrick simply went along with them because he had no choice (Thompson 32). That would certainly be a reason for some Christians to question his status as a bishop, if he quietly went along with a group that exploited the weakness of Gaul during the Western Roman Empire's collapse. If one is to accept this theory, the second slavery that Patrick claimed to have suffered was actually a cover-up for a period in his life when he either participated in or was forced to witness raids along the Gaulish coast.
So we know that Patrick had at least three bad interactions with the pagan Irish that may have shaped his opinions of this entire group. The first, dreadful interaction involved the Irish pirates who sold him into slavery. The second was with his pagan slave master who used Patrick as free labor to herd sheep. And the third was the ambiguous situation with the surly pagan Irish crew. Whatever happened between Patrick and the crew, it could not have made a very positive impression. Either they sold him again into slavery in Gaul, or they took him along on a raiding spree in Gaul despite his desire to go back home.
By the time Patrick was able to raise enough money to buy his way back home to Britain, he was around twenty-six years old. It had been ten years since he was sold into slavery. Once reunited with his family, though, he did not stay there long before he decided it would be his life's work to return to Ireland, the land of his captivity, to convert the Irish pagans to Christianity. He was aware of the disadvantage he had in official theological learning. While he had been toiling as a shepherd in Ireland, all his peers had been educated to a great extent. In a divergence from the mythical stories, the historical Saint Patrick lacked the hubris that Muirchu and later writers gave to him, and was very self-conscious about his lack of education, knowing his written Latin left much to be desired. At any rate, Patrick began having dreams of a man named Victoricus, who urged Patrick to return to Ireland. Later writers have claimed that Victoricus was an angel of God but E. A. Thompson argues that this man most likely was a friend Patrick had met back in Ireland (37). It is thought that Patrick then returned to Ireland despite the many protests of those in Britain. In Ireland, he became a deacon, and eventually was appointed to be a bishop.
How, then, did he go about his mission of converting the pagan Irish to Christianity? Were the events as clear-cut as Muirchu describes, with resistance from the pagans and druids at first but ending finally with their submission to Patrick's superior faith?
Historically, the Irish did not seem threatened by Patrick's activities. Many actually incorporated Christianity into their beliefs. In addition, scholars are not sure whether Patrick was as wildly successful at conversion as Muirchu claims. However, long after Patrick died, the church apparently had gained enough power to write its own version of events. Muirchu and others were allowed to create a revisionist history. In it, they claimed that Christianity was superior to paganism, and that this divine superiority had enabled a miraculous victory in Patrick's time. Thus, authors such as Muirchu made Patrick's mission seem more successful than it actually was. So, when Patrick first introduced Christianity to the pagan Irish, there was little contention between Patrick and the druids. But by the time Muirchu and others came along, circumstances had changed such that they could claim it was a straightforward matter of good versus evil, in order to further their own agenda of replacing paganism with Christianity.
Nevertheless, it is clear that Patrick was the first Christian man ever to go to Ireland with the express purpose of converting the Irish to Christianity. Before Patrick went on his conversion mission, a man named Palladius was sent by the pope to Ireland in 431 AD, but it is thought that Palladius was not expected to preach his faith among those who did not believe. He instead was expected to act as bishop and administer to the small communities of Christians who already lived in Ireland. Who these Christians were or how they came to be in Ireland is not known. "It was none of [Palladius's] business to go out among the heathen and convert them; he had enough to do among the faithful" (Thompson 56). E. A. Thompson also adds, "One reason for the backwardness of the Church in trying to convert the barbarians was presumably the view held by a number of churchmen that the barbarians were not fully human" (63).[2]
Scholars admit to being mostly ignorant of the happenings in the fifth century AD. There is very little surviving evidence that would allow us to get a good picture of what was going on at that time. However, we do know that Patrick's mission was not as cut-and-dried as Muirchu would have us believe. In fact, one of the reasons his family had protested the idea of mission work in Ireland was precisely because it was a dangerous proposition. Patrick himself knew when he departed with the aim to convert the Irish tribes that it would be a difficult task. Nonetheless, there are no contemporary records of confrontations between Patrick and the druids, upholders of the pagan faith. Why is this so? Did the pagans give up their religion without a fight?
In reality, there does not seem to have been any reason to fight. Patrick recognized that he could not go to the foreign country with a condescending attitude. He realized that there was a potential for violence, not because his conversion efforts posed a threat, but simply because Patrick was a foreigner. Patrick wrote that God meant for him to "endure the insults from unbelievers, that I should hear abuse for being a foreigner, that I should endure many persecutions even unto imprisonment" (Thompson 80). He even expected and embraced the idea that there was a possibility he would be martyred. It is clear that the pagan Irish would not have tolerated the behavior of the mythical Saint Patrick. There was no way Patrick could use coercion or the threat of force as part of his strategy to convert the pagans. E. A. Thompson writes that "the pagans were far too powerful and menacing . . . . And he was doubtlessly aware that if he gave any sign of trying to impose his views on the Irish pagans against their will, his mission would come to an abrupt and bloody end" (90).
So, being limited by this danger, did Patrick make any difference at all? Most scholars would say yes, but that it did not come at all close to the singlehanded effort that Muirchu tried to convince people it was. Patrick himself claims to be responsible for converting "thousands" despite the hostility he encountered, but no one can be sure that this is an accurate description. There is some evidence that he was better received by the youth in Ireland, and even slaves, especially female slaves (Thompson 91). We also know that Patrick mixed often with the Irish nobility, and in some cases ended up converting a number of that class too. Part of his dealings with the nobility consisted of Patrick paying Irish chieftains to cross their lands. The chieftains' sons would accompany Patrick while he crossed their fathers' lands. Even then it was not entirely safe. There is a recorded incident of Patrick being robbed by one chieftain's son.
But why would the pagan Irish even consider converting to Christianity in the first place? It certainly was not because of a threat of violence, and not because they witnessed any inherent inferiority in their beliefs when compared to Christianity (as Muirchu states). We know Patrick had to be respectful in his approach, but still, one wonders why the Irish would abandon the gods they had worshipped for thousands of years to accept a god that a complete stranger told them about.
By Bridgette Da Silva - StrangeHorizons.com - July 27, 2009
The patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick, is often credited with kicking all the snakes out of Ireland. Countless works of art have depicted the bearded saint crushing serpents under his feet, and pointing to the distance with his staff as if to banish them from his sight. But how is one to reconcile this story with the fact that there has never been any evidence of these reptiles living in Ireland in all its history? Some scholars contend that the snakes were originally symbols for Irish druids. Serpents are thought to have been important in the Celtic spirituality of the pagan Irish, and the druids were the keepers of that faith, acting as priests and priestesses.[1] So if indeed the druids are the snakes in these stories, and Patrick is supposed to have driven them forth from their homeland, can we suppose that there is any truth to the idea that Patrick had a hand in banishing the druids from Ireland? Just who were these druids whom Patrick is said to have expelled?
In addition to driving forth the serpents from the land, Saint Patrick is also said to have been the first man to introduce Christianity to the Irish. If this is true, what exactly was the nature of this conversion?
Muirchu maccu Machtheni was an Irish bishop who wrote Patrick's hagiography, The Life of Saint Patrick, during the seventh century, two hundred years after Patrick's death. This set of stories colors people's understanding of the saint even today. Muirchu wrote that Patrick was the driving force behind the annihilation of the Irish druids. Two of his stories illustrate this claim particularly well. The first deals with Patrick and his former master (Patrick had been sold into slavery from Britain to Ireland at sixteen). The other concerns a confrontation between Patrick and the pagan king Loiguire, along with Loiguire's court druids, at the Hill of Tara in northern Ireland. The Patrick in these stories demonstrates behavior not thought typical of a Christian bishop. Instead of possessing the traits of patience and forgiveness, Patrick is shown as vindictive, and he succeeds in a quest to punish his enemies with the help of the Christian God.
Both of these stories take place after Patrick had been ordained as a bishop. He and a few of his followers supposedly went back to Ireland with the goal of converting the pagan Irish to Christianity. The first place Patrick went on this journey, according to Muirchu, was to his former master Miliucc in order to buy his freedom, for technically Patrick had run away and never paid his former master to become a freedman. However, when Miliucc heard that Patrick was on his way to visit, he thought that Patrick meant to convert him to Christianity by force: "When Miliucc heard that his slave was about to come and see him, in order to make him accept, forcibly as it were, a way of life against his will at the end of his days . . . the devil put it into his mind to seek death of his own free will in fire" (Bieler 81). So Miliucc burnt himself along with all of his possessions. This was a common act of pagans "when faced with inevitable defeat" (Hopkin 41). How did Patrick react to this suicide? He cursed him. Muirchu quotes Patrick as saying,
[T]his man and king, who chose to burn himself in fire rather than believe at the end of his life and serve eternal God . . . none of his sons shall sit on his throne as king of his kingdom in generations to come; what is more, his line shall be subordinate forever. (Bieler 81)
So it seems that indeed it was Patrick's intention to convert Miliucc to Christianity, and the bishop was angry simply because Miliucc had died a pagan instead of a Christian. If one suspects that this reaction is a bit odd for a man of Christ, what is even stranger is Patrick's confrontation with the pagan King Loiguire and his spiritual leaders, the druids.
Muirchu claims that the High King Loiguire celebrated a pagan holiday on the day that Christians celebrate Easter. However, scholars think that Muirchu changed the date of the pagan Beltane festival from May 1 to coincide with Easter in order for the story to make sense (Ellis 76). Loiguire and his druids lived on the Hill of Tara. The druids and the nobility gathered at Loiguire's palace in order to "celebrate with many incantations and magic rites and other superstitious acts of idolatry" (Bieler 85). On that day, pagan custom stated that no fire should be lit in Ireland before the sacred fire was kindled at the palace at Tara (Hopkin 42). Patrick, however, had no love for this custom, and deliberately lit a fire on the Hill of Slane before the fire was lit on Tara. King Loiguire could see this act of disrespect from his palace and gathered his counselors to discuss the matter. According to Muirchu, the druids prophesied that if the fire of Slane were not put out that night, then, it will never be extinguished at all; it will rise above all the fires of our customs, and he who has kindled it on this night and the kingdom that has been brought upon us by him who has kindled it . . . will overpower us all and you, and will seduce all the people of your kingdom, and all the kingdoms will yield to it, and it will spread over the whole country and will reign in all eternity. (Bieler 87)
[Left: On the Hill of Tara stands a Lia Fáil or Stone of Destiny, a pagan symbol of royal power. In myth, the stone had otherworldly origins, and it would shout when touched by a rightful king.]
Essentially, the druids told their pagan king that if they did not stop the actions of Patrick that night, then Patrick would supplant the pagan religion and replace it with the newer Christianity. Of course, King Loiguire was not happy with this idea, so he set off with a number of his druids to stop this act of treachery. The story goes on to describe how the druids confronted Patrick for his misdeeds. Faced with these disgruntled pagans, Patrick converted one instantly, threw another druid up in the air with the power of God and crushed his skull against a rock, and summoned an earthquake to kill the majority of the rest. After this, Loiguire made an escape by pretending to be a pious Christian, but that did not stop Patrick and his followers from bursting into Loiguire's palace the next day when the pagans were feasting for their celebration. Patrick did this "in order to vindicate and to preach the holy faith at Tara before all the nations" (Bieler 93). This is when Patrick and the druids engaged in a magical contest to see whose skills and religion were superior. Once again, the pagans suffered fatalities and lost the contest. "For at the prayer and word of Patrick the wrath of God descended upon the impious people, and many of them died" (Bieler 97). Patrick continued on to tell King Loiguire, "If you do not believe now you shall die at once, for the wrath of God has come down upon your head" (Bieler 97). Indeed, this "convert or die" proclamation convinced the pagan king that "[i]t is better for me to believe than to die" (Bieler 97).
Who were these pagans and druids who suffered much at the hands of Muirchu's Saint Patrick? Were the Irish pagans truly evil? Did people honestly believe that the druids possessed great magical powers, such as the ability to call down snow and darkness at will?
To begin, one must be aware that no one really knows much about the Irish druids. Peter Ellis says in his book The Druids that "one person's Druid is another person's fantasy" (11). Ellis continues on to note that the druids were forbidden by religious law to write down any of their learning, lest it fall into the wrong hands. Most of what we know about them comes from sources innately hostile to the druids, namely the Romans who conquered them in Britain in the first century AD (Ellis 13-15, 32).
Rather than being purveyors of spells and magic, the Irish druids were a learned class that fulfilled many functions in ancient society, from carrying out priestly duties (namely at pagan holidays and festivals) to acting as "philosophers, judges, teachers, historians, poets, musicians, physicians, astronomers, prophets, and political advisors or counselors" (Ellis 14).
The word "druid" is related to dru-wid, which means "oak knowledge." Not only did the oak figure in to the spiritual life of the druids, but Ellis proposes that the oak symbolized survival itself, as it supplied many essential substances, including wood for kindling and shelter, and acorn flour for bread. Ellis thinks that thousands of years ago, those who knew about the properties of oaks were said to have "oak knowledge," and thus they were considered part of the learned class, as they were the ones who possessed the knowledge that would help the Celts survive (39-40).
There were three primary classes of druids: the bards (singers and historians who passed down knowledge through song), the prophets, and the druids who studied philosophy and nature (Ellis 51). Druids could marry and have children if they wished, and many druids were actually women, called ban-drui or druidesses. Saint Brigit of Kildare is said to have been brought up and educated as a ban-drui before converting to Christianity.
Though the Irish druids refrained from leaving written records of their practices, what is clear is that druids in early Celtic society were not considered mere magicians. Instead, they comprised an entire intellectual class and performed necessary functions in Irish society.
Throughout history, there have been cases of one religion imposing itself on another by force. Was the conversion of Christianity in Ireland another such instance, as Muirchu would have us believe? Magic and prophecies aside, Muirchu's stories imply that Patrick came to the island with a troupe of men to convert the "heathens" to Christianity. Ostensibly, in the course of this mission, there were some bloody encounters between Patrick and those of the older pagan faith, especially the upholders of that faith, the druids. How well do these stories, written two centuries after Patrick's death, represent reality?
To answer this, it is important to note that scholars make a distinction between the mythical and the historical Saint Patrick. Muirchu and others after him are responsible for inventing the character of the mythical Patrick. Muirchu's Patrick is a shaman who is familiar with the workings of magic and miracles, and is not above cursing and killing his enemies in the name of Christ. He scorns the druids and their pagan faith because he believes that it is a false faith. Thus, he can justify his actions toward those who refuse the word of God. The stories of the mythical saint can certainly tell us much about the context of the times in which they were invented, the seventh century AD, but what can they tell us about the truth behind the conversion of the Irish to Christianity? Is there any historical basis for these "convert or die" tales?
To best be able to consider the character of the historical Saint Patrick, it is wise to consider his entire pilgrimage and dealings with the Irish. There is a manuscript by Patrick called the Confession, written in the fifth century AD, in which he relates some of the events that meant much to him in life. He describes his first interaction with the Irish, which could indeed be considered a bad one: at age sixteen, Patrick was captured in an area of Britain called Bannaventa Taburniae by Irish raiders, and was subsequently sold into slavery across the sea. (No one has been able to locate this settlement, but scholars assume it is on the west coast.) In Britain, he had been part of the landowning upper class. His father was a deacon and his grandfather was a priest. (The clergy had less strict notions of celibacy in that period.) Yet Patrick admittedly was not a faithful Christian. He said, "I did not believe in the living god, no, not from my infancy, but I remained in . . . unbelief" (Thompson 7). .
First of all was a region of fire, called Muspell (also known as Muspellheim). No ordinary being could live there for the land was ablaze and the air aflame. Later the combusting fire giants were to make Muspell their home. Muspell means "Home of the Destroyers of the world".
It was quite obvious that after eons of time the regions of fire and ice in the yawning void must meet. When this eventually happened there arose that most amazing of all phenomena, which no one since the world began has been able to explain - Life. When the two elements came together in space, the yawning void was as mild as the windless air, but as the ice of Niflheim touched the fire of Muspell there was a tremendous explosion and a mighty booming band. The fermenting drops of venom bubbling up through Elivagar were fused to life by the fire and across the length and breadth of Ginnungagap their there formed the body of a giant. He was shaped like a man and at first he hardly moved. A broth of bubbling and boiling mud and ice gave birth to his ferocious head, his arms, his torso and his sludge-streaked legs. His later descendants, the frost giants, named him Aurgelmir which meant Mud Boiler, for they knew the secret of his creation; but others called him Ymir.
All these beings, the ancestors of the giants and the gods, and the universal cow Authumla, had formed the primeval form lessness Ginnungagap. Because of the venom proceeding from Elivagar some were evil. Others, like Buri, were good. But it is well known that good and evil cannot live peacefully together and before long there was a tremendous battle between the cosmic powers.
Fortunately (because without a sky the earth would been a dark and miserable, not to mention uninteresting place to live in) a solution was at hand: they were able to make use of the dwarfs. Odin, Vili and Ve peremptorily ordered four of them to stand forever at the four corners of the world to hold up the sky. They called them Nordi (North), Sudri (South), Austri (East) and Westri (West). A little later on Odin created the winds by posting a giant (one of Bergelmir's sons) in the form of an eagle at eh ends of the earth to flap his wings for ever. And into the stream of air Bor's sons cast Ymir's brains to make the clouds.
Nott's first husband was a handsome young fellow called Naglfari or Darkling, who may well have been a distant cousin of hers. Their marriage did not last long, but long enough for them to produce a son called Aud (Space). If you happen to be alone on a dark night with no clouds and the stars twinkling away into infinity, you will be well aware of the presence of Aud.
Nott drove first with her lead horse, Hrimfaxi (Frostymane) who each morning sprinkles the ground below with dew as he champs at his bit. The froth and glitter of his spit can be seen as it gathers in beads on the leaves and petals before dawn.
Sol's brother had to ride one of the horses of the moon, called Alsvider. But because his journeys were much more complicated than because the moon he was set to a guide of waxes and wanes each month so that it is never quite the same for two days in a row. Mani could not manage this himself and he in his turn kidnapped two other children from earth. A little boy named Bit and his sister Hiuki, had been sent up a high mountain by their father to fetch water from a well. That was the last the old man ever saw of them.
Empty? Well, not quite. In the distance, just beyond the waterline, the three gods made out two logs of driftwood. They had only been recently deposited on the yellow sand by the waves sweeping in from the ocean and were so near the water's edge that the tide still splashed the side of the one nearest to the sea.
As Lothur looked down on the woman he transferred to her the flush of youth, the use of her five senses and the power of understanding. Slowly she sat up, looking around the new world. Then she turned to look at the body still lying motionless and empty beside her.
